Proximity and distance in the mediation of suffering: Local photographers in war-torn Aleppo and the international media circuit

Mediating suffering: Studies of proximity and distance

This article, so to speak, looks behind images of distant suffering to study the norms and practices of war photography from a practitioner’s perspective. We rely on two research traditions to theoretically underpin these issues: First, scholarship on the ethics of distant spectatorship has discussed how media users – especially Western media users – engage with representations of despair. Second, research on war photography has studied the ways in which various actors cooperate to render conflicts visible in and through today’s connective and globalised media landscape. The combination of these perspectives is central to our argument because it theoretically frames our empirical findings that local photographers relate to (Western) aesthetic conventions and norms for representing suffering and that developing networks is key to gaining access to wide dissemination. At the same time, our analysis also underscores the need to further advance theoretical contributions to understanding the interplay between local practitioners and the international media circuit, a point to which we shall return.

Researchers such as Luc Boltanski (1999), John Ellis (2000) and Lilie Chouliaraki (2006) have studied the news media’s instrumental role in connecting and engaging (Western) audiences with the suffering of geographically removed others. This research tradition informs our article inasmuch as the photographers in our study all made it clear that their images are directed at global audiences, and therefore, the dynamics of reception are relevant to theoretically underpin the ways in which their work cuts across local and international forms of engagement. According to Ellis (2000), the news media’s – particularly television’s – coverage of suffering brings about a sense that ‘[w]e cannot say that we do not know’ because audiences obtain a ‘powerless knowledge and complicity’ from the safety of their living rooms (p. 1). Others have expressed more faith in the potential of distant spectatorship to facilitate change. Boltanski (1999: 17), for example, observes that the spectator is left with two options, paying and speaking, when converting feelings of pity and compassion into action. Chouliaraki (2006) contends that distance from suffering places the spectator in a ‘position of reflexive identification’, in which compassion forms the basis for an ethics of public life (p. 124). On a related note, researchers have discussed which images gain broad resonance and are widely circulated, perhaps even to the extent that they are attributed ‘iconic’ status, such as the images of Omran Daqneesh. Fehrenbach and Rodogno (2015) argue that humanitarian imagery ‘is moral rhetoric masquerading as visual evidence’ insofar as the photographs focus attention on suffering in a simplified and decontextualised manner (p. 6). Kevin Grant (2015) points to the importance of images being ‘tolerably shocking’, which means maintaining a balance between alerting audiences to the gravity of the situation, and not overstepping ‘the bounds of propriety’ (p. 64). That is, images need to afford the audience ‘safe emotional distance from an image of chaos brought to life’. While scholars have contested essentialist definitions of images attracting sufficient attention to be deemed ‘iconic’, they have nevertheless found certain common traits in these images, such as simple yet symbolically loaded iconography, authenticity, emotional appeal and openness to various interpretations and investments (see, for example, Brink, 2000; Hariman and Lucaites, 2007; Mortensen, 2015). In short, previous research has engaged with positions of distant spectatorship and which images call for a moral and political response.

Whereas research on distant spectatorship and ‘iconic’ images centres on the relationship between media texts and media users, scholars such as Amahl Bishara (2006, 2013) Christina Schwenkel (2008, 2010), Kari Andén-Papadopoulos and Mervi Pantti (2013), Sam Gregory (2015) and Lina Dencik and Stuart Allan (2017) have analysed the cooperation between actors near and distant from war and other atrocities from the perspective of production and distribution. This body of literature typically considers how modes of creating and disseminating war photography have become more fluid in today’s connective media landscape, characterised by convergence between social media and mainstream news media: Various actors outside the institutional confines of news organisations produce images. Meanwhile, media users access and co-create conflict reporting on and across platforms. For example, social media users have in several instances been instrumental in the initial circulation of ‘iconic’ images, which were later picked up by mainstream news media (Fehrenbach and Rodogno, 2016; Mortensen, 2017; Mortensen and Trenz, 2016). Dissolving boundaries between media production and media consumption make it more difficult to gain an overview of different actors contributing to the flow of news photographs from war. As Sam Gregory (2015), programme director of the human rights group WITNESS, pinpoints in his scholarly work:

How is one to understand the roles that ad hoc and informal networks of committed individuals play outside of formal or professionalized news-making or human rights documentation structures, and often operating at cross-purposes or in ignorance of existing professional norms and practices? (p. 1381)

