Finbarr O’Reilly Podcast
For this weeks homework, I had to choose a podcast to listen to from A Small Voice. After having a quick browse through the photographers available I found one from Mark Neville, I already knew that I couldn’t really listen to that one because I had just had a full talk with him. However it did remind me about his work in Helmand Province. This whole idea of war photography was something that I wanted to have a look into. So I had another look through the available podcasts and I came across British-Candian photographer Finbarr O’Reilly.
Finbarr O’Rielly spent 12 years working as a correspondent for Reuters the international news agency. He was also a staff photographer and was based in West and Central Africa. Over here he covered conflicts and social issues in countries like Niger, to which in 2006 O’Rielly won the 2006 World Press photo for his
documentation of the 2005-06 Niger food crisis. I know that it’s tough to like this image however the chosen equipment really made this an effective shot. On the World Press Photo site it says that he wanted to shoot this image on his wide angle lens. However he didn’t have time to switch lens so he caught this on his 70-200. The image feels much more striking now, the shallow depth of field instantly throws our eyes to this small malnourished hand. I think if this was shot on a wider lens like a 24-70, the shot wouldn’t of been as effective.
After covering problems in Africa. O’Reilly was frequently deployed with Coalition forces in Helmand Province between 2008 and 2011. He would go on and appear in Under Fire: Journalists in Combat a 2011 “documentary film about the psychological costs of covering war“.
In the conversation with Ben Smith. Finbarr described himself as “inpatient” He said “when I was in Canada I saw the journalist in the newsroom who were a generation older than me, none of those newspapers in Canada were going to send me overseas, as a correspondent you had to work your way up through the paper for the 20 years” to which he followed it up with “I was inpatient, I just wanted to go” To which we he eventually went overseas he found out that many of the Reuters correspondents were of a similar age to him “25, 26, 27” “It suddenly felt like there is space for our generation in a news context“. O’Reilly added this “The younger, the single are usually the ones more willing to go to these difficult posts“.
I really liked this section when Finbarr was discussing Isreal. “final straw for me … was covering the Isreali offensive … and all the pictures looked the same … felt I wasn’t capturing images, I was just maintaining an image of what this war looks like” I think this shows that photojournalism can be very repetitive, he also said that he was saying he got the same images in Gaza. He got the same images in other conflicts. “big fire bomb, clouds rising over smashed cities, grieving relatives and blown up bodies” these were all things that had been captured in other wars and O’Reilly had enough of effectively taking the same image over and over again.
He also reflected on what all photographer get spoken about. When theres a terrorist attack, the photographers who cover the event always get blamed for not helping the injured. This was said in the podcast. “Your seeking as a photographer to condemn this violence, but I ultimately was feeling like I was complicit“
Ben Peters Digital Photography 