Photos of Mosul 2017

https://petapixel.com/2017/07/05/no-one-buy-photos-free-mosul-2017/

by wfunction • 9 years ago

365 131 9 years ago

petapixel.com

arcticbull• 9 years ago

I would love to donate to this person, and I couldn't find a way. Any suggestions?

Doches• 9 years ago

From the last line of the article:

If you’d like to support my work, you can purchase prints of my photos. You can also learn about and support the world of the Free Burma Rangers here.

http://www.kainoalittle.com/prints/

nl5• 9 years ago

While I strongly support this journalist's work, I'm extremely hesitant to support the Free Burma Rangers. In Iraq they are an armed religious group, and while their goal of supporting refugees is admirable, their methods seem likely to make things worse.

To be clear, their methods involve actively seeking out firefights. See http://www.freeburmarangers.org/international/kurdistan/ for some idea of how they think about this.

morsch• 9 years ago

For what it's worth, you can buy prints at their website: http://www.kainoalittle.com/prints/

electic• 9 years ago

These are amazing images. Images aside, photographers like these put their lives in danger everyday to get images like these.

I would gladly donate. Also, would be neat if they also took Bitcoin and Ethereum as a donation option.

radicalbyte• 9 years ago

Me too; I've dropped him an email to see if he has a paypal or patreon or something :)

I don't think that we're the only ones here who want to send him some cash.

hajderr• 9 years ago

I hope this thread doesn't get hijacked with political discussions. I'll spare my comments at least. Let the story be told through the images...

mrkrab• 9 years ago

What else should we talk about in this thread? About how sad it is that nobody wanted to buy her photos, or about how great it is that she's giving them away?

jchw• 9 years ago

To be honest, sounds like a plan, because I'd like to know the former and I agree with the latter.

mynewtb• 9 years ago

The photographer is a man.

notacoward6• 9 years ago

FYI, Kainoa seems to be male. It's an easy mistake to make, since names ending in "a" strongly tend to be female in many (especially European) languages, but this one is Hawaiian.

superflyguy• 9 years ago

"But the soldiers had fed me and given me a seat in their Humvees, and the refugees had tolerated my presence on some of the worst days of their lives. They very rightly expected that I would tell their story."

You could have explained a little about the death of newspapers and other media outlets, and how much existing footage/photography there is of conflict in Iraq (to say nothing of Afghanistan, Syria etc). They should have been under no illusions as to the likelihood of any particular photographer getting their work paid for and published. It's like the Simpsons joke about space missions. The first guy landed on the moon and it's the story of the century. The 12th lunar mission though? Meh - what else is on. Trying to get a western, especially an American, audience excited about another batch of photographs about fighting in the Middle East seems like something of a tall order. Even outside of the news photography has died a death. Anyone can take an adequate photograph nowadays with cheap, simple equipment so few people are willing to pay a professional.

thinkloop• 9 years ago

"death of newspapers and other media outlets" decreases supply of such images - armchair bloggers have less means, infrastructure and connections to do it.

raverbashing• 9 years ago

But they are free to misattribute some video on youtube as something different or exaggerated and build their "news" on that

philipkglass• 9 years ago

The proliferation of mobile devices that record videos and pictures has IMO made up for it with sheer documentation volume from people on the spot. The Syrian civil war is far more thoroughly documented than the first Gulf War even though the first Gulf War took place in an environment where Western news-gathering organizations were in a much better financial state. You can see combat recorded from the the Syrian Arab Army, the foreign military powers intervening in the war, and the rebel factions. Not just combatants, either; the aftermath of attacks on civilians gets recorded/uploaded as well. They're all uploading stuff for the world to watch.

The vast majority of this footage is admittedly uploaded in service of one agenda or another, but that's just a lateral move from the status quo ante of the 1991/2003 Iraq invasions. The critical Western press coverage of war in the Vietnam era did not seem to endure. (And that was itself a bit unusual; American press coverage of WW II and Korea was by-and-large aligned with the aims of the American government in those wars.)

HearMeRoar• 9 years ago

Why would no one buy these amazing photographs? Either OP is bad at finding a buyer or photography is one tough job.

deepnet3• 9 years ago

Perhaps these photos do not 'fit the current narrative' or go against the editorial policy of the news outlets.