War photography as a result of ‘contributory news-gathering’ (Gregory, 2015: 1380) has primarily been researched from the perspective of news organisations or NGOs. In a newsroom study, Wardle and Williams (2010) find mixed attitudes among British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) journalist towards user-generated content (see also Harrison, 2010). Andén-Papadopoulos and Pantti (2013) draw upon interviews with Swedish and Finnish journalists to analyse what they perceive as the risks and benefits of deploying citizen eyewitness images in the reporting of unfolding crises. In particular, their study centres on how citizen reporting challenges journalistic authority, autonomy and objectivity. Other research contributions have focused on the cooperative relationship between NGOs and journalists. Dencik and Allan (2017), for example, argue that certain NGOs are reluctant to use non-professional images due to difficulties involved with verification and truthfulness. ‘There is always a question of where the photo actually came from, who took it, who shared it’, as an NGO representative states (Dencik and Allan, 2017: 1189). As our study shows, other types of NGOs work actively to tackle verification issues by training local photographers in conflict zones.

The conditions of local photojournalists working in areas of violent conflict have, however, received far less scholarly scrutiny. From the historical perspective of the Vietnam War, Schwenkel (2008, 2010) observes a stark contrast between the psychological effects of covering the war for Vietnamese photojournalists and US photojournalists, respectively. Schwenkel (2010) exemplifies this by quoting a US photojournalist for calling his time in Vietnam ‘adventure, fun and games, girlfriends, a “wild party”’ (p. 98). She traces this contrast to the varying forms and levels of immersion in the lives of the local civilians who were being photographed. Significantly different relationships were involved, depending on whether a photojournalist was a local or a foreigner. Even if our research also attests to differing approaches to the local population, it is important to emphasise that we do not recognise such detachment or carelessness on the part of the foreign journalists with whom we spoke. With similar attention to local practitioners, Bishara (2006, 2010, 2013) has studied the often-unacknowledged contributions of Palestinian journalists and photojournalists in US news about Palestinians. She argues that work by photojournalists and reporters on the scene demands embodied skills and experiences acquired through living under the occupation. These aspects are rarely recognised because journalism is generally considered intellectual work.

If we look beyond literature dealing particularly with images, collaborations between international news organisations and local actors have been studied in literature on war reporting. This research, like that of Schwenkel and Bishara, emphasises the increasingly important role of local media workers, particularly in relation to the wars in Iraq and Syria (Murrell, 2009, 2010; Palmer and Fontan, 2007; Pendry, 2011; Skrubbeltrang, 2014; Vandevoordt, 2016, 2017; Wall and El Zahed, 2015), but also in relation to Kosovo (Paterson et al., 2012). However, despite consensus on the significance of local media workers, most of these studies have mainly or exclusively explored the conditions of local media workers through interviews with foreign correspondents. To name but one example, Feinstein and Starr (2015) have explored psychological effects on journalists covering the war in Syria, which was the deadliest country for journalists in 2013. Even though 90 percent of the journalists killed in Syria that year were local (26 out of 29), the study remains limited to investigating the psychological wellbeing of Western journalists.

This literature contributes valuable insights concerning ethical and professional issues related to citizen imagery as well as to collaborations between local practitioners and international news organisations. Even so, the perspective of local citizens taking images aimed at the international news outlets remains underdeveloped. We seek to advance this area of study in the present article. While this article is primarily empirically driven, we also wish to contribute to theory building. Specifically, we argue that, when considering the suffering of distant others from a Western point of view, it is important to bear in mind the collaboration and mutual dependence as well as the unequal relationship between international news organisations and local media workers. We propose that discussions of images giving a presence to distant suffering should also take into account the perspectives of local community members documenting the damage and destruction caused by war to their immediate surroundings. From this dual perspective of lived experience of documenting proximate suffering and experiencing this documentation from a distance, we hope to gain a richer understanding of the role and impact of war photography in today’s connective media landscape. This dual perspective may also provide answers to questions regarding the relationship between distant and proximate experiences of war, that is, people taking, sharing and mobilising images of war in their local neighbourhoods and distant media users seeking information and trying to form a political opinion through these images.

