Link: Japan Earthquake: Photographing the aftermath – British Journal of PhotographyAs the scale of the devastation became apparent, dozens of other photographers packed their bags and headed to Japan too, including Magnum Photos’ Dominic Nahr, VII Photo’s James Natchwey, Paula Bronstein of Getty Images and Associated Press’ David Guttenfelder. Panos Pictures photographer Adam Dean arrived in Tokyo just 20 hours after the earthquake hit – and was shocked by what he found. “I am working with a writer out here and between the two of us, we’ve covered earthquakes in China, Pakistan and Indonesia, cyclones in Burma and tsunamis in Thailand, India and Sri Lanka, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as undercover reporting trips to North Korea and Burma,” he tells BJP. “But from a logistical point of view this has been one of the hardest assignments we’ve had to cover.”
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Japan Earthquake: Photographing the aftermath
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A Photo Student › Shooting Gallery – The limitations of photojournalism and the ethics of artistic representation
Link: A Photo Student › Shooting Gallery – The limitations of photojournalism and the ethics of artistic representationThe winning press photos by Hetherington and Guttenfelder on the one hand and McQueen’s art work on the other can be seen as two poles defining the spectrum of possible representations of war with a camera – one employs the rhetoric of reportage, the other uses a conceptual strategy, or the rhetoric of the metaphorical. Arguably, the photojournalist has a professional and ethical imperative to capture the immediate circumstances, while the artist has the license or luxury to turn his camera away from these events, even to question the photograph’s ability to accurately represent them. Does one approach function more effectively than another? And by what criteria can we judge their effectiveness? When it comes to images of the events and consequences of war, how close is too close? And how much distance is too much?
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Associated Press Photographer David Guttenfelder goes to war with… an iPhone – 1854
Link: 1854, the blog of the British Journal of Photography“These photographs, shot with an iPhone I carried in my flak jacket pocket, are not about the fight for Marjah,” Guttenfelder says. “Instead, they are an attempt, during my downtime, to show something of the daily lives of Marines and Afghan soldiers as they moved through the city and set down their packs each evening in a harsh, isolated place.”
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On Assignment: Afghanistan
On Assignment: Afghanistan – Lens Blog – NYTimes.com:You could call David Guttenfelder the man behind the man in the pink boxers. Mr. Guttenfelder, 40, the chief Asia photographer for The Associated Press, attracted attention two months ago — all the way up to the Commander in Chief — with his photograph of Specialist Zachary Boyd, Specialist Cecil Montgomery and Specialist Jordan Custer returning the Taliban’s fire in Afghanistan. Specialist Boyd was wearing pink boxers and flip-flops at the time. Admirers of this picture saw in it a perfect expression of American readiness and capacity to fight. “Any soldier who goes into battle against the Taliban in pink boxers and flip-flops has a special kind of courage,” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said.
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David Guttenfelder, Josh Meltzer, Photojournalists of the Year
From the National Press Photographers Association:
“This is an extraordinary photographer,” judge Ruth Fremson of The New York Times said after the panel picked Guttenfelder’s portfolio for First place. “There is a beautiful eye, someone who can handle any kind of news situation, including a helicopter crashing practically at his feet. This photographer has a wonderful sense of color and composition. There is a narrative thread through all the stories. This portfolio has everything you would ask for in a single image and a photo story.”
Here.