Photojournalists are not less relevant; in fact, I think they are needed
more than ever these days. However, the problem is the arena in which they
have historically functioned--newspapers and magazines--has been
considerably diminished. Give the photojournalists back their playing
field, allow them to tell the picture stories freely and they will. They
will photograph the storys we should be caring about--shouting
about--carrying on cranky about.
(I have some uncharitable views towards the owners and direction of today's
newspapers and magazines, but I'll keep those views to myself for now :-))
I'm just about done with a book called *Magnum: 50 Years at the Front Line
of History.* Fascinating read. Consider this passage from the 11th chapter
entitled, *End of the Glory Days*:
"Rene Burri remembers the precise moment when he realised the best days of
photo-journalism were over. He thinks it was as early as 1957 or 1958. He
had been out all day chasing a news story in Greece and was sitting down for
the first time in hours on a brown leather couch in the lobby of his Athens
hotel, unloading his film and getting it ready for dispatch. The evening
news flickered on the lobby television and Burri realised, with a mixture of
incredulity and shock, that the selfsame pictures he had been taking all day
were being shown on the television screen before he had even finished
rewinding the film from his camera, let alone getting it to the airport.
His images had yet to be developed, yet to be printed, yet to be
distributed--and already they were out of date." p. 230
I think digital photography helps keep photojournalism alive--no film
processing and quality of cameras has greatly improved. Today, we have
some amazing news images on the net and in the newspapers.
I also think what we need is a bigger educated viewership, which understands
the value--the importance of still photography/photojournalism. It's
unfortunate that younger generations didn't have the opportunity to grow up
with magazines like Life et al. The library at school has the complete set
of Life magazine, and I've been recently sneaking in time to go through all
the issues. The 1st issue was 11/23/1936. I've gotten as far as the
12/14/1936 issue. Fascinating. I hope to write some short reflections of
my experience on my blog.
I agree with Hurnn and Jay: the history of photography is the history of
subject--content--and the stuff of content has not lost its relevance--we
just need to show the viewer how to care about life's content again.
Cheers, Christine
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