Why photographers like The Times’s Joao Silva, who lost his legs in Afghanistan this year, risk their lives for their profession.
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/weekinreview/26kamber.html?_r=1
TWENTY-FIVE years ago, Joao Silva was a troubled high school dropout on the streets of Johannesburg. His future looked bleak until the day a friend took him along on a photo shoot. Joao fell in love with the camera.
Is this what photography on the web is going to come down to? Nearly every week we see a new…
via duckrabbit: http://duckrabbit.info/blog/2010/12/this-christmas-duckrabbit-does-not-want-your-donations/
I am being asked to to support photographers who message me on FACEBOOK to ask for contacts in Ethiopia because they want to ‘photograph malnutrition’. Wankers.
To support photographers who have their cameras stolen whilst grave digging for awards in Africa. Mentalists.
To support photographers who will end up offering their pictures to charities for free. Charities that won’t be able to use them anyway because the fetishization of suffering through aesthetic is a turn off to audiences.
Photography is a generous, abundant medium and Parke is a voracious photographer.
By Geoff Dyer
I was introduced to the work of Trent Parke (born in Australia in 1971, a member of Magnum since 2007) by a mutual friend, the photographer, Matt Stua
via AMERICAN SUBURB X: http://www.americansuburbx.com/2010/12/trent-parke-geoff-dyer-on-trent-parke.html
Photography is a generous, abundant medium and Parke is a voracious photographer. Keeping track of what he’s been up to since the publication of these two books can be a little difficult. He is amassing a vast quantity of pictures, working on multiple projects, which are still in the process of being arranged, edited and exhibited.
Four months after Neil Burgess famously called time of death on photojournalism, the debate is still raging. In fact, it’s been around for decades, as photographer Michael Kamber tells Phil Coomes of the BBC. “I remember arriving in New York in 1985 only to find that I’d arrived too late: photojournalism was dead. This was common knowledge – everybody said so.”
Link: Photojournalism: Wait, worry. Who cares? – British Journal of Photography
Whether he was leaning out a window in the Empire State Building or telling a bad joke, Ernie Sisto knew how to hook an audience.
via Lens Blog: http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/15/the-irresistible-sisto/
Ernie Sisto would hook an audience. He was as good a storyteller as he was a photographer. And, like all good photographers, he was equipped for any situation.
What makes me proud of this newspaper is the incredible people like Joao Silva, the war photographer who stepped on a landmine in October. And the newspaper’s decision to hire him as a full-time staff member after he lost his lower legs.
via On the Ground: http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/09/what-makes-an-employee-proud/
PhotoShelter CEO (and serial entrepreneur) Allen Murabayashi recently gave an online presentation during the (December) 2010 PDN Virtual Trade Show, called “Put More Business in Your Photo Business.”
Two photojournalists covering Afghanistan have sustained terrible injuries to their lower limbs from explosive devices. They met on Sunday.Who better to counsel one than the other?
via Lens Blog: http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/09/a-special-visit-for-joao-silvas-recovery/
Emilio Morenatti of The Associated Press, who lost his left foot and part of his left leg in August 2009, visited Joao Silva, a contract photographer for The New York Times, at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where Mr. Silva is recovering. He lost both of his legs on Oct. 23 while embedded on a patrol in Kandahar Province.
‘Surreal and Motivating!’
Those are the two words that come to my mind when I think about the week I spent at the University of Missouri judging the 65th College Photographer of the Year last month.
Link: CPOY
4. The sound of a shutter…and someone not noticing.
5. Realizing my entire portfolio adds up to about 10 seconds worth of life.
Link: 100 things completely right about our jobs | Redlights and Redeyes
Today, my office at the Portland Tribune got a call from the Oregon State Police inquiring about the identity of a man I photographed at the Civil War game this past weekend. Fans rushed the field after the Ducks won, and a group set fire to an Oregon State Beavers shirt. I was moving through the crowd to get at the center of the pack and was surprised to see the small fire at the center. I started taking photos, as people cheered and lit cigarettes and cigars from the burning shirt. The unidentified man then picked up the shirt and flung it into the air as everyone else cheered.