Ownership of traditional mainstream media is cloistered in few hands and those hands have agendas for editorial policy and friends in high places.

Chomsky's Manufacturing consent well demonstrates how this is achieved bottom up: i.e. one isn't so much told what to think but hired because of ones views and worldview.

deepnet3• 9 years ago

The correspondence of Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent and the practice of "culture-fit" in Hiring Practices should be a note of caution to growing companies.

Over constraining your hiring, ( i.e. the aspect of "culture-fit" that is antonymical to diversity ) can lead an organisation to blindness to the true state of things ( i.e. not having diverse perspectives on customers due to a lack of diversity in employee backgrounds ).

This is why diversity is not just about fairness but also highly pragmatic.

Diversity makes for wiser corporations which makes them anti-fragile and gives them new edges in competition.

It is also why the subtle method of subverting democracy outlined in Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent as a practice to create an organisation ( or newspaper ) that outputs a world view concurrent with ones own makes for fragile democracies and administrations.

That it can happen "unconsciously" because it is easier to recognise competence in those who are like you means organisations and democracies must be vigilant against entrenched political and journalistic class evolving.

In short: critics are better friends than an echo chamber.

Or contemporaneously: firing scientists does make climate change less true.

omegaworks• 9 years ago

Or there is an active interest in resisting on-the-ground journalism about this conflict. Photos of soldiers killed or wounded are still subject to restriction.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/world/americas/27iht-photo...

probably_wrong• 9 years ago

There are things that are not supposed to be shown on the traditional media, dead soldiers being the first one that comes to mind.

Maybe these pictures go against the prevailing vision the media wants to disseminate.

Jaruzel• 9 years ago

Tell that to the BBC, ITV, and Sky News here in the UK. They show dead bodies all the time. I find it distasteful. I get it - people died, you don't have to show me their bodies to get your point across.

vwcx2• 9 years ago

A media's distaste for violent images is not the issue here. Photographs very similar to these are published every day by tens of thousands of outlets around the world. The issue is that these photographs are coming from an unknown source and not many editors are apt to trust unknown sources randomly emailing with conflict images these days.

Source: I hire and direct photographers in war zones professionally.

cguess• 9 years ago

Photography is a tough job. It's wracked with internal politics, people playing favourites and in general just a lot of work. Honestly, it's easier to get $250k in VC funding than to sell your first break out photo essay (even if it's brilliant). I'm not an actor, nor a novelist, but I imagine it's a lot like trying to get your first big role or your novel to even get read by an editor. It's a painful grind on a day to day endless cycle of rejection.

Let's not even start with the fact that news staff jobs are basically non-existent, so most of these photographers are going into war zones with no backup support, no insurance provided for them, and it's all done on spec, so it's literally laying their life on the line with, if you're lucky, $3k for two weeks worth of getting shot it. We could then get into the mental health aspect of working for very little, very hard, while also facing the very real prospect of death every day (remember, probably no insurance for therapy or zoloft back stateside).

This is just for war photographers. For your day-to-day working photojournalist it's actually worse for pay and you have to be on call 24/7 or else they'll move on to the next guy/girl and you're out of rotation. Good luck going on holiday.

jawbone3• 9 years ago

Mosul is basically Aleppo done by the good guys, but looking much the same in terms of dead civilians and destroyed buildings. Not as popular a story.

prawn• 9 years ago

I'd guess that there is fatigue or disinterest in the West at continuing to hear/see this sort of story. It doesn't sell so editors run with whatever local non-drama captivates people.

At least it looks like this ploy by the photographer has worked - search his name and loads of online media have published something similar to this link. The idea that people don't care and the media won't pay has made it a story. Good on him for outside the box thinking.

PeterisP• 9 years ago

Lots of supply and little demand - doing photography is one thing but selling photography is one tough job.

Journalistic photography is slowly moving away from being a profession towards an expensive hobby where you may sell some pictures sometimes, but not enough to earn a living or even cover the hardware.

vwcx2• 9 years ago

I am a photo editor at a major publication that's been around for more than 100 years, and I have been responsible for sending photographers to Iraq, Syria and other conflict zones over the past seven years.

The short answer is that we do not publish unsolicited imagery from war zones, especially imagery from a completely unknown photographer randomly approaching us via email. In the same way we wouldn't publish a quote from a random citizen claiming to have interviewed Donald Trump, we do due diligence to learn the context of unsolicited images.

