"Intimately acquainted with death"

It is well-known that reporters and photographers in conflict zones are often exposed to psychological trauma. It is often forgotten, however, that people back home in the newsroom face similar exposure.

After 18 months working with photos of death and destruction in Iraq, Chicago Tribune picture editor Jonathan Elderfield recently moved to the features department. "I needed a break from looking at dead bodies," he wrote Sunday in a first-person story. Elderfield describes the daily routine looking at images that, he says, "have left their mark on me emotionally":

My job for the last year and a half has been to look at every hard news photograph from across the world and nation that comes into the Tribune's photo system. I have become intimately acquainted with death in Iraq, mostly with the death of the Iraqi people. While there are more than 2,000 dead servicemen and women, there are many times more dead Iraqis.

Every weekday I have seen images of Iraqi dead or of grieving family members. I have seen exploded cars, pools of blood, terrified children, dismembered bodies, bodies in mass graves. My job is to sort through these images of the dead, dying and grieving and to decide what is a good picture, what is acceptable to publish in the newspaper--or what is too gruesome.

I have to make aesthetic judgments about images of death. I am not the final arbiter of what goes on the front page or in the main news section (that is generally a group decision, or ultimately decided by the paper's editor) but I am on the front line. I see every news image from Iraq that enters the newsroom.

So, although I haven't been to Iraq and have never served in a war zone, I feel that I very well may have seen more images of death in Iraq than most soldiers who have served there. I would never equate my looking at photographs of the dead with witnessing acts of violence in person; however, I know that Iraqi children die there almost every day.

Related: Last fall, the Dart Center held a discussion about the emotional and psychological effects of repeatedly viewing violent images at the Frontline Club in London. Several top journalists and news managers participated. (Click here to read a report on the discussion.)