Israeli photographer Ziv Koren recently traveled to Guantánamo Bay on assignment for NEWSWEEK to capture some footage inside the detention camps. After months of waiting for clearance, he was able to spend several days in May on the inside shooting both video and still photographs. Koren has developed a special technique for capturing video and still images simultaneously. The resulting video has a stop-motion feel that gives viewers a sense of how photographers choose to frame still images.

U.S. officials are highly concerned about the public image of the detention camps, particularly after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2006 entitling all detainees to rights and protections in accordance with Geneva Conventions. Few photojournalists have been permitted to capture images at Guantánamo, and NEWSWEEK's Jessica Bloustein spoke with Koren about his rare experience. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: What did it take to get clearance to go in and shoot?
Ziv Koren: It took five months to get approval to go in. They required a list of my clients, my CV [curriculum vitae], a list of the assignments I'd completed, a list of my gear. Pretty much everything I have.

What happened when you first arrived?
We followed a tight schedule and were told what to film when. I was with another [Associated Press] photographer and two other camera people from different news [outlets]. In two and a half days of shooting, we'd spend half a day shooting and half a day for censorship. They gave us a tour of the border between Guantanamo and Cuba, and interviews with generals. We toured [Camp] X-Ray [a temporary holding facility], which is now totally unoccupied. The grass is three feet high, but they still keep it.

What was your first impression of the camps?
Everything I saw there was in accordance with the Geneva Conventions and human-rights standards. The detainees have TV, a library. I was convinced the way they were being held is totally fine. But the fact that we were censored in such a heavy and irrational way causes the opposite impression. You're left with nothing because they've censored everything.

So you couldn't just snap photos of anything you wanted, right?
They were very strict, with no margin to the left or to the right. In [the U.S. military's] Censorship [Department], they went through every picture and video, frame by frame. For example, we would go into the camp to shoot the watchtowers. But they told us we couldn't shoot more than one in the same frame, for security reasons. There had to be a guard in the watchtower we were shooting, but the guard couldn't be seen in the shot. We also couldn't shoot the security camera on the tower, which to me looked like the generic cameras you'd find in any drugstore. We couldn't shoot the faces of the detainees. No pictures of locks, faces or the seashore.