Shooting Violence

I would like to tell you about some of my experience concerning filming and watching videos of violence in my area. During the last 10 years of fighting and war, I have had to witness many many very violent pictures, and I and my colleagues hope that this will be useful for other people and journalists to learn from.

Working in a war zone means dealing with, filming and watching violence and blood all the time, almost every day.

This is not very easy to deal with, since we are humans and have feelings. What you shoot, what you film and see can't just be forgotten easily. These pictures go home with you, stay in your mind, in your dreams. You remember them when you are eating, when you are sitting with people, when you walk again in the same place where you shot the pictures.

These images stay with you sometimes for years, and not only days or weeks — especially if you shoot pictures of dead children, or of people you yourself have known before.

It is easier to shoot pictures of people killed and dead, and of body parts, if you didn't know them when they were alive. In my case, as someone who works and lives in the same place where the violence is happening, many of the violent pictures I shoot are of people I know from before — which makes my life much more difficult.

The images and memories never stop coming into my mind. It's the same for my colleagues. We can be in a very bad mood. We don't enjoy food and life, and even sex. It makes you want to stay away from people most of the time. It affects your family relationship with your wife and children. It makes you more angry when you feel that people around you don't understand and don't feel with you.

People around you expect you to deal with them as a normal person, which is not possible.

Sometimes you think of leaving your job. You are very tired of shooting clashes and violence, and want to find another job.

There are many other problems coming from shooting violence. Also your colleagues at the office suffer from the same problem when you send them pictures of violence.

They have to see the footage and feel the same as you feel. They decide what pictures should be sent to the audience, and what pictures should be cut away and not be shown to people around the world.

Sometimes they call you and ask you not to shoot such pictures, because they are very tough or disgusting pictures.

One other problem is this: When you shoot the pictures, you sometimes don't think about it in the time, but when you finish, you start to remember what you shot and start to feel bad.

The question is what to do to help yourself get out of this?

I think every journalist who deals with violence in his job should admit that he might have some problems because of that, and should be encouraged to talk to a specialist. You need to talk to someone who can understand you and what you are talking about. If you tak to a doctor for example, you feel better. You get things out of your heart and mind.

You might have some medication. That can help. If we don't talk to anyone, things will get worse, and you could come to the point where you can't understand things any more. That's very dangerous and could even lead you to think about suicide, or doing crazy and violent acts against people or members of the family.

Another thing journalists should do is go on vacation from time to time, to another place far away from their camera, their mobile and violence. This is very important. Every company should understand this, and even force the employee to go on vacation and offer him a specialist to see from time to time.