COVID-19, medios de comunicación y fotografía. ¿Una crisis sin víctimas? / COVID-19, media and photography. A crisis without victims

On May 1, 2020, Sarah Elizabeth Lewis wondered, from the New York Times’ pages, where were the pictures of people dying from COVID-19, the images of the real victims of the pandemic (Lewis, 2020). She claimed to see images able to arise empathic responses from the audience. She defended the transformative potential of this kind of photography, as it is widely demonstrated by the legacy that some photojournalists have left behind us since they began to witness conflicts, wars, and natural disasters. However, the publication of sick, dying, or deceased people’s images in the media has become an increasingly exceptional fact, especially, when it comes to our dead or dying people. During the firsts weeks of the coronavirus crisis, the media, news agencies and freelance photographers have been trying to find situations and capture images capable of showing the exceptionality of this pandemic, as only photography knows to do it: in a synthetic, universal way, incorporating all those elements that transform a singular image into an iconic one. Photographs that over the years become a symbol of a moment, of an event, or a conflict. On June 3, David Ramos, photographer for the Getty Images agency, went to the Hospital del Mar, in Barcelona, to catch the moment when the medical team accompanied Mr. Isidre Correa, a COVID-19 patient who had been in suffering for more than 50 days in the ICU, to see the sea. The image went around the world immediately. Why did that photograph work? What visual elements does it contain that make it so exceptional? This communication analyses the persistence of visual tropes related to the photographic narration of catastrophes as well as their iconographic updates.