Fallen Marine's photo shows a more human war

BY ERIN K. O'NEILL

"Photographs shock insofar as they show something novel. Unfortunately, the ante keeps getting raised." – Susan Sontag

It is hard to believe that in this age of hyper-realistic violent imagery that a blurred photo of a mortally injured Marine can be so shocking. And yet, there was a national response to The Associated Press photo that ran in the Missourian and other papers across the world on Sept. 4.

Lance Cpl. Joshua M. Bernard, all of 21 years old, was the injured Marine in the photograph. The image was made soon after he was struck in the legs by a rocket-propelled grenade in Afghanistan. It depicts fellow Marines rushing to Bernard’s assistance. It is blurred, but there is an ominous pool of red amid the blur. Bernard died during surgery the night the photograph was made from a blood clot in his heart.

On Sept. 4, I picked up a copy of the Missourian and, after examining the front-page image of a Mizzou football player, turned to page 3A. The photo, by embedded AP photographer Julie Jacobson, ran three columns wide and was the newspaper equivalent of being pushed into Lake Michigan in December. I had to look, and look again and then again to be sure, but that blob of blood red on the page was undeniable.

The story, by Jacobson and AP reporter Alfred De Montesquiou, that accompanied the image was descriptive and in my mind as graphic as the photo: "Bernard lay on the ground, two Marines standing over him exposed, trying to help. A first tourniquet on Bernard's leg broke. A medic applied another.

'I can't breathe, I can't breathe,' Bernard said. Troops crawling under the bullets dragged him to the MRAP, the mine-resistant armored vehicle that accompanied the patrol."

And this is really what bothers me about the public reaction: The photo is unacceptable — even unpatriotic — to publish, but the words are not to be so censored. Bernard’s parents talked with reporters at their home in Maine and spoke of Bernard’s love of literature and his faith in God. But John Bernard found the image to be disrespectful of his son’s memory. Defense Secretary Robert Gates even asked the AP to hold the photo back.

War is ugly — about that there is no doubt. In the Missourian, you are far more likely to encounter images of press conferences, festivals and football games than images of war from far away. The photo of Bernard’s injuries is painful, breathtaking and, unlike so many other stories and photographs in the newspaper that day, it was stunningly immediate and emotionally real.

"Images transfix. Images anesthetize," critic and author Susan Sontag wrote in "On Photography." “An event known through photographs certainly becomes more real than it would have been if one had never seen the photographs.”

The AP released excerpts of Jacobson’s journal entries. In them, she wrote of the image: “Death is a part of life and most certainly a part of war. Isn't that why we're here? To document for now and for history the events of this war? We'd shot everything else thus far and even after, from feature images of a Marine talking on a SAT phone to his girlfriend, all the way to happy meetings between Marines and civilians.”

Lance Cpl. Joshua M. Bernard is one of 807 Americans killed in Afghanistan since 2001. This is an agonizing statistic. Because the agony of Bernard’s death should really be felt 806 times over.  I saw the photo. I read the story. And I felt it.

Erin K. O'Neill is a former assistant director of photography and current page designer for the Missourian. She is also a master's degree candidate at the Missouri School of Journalism.

Published in the Columbia Missourian on September 16, 2009.

Show me the photos!

BY ERIN K. O'NEILL

While the news cycle has moved on to President Barack Obama’s trip to Cairo and family vacation in Paris, the executive branch of our government stopped the release of photographs showing prisoner abuse by American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan last month and the public has yet to see hide or hair of those photos.

In his speech at the National Archives in Washington on May 21, Obama said, “It was my judgment — informed by my national security team — that releasing these photos would inflame anti-American opinion and allow our enemies to paint U.S. troops with a broad, damning, and inaccurate brush, thereby endangering them in theaters of war.”  That’s a fine sentiment: We do have a national interest in protecting our military men and women serving in active combat duty. But I’m not so sure they’d thank us for this favor.

Considering the poor reputation that the United States has gained in our dalliances abroad in the past eight years, how could these particular photos make it any worse for our troops? It is a larger shame that our nation’s military asked the troops to perpetrate in such a way as to betray the moral high ground on which this nation was founded. As a nation we cannot truly understand and overcome the specter of prisoner abuses unless we face the images that those abuses created.

Seeing is believing, as the saying goes, and there is nothing like confronting photographs of atrocities to crystallize truth. The role of the photograph is to provide evidence of a moment in time and to challenge the status quo in ways worded documents fall short.

America faced a similar crisis in 2004, when photographs of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq came to light. Susan Sontag, the author and critic wrote in “Regarding the Pain of Others:” “The meaning of these pictures is not just that these acts were performed, but that their perpetrators apparently had no sense that there was anything wrong in what the pictures show.” Americans were quicker to condemn such actions in light of photographic evidence.

In the same May 21 speech, the president spoke of his decision to uphold the rule of law and release memos detailing the so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” (read: torture) used at Guantanamo Bay. Obama said: “There is also no question that Guantanamo set back the moral authority that is America's strongest currency in the world.” This highlights a dichotomy in the perception of media: Why are the memos acceptable for public discussion and debate, while photographs of prisoner abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan are not? How are the memos less dangerous to our troops than the photographs?

In the end, the danger of inflaming anti-American opinion abroad and increasing the danger of American military personnel already in perilous situations is more theoretical than imminent. It is far more dangerous to let the photographs of whatever happened at prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan lie in darkness than to let them come to light.

“We uphold our most cherished values not only because doing so is right, but because it strengthens our country and it keeps us safe,” President Obama said. Attempting to hold back these photographs – these potentially damning photographs – from public scrutiny is a betrayal of America’s professed cherished values. To shield the public from knowledge that would increase understanding of a war that has been muddled from the beginning is a shame. Show us the photos, Mr. President, and we will be a better country for it.

Erin K. O'Neill is an assistant director of photography for the Missourian and a master's degree candidate at the Missouri School of Journalism.

Published in the Columbia Missourian on Monday, June 10, 2009.