Cecilia Bohan (CB) — International Herald Tribune / Interviewee Sheyi Bankale (SB) — Next Level magazine / Interviewer Florian Wupperfeld (FW) — Soho House / Interviewer

SB: What do you seek in your choice of image?

CB: I can say that I would tend to go for multi-layered or nuanced photographs, ones which have layers of meaning rather than one message that once you get leaves nothing to ponder. There are some very typical pictures, say out of Gaza [for example], where there is a lot of confrontation. There’s a lot of the same picture[s] over and over and over again. I think that people are sick of those pictures. I think that we need to get beyond that.

SB: More left-of-centre in your choice of images…

CB: Yes, more left-of-centre and show something a little beyond that.

SB: Essentially, how influential is photo-journalism to art photography?  

CB: Perhaps in a time of war, with a proliferation of violent images, there is also more violence in art photography. I think that more war photography is becoming art, for instance. It’s becoming more valuable. The photojournalists who are shooting war are making limited edition prints. They have a following. People want those kinds of pictures. Look at Paris, look at the exhibits; I think in London it’s the same. When you have an exhibit of war photography, the line is around the street. People can’t get enough of it. I think people are interested in having that. There are also cases of photojournalism being turned into art, and sometimes without the photographers’ consent. Susan Meiselas was chagrined to find that a striking image of hers showing a young rebel in Nicaragua with a Molotov cocktail was appropriated for use in artwork many years later. Some people feel that her image, and others, can be incorporated at will into art. At stake is the integrity of the photograph and the importance it holds as a document of history.

SB: What is the balance between objective reporting and the often very emotional images that you have to print? And to sell a newspaper?

CB: Those are both very good points. We strive for images that most accurately represent the situation and those that have impact because of their content, composition or both. When we have very strong, graphic images we evaluate whether the news value of the event is worth the attention that the image on the front page will bring to it. Powerful events often produce powerful photography and that can indeed be a good combination for selling the newspaper. People want to know, and to see, what is going on.

SB: I have in my hand a catalogue of images, from dead people to blood dripping on walls to maybe an explosion of a vehicle. What can you print? What’s the fine line?

CB: What’s the criteria? It depends on the origin. If it’s a bus accident, and fifty people die, they go off a cliff in Brazil: that’s not going to be as big as an ETA bombing in Spain where one person is killed because it is a political attack. It is the origin of the incident that makes the difference for me. Or even the blood dripping down the side of the car, we might put it in black and white inside. If it’s something that’s really big, the way we feel is that we don’t want people to become inured to seeing dead people on the front page. If we do it, it’s for a very, very good reason.

SB: If this is the case, how driven is symbolism and or sensationalism in your choice of cover image?

CB: We choose pictures on the strength of their news value. If they contain symbolic elements such as an Israeli flag being raised on an outpost, then that can make the images and the impact of the photo stronger. We would avoid sensationalising a situation.

SB: On a more personal note, is there a position that you have taken or defended an image in recent times that you now regret?

CB: That’s a good question. On September 28th, we had a big debate this day. We ran a sequence of two four-column photos showing a man in Myanmar who was killed by the army. In this case, it helps to understand the process and how our decisions change with time as we learn more. The situation in Myanmar had been getting worse by the day, and this was the first day in which the army opened fire on citizens. It was clear to us early in the day that the photo showing a man on the ground with soldiers approaching was going to be an important image. Nine people were already reported to have been killed. Without knowing whether this man was one of them, we decided on the strength of the image to run it five columns across the top of the page. By doing so, we wanted to signal that this was a highly unusual and important moment and was worth the space on our front page as it is quite rare for us to run a photo that big. About an hour after our decision, and just before the page was to close, we learned that the man on the ground was a Japanese journalist and that he had indeed been killed by the army. Armed with this information, I took another look at the photos and felt that running two photos would give the effect of having the event unfold before one’s eyes. The reader could study the pictures, see the soldier with his rifle pointed at the wounded man, and then see how several soldiers walked by as the man appeared to be dying. So, I went back to Alison Smale (managing editor of the International Herald Herald Tribune) and made the case to change the photos. She agreed and we changed the layout on deadline. The next day most of the other papers ran one or the other of the two photos, but we were the only one to run both of them. There was some debate in the newsroom about which page was stronger, had we done the right thing. I still think ours was the bolder, more informative and much more interesting front page.

SB: Do you try to tell a news story each edition with images?

CB: Usually, and that is probably the biggest difference between us and some of the other big publications because sometimes, they’ll just go for the aesthetic pictures. It might be a feature picture, it might be a weather picture. We’ll only use a weather picture on the front page if it’s news: if it’s breaking records if it’s huge news if there is a heatwave across the country or a cold wave. Then we’ll do it. We don’t just put out a nice picture just for the art of it. Unfortunately, I wish we would do that sometimes. Every now and then one will come along. One of my favourite pictures that we ran on the Asian front page didn’t have to do with anything that day. It was a homeless boy sleeping on a bench with a Spiderman mask on. He was just curled up with a Spiderman mask on and this wall of graffiti all around him. It was a wonderful picture. And so I spoke with the deputy managing editor in Asia and said this is a great picture and I looked for a tiny news peg. The day before the World Health Organization or some group had released the number of homeless kids there are in the world. So I could use that picture because it had a tiny bit of news value. But to use a picture that has no news value, it’s a rare thing for us, it really is. So, you’re right. We do have news on the front page every day. But I am trying to come up with the best news pictures of the day.

