Can a Photograph Change History? Sitting Down with Ron Haviv

A photograph Ron Haviv took at age 23 would be cited by George H.W. Bush when the President called for the American invasion of Panama. Since then, Mr. Haviv has traveled from conflict to conflict zone, producing photographs of some of the late-twentieth century’s most difficult periods of violence.

Ron Haviv has photographed some of the most traumatic conflicts of the past three decades. Since his picture of Manuel Noriega’s bloodied opponent appeared on the cover of Time, Mr. Haviv has worked in twenty-five conflict zones in more than a hundred countries, most notably the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Haiti. In 2001, Mr. Haviv founded VII Photo Agency in New York, where he is currently based. On June 22nd, Mr. Haviv joined Merion West’s Erich Prince to discuss the psychology and impact of conflict photojournalism.

To begin, you started your career photographing some of the 1989 events in Panama. What initially drove you to want to photograph conflict, and how did you set out in your career path, deciding to photograph these sorts of events?

I started off working as an intern in New York City and eventually started freelancing for various publications in New York, like the New York Post, for example. I was starting to think about traveling overseas, but I was not really sure how to do it or what the real reason was to do it. I met a photographer in New York named Christopher Morris, who was a very experienced photographer and had just come back from the Philippines where he was on assignment for Newsweek. We were talking, and I asked him where he was going next: What was the next foreign story that he was going to do? Chris said that he was going to Panama, and I just said, “Oh that’s great. I’m also going to Panama,” but I didn’t really understand what the story was or what was happening.