Italian photographer Giovanni Troilo’s series The Dark Heart of Europe was stripped of its prize from the World Press Photo Awards after being revealed as having crossed photojournalism’s ethical line
Then I spoke to Canadian photojournalist Donald Weber, one of the judges for the World Press Photo Awards. He was a jury member at both stages of the process that selected Troilo as the winner of his category. Weber took a more philosophically complex view (or a sophistic one, depending on your stance). He described, in e-mails, how he shot the EuroMaidan protests in Kiev and saw the whole thing, with its costumes and its audience, as theatre on a vast stage. “The whole goddamn thing is staged, Gaza was staged, large news events by their very nature are theatrical … As a photographer, you have to spend time with a subject to gain trust, you have to earn their comfort and their freedom to allow you into their lives … so, there’s a ballet, a dance, a theatrical element to our relationship … Is this not staged? … The only photographer that is offering a pure image is that of a Reaper drone in Pakistan, flying 20,000 feet above, undetectable … That’s total neutrality. Is that what we want?” Weber points out that the “photo of the year” winner, shot in a private St. Petersburg apartment with the consent and collaboration of its two subjects, could easily have attracted the ire of what he calls the “fundamentalists.”