Method: Researching the work of photojournalists in war-torn Aleppo

Our methodological approach is inspired by Anna L. Tsing’s (2005) notion of an ethnography of global connections. She maintains that ‘[t]he term “global” here is not a claim to explain everything in the world at once, but proposes instead to study the global through a focus on “zones of awkward engagement,” where words mean something different across a divide even as people agree to speak’ (Tsing, 2005: xi). By the same token, we approach ‘the global’ through the work of local photographers in Aleppo, who explicitly sought to reach what they term ‘global’ audiences.

We study ‘zones of awkward engagement’ while being separated in time and space from key places. Bearing this separation in mind, we have deployed qualitative interviews, supplemented by digital ethnography and watching videos and photographs, to approach an understanding of the lived reality of the local photographers and the zones of friction their images have engendered in their initial stages of becoming and dissemination. We have taken our empirical point of departure in the images of Omran Daqneesh from 2016 since they constitute a major example of the work of local Syrian photographers spreading across the world. Through professional networks and digital ethnography, we made contact with and carried out qualitative interviews with key actors directly involved in taking and sharing these images: five local photographers, two international journalists, two news agency photo editors, a news agency correspondent and three NGO workers. Interviews were conducted over Skype, on the phone and face-to-face, supplemented with follow-up discussions on e-mail and messenger. All our interviewees are male, apart from one international journalist. Moreover, we have watched videos and films from Aleppo, particularly those made by the photographers we interviewed, as a means of achieving an – albeit limited – sensory perception of the circumstances under which they carried out their work. This has further made us attuned to the ‘taken for granted’, which can be difficult to articulate in interviews. As the interviews generated a rich trove of data, future work will deal specifically with the images of Omran Daqneesh, while this article focuses on the roles assumed by photographers.

The interviews with local photographers from Aleppo were conducted under somewhat demanding circumstances in the winter of 2017–2018. Several of the photographers were living in exile at this point. One of them was attempting a dangerous and unpredictable journey towards Europe, as we repeatedly spoke with him. Internet connections were often unstable. In addition, interviews were complicated by linguistic difficulties as the interviewees spoke Syrian Arabic and one of the authors of this article held the conversations in non-native Egyptian Arabic. At times, linguistic difficulties meant that significant details were not followed up on during interviews. We sought to compensate for this by returning to these issues in e-mails and other written correspondence. The recorded interviews were translated and transcribed into English by a professional translator, and quotes were later double checked by another professional translator. We subsequently coded the transcribed interviews to systematically identify main themes.

Three of the local photographers were part of AMC. A citizen-driven media initiative, AMC delivered significant visual documentation of Aleppo when rebels controlled the city. AMC started as a group of activists with limited skills communicating through Skype with fake names during the initial uprising. After The Free Syrian Army gained control of Aleppo, they developed into a media collective of about 30 people and several offices. Their goal was to counter regime cover-ups and to show the outside world the hardships in Aleppo. Photographers were assigned to cover their own neighbourhoods. They received some assistance from Western NGOs in the form of training, production and safety equipment and production support. They also carried out internal trainings. While building up a followership on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, they also made legal agreements with news agencies to make their work available as ‘handouts’, that is, without financial compensation. Photographers, often working with their own cameras, received little compensation for their work. Many similar initiatives existed in Aleppo and across Syria.

Researching journalism in war zones invariably raises a number of issues concerning ethics and security. War journalism is always complicated by access being controlled by partners in the conflict. In Syria, this is the case whether journalists attempt to cover the regime side or oppositional groups. Relationships with armed groups was as detrimental for the local photographers we spoke with as it was for international journalists entering the city. This is a crucial context for our study as well as an ethical challenge for researchers and news organisations alike (see also Allan and Zelizer, 2004). We are entirely aware that these collaborations are not unproblematic, especially as some of these groups have committed war crimes and acts of terrorism. However, in order to study the circumstances under which local photographers in Aleppo carry out their work, we are bound by their own accounts, which needless to say are subjective, partial and in retrospect. Another fundamental ethical concern is that the photographers, journalists and NGO workers we interviewed are involved in highly dangerous activities. We do not in any way want our research to contribute to the harm of any of the people we have spoken with. We have therefore left out many details in order not to compromise their safety or ability to work.

