The different photographs that The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald ran this week of a Vietnamese girl with a massive facial tumor raise questions of when a picture is exploitive of its subject or offensive to us as readers.
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Category: Photojournalism
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In printing graphic photo, instinct guides editors — not hard rules
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I was hooked on the story in Afghanistan
I am back in Afghanistan for the fifth time in two years. I have a lot in common with the British, Canadian and American soldiers deployed in the country. Like many of them, I have been here before and I have been under fire. And, dubious though the honour is, I am a member of an even more exclusive club: I have been shot during a gunfight.
There are differences between us, too. I am a photojournalist, not a soldier. I carry cameras and a notebook, not a gun. In the heat of battle, I am trying to stay alive, not trying to kill. The biggest difference – the one that surprises all the soldiers I meet – is that more than volunteering to be here, I overcome many obstacles to be an observer in this war zone.
Check it out here.
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Through Weegee’s Lens – New York Times
BACK in the 1970s, a gutsy blond named Jill Freedman armed with a battered Leica M4 and an eye for the offbeat trained her lens on the spirited characters and gritty sidewalks of a now-extinct city.
Influenced by the Modernist documentarian André Kertész, with references to the hard-edged, black-and-white works of Weegee and Diane Arbus, this self-taught photographer captured raw and intimate images, and transformed urban scenes into theatrical dramas.
Her New York was a blemished and fallen apple strewn with piles of garbage. Prostitutes and bag ladies walked the streets, junkies staked out abandoned tenements, and children played in vacant lots.
“The city falling apart,” Ms. Freedman said one day recently in recalling that era. “It was great. I used to love to throw the camera over my shoulder and hit the street.”
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The Papal visit | Blogs | Reuters.com
An interesting challenge is how to tell the story without including the subject in the photographs. It’s interesting because, by avoiding the obvious and familiar, sometimes a greater sense of the occasion, and the emotions involved, can be conveyed.
For example, take the current visit by Pope Benedict XVI to the United States. Clearly the Pope was the centre of attention, and there are very good photographs of him that were taken and published in newspapers and on websites around the world. Photographs of him bring pleasure and comfort to millions.
The fact that he is in the States is of interest too, and it is important to take photographs that locate him there. On the other hand we are familiar with photographs that show the Pope in person, and what strikes me when looking at the Reuters coverage of the current visit is just how much the passion, reverence and joy felt by so many, can be conveyed in photographs that don’t show him in at all.
Check it out here.
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The Face: Robert Knoth | The Australian
DUTCH photographer Robert Knoth describes himself as a sissy, then laughs.
If Knoth is a sissy, he is not the sort of sissy most of us would recognise. His travel resume is a catalogue of the bleakest, most dangerous places on earth: Afghanistan, Angola, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Tajikistan, to name a few. It seems he is drawn back time and again to suchplaces to document the suffering of theforgotten.
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How Jessica Dimmock got to the Ninth Floor – Shoot The Blog
Jessica Dimmock has been a whirling dervish since graduating from the Photojournalism program at ICP in 2005. A project she embarked upon while still in school, The Ninth Floor became a three-year intense documentation of the lives of 20 to 30 heroin addicts who lived in a run-down apartment in a well-appointed building in a fancy Manhattan neighborhood.
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PDN Interviews Pulitzer Winner Adrees Latif
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Algerian reflections on a Swiss vision of a civil war
Enter Michael von Graffenried. This much-lauded 51-year-old Swiss-born photojournalist has worked in this region for nearly two decades. He has a special relationship with Algeria, where he first shot photos in 1991 and returned to shoot the country’s agonizing and bloody decent into civil war.
Von Graffenried’s Algerian work is the stuff of “Algerie: Photographies d’une Guerre sans Images,” the exhibition currently on show at The Hangar in Haret Hreik. A meta-exhibition, it features both a sample of the photographer’s riveting work alongside “War Without Images: Algeria I Know That You Know,” Mohammed Soudani’s 2002 documentary about Von Graffenried’s work. The Hangar is playing the film in a loop alongside the photos.
Check it out here.
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Gilles Peress
Quote:”I don’t care so much anymore about ‘good photography’; I am gathering evidence for history”.
Gilles Peress joined Magnum Photos in 1970 and is a Magnum Contributor.
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The inside story behind Preston Gannaway's Pulitzer Prize
Like much of the journalism we do, the St. Pierre project required that members of the community trust in our ability to tell an important human story. As we at the Monitor celebrate this historic moment for the newspaper, we also recognize our debt to the spirit of Carolynne St. Pierre and to Rich and his family. They have our deepest gratitude.
