Photojournalism: First Photograph

Photo taken by Pulitzer Prize winner Oded Balilty; Originally published by the Associated Press.

This photograph features a group of Ukrainian students who have tried on gas masks as part of a safety drill. This took place in a school in Rudniya, which is located just outside the Chernobyl decontamination zones. The photograph accompanied several different articles written in commemoration of the world’s worst nuclear accident, which occurred on April 26, 1986.

This photograph was taken by the Pulitzer Prize winning photographer Oded Balilty, and it was originally featured in the Associated Press. Balilty was born in 1979 in Jerusalem, where he still lives. He learned photography from his service in the Israeli Military Defense Force, where he eventually served as a photographer for the accompanying published magazine. He began working with the Associated Press in 2002.

This photograph features many news values. Among them, the most prominent is probably impact. Almost everyone has heard about the disaster that happen in Chernobyl, and this photograph serves as a bleak reminder to everyone. Additionally, the photograph features the reminders of conflict, and the accompanied story features several testimonies from people or families who still grieve over the tragedy. But the photograph is also bizarre, because the unfamiliarity of a group of students in gas masks to American students is immense.