Photography: Beyond the frame

A new exhibition exposes remarkable news photos that were left on the cutting-room floor. By Tiara Walters

On June 8 1972, Nick Ut photographed a nine-year-old South Vietnamese girl running from a napalm cloud. She is surrounded by fleeing soldiers and villagers. Seconds earlier, she had torn off her burning clothes. She is the only naked figure on the scene. It's an unforgettable indictment of war.

Yet the picture was rejected by an Associated Press editor because it flouted the agency's anti-nudity policy - until a powerful AP photographer, Horst Faas, stepped in. He argued it was too important to ignore, and it was sent to print. The horror frozen into the image galvanised protests for peace into a mainstream juggernaut that helped end the Vietnam War. In 1990, Faas also fought for the publication of Bang-Bang club member Greg Marinovich's potent images of apartheid violence.

Even today, great news images go unpublished due to the narrow demands of the daily news cycle.

But a new exhibition at Cape Town's Young Blood gallery is filling in the gaps by celebrating the finest unpublished photos by South African news photographers.

Eyewitness News journalist Aletta Gardner was poring over such an image when the idea for the show came to her. She had taken the shot on assignment in Qunu, Eastern Cape.

"We were trying to paint a picture of the people who called Madiba their neighbour. We found tragic stories and some indifference, but then we spoke to 12-year-old Abulele Qwase. What I ended up with was a portrait of a young face glowing with admiration as she waxed lyrical in semi-religious fervour trying to describe her feelings for Madiba. She looked so incredibly beautiful in that moment," says Gardner.

"It wasn't the strongest photograph to accompany that news story, but it had this glowing significance for me. Then I started thinking, if I have a photo like this, surely others do too."

Curated by Go! Magazine photo editor Sam Reinders, Sunday Times senior photographer James Oatway and Mike Ormrod, owner of camera shop Orms, the exhibition features 21 shots by top local news photographers.

They range from a bracingly optimistic shot taken in the aftermath of last year's Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines by Argus chief photographer Henk Kruger, to Times chief photographer Alon Skuy's portrait of transvestite revellers at the Joburg Pride parade.

Last year, Skuy's coverage of the 2012 Marikana massacre won Best Picture Story in the prestigious Picture of the Year International awards.

But Skuy says some of his most important images of the massacre were relegated to the cutting-room floor.

"I would have liked to have seen more images depicting the devastating aftermath of that day, rather than the build-up to it."

But, he says, "When you're on deadline, you don't have the luxury of looking at images as carefully as you'd like."

Editorial styles, space constraints and story angles also determine which photographs are eliminated.

Says Kruger: "When an image does not contain enough information about the biggest breaking news, you have to accept that it's not going to make the paper. There are always powerful images going 'missing'. In other words, they're deleted." LS

. UnPublished - The Images behind the Headlines runs at Cape Town's Young Blood gallery, 70-72 Bree Street, until October 3