“They’re slaughtering us like animals”
You can’t look away: Daniel Berehulak’s gripping photo essay and accompanying text document 57 homicide scenes in 35 days as part of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s crackdown on suspected drug dealers. Berehulak’s work is in many ways the child of Weegee, whose unique style of street, crime and murder scene photography in the 1930s and 1940s set a tone that echoes through photojournalism to this day. Berehulak covered Afghanistan and Iraq and “lived most of 2014 inside West Africa’s Ebola zone,” but writes, “What I experienced in the Philippines felt like a new level of ruthlessness: police officers’ summarily shooting anyone suspected of dealing or even using drugs, vigilantes’ taking seriously Mr. Duterte’s call to ‘slaughter them all.’”
Go check out “‘They are slaughtering us like animals’” in the New York Times, or read up on Weegee, check out a New York Time review of a retrospective of Weegee’s work, or have a look at what the Guardian thinks is some of Weegee’s best street photography.