Paul Hansen on Depicting War: Details, Not Balance, Tell the Story

Paul Hansen is a multi-award-winning photographer employed by Dagens Nyheter, perhaps best known for his international reporting. He has frequently visited countries in conflict, having been in Israel this past autumn and Ukraine on several occasions in recent years. As soon as journalists are permitted into Gaza, and as long as it's safe enough, he will go there.

"The more people I meet, the more I learn about myself. The camera is a ticket out into the world and into my own inner self," Paul Hansen shares in the podcast.

Covering war is all about the people, Paul explains. War means people are killed, and it's essential to tell those stories in a way that resonates with readers.

Paul Hansen recounts an instance when he met a man in Sarajevo whose wife had been killed. During the visit, the man found a potato masher in the ruins of the couple's old house and began to describe how his wife made the world's best mashed potatoes.

"Everyone can identify with a potato masher and with someone's mother or wife making delicious mashed potatoes. That was an incredibly powerful entry point for us when we were telling the story of the war in Bosnia. The identifiable small details make all the difference in these narratives."

"The opposite is often the root of war. When you lump people together and say 'those Bosnians' or whatever group it is. If you have that group affiliation and add a bit of fear, ignorance, and disinformation, then you have a powder keg."

As a photographer, you must be on location and meet people; that's also the strength. As a photographer and journalist on the ground, Paul Hansen primarily focuses on reporting what he sees.

"So much in war is opinion, and so much is an attempt to discredit stories from various crisis and war zones by claiming they're not balanced. There is no balance when a child is shot dead. Someone shot that child dead, and then the adult world can say whatever they want; it's still a total failure. And that's what we report on."

Listen to the podcast to hear more about:

• How images force journalism into the field.
• The challenge of AI concerning fake images.
• How journalists are real-time historians.
• The feeling of never quite being enough.

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