Lots of people make the assumption that images are unbiased and truthful representations of an objective reality, and I see many comments here supporting Kai for his "distinct" perspective. I encourage you to read Errol Morris' book "Believing is Seeing", where he discusses the importance of context as related to truth in photography.

Furthermore, especially in a conflict like Iraq or Syria, we do not want to encourage random photo cowboys to show up without the resources that our organizations offer true professionals on assignment in these stories. As journalism got particularly crunched in the early 2000s, we tried this for a brief period and it resulted in many young photographers heading to war zone s to "make a name" for themselves. They were killed and we were blamed for encouraging them.

Lastly, my professional opinion is that Kai's work is amateur. It's what we see from young photographers, relying way too much on aesthetic and situation to try and make an abstract point. Study the work of James Nachtwey, the late Chris Hondros, Don McCullin, even Robert Capa, and you will immediately see (and more importantly, FEEL) the difference.

I am happy to share more if there is interest in starting a dialogue.

zdkl2• 9 years ago

Wildly off topic: this site redirected my mobile chrome to some advertisement with a screen blocking scammy alert and closed all other tabs. What the hell?

jbg_• 9 years ago

I think you have some malware on your device; closing all other tabs isn't something a website should be able to do.

zdkl2• 9 years ago

The device rebooted like 10 minutes later so I'm breaking the tinfoil hat out. Anyone got good advice on how to handle possible infection on an android phone?

nikkwong• 9 years ago

I'm also having this issue, so I can't even view the photos.

LeoNatan25• 9 years ago

Some really good photos. War is tragic, but it sure allows for people to capture amazing photography. What does this say about us?

tomxor3• 9 years ago

Good shots Kainoa, I really wish I could read the story that goes with them.

I can see it being hard as a news photographer of any sort these days, as papers are going through a very hard transition that may see them completely vanish at the other side of it.

Have you considered finding some writers on Medium? Their new concept is to be the platform without the paper, readers select writers more organically and writers get paid more directly, photographers don't fit directly into this model yet but you could at least sell to writers there. Maybe medium will come up with a way to have multiple contributors to articles that photographers could be a part of too.

tomxor3• 9 years ago

To clarify with the Medium thing, I guess what I mean is when you sell to papers you don't consider it your job to find the writers that your photos go with, but maybe now that is part of the job.

wfunction5• 9 years ago

Apologies for the confusion, this isn't by me -- I was merely sharing the page and wasn't sure what else to title it than what it had originally. I just posted a note to that effect.

tomxor3• 9 years ago

There seems to be a few more photos in the collection on his site too:

http://www.kainoalittle.com/mosul

NicoJuicy• 9 years ago

I suppose you mostly tried US papers? I see a better audience for this in Europe

wfunction5• 9 years ago

Apologies for the confusion, this isn't by me -- I was merely sharing the page and wasn't sure what else to title it than what it had originally. I just posted a note to that effect.

Nanite• 9 years ago

They're decent pictures, but not "GREAT" pictures. Even in warzones photojournalism is a highly competitive field. Editors at Reuters, AP and other news agencies get tons of sets offered every day.

Whining about it in an extremely passive aggressive blog post really isn't going to help his career along.

strawcomb• 9 years ago

I'm sorry, but where is the whining? He simply said that no-one would buy his work, and that he felt he owed it to the people who kindly shared some of their lives with him to try and get their story out there. The headline 'no one would buy my photos...' is catchy, truthful, and has obviously been effective at drawing attention.

andmarios2• 9 years ago

These shots capture the harshness of human conflict and how we (human beings) change in the face of it. Thank you.

I disagree with people saying these are good shots. In the collection another user posted ( http://www.kainoalittle.com/mosul ) there are better shots technically and artistically. Yet that the photographer chose these shots for the article speak tons. These aren't photographs to make you feel better, these are photographs to make you understand (even a tiny bit) what real war looks like and it is ugly.

ux• 9 years ago

I always found disturbing the way a mixing "art" with this kind of subject. It's giving a much more positive feedback, as in "it looks cool" or the feeling of emotions you get in a movie (because it doesn't look real).