Gannaway’s winning Pulitzer entry included 19 of the photographs we published last year. The photos are candid, beautiful, intimate, heart-wrenching and sensitive. Five are reprinted in today’s paper, and readers can see a multimedia presentation of the project and read Conaboy’s fine stories at concordmonitor.com. The photo entry sent to the Pulitzer Prize board is also available on the site.
Check it out here.
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A visual journal by Richard Koci Hernandez | Waitin' On a Moment – by Tim Gruber
We all loved MultimediaShooter and it’ll be dearly missed, but thankfully Richard has found what he calls his new online distraction. Check out the first piece in his new visual journal.
Check it out here.
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Winners In 2008 Best Of Photojournalism Picture Editing Categories Announced
The Newspaper Picture Editor of the Year (Individual) is Brad Loper of The Dallas Morning News. Second place is Mary Cooney of the Los Angeles Times, and third place is Dan Habib of The Concord Monitor. Honorable Mentions were awarded to Janet Reeves of The Rocky Mountain News, and to Mark Edelson of The Palm Beach Post.
Check it out here.
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俗画 zokuga 俗画: Bryan Patrick
Congrats to Bryan Patrick for winning the San Francisco Bay Area Photographers Association photog of the year award. Well deserved.
The Bee put up a gallery of his portfolio
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Combat Camera Airman receives best in DOD honor
A photojournalist from the 1st Combat Camera Squadron here has been recognized as the best in the Department of Defense.
Staff Sgt. Stacy Pearsall was named Military Photographer of the Year. She received the honor against more than 1,700 entries submitted by her peers from all branches of the U.S. military worldwide.
Check it out here.
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The story behind the Pulitzer picture | Reuters.com
Reuters Bangkok senior photographer Adrees Latif tells how he took the pictures which won him a Pulitzer Prize. The pictures were taken in Myanmar during the protests in September last year and include the photo of Japanese video journalist Kenji Nagai being shot.
“Tipped off by protests against soaring fuel prices, I landed in Yangon on 23 September, 2007, with some old clothes, a Canon 5D camera, two fixed lenses and a laptop.Check it out here.
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2008 Pulitzer Prizes-FEATURE PHOTOGRAPHY
Photos by Preston Gannaway. Pulitzer warded to Preston Gannaway of the Concord (N.H.) Monitor for her intimate chronicle of a family coping with a parent’s terminal illness.
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2008 Pulitzer Prizes-BREAKING NEWS PHOTOGRAPHY, Works
Photo by Adrees Latif of Reuters. A wounded Japanese photographer, Kenji Nagai, lay before a Burmese soldier yesterday in Yangon, Myanmar, as troops attacked protesters. Mr. Nagai later died. Published September 28, 2007.
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A Good Day With No Hope – The Digital Journalist
by Carsten Snejbjerg
Koba Kopaliani leaves the room. He closes the door quietly behind him and smokes a cigarette on the small balcony. Behind the door the family is gathered around the only meal of the day: potato soup and bread. Neither Koba nor his wife have jobs so they rely on what money they get from the government to support themselves and their eight children—right now that totals $17 per adult and $7 per child. For the majority of the people living in the city of Tskhaltubo, Georgia, this is the reality of life.
I was in Tskhaltubo to do a story for the Danish NGO Cross Cultures Project Association
Check it out here.
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redlights and redeyes: finding a lost marine
The camera allows us access to the lives of our community everyday – sometimes it’s the sidelines of a football game, other times it’s following a candidate around the country. Then there are the times we get to witness the worst day of someone’s life. I had that opportunity recently for The New York Times a few weeks ago when I met the Hall family and watched as they said goodbye to their son, brother, and Marine.
Check it out here.
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China photojournalist Tom Carter gives first exclusive interview.
I’m out pounding the pavement from 6am to 6pm every day, learning about the culture through observation and interaction. Many photojournalists cover their assignments as quickly as possible so they can remove themselves from the elements, but I revel in the elements. I don’t have any technical or artistic preconceptions to my photos. The whole idea of spending an hour setting up a shot and then photoshopping it to death afterwards is not what I’m about. I just capture life as it is, then move on. If the picture turns out crooked, so what! Life is crooked!
I have no desire to make something palatable, even if it means not getting on Getty. On the other hand, any of my photos that are considered beautiful I credit entirely to my subjects. They are the ones who deserve the compliments.Check it out here.