Week 8 EOC: Bang Bang Club

First of all, I thought the movie was great.  It really showed how the photographers work in conflict areas.  We only hear and see what happens in war torn countries, but these photojournalists really go through great lengths to provide us with their vision.  This movie delves into that kind of situation and showed us what goes behind the scenes of these interesting photographs.  Needless to say, this is a very dangerous job.  To me, this is more dangerous than being a soldier, because photographers only shoot with cameras, not guns.  What kind of protection and training do they really have as far as being the the middle of war?  The men and women in uniform go through intensive training before being sent to conflicts and they wear the proper gear for protection, but photographers do not have the appropriate training needed to survive the fight.  Additionally, most of these photojournalists are freelance, which makes protection more challenging.

These pictures are frightening in real life as there have been too many deaths in which photojournalists are involved.  With the Bang Bang club, the name in reference to gunfire and the violence that occurred in different communities, showed devotion to their work.  This witness the brutal killings right in front of them.  With Greg Marinovich's pulitzer prize winning photograph of a man being hacked with a machete, he says, “This was without doubt the worst day of my life, and the trauma remains with me, despite some twenty years and a lot of coming to terms with the incident, my role and what it means to be involved in murder...I neither saved him, nor redeemed myself, though at least I did not act shamefully.” (Wordpress)

Two of the four members of the Bang Bang Club are now dead which goes to show how dangerous it is by being a photojournalist.  I probably would not have the heart to do what these men and women do and I am sure this type of job are just for the special ones.