Let's not forget war is freaking horrible and there is nothing worth idealizing one way or another about it. That's my personal belief, but I don't think art has its place here. Any form of heroic spectacle are truly misleading about what the people and soldiers truly endure.

jszymborski• 9 years ago

"Art" obviously means different things to different people, but I know that in my case, and likely in the grandparent post's case, "good art" is a form of expression that effectively evokes emotion, feeling or idea, be they positive or negative.

We might respond positively to the efficacity and skill with which that feeling or emotion is conveyed, but still be disturbed by the message that it represents.

cobbzilla2• 9 years ago

Does there exist any acceptable mixing of art + war in your view? What are your thoughts on Picasso's "Guernica" [1] ?

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guernica_(Picasso)

mc32• 9 years ago

I both agree with you and disagree with you. On the one hand war just or unjust results in destruction and death, so anything that comes from it is tainted by it.

On the other hand, that may be my personal attitude, others certainly feel different about it. Some people profit off if it (not in the multinational way, I mean people making a living bringing provisions in, etc).

On a detached unemotional level, I think there is no reason not to record these events. Be they fire, earthquake, floods, disease, war, etc.

James Nachtway[1]does good on that front by me.

[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Nachtwey

flogic• 9 years ago

Art certainly has a place here. The purpose of this are isn't to look cool. The purpose of art is express and/or provoke a reaction. In this case, it's a reminder that these people exist and are suffering due to war. Most of us know war is horrible, but we don't know it the same way someone who has experienced it has. Part of the reason these pictures exist is to give us a glimpse of that understanding. And maybe if we're lucky next time around, people won't choose war.

canada_dry• 9 years ago

https://petapixel.com/assets/uploads/2017/07/PwUqoz6-800x534...

It really hurts seeing little kids caught in this crap.

reitanqild3• 9 years ago

Agree. A lot of this cannot be truly understood just by the facts, it seems you somehow need to feel it too.

_nedR• 9 years ago

I have to (respectfully) disagree. These pictures are good, but imo they are still arguably war porn- lots of concrete rubble and men in the heat of battle (videogame stuff essentially). They don't really capture the true consequences or horrors of war. Pictures like the Napalm girl in Vietnam or more recently the picture of the drowned refugee boy on the beach[1] and that picture of that Syrian boy covered in blood and dust[2] . Those pictures are painful to look at (but not too graphic to be nonpunishable) but still tug at the heartstrings and inspire people to action or make them reconsider their actions.

[1] ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Alan_Kurdi)

[2](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/18/boy-in-the-amb...)

andmarios2• 9 years ago

For me it works a bit differently. The photographs you referred to (and I do know them) make me very sad but also it is difficult to relate (not sure if it is the proper verb), maybe because I don't have kids.

The shots from this story though, I can relate. I can imagine myself (as a middle aged male) in a war going against live rounds and it is very scary. I can imagine both being a civilian, unable to do anything or a soldier going at the heart of the conflict and I hope I will never have to be in such a position.

wfunction5• 9 years ago

Note: Just to clarify in case anyone misinterprets, these are not my photos! I merely copied the title from the page. If there's a better way to title pages like these, please let me know, since I was confused as to what title I should put while avoiding it being misleading.

Denvercoder9• 9 years ago

It'd probably work to prefix the name of the author before the title, so something like "Kainoa Little: No One Would Buy My Photos, So Here They Are For Free: Mosul 2017".

wfunction5• 9 years ago

Ooh, that's a good idea, thanks!

JCDenton2052• 9 years ago

Very nice, but could have used higher resolution.

smallhands• 9 years ago

As a foolish man that had not experienced war.these pictures remind me of Call of Duty a lot!!???.I am kind of wonder the magics advance VR can do in training of soldiers?

onetokeoverthe• 9 years ago

His website won't load. No wonder they're not sold.

LeifCarrotson• 9 years ago

The article has received both the Reddit and HN hugs of death, it might be a traffic problem. And it loads fine (quickly, even) for me...

