Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

"Corentin Wauters: Gamma is one of the most famous photojournalism agencies. Some even call it legendary. How important has it been for photojournalism? Michiel Munneke: I think Gamma - but also others like Magnum, for instance - played an extremely important role from early years on, especially in documenting crucial news events around the world. It's important to realise that in those days you had magazines like Life and the Picture Post who very generously allocated tens of pages to events like the war in Vietnam, for example. Those publications and photographs made a huge impact on their readerships. I think it's fair to say that the founders of Gamma, like Raymond Depardon - although he moved to Magnum at the end of the '70s - and Gilles Corron, who died in 1970 in Cambodia, can be classified as legendary. They played a very important role in news documenting in those years. Raymond Depardon said that in 1966 you only had to travel far away and take three shots to get published in magazines Paris Match or Le Nouvel Observateur. How has the profession of photojournalism changed since Gamma was founded? If Depardon was saying that competition for space in publications like Paris Match or Le Nouvel Observateur is stronger, then he's absolutely right. Competition is far more severe. Circulations are going down, advertising revenues are shrinking, and consequently budgets for journalism and for photography are being cut. image Nowadays its very rare that publications send photographers for assignments overseas. Take a renowned magazine like Time. They still have photographers on staff but they very rarely get assignments to go overseas. It's a sign of the times. Gamma, but also other big photojournalism agencies like Sipa, were founded in Paris. The city had a big name as a centre for photojournalism. To what extent is that true today? I think for those years it was really true. But now, in the era of globalisation and digitisation, it doesnâ

"Stanley Greene, 61, is a founding member of Noor Images, a photography collective, agency and foundation in Amsterdam. His books include the autobiographical "Black Passport" and "Open Wound: Chechnya 1994-2003." He won the W. Eugene Smith Grant in 2003. Michael Kamber spoke with him in Paris in May. Their remarks have been condensed."

"In Biafra in 1968, a generation of children was starving to death. This was a year after oil-rich Biafra had seceded from Nigeria, and, in return, Nigeria had attacked and laid siege to Biafra. Foreign correspondents in the blockaded enclave spotted the first signs of famine that spring, and by early summer there were reports that thousands of the youngest Biafrans were dying each day. Hardly anybody in the rest of the world paid attention until a reporter from the Sun, the London tabloid, visited Biafra with a photographer and encountered the wasting children: eerie, withered little wraiths. The paper ran the pictures alongside harrowing reportage for days on end. Soon, the story got picked up by newspapers all over the world. More photographers made their way to Biafra, and television crews, too. The civil war in Nigeria was the first African war to be televised. Suddenly, Biafra's hunger was one of the defining stories of the age-the graphic suffering of innocents made an inescapable appeal to conscience-and the humanitarian-aid business as we know it today came into being. "

good source of news on central asia and caucasus

"Here is a link to New York Times photographer Damon Winter's photo series, "A Grunt's Life", which won the third place award in the Pictures of the Year International "Feature Picture Story - Newspaper" contest. No one seems to be questioning the quality of Winter's work; rather, there was been a stir of debate regarding the series' lack of objectivity in capturing the "reality" of the War in Afghanistan. Does the old school, discolored, oversaturated, plastic toy camera feel of the photographs, which was created through the Hipstamatic app on Winter's iPhone, detract from their validity? "

A Thousand Words March 14, 2008 Novelist Jim Lewis once believed that photographs were a necessary part of any wartime tale. Fallujah, however, changed all that. Lewis told us in 2004 that graphic documentation of violence doesn't help anyone understand the story.

Afghanistan: Pictures Not Taken 'When the press started to feel empowered to show and tell the truth, it was only a matter of time before the military and government powers would retaliate.' By Travis Beard Journalist Ash Sweeting rides in a pickup with the Afghanistan National Police. Photo by ©Travis Beard/Argusphotography. Nothing has more power to communicate the destruction and despair of our time-especially from the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan-than photography. But in the sanitized and censored environments now of government and military control, taking the picture can be as difficult as getting it published. In coverage of these wars, freelance photojournalists are indispensible. One after another, news organizations have abandoned the task of informing the public. For editors back home, photojournalists-and the images they transmit-are problematic. But it's not the photographers who pose the problem; it's the truth their images tell. During the Vietnam War, there was the searing image of nine-year-old Kim Phouc running down the road with her flesh melting and fusing into her body after a napalm strike and her brother running in front of her with an expression that recalled Edvard Munch's "The Scream." This photograph spoke to people in ways that words had failed to do. These children were ones the Americans were supposed to be saving, not bombing. Images such as this one did much to turn the tide of that war, but if they did, it was because they conveyed important truths.

The window of a Humvee rolling through Baghdad's dangerous streets is essentially a television, watched in the dark. The glass is dirty and three inches thick: everything has a hazy and muted look, like a rerun of an old seventies movie. Humvees are dim inside even on sunny days; you can see out, but Iraqis can't see in, any more than a sitcom character can see us when we watch. Even the proportions are right: the older Humvee windows have the squarish shape of an old-fashioned picture tube; the latest armor kits feature wider, more horizontal windows, like the letterbox of plasma screens. And these screens show, for the American soldier-viewers, the day-to-day life of seven million souls: Iraqi children walking to school, men lounging in chairs outside of businesses, a food seller grilling meats. Women swathed in black abayas (so rare before the invasion and so common today) shuffling through the streets. Tall concrete blast walls, everywhere.

Chris Hondros / A Window on Baghdad hondros images from windows of humvee in iraq

In the September issue of Italian vogue, fashion photographer Steven Meisel (the man behind Madonna's controversial Sex book) stirs up controversy with his glamorized imagery of the war in Iraq. His 'Make Love Not War' series (mostly) depicts sweaty, dirty soldiers in the middle of a war-zone interacting with models in a very "heated fashion" Apparently, claims are being made by 'Women In Media and News' suggesting this series of photographs are pornographic and evoke sexualizations of horrific situations, also saying that violence is erotic. Am quiet certain everyone would agree by this "surface" reading, but is that the point of the message? What do they mean to you? Check out the rest.

This is an article of particular interest to the Citizen Photojournalism project. Writer Alissa Quart writes for the Columbia Journalism review amongst others, and in this article, she considers the impact of citizen photojournalism on agencies and professional photojournalism in general.

I must say that during last Sunday's riots in the Old CIty of Jerusalem the citizen journalists outnumbered those who were rioting . At least 6 photographers complained about their difficulties of capturing an image without someone sticking a cell phone or other small camera into the frame . A Palestinian man poked his head of the entrance of his home and asked me to assist a Norwegian man who ran into his home to seek safety but was too afraid to leave the area and was trapped . I helped the man make his way down the alley that separated the masked Palestinian youths who were throwing stones towards the Israeli border police at the other end and told him to stick to my side where he would be more protected by the stone building along the way . This has happened a number of times during my coverage of the Palestinian Israeli conflict and in some ways hinders a photojournalist because they leave the scene to assist someone else , can endanger them further my walking in between lines however even the seasoned professionals have opted out of situations that risked their own safety .