Gaining voice: Professionalisation and immersion

We refer to the Aleppian citizens taking photographs as ‘photographers’. But this is far from the full story. While they consistently talked about taking and sharing images as their job, the interviewees described themselves interchangeably as photographers, activists, citizen journalists and journalists, corresponding with the varying ways they are designated by others. These alternative labels imply that their work involved aspects of all these roles. Meanwhile, their immersion and proximity to their photographic subjects sits uneasily with Western notions of journalism and its epistemology (Mollerup, 2016; Schwenkel, 2010). The lack of clear definition of these actors also potentially makes it easier to overlook that they did not enjoy the same privileges, rights and protection as journalists/photojournalists within news organisations. At the same time, they seem to conform to a role well-known from the history of photojournalism of the male, humanistic and idealistic photographer documenting innocent war victims up close. Nonetheless, their dual role of being part of the conflict and reporting on the conflict is worth noting in relation to the verification challenges, to which literature on amateur or eyewitness images has repeatedly drawn attention (e.g. Allan, 2013; Andén-Papadopoulos and Pantti, 2013; Mortensen, 2015). This renders the photographers vulnerable to allegations of falsification, political infiltration and manipulation. From the perspective of international news organisations and their users, it would at least in part be unclear who had taken the images.

Similar to other current conflicts, international news coverage of the war in Syria was to a great extent shaped by the work of local photographers (Bishara, 2005, 2013; Murrell, 2009, 2010; Salama, 2012). Working under extreme danger and insecurity, local photographers in Aleppo managed to reach global audiences with their images. None of the photographers with whom we spoke had planned to assume this line of work prior to 2011. As one award-wining photographer explained,

Essentially, as I told you, I am an informatics student. I never imagined that I would end up working in photography. However, there was a need for me to work with photography, because most of the journalists were biased towards the Syrian regime. So all the crimes that were taking place in the opposition areas – the air bombardments and the people dying – the regime journalists were denying all of that. So we, the activists, were the eye that communicated the events that were happening in the liberated areas.

This explanation of his motives for turning to war photography is typical. Regardless of their lack of formal training in photojournalism, the photographers all express that they wished to make up for the outside world’s lack of information about the scale of the atrocities in Aleppo.

International attention on Aleppo was intense, and news organisations’ demand for images was high in 2016. When protests began in 2011, they were violently suppressed. The situation escalated into an armed uprising and later war. In the summer of 2016, Aleppo was a divided city with rebels controlling parts of the city and the regime controlling other parts. Aided by Russian airstrikes, the government had started regaining control of the city. Severe confrontations raged, described as the ‘most decisive battle yet’ in the Syrian war (Sly et al., 2016). From the start of the uprising and until the summer of 2016, at least 105 journalists were killed in Syria (Committee to Protect Journalists, n.d.). Journalists had also been subjected to torture, disappearances, deportation and denied access to the country (Reporters without Borders, 2011; Salama, 2012). Danger and restricted access made it difficult for journalists without close allegiances with whoever was in control in a given area to gain access. The country was increasingly referred to as closed off to international journalists, creating a gap between demand for images and access. In this context, locals without prior training in photography became key suppliers for international news organisations.

The photographers we spoke to made it clear that they entered this profession as an act of opposition. By taking photographs, they actively positioned themselves as participants in the conflict. But then again, as citizens of Aleppo, they never had the choice not to be part of this conflict. Although the Assad regime and Russia were unequivocally described as the perpetrators, the images taken by local photographers were not addressed directly at the Assad regime, Russia or others specifically related to the war. Instead they were aimed at global audiences – ‘people of the world’ and ‘the general public’, as two photographers put it. As a third photographer explained, they wished to gain voice:

Then the Syrian revolution came […] and the regime created a media blackout of the events that were happening. The people and the activists themselves, they were the ones who saw that we should have a voice. We must have an organisation or a body through which we can get our voice out and report the events that are happening. The work evolved. In the beginning, it was limited to filming the demonstrations as they were happening, and then uploading them to YouTube.

International news organisations were crucial for the photographers in their attempts to reach global audiences. Accordingly, the photographers taught themselves how to compose and capture images in line with the traditions of war photojournalism. Due to severe repression of media and activism in Syria pre-2011, skills were limited at first. One photographer described how he appropriated photojournalistic traditions by studying main international outlets for war photography:

I started following the photo pages of AFP, Reuters, New York Times and Washington Post. I would look at the photos from earlier wars to be able to form an idea of the photo. And little by little, I started getting experience with photography.