Try the author's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/isawgold/ or personal website: http://www.kainoalittle.com/mosul if the Petapixel link is not loading for you.

skywhopper• 9 years ago

These are great pictures, and makes me realize that while we hear a lot (though not enough) about these conflicts around the world, its usually just accompanied by a photo or two or a few seconds of video capturing a firefight or an explosion. But such things are cliche at this point and don't hit home. Seeing real soldiers taking a break between firefights, and real families fleeing their homes with their children and a few belongings really makes the reality of the situation much more graspable. I think we need to see a lot more of these candid photos (and video too) of the real people whose lives are being devastated by these conflicts.

dsego• 9 years ago

There is a great short film about the yugoslav war that depicts this really well. You can find it on youtube, type in "10 Minutes, a short film".

aphextron• 9 years ago

The recent drone footage from Mosul is some of the most mind blowing, surreal stuff imaginable. God help anyone trapped in that city.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW_F2ntQOcQ

AndrewKemendo• 9 years ago

I was there in 2010 and it was pretty peaceful. Now it's a total disaster, along with most of Iraq.

archvile• 9 years ago

USA Military Indistrial Complex strikes again.

rdl3• 9 years ago

I was there in 2005-2007 and it was peaceful at times, punctuated with violence. I can't imagine what it would be like to have lived there from Saddam days through today without being able to leave -- at least 5 big waves of violence.

nerdponx2• 9 years ago

I've been watching live combat footage on the Internet. War is an astounding phenomenon.

rattray• 9 years ago

where is that available?

the_cat_kittles4• 9 years ago

anti refugee sentiment is so unconscionable, what the hell world do we live in

stinos• 9 years ago

Not sure why you got some downvotes. Maybe the wording? But still.. I share your sentiments regarding other's anti-refugee sentiments: seeing things like this video, and having met and talked to actual refugees (seriously, I wonder how many of the antis actually did that? Or would even want to?) and having heard what they went through, it is painful to see others shouting refugees aren't welcome (or worse). Ok I get it, it is not always practical and sometimes even problematic to allow thousands in your country, and yes they have a different culture, and yes some of them might not be on the run for actual war. But my feeling of compassion for their problems, which I as a 'standard' western can only begin to feel related to (e.g. how many of use even ever came close to an actual proper bomb, or the constant fear for it?), is still too big to jump on that bandwagon.

Simon_says5• 9 years ago

Please at least make an attempt to try to understand the other side. When any immigrants come, they change the country they immigrate to. With these particular refugees, they're refugees in no small part because of shortcomings their home culture has. It's not evil to want to preserve your own culture in the face of this. You can feel empathy for the people trapped in a hellish warzone just as you can feel empathy for the girl raped by migrants. The refugee debate is not good-vs-evil; it's competing virtues.

Kevve2• 9 years ago

Moralizing is cheap. How about you stop voting for politicians who keep bombing and destabilizing countries and producing more refugees?

pinaceae• 9 years ago

The one upside is that all those suicide attacks slowly wipe out all young men mentally unstable enough to do this.

Will be interesting to see if long term certain psychic diseases (bi-polar, depression, etc.) get less prevalent on the Arabic peninsula.

aagha2• 9 years ago

You're (likely incorrectly) assuming that the rate of extreme radicalization is lower than the rate of annual suicide attacks.

e40• 9 years ago

A consistently excellent place to view photos of this sort, though not exclusively about war, etc, is the Atlantic "In Focus" page:

https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/

I visit them once a week and go through the photos. Quite amazing.

notacoward6• 9 years ago

I'd never heard of the Free Burma Rangers before, and these photos helped me learn. I guess that means the author has succeeded in his admirable mission to tell others' stories.

rmason• 9 years ago

I too had never heard of the Rangers and their work. Here's their site: http://www.freeburmarangers.org/

thekid314• 9 years ago

For photos by a pro check these out: www.asmaawaguih.com/albums/liberating-mosul/

anonu• 9 years ago

Curious why the photographers pictures didn't sell? Is there an oversupply of stuff material? Is the source questionable?

jokoon2• 9 years ago

It's weird because I've read several times over that violence in the world is decreasing on average, so it would seem the middle is the last violent place. Still quite violent...

nyolfen2• 9 years ago

you see all those weird straight lines when you look at the political boundaries on a map of the middle east? those are lines drawn by former colonial masters. they look inorganic because they aren't natural.

this alone is a seed of conflict: unnatural borders that don't reflect a social reality. throw in prized resources to compete over, and it's incredibly fertile ground for violence.

now, look where else you can see these national border geometries for a glimpse into the future...

Photos of Mosul 2017

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