But the future? The tenuous state of print journalism, with so many publications closing or contracting, suggests a rough road ahead for photographers (as with writers) needing time and support to address subjects with depth and complexity. The Internet offers myriad new avenues for exposure but no viable system to pay for such work to be produced. Also, viewing an extensive essay on screen is not the same as making one’s way through the pages of a book or magazine.
Tim Page settled back for the long ride, past the town of Skun, known for its fried spiders, past hypnotic rows of rubber trees, out to this dusty village near the Mekong River where he believed the bones of two missing war photographers, Sean Flynn and Dana Stone, were buried.
Afghanistan-based photographer Andrea Bruce, who has worked extensively in Iraq as a staff and contract photographer for The Washington Post, and Paris-based photographer Tomas van Houtryve, who won 2010 Photographer of the Year from POYi, have joined the VII Network. Both are new to VII.
“I have worked with many photographers in the field, all over the world,” Régis Le Sommier, deputy editor in chief of the popular French magazine Paris Match, told The Daily Beast in an email. “I believe [Veronique] is one of the most daring and promising photographers of her generation.”
When I travel I take — in this case — a Holgaroid; a Holga with a Polaroid back. It’s a plastic camera. It’s very light. And I can fit those two things in my camera bag besides all my work equipment. When I am done working, on the day before I leave, I’ll go find things of interest and keep a journal of where I’ve been. Wherever I go — across the country or around the world — I always carry a notebook or a drawing pad. I buy little Crayolas, and draw and paint in the notebooks. And I always find someone who is of interest and who has touched me and ask them, if they don’t mind, if I may take a Polaroid of them and if they would write something in the notebook about themselves and their experience. I’ve been doing that for years. I have a lot of books.
Photographer Antonio Simoes told his paper, the Portuguese daily O Jogo, that at about 4 a.m. this morning, he awoke when two men entered his room at the Nutbush Boma Lodge. One pointed a gun at his head while the other took about $35,000 worth of camera and computer equipment, his passport, cellphones, World Cup accreditation and cash.
Success that Friday night was about cutting edge technology, a super experienced news photographer, and having one of the best pilots in town. Saturday’s page 1 picture was shot at a 3oth of a second (handheld) at f2.0 and at 12,000 ISO so without our new 1D Mark IVs it wouldn’t have happened.
To me, this is what documentary photography is all about. The photographer as a fly on the wall…seemingly unnoticed by his subjects…who perhaps either ignore his presence, got used to it or tolerate it….and from these frames, one can build a storyline
Over the past year I have been emailed frequently by photographers inquiring the “how to’s” of embedding to Afghanistan, especially those who are first-timers. I wrote very similar emails like this to very experienced colleagues (such as Alan Chin, John Moore, and Teru Kuwayama, to name a few) before I embedded for the first time in 2009. To save us all a lot of trouble (those asking the questions and those having to repeat the advice) I decided to compile a document entailing a list and series of frequently asked “Q and A’s”, as well as information given to me from these colleagues in the field; without their help my embed would have been much more difficult.
Whenever I received such an assignment from my boss at the Sun-Tattler, Rick Shaw (who now directs Pictures of the Year International based out of the Missouri School of Journalism), he would always say the same thing. ‘The event is not sacred.’
What did he mean? He meant that he wanted his photographers to look beyond the obvious. He wanted us to bring back story-telling images from the fringes.
May 11th, 2010 Honorees at the 26th Annual International Center of Photography Infinity Awards, held last night in New York, paid tribute both to photography’s continuing power and to the photo community that has fostered its best practitioners. Addressin
Honorees at the 26th Annual International Center of Photography Infinity Awards, held last night in New York, paid tribute both to photography’s continuing power and to the photo community that has fostered its best practitioners. Addressing “those who say that photojournalism is dying,” Reza, winner of the Photojournalism award, said that 43,000 years after the first cave painters documented their world, “the visual artist has never been more important. Our picture community is connecting people.”
Sun-Times publisher John Barron told me that last December his paper sold its archive of more than a million photos and negatives to Rogers for a “sizable cash payment.” Neither he nor Rogers will be precise, but Rogers said it ran to seven figures. The Sun-Times retains “all the intellectual property, all the copyrights,” Barron said. What’s more, Rogers is obliged to re-create the “entire library in digital searchable form,” and make it accessible to the Sun-Times.
The photographer Paolo Pellegrin spent two weeks among the children of the Gaza Strip documenting their perilous lives in the shadow of the Israeli border.
Join internationally acclaimed photojournalist, Peter Turnley, for an insightful look into humanity amidst the last three decades of history, geo-politics, and everyday life in different countries from around the world. Peter’s presentation will weave in and out of images depicting life worldwide, in moments of conflict, hardship, and political change, as well as images of major world figures that influenced the direction history during the last three decades
The Foundry Photo~Journalism Workshop 2010 is in Istanbul, and if your dream is to be coached by some of the best photographers and photojournalists available, do it now!
Here’s another story that is guaranteed to make your stomachs churn. It involves Marco Vernaschi an Italian photographer/photojournalist who worked on a project documenting the phenomenon of child witches, human sacrifice and organ trafficking in Africa, and the Pultizer Center For Crisis Reporting.
ALL IT takes to be a photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson once said, is “one finger, one eye and two legs”. He visualised photography as a way of engaging with the world. He quietly stalked his subjects—Balinese dancers, Mongolian wrestlers, New York bankers—until that “decisive moment” when the right composition filled the frame. It all came so naturally. He rarely used a light meter or checked his aperture setting, and he seldom took more than a few shots of a single subject. With the instinct of a hunter, he knew when to click the shutter: “I prowled the streets all day, feeling very strung-up and ready to pounce, determined to ‘trap’ life—to preserve life in the act of living.”
The Associated Press has just announced that it is making staff photographers available for hire to other news organizations for assignments around the world.
The photographic reporting of famine, especially in ‘Africa’, continues to replicate stereotypes. Malnourished children, either pictured alone in passive poses or with their mothers at hand, continue to be the obvious subjects of our gaze. What should dri
The photographic reporting of famine, especially in ‘Africa’, continues to replicate stereotypes. Malnourished children, either pictured alone in passive poses or with their mothers at hand, continue to be the obvious subjects of our gaze. What should drive our concern about this persistent portrayal? This morning I came across an example that demonstrates how criticism needs to be careful before it can make its point effectively.
This afternoon VII Photo Agency announced the launch of their latest venture, VII The Magazine, a syndicated online magazine that features photo stories and interviews with VII photographers. The beta version of VII The Magazine, which is subtitled “How photographers see the world,” is being presented in partnership with the Herald Scotland newspaper and the photography blog Lens Culture, with further partners to be added and announced in the coming months. VII Photo is offering the magazine as a widget that can be inserted into the Web pages of its syndication partners.
