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‘One of the key debates in
photojournalism has long been where to draw the line between reportage and creativity.’
News photography
True news photography is events driven. The education enjoyed by press photographers means they will use creative visual language in their work whenever possible, as the event itself may dictate the possibilities. News photography tends to depict or bear witness to the event.
There is an immediacy and timeliness about the images that limits the degree of creative interpretation, which is either required or acceptable. This is sometimes referred to as ‘hard’ news.
Photojournalists, on the other hand, are less witnesses and observers and more interpreters. While a news image will often answer the journalist’s questions – who, what, why, where and when – in a single image, a photojournalistic image may leave some questions intentionally unanswered and probably ask as many of the viewer as their imagery seems to answer.
One of the key debates in photojournalism has long been how appropriate a creative approach is and where to draw the line between reportage and creativity.
The use of posed, staged or re-staged photographs throws up ethical questions and begins to pick at the whole issue of where photojournalistic practice now sits in a media-savvy, image-aware world.
Papua New Guinea Rick Rycroft
The photojournalist may have more time to explore issues and compose images than the events driven, hard-news photographer.
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Malalai Kakar Afghan prostitute The images on this spread are from the photo essay
‘Hidden Half: Women in Afghanistan’ by Canadian photojournalist Lana Šlezic.
The photographer travelled through Afghanistan to capture and document these images.
These powerful pictures are all connected – they tell a story and are based on a focused theme.
For more information on this photo essay please visit:
www.motherjones.com/
photoessays.
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Photo essay – structure
The photo essay needs to have a structure, just like its printed counterpart. It first needs a formal structure fi to establish the subject, expand on the theme, explore aspects in detail and come to a conclusion. The sequence of images will almost certainly not be in the actual order in which they were taken. Picture editors expect a clear structure and will be looking for a wide establishing shot:
close-ups of activity, a decisive event or moment, portraits (headshots) and a concluding image. To see how this approach tells powerful stories, look at one of photo essayist Eugene W. Smith’s compelling Life magazine photo essays: ‘Country Doctor’ and ‘Nurse Midwife’
(reprinted in the monograph ‘Let Truth Be the Prejudice’).
Citizen journalists
There are technological and social pressures that are changing the role of the photojournalist forever. First is the rise of the so-called citizen journalist. Often, as news breaks, there is no professional journalist available to report events and members of the general public, who just happen to be on the spot, supply timely images.
These citizen journalists capture their images on compact cameras and mobile phones, which permit the images to be instantly uploaded and available on news websites and on television.
Quality is of little or no importance. Money very rarely changes hands as members of the public are often only too happy to have their ‘fifteen minutes of fame’. fi In response, the professional is compelled to do a different job altogether and to cover the story from another angle, looking deeper for new revelations and back stories. It is often the quality of their research that leads the photojournalist to a new angle on an existing story.
Photo essays
A photojournalist can in one sense be thought of as a news reporter, using a camera instead of a notebook and pen. However, there is a more considered form of photojournalism where instead of a news item (picture), a complete essay or story is produced: the picture story or photo essay. Photo essays are more commonly found in galleries and published in books. Where a
photojournalist may sum-up the story in just one
compelling image, the photo essayist – sometimes called a documentary photographer – will produce a series of connected images based on one theme. The photo essay is a considered body of work that may be the result of a self-initiated project or commission. It is a longer-term project than simple news coverage and may take many weeks or years of preparation and photography to complete.
Computer image editing has produced a whole new area of ethical issues in the world of photojournalism.
How far can removal of blemishes and technical enhancement go before it becomes misleading image manipulation? Photojournalists who have tampered with image content in order to improve the look or to strengthen their story – however valid – have usually paid with their job.
In 2003, this was the fate of a Los Angeles Times staff photographer who produced an image of a British soldier in Basra, Iraq, gesturing for a father carrying his child to get down and take cover. Editors discovered the image was a composite of two frames and had been created by the photographer to strengthen both the composition and message. Creativity in the camera is one thing; creating an image of something that did not in reality happen is quite another.
New technology
A new generation of D-SLR cameras shows the way photojournalism is going. Today’s bigger corporations no longer just print newspapers, but have a much wider reach across the new distribution media. This will undoubtedly include the web and television. Those contributing imagery to the media will be expected to have it in a form suitable for web log video inserts as well as print, and possibly broadcast television.
The latest D-SLRs feature high-quality video
recording in a still camera that is clearly aimed at being a professional photographer’s second camera or back-up body. No longer are separate stills photographers and television news crews despatched to cover a breaking news story – one photographer/videographer will be expected to bring back all the goods. And edit their own material. And caption it. Guaranteed employment in the future will mean having a portfolio of skills and abilities, not just an eye for a good news picture.