Making the invisible, visible : photojournalism and the documentation of the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

It has been argued that published photos by news agencies of COVID-19 were either too nuanced or too graphic. In either scenario, photojournalists were held accountable for what members of the public might see, and as a result, how viewers might react. The documentation of COVID-19 by photojournalists enabled viewers to see what was happening. But only if the photographers were allowed access to situations where the pandemic could be photographed. In an environment of social distancing and statewide stay-at-home orders to avoid contracting COVID-19, the ability of people to interact, beyond digital platforms, was significantly severed. News sources served as conduits of potentially life-threatening information, that sometimes evolved on a day-to-day basis, for an entire nation in lockdown. Considering the lethal impact of the coronavirus disease, media coverage was saturated with COVID-19 updates. For three consecutive years, 2020, 2021, and 2022, COVID-19 was the third leading cause of death in America; more than 1.1 million Americans died because of COVID-19 during this period, accounting for about 16 percent of the world's total fatalities. This study is twofold: 1) it explores 500 photographs published by an international news agency during the first 20 months of COVID-19, with a primary focus on images made in the United States, and 2) it analyzes semi-structured in-depth interviews with 16 photojournalists, four photo editors, and one medical doctor. It finds that photographic themes principally included anonymity, health care, death, isolation, and community. To contextualize these themes, photojournalists were interviewed to help explain their process of primarily working with very xii limited access in highly contagious situations. In addition to health care as an all-encompassing backdrop, interview themes included professional and personal routines, creative ingenuity and specialization, access (denied and allowed), and a sense of purpose. The study emphasizes the importance of gatekeeping as either an impediment or a catalyst for photojournalists to communicate visual stories in a pandemic--specifically within organizations and institutions focusing on medical treatment. It explores the intersection of photojournalism and health care, and how an openness to allowing the documentation of the effects of a deadly virus can result in an informed populace readied with insight when living in isolation. Although the effects of photographs on viewers are not the focus of this research project, they were found to be sources of motivation for photojournalists to perform their jobs in life-threatening situations. The primary intent, as expressed by numerous photographers, was to inform the public.