Why would the Media as a whole run these sorts of stories? Because they get far more viewers.
On this blog, Wednesday 9/9/09, I posted on "The Ongoing Project."
That post (if you haven't seen it already) contains several graphic images designed to depict a teenage suicide.
This morning I checked my stat counter for the previous week. Here's a graph counting the hits I get on a daily basis.
(Green is page-loads, Blue is unique visitors, Orange is returning visitors)On Wednesday, I got about triple the average number of hits. In addition to the few who follow this blog via RSS feed or make sure to check it every day, the blog is posted on Facebook. All of my 300-some friends can see whenever I write a blog post. Only when the forefront image is a girl who has apparently bled to death do I get a large number of hits...
If I wanted to gain more viewers, get more hits, and thus be able to advertise on this blog, the easiest way to do that would be post gory images all the time.
Now, I'm not going to do that. Partly because shooting stuff like that really takes it out of you, and partly because that isn't who I am as a person or as a photographer.
Think about how much blood/death sell. It isn't the fault of the Media at large; all they're trying to do is make money. It is our fault as the consumers. If we responded the same way to positive news as we do to bombings (by watching/reading a lot of news), the Media would happily focus on the positive rather than the negative...
... Right?
4 comments:
i pop over here whenever i see you tweet about a new post, and i'll admit that i spent a lot more time than usual on that post. i think it has to do with the taboo of death and suicide. being confronted with imagery depicting such a morbid and desperate act is very thought provoking, and not something that people get to experience or study on a normal basis. your photos were very well done (both you and the model deserve a lot of credit), and it was hard to look away.
is it "right" that people are so focused on the negative? can't really say. there's obviously something in human nature that propels us toward bad news. it takes something extrodinarily good to get the same reaction (take the plan landing on the hudson, for example).
that's not to say that you can't be thought provoking and make an impact with normal every day subject matter, but it's certainly harder.
Well said sir! I agree, the taboo probably has a lot to do with our fascination and resulting response to the entire subject of suidicide.
I agree that some of the response may be morbid curiosity/fascination. Very few of us get to see those who have attempted suicide -- or succeeded.
As a long-time Emergency Medical Technician/Firefighter, my reaction was probably greatly different than many who viewed this photo series. My first thought was "not enough blood loss there to cause a serious problem."
So, maybe curiosity instead of "blood sells"? True, not for me.... Though the mainstream media does have a penchant to report negative events, they still don't usually show the blood/gore, so seeing it remains relatively rare (outside of the movies :-).
Loved hearing how you got the shots!
I was thinking about the amount of blood that would be necessary to make a problem. That's why in most of the pictures you don't see where the blood would have pooled. For all the viewer knows, all her blood could have run down the two or three tracks on the side of the bathtub. At the same time, I didn't want to make things TOO realistic. Not to mention I've never had any experience with blood loss at that level (outside of movies).
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