This photographer described the process of learning by seeing, that is, teaching himself photography by looking at the photographs published by international news agencies as well as major US newspapers. Western norms and traditions were scrutinised and then, presumably, reproduced in his photographs directed at an international audience; photographs for which he won international prizes.

The Aleppian photographers’ attempt to train or even professionalise themselves in order to ‘gain voice’, as one of them puts it, underscores an inherent paradox. Their motivation was to create alternative images from their local conflict and yet they had to conform to Western traditions and the ‘moral rhetoric’ (Fehrenbach and Rodogno, 2015) of humanitarian photography in order to reach their targeted audiences. In this way, they adopted a dual position between local immersion and the professional standards of international news organisations.

From local suffering to ‘people of the world’

Learning to create photographs of the quality demanded by international news organisations was not only a matter of refining aesthetic sensibilities. Photographing a severe humanitarian crisis also meant walking a fine line between sensitivity towards various actors, including distant viewers, who might be repulsed by graphically violent images, as well as the people represented in the photographs, who might be further endangered by having their image taken. Concern for their emotional and physical state was another reason not to photograph people suffering or their next of kin. As another photographer explained, ‘[o]f course, I didn’t film his mom because she was in a really bad condition’. This care for the wellbeing of victims speaks to the immersion of local photographers in the lives of their photographic subjects, which Schwenkel (2010) has critically contrasted with ‘patterns of global hopping’ of Western news reporting that ‘foster a distanced and detached position from photographic subjects’ (p. 87).

Local photographers’ attention to the aesthetics of war photography notwithstanding, they found it difficult to predict which pictures would be in demand by international news organisations. The resonance of the images of Omran Daqneesh, for example, which were disseminated on social media and by news outlets around the globe, caught both photographers who took these images by surprise. One of them described the swift dissemination in the following manner:

I documented a lot of airstrikes and crimes happening in the city. So I didn’t expect that the picture or video would be distributed so widely. I wasn’t expecting something like that. Because every day I would take pictures of more than ten or fifteen children or entire families who’d been under the rubble or hit by airstrikes. So I published the video, I published the pictures. And afterwards I was really exhausted, so I put my head down and went to sleep. I woke up in the morning, and I saw that my picture and my video had been spread all over social media, on [TV] channels, on international [news] agencies.

For the photographers, it appeared somewhat arbitrary which images attracted international attention. Since the images were circulated so intensely on social media and by news organisations, it was beyond the control of any one actor which photographs would ‘go viral’ and be ascribed iconic status. From their perspective, the image of the injured boy in the ambulance did not represent an anomaly in their day-to-day experience of war-torn Aleppo. Yet, they were aware that, in the context of the international news stream, the relevance of their work also depended on current affairs in Iraq, Yemen and other places – and the availability of images from these wars. The international appeal of the Omran Daqneesh imagery travelling across geographical and cultural distances did not only take the photographers by surprise. This was also unforeseen for the international journalists and news agency photo editors we spoke with. One of the first journalists to spread the image through her Facebook account, Anne Barnard of the New York Times, only decided to have the newspaper publish the image after it had gone viral. However, even if no one was able to predict how many people would find this image significant, the photographers were crucially aware of the significance of these ungraspable meanings in other places. Bishara (2010) has explored along similar lines how ‘initial meanings and contexts […] become unavailable as layers of mediation accumulate and as media travels across geographic and cultural distances’ (p. 56).

In summary, local photographers carry out a delicate balancing act between their home contexts and international media when documenting human suffering: They adhere to Western standards of photography while being unable to predict which images will gain wide distribution. In addition, they weigh the care for victims, who are members of their local communities. Politics, safety and economy constitute other vital dimensions in their cooperation with international media organisations, which we concentrate on in the following section.

‘I don’t benefit and trade from the revolution’: Politics, safety and economy of war photography

Photographers working in Aleppo had to deal with two interweaving logistical dimensions of producing and distributing images: They organised their work on the ground in the war zone by being alert to situations of urgency and importance to which they should turn their cameras, while also manoeuvring among demanding circumstances with regards to safety, politics and economy. At the same time, they also had to distribute their images through networks in order to reach the intended, global audiences. Even if the photographers were short of a clearly defined role, their careers did not come about all at once. When the world’s attention turned to Aleppo in the summer of 2016, the photographers had spent the past 5 years honing their skills, developing their internal organisation with initiatives such as AMC and building up networks of dissemination.