Link: http://thelifeofm.com/?p=432
Dear Newspaper Photographer,
If you think it’s all doom and gloom, it’s not.
I say that to remind you that you, scratch that… that we, still have the best job around. We get paid to take pictures for a living. We work for newspapers that people read, that are incredibly relevant to their lives, that reflect the good and point out the bad. We get the chance to cover our communities. And we know them better than anyone.
the 1980s was a decade of buoyant, creative and committed photojournalism in the UK; photographers were prepared to exercise their social concerns by investigating the momentous changes happening around them.
To bring Sky News viewers HD pictures from inside Burma for the release of Aung Sang Suu Kyi was a serious challenge. Foreign journalists and their broadcasting equipment are not welcome. Dodging the authorities was not our only problem. We were also filming rebel militias in the jungle, capturing gun battles – and fighting off the wildlife, like the army of black ants that overran my Macbook Pro as I was frantically editing a video one night.
UK agency Panos Pictures has put out a call for portfolios from social documentary photographers interested in joining the agency. The deadline is March 1, 2011. Although Panos lists more than 100 photographers on its roster, director Adrian Evans says a
via PDNPulse: http://pdnpulse.com/2010/11/panos-announces-worldwide-search-for-three-or-four-photographers.html
UK agency Panos Pictures has put out a call for portfolios from social documentary photographers interested in joining the agency. The deadline is March 1, 2011.
The first thing I noticed on going to see Joao at the Walter Reed (after all the uniforms, of course) is that there are dispensers with antiseptic hand gel everywhere. And god forbid you try to enter a patient’s room without cleaning your hands. The obsessive hygiene is like a sickness itself, to the ignorant eye, what with people washing their hands compulsively. The bacteria they most fear is a little critter called Acinetobacter baumannii.
Text and Photographs by Peter Turnley The first foreign trip I ever made as a traveling photojournalist was to India to cover the funeral of Indira Gandhi and the sectarian violence that followed her assassination by two of her Sikh…
via The Online Photographer: http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2010/11/calcutta.html
The first foreign trip I ever made as a traveling photojournalist was to India to cover the funeral of Indira Gandhi and the sectarian violence that followed her assassination by two of her Sikh bodyguards on October 31, 1984. I had moved to Paris in 1978 and this first assignment in India would mark the beginning of a new way of life for me, one of almost constant travel to more than 90 countries these past 26 years.
I could have spent an extra hour sitting on my couch watching the Bears’ game before leisurely driving into the city for tonight’s Hawks’ game but instead, I left early so that I could squeeze in a bit of street photography.
More than two years after photojournalist Trent Keegan was killed in mysterious circumstances in Kenya, police have finally charged a man for the murder after a documentary maker helped solve the mystery
Link: Documentary leads to arrest in Keegan murder mystery (update) – British Journal of Photography
the newspaper industry is in crisis, and it’s unrealistic to expect that a staff photographer job is out there waiting for you — even if you’ve got the world’s best portfolio. Goals have changed – you have to take care of yourself.
You’re still expected to make incredible pictures, but you also need to market yourself and make sure the business is making money. People graduating today find themselves swimming in a vast pool of freelancers, and a good photo education is one that teaches photographers a lot more than how to shoot pictures.
Link: 12 Things Photo Students Need To Know/Study Before Graduation – A Picture’s Worth | PhotoShelter
In covering narcotics trafficking and use, photographers work hard to bring back pictures that almost never show their subjects’ faces.
via Lens Blog: http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/29/when-drugs-ruled-new-york-streets/
In a week when public attention has refocused on the dangers of being a war photographer, it’s worth recalling the risks taken by photojournalists much closer to home who set out to document drug dealing and drug use. The territory is every bit as treacherous, the enemy every bit as implacable, the peril every bit as real.