In Part 3 of this three-part interview with Nina Berman, I spoke to the photographer about why print journalists largely ignored “Marine Wedding”—and how the blogosphere wasn’t afraid to publish something print journalists wouldn’t.

Richard Bradley: So the photos of Ty and Renee were published in People in November…

Nina Berman: Not [Marine Wedding].

Why not?

I never asked—it was pointless. Editor’s choice. The story was published around the world, but if you look at the spreads that everyone ran, no one published that picture. They all published the fairy tale story.

So which photos were printed in People?

The picture that People ran is from the photo studio, but it’s a horizontal portrait. You see the bridesmaids and some other people from the groom’s side. It looks like some typical high school or college wedding—and then something’s a little off.

Were any of them published elsewhere?

Paris Match and Stern published another one—Ty and Renee coming out of the high school right after their wedding. We see the back of the high school and Marines standing at attention, and Ty and Renee smiling.

I like the image of them alone better because it conveys the idea that when the party’s over, they’re going to have some heavy stuff to deal with.

Of course. But this is the failure of journalism. [Magazines] want to go for the narrative that they constructed before they sent me out on the story. They want to go for the fairy tale.

Which tells you what?

That in war people look for fairy tale endings. “See? Everything’s fine. You can blow a guy’s face apart, take off his limbs, rip his brain out, but he’s fine. Right?”

How did Marine Wedding get such exposure on the Internet then?

Then only reason why that picture got published is because I entered two pictures from that series in World Press [Photo Contest].

What is World Press?

It’s the main photography competition. They get 70,000 entries around the world in different categories. I entered two pictures from that series, and Marine Wedding won in the portrait category. After that, it became this Internet sensation. That’s why the picture became known. It just went insane over the blogosphere.

So bloggers responded to it more than the print press did.

Yeah. Absolutely. It shows the lack of imagination of photo editors.

Or the fear that this was a picture people didn’t want to see.

Or the fear. Or that they’re so trained in their ways.

Tell me about the reaction.

Some guy wrote me: “I usually get 12 hits a day on my site, and then I posted your picture and I got 40, 000.”

(Sarcastically) Great—thank you.

For a few days, my site was getting about 30,000 hits a day. I was besieged with requests from journalists around the world who wanted to visit the couple. I had seen this process before, this kind of media frenzy where some story becomes a fetish story. And so I basically became a gateway. Ty’s mom would call me up—“Who are these people, what is this, should I do it, should I not do it?”

That must have put you in an awkward position.

I wanted to be done with the story. I liked the picture, but I wanted to be done with it. I liked that it finally brought the war home to people, and when I exhibited it, I got amazing responses from people.

For example?

The one I remember the most, which was incredible, was at a little gallery downtown. One evening I gave a talk, and this one girl stuck around for the longest time after—she was a black girl around 21—and I say this because of the identification that she had with this picture even though she wasn’t white.

She said, “I have to ask you”—in this quiet voice—“did she love him?”

I said “Yeah, I think she did love him.”

She said, “Because she reminds me of my mother. My father was a Vietnam veteran and my mom wished she’d never married him.”

Wished she had never married him—which means, never made her.

So the picture raised lots of issues for people, and that was good.

Did you ever see Ty after 2007?

Everyone said, “Why don’t you go back?”

But are so many other people like this, it was like, Why go back? It was the typical thing: After my book came out, when [other reporters] were filming my pictures, I was like, “Go film your own. There’s plenty of [wounded vets]. I saw them. There’s plenty of people who look like that.”

But then in 2008 the Sunday Times of London said, “Look we’re going to back with you or without you.”

And?

I went back. I ‘m glad I did.

Why?

I was able to talk to Ty more. I really like his mom—we’ve stayed close. So I was glad to see his mom. And the writer was a friend of mine and I really liked her story. They gave it some space and they picked apart this fairy tale thing.

Plus, I made some good pictures. When I saw them all together at the Whitney, I liked the new pictures.

I wanted to ask about the Whitney, which is one of the things I blogged about.

You don’t like that it’s at the Whitney.

Seeing them there threw me.

Why is that?

I appreciate the importance of seeing the pictures collectively, but I was disturbed by the idea of presenting these images as part of a show of new art.

Because your idea of art is…?

Not that.

Not that. Well, that’s really the more important thing to get down to, right? (Laughs)

It’s more about my idea of journalism. I thought that it trivialized these powerful and important pictures to be classified as modern art and theorized about and deconstructed and intellectualized.

Well, I think it’s a useful conversation. I hope it becomes more in the open—what’s art, what is the place for journalism.

But in my view, I need the Whitney. The only place that that photograph got published was because an art critic wrote about it, and because it won a competition.

And because of bloggers.

And bloggers. But not magazine editors.

So how do you explain that?

The photo editors that really understood pictures have lost their jobs. There are a few left, but they’re either operating under unbearable constraints or they’ve given up—they’re afraid to take chances. They keep their heads down. So those of us doing work that doesn’t fit in a certain box—where else are we going to go?

The Whitney?

What’s interesting is that, from all accounts, the room at the Whitney that the wedding pictures are in is its most visited, crowded room. So I think it says more about the state of what museums are showing than whether my pictures belong there or not. Maybe museums need to show more work like that. That people can more directly engage with and not have a whole playbook or MFA to understand what they’re seeing.

Looking back, are you satisfied with how the whole story came out? Do you feel what the photograph accomplished what you wanted it to?

I still think it’s a great photograph. I’m oddly protective of it. I’m not sure why. Because I know it’s—(Berman pauses for a good 10 to 15 seonds)—I’m not sure the couple understood what they were in for when they agreed to have a magazine look at their life. They became very public. They went on TV. Did talks. They were at all these events.

Maybe I’m just projecting my own things on them, but—I am oddly protective of it.

For more information on Nina Berman, visit NinaBerman.com.