SB: How do you correlate the relationship between the image and the caption? What is more powerful to you?

CB: Well, the caption can make the picture better, but it’s the picture you see first. So the caption has to be the supporting actor. It can’t be the main [focus]. We can’t say [for example] let’s use a picture of this typhoon no matter what the picture shows because we want the caption out there. If we have a dramatic picture, we’ll put it out there and then the information in the caption is key and will help.

SB: I guess to add to that, there are various sound bites, such as the ‘genesis of war by media’ and also ‘journalism as a weapon of war’. How do you see that? People say media influences the success of a war.

CB: I would say that it goes a long way. If people can’t see what’s happening …

SB: Would you agree or disagree that the ‘invisible government’ which is the true ruling power is the media, and that propaganda so often disguises itself as journalism. How influential are newspapers and the media?

CB: How prevalent is it? I think it varies from country to country. In some countries they do, well if it’s a dictatorship they can’t really do very much, if there’s no free press, then the readers know that and they know what their getting in their newspaper is not what’s really going on out there. So, unfortunately, they don’t know what’s really going on out there unless they have other means.

SB: I want to come back to that word ‘free press’.

CB: Self-censorship.

SB: Or censorship by omission.

CB: At a paper like ours, I think that we will do our best to cover things neutrally. Though by omission, if I am not showing the dead Iraqi civilians because I think that the picture’s too gruesome, then you’re right, I am censoring by omission and maybe that’s done …

SB: Do you ever take into consideration your audience? Would a complaint about an image dictate or change your perspective?

CB: That reminds me of a letter that came in asking why do we always choose pictures of Condoleezza Rice where she looks so awful.

FW: That was written by Mr Rice.

CB: Ha ha, but actually, it raised my awareness. After that, I was much more selective in my choice of photos of her. We can easily be accused of trying to manipulate the world opinion by how we present people. Sometimes we are criticised with being too invasive. When we photograph somebody’s funeral in Kosovo and they’re wailing, and there’s the body wrapped up on the ground. The photographer becomes like a fly on the wall. Nobody notices the photographer. Nobody is looking at the camera. Then we run that kind of picture, and people criticise us saying how could you intrude the privacy of this private event? Well, in some cultures and in some societies they want the world to see what’s happening. They want the world to see that their son’s been killed because they know that maybe this press picture can make a difference to their country. So we’re not always invading… Maybe there are cases where that happens. If it’s a situation like that, normally the photographer has been invited into the room. Now the reader looking at that picture might not realise that, but there’s a sensitivity to what we’re doing. We want to get the news out there. We are communicators. We want to show what is happening in their life, and they want us to.

SB: From a visual point of view, what are the differences you see between the International Herald Tribune and, for example, Le Monde, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in Germany or Neue Zürcher Zeitung from Zurich?

CB: We have some themes that we keep hitting, that we are in effect trying to take ownership of. In an ideal world, I would love to see more space for photography. Right now we have a limited number of pages. There is so much news in the world. It is hard to cut out news stories to give more space to pictures. It’s a battle that we have. Well, you see what the other papers are doing. The Guardian gives huge spaces over to photography. We just don’t have the space for that. If we had more money for more pages, more advertising, more of all the above, then we could do more with photography. We could commission more work. We could be looking for the latest, greatest person and featuring their work on a regular basis, things like that. I think that we’re not doing enough of that, finding new young photographers that are out there and showcasing their work.

SB: Similar to us [Next Level], there is a thread of emerging photographers which I source and feature in the issues. I view this as an important role in the support of photographers.

CB: I see my role as an advocate for their work. I really feel that they are the ones that really know what is going on out there in the world. One of the photographers called me a photographer’s editor, not a photo-editor, like a writer’s editor. I really appreciated that. I thought that was the best compliment she could give because I do see myself as a voice of what their mission is.

SB: So you would stand more on the side of the photographer than the newspaper?  

CB: Oh, I can’t say that. No. There are times when a photographer may have covered a demonstration that went violent but I know the truth to be that in general, this demonstration was peaceful. I can’t use those images because that would be misleading. So I can’t always stand by the photographer.

SB: I have a final question. What is symbolic in an image that you would publish? There must be a particular style that everyone would acknowledge as an image that you published?

CB: Definitely human drama. I gravitate towards human emotion. I will tell this one little story. For a short period of time, I left the [New York Times] foreign desk and went to the house and home section; when I came back to the foreign desk, my former boss, Mark Bussell, said to another editor, Cecilia’s back on foreign, isn’t she? He knew from the work. I never asked him [how come he knew] but I understood it to mean that like photographers with a particular style, I as an editor have a distinct mark. I know internally what I am looking for but it’s very hard for me personally to describe it.