“So when I’m working here, I’m helping to save the world” is a quote from a gravedigger in Suakoko, Liberia, ground zero for West Africa’s Ebola outbreak. 

The quote comes from the video “Inside the Ebola Ward” now posted on the New York Time’s website, and is one of the amazingly powerful, and utterly heartbreaking videos produced by Ben C. Solomon while on assignment covering the Ebola outbreak in Western Africa. Solomon’s videos “Inside the Ebola Ward”, “Fighting Ebola Street by Street”, “Dying of Ebola at the Hospital Door”, “Burial Boys of Ebola” and several others, are just a few of the graphic visual stories that the Times has brought to its readers from what appears to be Hell’s doorstep. Images of hope and horror that will stay in your head long after you turn off your computer.

The videos remind us of an absolute truth about the profession of visual journalism. Whenever I speak to school students, (or sometimes to anyone who will listen), I tell them that when you see an amazing image, to remember that there was someone behind the camera taking it. I would love to say that this is primarily for the world of photojournalists, but as cameras on cellphones and the like proliferate through our society, this truth will spread like the old adage of “I was in the right place, at the right time” replacing “If I only had a camera.”

A perfect example would be to imagine the coverage of September 11

^th

, 2001 in New York City in today’s social media world.  I am pretty sure that such an event would bring Twitter to a standstill. 

I remember becoming aware of this concept of “someone took that picture” watching news coverage of the rescue of some homeowners as their house collapsed into the ocean behind them during a hurricane. The photographer was there in harm’s way to take the picture, yet when photojournalism as a craft is produced at the highest levels, the photographer tends to be the last thing that the viewer thinks about. 

The other side of this coin is not just the physical danger that journalists all over the world put themselves in to cover a story, but the emotional danger as well. These stories are seldom told of the emotional toll that covering this much horror and trauma can reap on an individual. I was very concerned for many of my good friends and colleagues after the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary. Another buddy of mine was at the World Trade Center on 9/11 when the second tower fell, and commented that this was the first year since 2001 that he did not slip into a depression in September.

Obviously the photographer is not the story, and excluding all but a few extreme cases, neither should they be. I feel that it is always a good reminder, however, when you see amazing coverage of any event big or small, or when a photo or video makes you stop in your tracks, to remember that someone was on the other side of the camera bringing it to you.