It was while watching the BBC2 programme 'The Great War in Colour: the Wonderful World of Albert Kahn' earlier this evening it occurred to me that ostensibly citizen journalism has been going on much longer than we currently imagine, but potentially under a different guise...
This programme looked at the really rather beautiful and poignant collection of colour photographs from Albert Kahn's 'The Archive of the Planet'.
Albert Kahn was a millionaire Parisian banker in the first half of the twentieth century. Between 1908 and 1930, Kahn used his fortune to create what is widely acknowledged to be the most important collection of early photographs in the world.
Using the French autochrome system, which had only been marketed since 1907 by its inventors Auguste and Louis Lumière, Kahn embarked upon his mission to effectively to document the world. He hired photographers and dispatched them to more than 50 countries worldwide. They shot more than 72,000 colour pictures and around 100 hours of film.
But what got my journalistic synapses sparking was what they were recording.
They captured everything from religious rituals and cultural practices to momentous political events all over the world. They took the earliest known colour pictures in countries as far apart as Vietnam and Brazil, Mongolia and Norway, Japan and Benin.
Often, they arrived in these countries at crucial moments in their history. They recorded the collapse of both the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires for example, and the advent of new states in Europe and the Middle East. During World War I, Kahn's photographers captured the lives of soldiers behind the front lines at The Battle of Verdun, and they also watched the world's most powerful men when they convened for the post-war negotiations at Versailles.
Journalism? I think so.
If you take Lord Donaldson's famous quote, "The media are the eyes and ears of the general public" and now consider Albert Kahn's collection. By capturing and preserving the images of behind the front lines at Verdun for example, Kahn's team of photographers informed the public (then and now) and helped to reveal the 'real' story of 'real' people and the very real situation.
Albert Kahn was an idealist, but also an internationalist. One of his aims for his soon-to-be vast collection of philanthropic photographs was to be able to create a greater understanding among the world's cultures. (Donaldson would be so proud!)
I argue that even when technology like mobile phone cameras, digital cameras or video cameras were a mere microchip in a rather 'H.G. Wells-ian' eye, citizen journalism was here all the time.
Kahn used his collection to inform people, and his material reveals so much in pictures that our concept of the first world war for example could be greatly hindered if we did not have this evidence.
Arguably no, the pictures were not emblazoned in the newspapers for example, but they were displayed and proliferated in the manner of Kahn's notion of creating a better understanding within different cultures. Remembering that a publication simply means something that is communicated to a third party in some form, in my opinion Kahn was publishing and therefore, without realising it, he and his team of photographers were, in our terms; citizen journalists.
Now, being the subject of a BBC documentary, the pictures and historical analysis are being broadcast. I watched this programme and it informed me of a whole different side of World War 1 for example. It delved into and explained details which were encapsulated and revealed through Kahn's photographs.
Would it not be appropriate to compare this to the 'at the front line', foreign correspondent reporting what we now see in Iraq, Afghanistan or in previous wars?
I will leave you to decide.
By Natalie
4 comments:
Perhaps this idea of pictures being citizen journalism could go even further back. For example, many many people over the years have had portraits of them done. Perhaps these were done for their families, or just to show their power. But nonetheless the portrait still says 'I was there'
Go to an art gallery and look at portraits from anywhere from the 15th century and there is a lasting impression of what someone was doing back then. Yes, ego would have been involved in order to have a self portrait done, and the portrait wouldnt be exactly like the people in it..but it gives us an idea.
So maybe this was a primitive form of citizen journalism...
Now that is just going too far Mr Palmer...if we take that angle then just about everything written down is citizen journalism! I think we need to focus here - what is our job description as journalists? now just add the citizen bit and thats it. not book, not paintings. Yes books may be used as historical reference to the times in which they were written but that cant really come under the title of journalism can it? If we are going to take that stance then all authors are journalists in which case why do we make a distinction?
above comment by sophie - sorry danny!
above comment by sophie - sorry danny!
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