ABSTRACT
Not long after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a memo from the American Press Institute went out to US news editors and reporters, advising them on the “correct” way to utilize photographs in crisis reporting. In part the directive said, “our backs are to the podium and our cameras are focused on the faces of the crowd” (Lower 2001). This was curious, for among photojournalists the idea of using images to draw from and upon the public rather than to depict the events being witnessed was antithetical to what good journalism is supposed to do.
