Korangal: A Narrow Field of View /

I have just finished answering some messages on Facebook and a post from Yumi Goto caught my eye. Yumi makes excellent references to all things photographic so I usually pay attention to what she posts. The post was a link to a video by the NY Times team in Afghanistan.

The piece is what it is – nothing surprising, neither great nor terrible; it’s decent journalism that assuages an appetite between meals, soon forgotten.

What struck me about it is not its content but the location in which it was made.

The Korangal Valley is a microcosm of a microcosm. Since a small number of journalists won well-deserved acclaim after spending a few weeks there last year focusing on a small group of US military personnel and the villagers living between a domestic insurgency and a foreign occupying force, hordes of media have beaten a path to the area and photographed, filmed and reported the very same vignettes. Why?

Are they trying to shed nuanced light on the complex story of Afghanistan? If so, why on earth repeat what others have done before, and better. Wouldn’t it be more useful to go somewhere else; wouldn’t we then understand whether the Korangal valley were typical or atypical; wouldn’t we learn something new that way?

Are the US Public Affairs Officers sending everyone to the same assimilated group of soldiers to keep curious minds and inquisitive eyes away from other places? If that were the case, surely that story should be told.

Are the journalists trying to replicate the success of those who climbed through the valley before them? Knowing some of them I doubt it, as they are good enough not to have those insecurities. Never the less the Korengal Valley is fast resembling a reality TV show, and surely the public deserves to know more about Afghanistan than they can learn from repetitive stories from a remote and relatively insignificant valley in the North East of the country.

The Korangal Valley now has the appearance of being the easiest option for everyone and that is no longer very useful.

16 June 2009

Visuals / Essays / Gary Knight