AP Picture of the Year Strips Jewish Woman of Her Humanity
The award-winning photo of Shani Louk's brutalized body raises ethical questions about the role of modern photojournalism. Author Judy Bolton-Fasman reports.
Editor’s Note: I chose this piece because it highlights the blurred lines between journalist and combatant in the Israel-Gaza war. I was taught in journalism school, "If your mother says she loves you, check it out." Now, I don’t recognize my profession when unvetted information from terrorists spreads unchecked. This shift has also hit photojournalism, where those documenting atrocities are also participants, either through action or inaction. Through this essay, I hope the memory of Shani Louk, brutally murdered and paraded through the streets of Gaza on October 7, is respected and not turned into a further spectacle. Author Judy Bolton-Fasman helps show us the way. — Howard Lovy
Shani Louk, a German-Israeli civilian, was twenty-two years old when she was brutalized and killed in Hamas’ genocidal attack against Israelis on October 7, 2023. An Associated Press photograph showed Shani’s half-naked body lying face down in a truck bed surrounded by five Hamas terrorists. One was defiantly pointing at her body; another had his leg casually flung over her exposed torso.
This photograph won first prize in the Associated Press’ 2023 Picture of the Year competition, sponsored by the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism. The Associated Press won in the Team Picture Story of the Year category for that image.
Shani had attended the Nova Music Festival in the Negev desert on Saturday, October 7, where Hamas terrorists murdered her. They gloated over her dead body and then paraded it to cheering crowds in Gaza. That same day, her bank reported that her credit card had been used in the Strip.
Per the AP, to win in the “Picture Story of the Year” category, a photograph should tell “a narrative picture story that consists of images taken as part of a team effort to cover a single issue or news story.” Rather than telling a cogent story, the photo provoked outrage. Lyndon Steele, dean of photojournalism at Missouri’s School of Journalism and a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist, released a statement in response, which included the following:
The Reynolds Journalism Institute and Pictures of the Year strongly condemn the Hamas attack on October 7, and we continue to mourn the loss of innocent lives and human suffering. This year and every year, the photos in the competition are selected by a panel of professional journalists tasked with identifying compelling representations of the significant news events of the year… photojournalism plays an important role in bringing attention to the harsh realities of war.
Judaism accords the dead the utmost respect before and during burial. A Chevra Kadisha—a Holy Society—ritually prepares the deceased for burial. A “watcher” keeps a vigil over the body; nobody, alive or dead, should be alone or isolated. Psalms and prayers are recited as the body is bathed in warm water and purified for return to its eternal home.
Shani Louk and all the babies and children and grandmothers Hamas slaughtered were not tenderly attended to in death. They were murdered, burned, and mutilated. The AP’s prize-winning photo is graphic commentary on how Hamas weaponizes rape as well as a devastating representation of Jew-hatred.
How do we justify the choice to recognize the AP’s photo with an award? The image blatantly shows the world how expendable Jewish life is. It belies Hamas’ brazen claim that those atrocities against Israeli women on October 7 never took place. Yet the Associated Press’s image captures Hamas celebrating their sadism in real time—the intersection of antisemitism and misogyny.
To make matters worse, the photograph’s caption presents the sequence of events in reverse.
Heavy Israeli airstrikes on the enclave has killed thousands of Palestinians. Palestinian militants drive back to the Gaza Strip with the body of Shani Louk, a German-Israeli dual citizen, during their cross-border attack on Israel, Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023.
Israel did not strike Gaza until twenty days later.
War photojournalism once made witnesses of us all, and that has been important over the last couple of centuries. Many of us have seen Matthew Brady’s photographs of the dead at Antietam: the only photographic proof of that tragedy.
An iconic image of a naked nine-year-old Vietnamese girl running away from a napalm attack is especially indelible. Nick Ut, a Vietnamese American and the AP photographer who took that picture, put down his camera and carried Phan Thi Kim Phuc to a hospital. He won the World Press Photo of the Year in 1973 for that photograph.
How many photographers would have done what Ut did for dying and dead Jews on Israel’s southern border and in Gaza?
Interviewed for the fiftieth anniversary of the photograph titled The Terror of War, Phan Thi — also known as “The Napalm Girl” — was asked to comment on whether it was appropriate to show graphic war pictures. She responded, “I believe that we need it. Sometimes it is not pretty, but we need to show that. That kind of education, that kind of reminder is needed to let people know that we need to stop it.”
Laura Easton, the AP’s vice president of corporate communications, tried to justify the prize by invoking this rationale. “Documenting breaking news events around the world—no matter how horrific—is our job,” she said. “Without AP and other news organizations, the world would not have known what was happening on Oct. 7.”
But that’s no longer true in the digital age. Today our smartphones and social media loop us into atrocities as they’re happening. During the October 7th massacre, the very people beaming images to the world — so-called journalists — were committing mass murder in real time. Bracha Levinson, a grandmother, was murdered in her home on Kibbutz Nir Oz. Her family learned of her death after the killers posted a video of it on her Facebook page.
In this context, there does not appear to be a significant difference between the terrorists and the “observer.” The photograph of Shani Louk was taken by AP freelancer Ali Mahmud. He, along with other freelancers from major agencies like Reuters, was reportedly embedded with Hamas during the October 7th attack, leading many to question whether they were complicit in the violence they were photographing.
This reinforces the message that Jewish bodies are expendable. And it sends another dangerous message as well: that complicity with terrorists while documenting their atrocities can reap professional rewards.
The memory of Shani Louk is a blessing. But this is in spite — not because — of the dishonor done to her memory by this photograph and AP award.
Judy Bolton-Fasman is the author of Asylum: A Memoir of Family Secrets (Mandel Vilar Press, 2021). Her essays have frequently appeared in Memoir Monday/Memoir Land and have been published in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and various literary magazines. She is a contributor to WBUR's Cognoscenti and has appeared in three anthologies, including Pangyrus' 10th-anniversary volume, Where We Dwell. Judy has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize and is a 2024 Best American Essay nominee. She is the recipient of a Hedgebrook residency, the Alonzo G. Davis Fellowship for Latinx writers from the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, a fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center, and the Erin Donovan Fellowship in Nonfiction at the Mineral School.
Five tiny delights
Talking to my kids at the end of their busy days
Writing something that is meaningful to me, and hopefully to others
Overhearing Spanish — my mother’s first language — and still understanding it from my childhood
Discovering a great poem or poet that speaks to me
Uplifting a friend’s beautiful art
Five tiny Jewish delights
Watching my friend Brenda make challah
Having my children home for the High Holidays (a rare occurrence these days)
Understanding a word of Hebrew here and there
Going to my sister Carol’s for Rosh Hashana
Going to my friend Brenda’s for Seder
About the Artist: Deborah Putnoi is a Boston based mixed media artist who has shown her work in solo and group exhibitions internationally to critical acclaim. Her work is included in many significant collections. She has taught in a range of settings, including elementary and secondary schools, universities, and community outreach organizations. Putnoi also worked for many years as a researcher at Project Zero working on research projects focusing on community art centers, museums, and school learning. Putnoi is the author of The Drawing Mind. She installs her Drawing Lab installations at schools, museums, nonprofits, science laboratories, libraries, and other spaces.
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Couldn’t agree more. Poor Shani Louk was violated and desecrated twice; once in the original attack and then again by AP, a news organization which has long been anti-Israel.
Thank you. May Shani's memory be a blessing.