in Ukraine, photographers immersed in the war of images

It is necessary to have the heart firmly attached to the images reported from Mariupol by Mstyslav Chernov and Evgeniy Maloletka, of the Associated Press (AP) agency. They were the last two international journalists to work there, in Marchbefore fleeing the besieged city, deprived of water and electricity, soon reduced to a spectacular heap of ruins – it is now occupied by the Russians.

In a chilling video, taken from an upcoming documentary film, Twenty days in Mariupol, screened at the Visa pour l’image festival in Perpignan on Saturday September 3, we follow the duo in a maternity ward which has just been bombed. Between the cries, the panic and the rubble, a pregnant woman is evacuated on a stretcher, haggard, her hip opened by a large wound. Neither she nor her baby will survive. The reports of the two Ukrainian journalists in Mariupol, which showed the hell of civilians bombed and trapped in the city, living underground like rats, hastily digging pits to bury the dead, marked the chronicle of this war – Evgeniy Maloletka received the Visa d’or News in Perpignan for his poignant images.

Two days earlier, Ségolène Royal had yet dared to question, on BFM-TV, the reality of the bombing of the maternity ward which shocked the whole world. At the festival, the declarations of the former minister created indignation, but the two interested parties, questioned, remained stoic. As soon as their images were released in March, the Russian Embassy in London tweeted calling the photos “fake” and ensuring that one of the pregnant women was an actress. “There is a real battle today over the interpretation of images, says Mstyslav Chernov. But it’s not our job to fight the information war. We are not soldiers, we are journalists. Our job is to go and see what is happening on the spot, to check and to publish. And that’s what we will continue to do. »

False legends and propaganda

The Visa pour l’image festival put Ukraine at the center of this edition, with four exhibitions. But he also underlined how the journalists who cover this war see their work systematically challenged, denied, vilified online by highly organized pressure groups emanating from the Russian side. “Ukraine has taken a rather unique turn, which perhaps foreshadows the wars of the future, summarizes Grégoire Lemarchand, editor-in-chief for digital investigation at Agence France-Presse (AFP). There is a war on the ground and another on social networks, which disturbs the public and the media. » In Perpignan, AFP also organized a debate on this theme, to explain its strategy in the face of accusations of lying and staging made online, which resonate with a certain Western public, who have become suspicious of the media. . At AFP, a team of one hundred and thirty journalists specializing in the virtual is added to the thirty-five reporters working on the ground in Ukraine.

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