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WAR PHOTOGRAPHER TEACHING IDEAS

Pre-reading:

  • From newspaper & magazine box - 10 mins max to find a photo of a war scene or a suffering scene.

    Then:

  • Describe what's portrayed in your picture.
  • Describe the scene the photographer must have watched.
  • How would you have felt as the photographer?
  • How intrusive? Private grief ? or public knowledge? Diana funeral etc. Would you like this to be you or your parents/child?
  • How moral is it to be paid to take pictures like these? Is it exploitation or telling the world what's happening? What good could come of it?

  • Write own poem, expressing feelings about the photo in some way, stick photo onto written up poem. cf Exclusive Pictures by Steve Turner - get them to notice irony!

  • Read and discuss Duffy poem.

    More ideas for activities:

  • Debate/ discussion/make speech on morals of photography in the media??

  • Discursive essay/ article on topic?

  • Formal Letter to a broadsheet, arguing that such photos are intrusive + reply from photographer?

    EXCLUSIVE PICTURES by Steve Turner

    Give us good pictures
    of the human torch
    which show the skin
    burnt like chicken,
    bursting like grapes.

    It will teach us
    to avoid flames.

    Give us good film
    of the lady on the ledge
    as she leaps open mouthed
    and hits the streets
    like a suicide.

    It will teach us
    to use stairways.

    Give us sharp colour
    coverage of the African
    troubles. Show us
    interesting wounds,
    craters in fat and flesh.

    It will teach us
    not to point guns.

    Give us five page spreads
    of the airliner that fell
    like a pigeon to the ground.
    And make sure you get there
    before the victims are pulled out.

    It will teach
    engines to function.

    Don't give us
    any of that shaky
    hand-held stuff
    where the trapped children
    are smoke-like shapes
    and their screams barely audible
    beneath the wailing sirens.
    Get in there with your lenses
    and your appetite for danger
    and your hard newshead
    and give us what we're after.
    Make us informed.
    Make us feel we're really there.
    Provide us with education.
    Broaden our backgrounds.
    We live in a democracy
    and we need to know.

    This work unit by Jennifer Greenald was found free at www.englishresources.co.uk
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