News Photographers and Interference: Iconophobia, Iconoclasm, and Extramedia Influences on the Ground

Abstract

This article makes use of semistructured interviews with photojournalists to identify, categorize, and create a taxonomy of the sources of interference that they encounter in the course of doing their work. In so doing, it also assesses the extent to which photojournalists encounter iconophobia, the fear and anxiety of images, and iconoclasm, a desire to control, suppress, and destroy them. Among the chief findings is the identification of a “passerby effect,” a type of influence that print journalists may not encounter, and the way that the Internet's surveillance capacities may disrupt photojournalists' work. Taken together, this study's chief goal is to open up new, understudied avenues into the practice of photojournalism.

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Rachel Somerstein

Rachel Somerstein is an assistant professor of journalism at SUNY New Paltz in the Department of Digital Media & Journalism. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Journalism, International Communication Gazette, and Visual Studies and has been featured on NPR's “On the Media.” Somerstein is the winner of a 2016–2017 American Academy of University Women Summer/Short-Term Research Publication Grant. She holds a PhD in mass communications from Syracuse University's Newhouse School of Public Communications and an MFA in creative writing from New York University. E-mail: [email protected]