As mentioned above, international news organisations started depending even more on uncontracted local media workers after pulling their reporters out of Syria. Paradoxically, the situation was deemed too dangerous for these organisations’ permanent staff to cover (e.g. Salama, 2012), yet the very dangerousness of the situation prompted a profound demand for coverage. Local photographers in Aleppo answering to this demand for coverage were going outside during airstrikes and putting themselves in other positions of high risk to document the war. They coped with the danger in numerous ways, such as developing strategies to avoid attacks when exposed during airstrikes, working under aliases and taking other precautions when engaging in what one photographer refers to as ‘the biggest crime’ in the eyes of the Syrian regime, namely documenting the war:

I took this alias so the regime couldn’t find me and arrest me, as we were committing the biggest crime according to them – documenting their crimes.

Photographers in Aleppo lived through the same violence and hardship as other civilians in the city, coping with daily bombardments, frequent power cuts and food shortages. Under these circumstances, photographers depended on alliances with armed groups to secure their safety:

While working as a photographer inside of Aleppo, I was not very afraid. Because Aleppo was a stronghold of the Free Syrian Army. In other towns, you would find the Al-Qaida group, but in Aleppo Al-Qaida consisted of around 50 people, which wasn’t that scary. So we were working under the protection of the Free Syrian Army, and they would protect us when we were filming. Sometimes a few people would go out with us to help us, so that no one from the armed groups would stop us.

These security arrangements, while obviously not unproblematic from a journalistic point of view, were at times crucial for the work and survival of photographers, whether local or foreign. One of the last international photographers to work in Aleppo before the intense bombardments in the summer of 2016 conveyed how he and his crew were stopped by members of an armed group at a checkpoint because they had filmed a particular incident, which the armed group did not want documented. He believed that they only made it out because a group of bodyguards, that is, people from an armed group making money by offering security, was riding in the car behind them.

Local photographers also needed to navigate the accelerated international media circuit. They found myriad ways of connecting with international journalists, news organisations and NGOs. During the 5 years of the war, many had established themselves as relevant sources of news images from Aleppo, by using WhatsApp groups, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other platforms:

I always share on my Facebook profile the different kinds of sufferings I experienced in Aleppo, and I had around 22 thousand followers on my Facebook [in August 2016]. Some of them are Western journalists, some of them are from Sweden, from Belgium, some from the Netherlands, some from Germany, from several countries. I always used to share so that they could see our suffering, and people used to take my pictures and send them to media agencies. It was quite normal.

As images taken by local photographers were being shared widely on digital platforms, often without reference to the original source, journalists abroad had to trace images back to photographers for copyright, for verification and to request high-resolution copies. Photographers also shared images with journalists through Whatsapp groups, which allowed journalists to ask directly for permission to use them. Certain media collectives and photographers earned the trust of international journalists and news organisations by consistently providing images. In some instances, as with AMC, photographers and media collectives made contracts with international news agencies, permitting them to use their images with attribution but without financial compensation. This occasionally granted photographers the wide outreach they were seeking. However, these agreements and similar freelance relationships did not ensure photographers a steady outlet for their work because this, as mentioned above, depended on the level of international attention on Syria, which did not always accord with the photographers’ own experience of the gravity and urgency of the situation. The photographers, in other words, only achieved their goal of contributing to the international news coverage of Syria when this suited international news cycles.

Agreements between local photographers and international news organisations made it easier to use the work of local photographers, but they did not render the work of local photographers financially sustainable. According to the photographers themselves, their incentives were not financial in any event. They hoped that by visually recording suffering of civilians in Aleppo, they could contribute to stop the bombardments and intense fighting. One photographer referred to potential financial compensation as if it would have been morally questionable for him to receive payment for his idealistically driven work, seeing as he was himself a citizen of Aleppo with a family in imminent danger. He reflected upon his experience of taking and sharing a photograph of Omran Daqneesh:

I do not want any money because my own daughter is under siege, and I only want the bombing of her to stop. […] So, I sent [Washington Post] the picture, and they said that they wanted to buy it – but I rejected that and told them that I don’t benefit and trade from the revolution. Therefore, I want to give you the picture without charging you for it, and you can pass it on to all the media agencies in the world to publish it, just so that the bombardments of my daughter can stop. […] My goal is to stop the bombardments against all the children of the liberated city and in all the liberated areas in Syria – and this is done by making sure it reaches the general public and they see what is happening to our children.

