Paolo Pellegrin attacked… everybody. He took no responsibility for his own actions. He constructs straw-men to whack down while at the same time blaming everyone but himself. My way, end of controversy. Paolo’s way, fuel on the fire
So, enough controversy for you this week? It’s been interesting watching the Pelligrin story evolve over the last couple of days, but as I sit here on Sunday evening I can’t help but think that it’s much ado about nothing
what we’re concerned with at BagNews is not the integrity of a person but the integrity of the image and as well as the titles, captions and any other attendent information presented in the elaboration or justification of that imagery
Yesterday, I linked to a BagNews post about the accuracy of an award-winning photo by Magnum’s Paolo Pellegrin. Since then, Paolo has responded (weakly, in my estimation) and a number of sites have leapt to his defense.
Mr. Pellegrin was not asked for comment by the post’s authors, however. “I didn’t want to call Paolo,” she said. “I wanted to write this from the vantage point of raising a discussion.”
Also from Paolo:I have no idea why Shaw et al. appear to think there is something wrong with making a portrait, or that making a portrait is not “authentic”. As photojournalists, we make portraits all the time. Are my portraits from Gaza any less “authentic” because they’re portraits? Of course not. It’s ridiculous.
Neither Shaw, Steinberg nor Keller ever attempted to contact me. They do not quote Brett, anyone in the Crescent, the police officers I spent so much time with, etc. It seems somewhat strange to me that while mounting a purported journalistic high horse they themselves did not follow the basic tenets of fair and professional journalism.
What happens when a World Press Photo and Picture of the Year International award-winning photograph doesn’t show what it purports to show? Not through a mistake of interpretation or subjective opinion, but when the facts show the photo wasn’t taken where it was claimed to be taken and when the subject of the photo isn’t who the photographer says he is. What happens when a city is represented through photographs bearing photographer-written descriptions almost wholly plagiarized from a 10 year old New York Times article? Does it make it worse when the photos and the series in question, “The Crescent, Rochester USA 2012”, have won multiple awards and the photographer is Magnum’s Paolo Pellegrin?
The Magnum photojournalist Paolo Pellegrin has documented many of this generation’s major conflicts and disasters, from wars to revolutions to tsunamis. “I am trying—as I do in all my work—to create a bridge,” he said in a recent interview. “To use photography to say something that goes beyond the surface, that vibrates, that resonates, that speaks about a form of psychological portraiture, if you will. To make a connection.”
Ten Magnum photographers will be working in Rochester. Two of these photographers have already gotten started. A couple weeks ago, Alessandra Sanguinetti and Jim Goldberg picked up Uncle Jackson in Oakland and began driving to Rochester. You can see some pictures from their trip here. On their way, Alessandra and Jim picked me up in Minnesota. Later today we’ll be joining Bruce Gilden, Susan Meiselas, Martin Parr, Paolo Pellegrin, Larry Towell, Alex Webb, and Donovan Wylie in Rochester. For two weeks we’ll be living together and working together.
The current issue, shown above, the American edition of the magazine has a cover about animal friendships, while the worldwide editions have a cover featuring Italian prime minister Mario Monti
“I happen to think of photography as a foreign language,” says Paolo Pellegrin. “The question isn’t how to take good photos, it’s how to take photographs that succeed to do a number of things simultaneously: to document, to transmit information, and to strike a chord emotionally.”
Link: Postcards From America: Five Photographers, a Writer, Two Weeks and a Bus – LightBoxMagnum Photographers Alec Soth, Jim Goldberg, Susan Meiselas, Paolo Pellegrin, Mikhael Subotsky, and writer Ginger Strand are a bunch of friends going on a homespun adventure; a two week road trip, from May 11-26, across America. Rather than a super group on a stadium tour, the Postcards From America trip will be more in the spirit of a band going back to a small venue tour — a tour where they have to drive their own van and haul their own gear.
Link: Paolo Pellegrin Dies Irae | La Lettre de la PhotographieDies Irae is the first major retrospective exhibition dedicated to the work of Paolo Pellegrin. The show includes more than 150 images through which he tells us many of his stories and reportages. He has become a symbol of that authentic photojournalism (Magnum) that is not afraid of documenting the world by bravelesly staring at it in the eyes.
Link: StormWith Storm, Paolo Pellegrin takes a fresh and personal look into fashion. Through an exploration of the Present, he portrays his dreamlike vision of the future, involving in the course of pages a unique collection of landscapes from all over the planet – passing from the most condensed asian metropoles to Iceland, from an unseen Dubai to an oniric New York City, to Siberia – unconventional fashion series, ghost imaginary and a gallery of some of the key visionaries of our days – including the director Alejandro Jodorowsky, the fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, the architect Sir Norman Foster, the fashion designer Ms Stella McCartney, the Chairman John Elkington, the designer Mr Bruce Mau, among others. An inner journey, between fiction and reality, through mankind’s present position toward the planet.
Link: Gaza Strip: the children with nowhere to hide – TelegraphThe photographer Paolo Pellegrin spent two weeks among the children of the Gaza Strip documenting their perilous lives in the shadow of the Israeli border.
Link: Iranian Memoir | Magnum In Motion via: dvafotoIn this essay by Paolo Pellegrin, young Iranian-Americans whose parents fled the Iranian revolution in 1979 and started a new life in the USA remember Iran and imagine how their life would have been if they had never left their country.
Link: Little Water, and Less, Along the Jordan – Lens Blog – NYTimes.comIn his first assignment for National Geographic, the Magnum photographer Paolo Pellegrin has explored what happens when one of the world’s most critical issues — climate change — is superimposed on one of the world’s most volatile regions.
This month Magnum Photos releases Georgian Spring: A Magnum Journal, a group project for which ten photographers—Thomas Dworzak, Martine Franck, Mark Power, Alex Majoli, Martin Parr, Alec Soth, Jonas Bendiksen, Antoine D’Agata, Gueorgui Pinkhassov and Paolo Pellegrin—traveled to the Eastern European country to document the contemporary culture and national identity. The book is curated and published by Chris Boot, a former Magnum director in London.
