British Journal of Photography, December 1995
Photojournalists are getting nostalgic. Many are harping back to the days when newspapers and magazines had seemingly unlimited budgets, picture desks were happy to finance newsworthy assignments, and when photographers returning from trouble spots knew their pictures would get the necessary space needed to tell the story. Folks, for what ever reasons, this is simply not going to happen anymore.
Judah Passow, twice a winner of a World Press Photo award and one of the founders of the Network agency, has accepted this, albeit somewhat reluctantly. But he is not looking back, far from it: with new technology at his disposal he has carved out his future and that future is CD-ROM.Days of Rage is Passow's first foray into CD-ROM creation and is an attempt to document the madness and chaos that was Beirut between 1982-1985. It is Passow's haunting B&W photos which dominate the disc, although these are accompanied by maps, essays and a glossary that is so detailed it could almost be a historical textbook in its own right.
Each of the 71 images is accompanied by two commentaries, one from an Israeli soldier, the other a Lebanese civilian, each giving their account of the conflict; they are the little people caught up in the war trying to make some kind of sense out of the action around them. Their words breathe life into the pictures, placing each image into a human and moral context.Passow has cleverly scanned onto the disc his own tatty street map of the City which he carried around with him at the time and if the viewer wants to see where an image was taken, a click on the cursor will highlight the exact location on the map. This device gives the photographs a remarkable immediacy, a physicality that gives the commentary an even greater poignancy. It may be apparent by now, but this CD-ROM is not fun.
Passow is committed to telling a story and it certainly is a harrowing one. Is there a theme?"The calamity that was Beirut is what I'm trying to get across. It is not just a place, but a symbol of a kind of 20th Century madness. What went on there has subsequently infected other regional conflicts - the insanity of the city can be seen on a larger scale in Bosnia, Rwanda, you name it."
A photojournalist must be driven, but Passow is more driven than most. When BJP asked him what he found attractive about covering the conflict, he became quite indignant:
"Attractive? That is not the point of what I do. I am a photojoumalist, there recording the disturbing and turbulent events of our time. Photojournalists create a record for future generations; we have the ability and talent to convey a message and that talent carries with it an obligation to keep pursuing stories like this."
Yet for all his idealism, Passow at a relative early stage saw the potential of new technology. The CD ROM might have a different appeal to staring at the images on a gallery wall, or handling just dried prints, but it is no less powerful. Passow says he wants to take current affairs beyond newspapers and magazines, and the CD
"gives the images room to manoeuvre, it gives life to the mfommation. Somebody who recently looked at the CD tumed to me after it was finished and said: 'It's just like watching Newsnight!' That is exactly the reaction I wanted."
Passow, like countless others of his colleagues, has become increasingly frustrated at the state of the photojoumalism market and in particular the attitude of the newspapers:
"Why have they abandoned their commitment to good photojoumalism? They are arrogant and presumptuous in assuming that their readers aren't interested in reading about serious issues. I can't believe that to be true.'What worries me is that editors don't seem to care about the intellectual quality of their product anymore. They are under pressure to sell more copies and they don't care how they do it. People who used to buy newspapers and magazines for their coverage of serious issues can now see photojoumalism somewhere else in a digital format."
This is one target audience for the disc - the serious broadsheet reader, the ABC1. The other group is the educational sector - colleges, secondary schools; students of history, photojournalism, media and ethnic studies could, believes Passow, get something out of the disc. He may well have a point; the trouble with most educational CD-ROMs at the moment is their compulsion to entertain, to become 'Info-tainment' (oh dear). The more serious the subject, it seems, the more CD-ROM writers feel the need to dazle with gratuitous visual and audio tricks lest the viewer's attention wane, to become a computer game for those on a slightly higher evolutionary scale.Days of Rage breaks the mould, but be prepared, as Passow himself warns, for some serious viewing:
"This is not about sitting in front of a computer having a couple of laughs about war; this is an attempt to get a serious message across in a new fommat."
Message received, loud and clear.