Other photographers, however, said that the issue of pay simply never came up, even when they consistently supplied images to a news organisation. Although the photographers were often not compensated, their work involved high costs. Access to infrastructure and means of communication was crucial. At the same time, Internet supply was uncertain, expensive and related to the physical control of places. Photographers also faced significant costs related to equipment and the necessities of daily life. One photographer explained how his ability to take images of the quality demanded by international news organisations had been supported by an uncanny intersection of chance and violence, when he had simply taken a camera from a dead photographer next to him. Some photographers received equipment and production support from Western NGOs, which recognised the importance of documenting the atrocities in Aleppo. Concurrently, to help fill the gap between access and skills, NGOs seeking to professionalise local media workers offered some training in photography, journalism and safety. However, the precarious circumstances of documenting a war zone and the photographers’ lack of strict organisation made it difficult to arrange such trainings. NGOs were at the same time hesitant to provide safety equipment such as bulletproof vests because, in their experience, wearing such gear might further endanger photographers.

The economic circuit of photographers sharing images without financial compensation for the sake of contributing to a cause and news organisations publishing these images for journalistic purposes as well as for profit opens a financial gap. Unsustainable media initiatives can at times function through personal wealth, occasional donations or funding from NGOs. In the case of photographers in Aleppo, Western NGOs played a part in enabling and sustaining the photographers and their activities. This economic circuit nevertheless raises ethical questions regarding image dissemination from war zones and the role and responsibilities of international news organisations. Furthermore, support from NGOs may in a sense add to the precarity of photographers. Once interest in the photographers’ work fades or they are no longer able to photograph and/or stay in the war zones, they lose organisational support.

Conclusion

Research into war (photo)journalism and spectatorship of distant suffering has primarily revolved around the perspective of Western spectators and/or Western journalists or photojournalists within media organisations. Based on the accounts of local, Aleppian photographers documenting the Syrian war, this article has sought to join this literature with the challenges facing local photographers in war zones. With an empirical point of departure in local photographers in Aleppo, this article has shown how blurred boundaries between documenting conflict and taking part in conflict raises ethical, professional and financial concerns. The photographers were able to provide international news organisations with continued documentation of the conflict exactly because as citizens of Aleppo they were part of the conflict. However, regardless of the professionalisation of their work, it was their very immersion in the conflict, which disqualified them from obtaining the safety, recognition and financial rewards granted to acknowledged journalists. This article has also shown how the photographers used their cameras to attract international attention to the suffering of the local civilian population. However, to reach their target group, they needed to navigate in conditions set by the international media circuit in terms of the format and aesthetics of the photographs as well as news cycles, attention spans and convergence between social media and news organisations. The proliferation of images from the Syrian war is contingent upon uncertain, divergent, unpredictable circumstances and intersecting interests, which renders the spread of images beyond the control of any single actor.

In studying the zones of global friction we have, however, experienced missing links in the connection between the two bodies of literature on ethics of distant spectatorship and practitioners’ perspectives on photojournalism. We found that local photographers’ immersion in conflict and orientation towards global audiences lacked a theoretical frame in the existing scholarly research. The photographers’ somewhat fluid or unclear role in relation to news organisation – as sources, freelancers, activists, citizen media actors, and so on – is crucial for the terms under which they work. We would welcome future theoretical approaches grasping the complexities of this particular labour market and how this accords (or not) with journalistic ideals of objectivity, fairness, and so on. Another theoretical blind spot concerns the circulation and mobilisation of images. The sudden and immense attention sparked by the imagery of Omran Daqneesh took media actors, whether local or international, by surprise. A contribution of future empirical work and theory building would be to understand the cultural, social and market-driven dynamics behind certain images going viral on a global scale. To a large extent, research into iconic images has focused on inherent aesthetic qualities and symbolic connotations, but other and seemingly more unpredictable factors such as networks, algorithms and changing meanings across distances must also be taken into account.