Is 'artist' the new 'photojournalist'?

emraphoto

emraphoto

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With more and more of the folks we/they/whoever consider 'intrepid photojournalists' moving towards funding strategies very similar to the classic 'artist approach' (grant writing, crowdfunding, gallery representation, collectives etc.) is the term 'artist' that far off?

When i consider the work and photographers that motivate me few, if any, consider themselves 'photojournalists'. Despite this, most are known as such and i even use the term on occassion to avoid a long winded explanation that most still won't understand. This drives my wife, lovely creature, batty as she knows how little interest i have in 'photojournalism' these days.

The work coming out by folks such as Ziyah Gafic, Don Weber, Luc Delehaye etc. sure gives nod to the classic photojournalism we all know yet all of them find the bulk of funding in a way no different than an 'artist'. They are also loathe to use the P word.

So, beyond the usual disintegration the word art causes here, how else do we define this sort of work. When it appears to the average bloke as 'photojornalism' yet we know it isn't.
 
I've been hearing a lot of McLuhan quotes these days and they seem appropriate to what's happening now.

“Obsolescence is the moment of super abundance.”

“Obsolescence never meant the end of anything, it’s just the beginning.”

He also talked about how a new medium transforms the message through the quote everyone knows, but as an addition, he talked about how the new medium also transforms all the old ones too.

Looking for certainties in times of change is just an exercise in frustration. I'm glad that the profession still exists, as it's a wonderful tradition. For me, people like Anthony Suau and Tomas Van Houtrye are doing some beautiful and important work in the "still" photograph news tradition. Many of my favorites like Alex Webb and Christopher Anderson and Alex Majoli are still out there doing their thing and making relevant art.

I hope that makes you feel better. It's easy to focus on what's getting "lost" and not notice what is new and exciting. It seems a hard way to make a living these days so I wish working photojournalists and students the best and hope there are more innovations that enable their work!

cheers
 
Only a guess since I don't really know the market/funding/professional circuit:

when color photography became largely available, B&W was pushed to be used for a clear purpose, and not as a default choice.

With the digitalization of our lives, the images and there transmission are instantaneous (when they are not obliterated by video). That means that what we knew as "PJ" is no longer in use of their traditional clients that want now one shot crappy enough for the web at zero cost and risk.
I think serious PJ as we understand it from the days of "Life" gets closer and closer to "documentary" and finally approaches the same commercial path as art, because of the way it is consumed.

Again, I'm not an artist nor a commercial photog, so I may be completely wrong, and I'll follow up the answers with great interest...
 
'Artist' is the word to use when you lack the self-confidence or ability to call yourself a photographer, or when the people you are asking for grants-in-aid are too feeble-minded or illiterate to accept anything not couched in 'artspeak'. When it comes to grants, the latter is far from irrelevant.

As Frances pointed out, look at the FSA for an example of fashions in funding.

Cheers,

R.
 
"Journalism" just means work that is done for journals -- magazines and newspapers. Sometimes journals funded ambitious, high quality work -- some novels originally ran as serials in newspapers. A lot of nonfiction was first class. Journals still fund lots of topclass photography, mostly in Vogue and Vanity Fair.

The move of "photojournalism" to "art" is fine with me. It opens up the field. Anyone can go spend a few weeks with a camera, maybe do a little writeup, and publish the results on Blurb. Most of it is crap, but the top 5% is still probably better than the best of the old magazines, and there is 10x more of it.
 
Roger Hicks said:
'Artist' is the word to use when you lack the self-confidence or ability to call yourself a photographer, or when the people you are asking for grants-in-aid are too feeble-minded or illiterate to accept anything not couched in 'artspeak'. When it comes to grants, the latter is far from irrelevant.

As Frances pointed out, look at the FSA for an example of fashions in funding.

Cheers,

R.
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with the respect you know i have for the two of you Roger, i have to say Bollocks to that. I have used all sorts of these terms in the past week alone. all followed with ZERO lack of confidence.
 
Roger Hicks said:
'Artist' is the word to use when you lack the self-confidence or ability to call yourself a photographer...
Click to expand...

I don't see the word 'artist' as a word being used -most of the times it's used- by people who lack self-confidence as photographers... Maybe some artists can feel they don't need to be better photographers, and maybe it's not about lack of confidence but about what they prefer: being artists... I can respect, as artists, bad photographers (from a technical point of view) doing photographs with depth, and I prefer them to good photographers doing irrelevant photographs with an expensive lens... Artist is a fair word to designate anyone that produced works with more than just one simple, literal meaning... Isn't that art? As far as I know, art doesn't mean great work as that done by a great technician or a great artisan, but the act of using one single form to communicate at more than one level... "To be able to say different things to different people": I don't mean "people understand differently", I mean "some people understand the most superficial meaning, and another one or a few more the artist put there"... Some great photographs are art, and some others aren't, even from the same author... I don't find pretentious or wrong in any way to consider a photographer can be an artist. To be an artist, a photographer doesn't need great technique or great gear, but just more than a literal meaning in a photograph... As in poetry: the word is rose, but poetry doesn't talk about roses... Newton or Atget come to mind... The very humble Atget used to offer and sell his photographs as "documents for artists" with that meaning, I guess: there's lyricism there, and he felt that lyricism was ready to be used, with any desired transformation, by artists from other plastic/visual arts...

Cheers,

Juan
 
NLewis said:
"Journalism" just means work that is done for journals -- magazines and newspapers. Sometimes journals funded ambitious, high quality work -- some novels originally ran as serials in newspapers. A lot of nonfiction was first class. Journals still fund lots of topclass photography, mostly in Vogue and Vanity Fair.

The move of "photojournalism" to "art" is fine with me. It opens up the field. Anyone can go spend a few weeks with a camera, maybe do a little writeup, and publish the results on Blurb. Most of it is crap, but the top 5% is still probably better than the best of the old magazines, and there is 10x more of it.
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Hmm, to be honest, i agree with the bulk of this. Perhaps understanding that I ask this alk with the idea of BRAND being my main theme.
 
Roger Hicks said:
'Artist' is the word to use when you lack the self-confidence or ability to call yourself a photographer, or when the people you are asking for grants-in-aid are too feeble-minded or illiterate to accept anything not couched in 'artspeak'. When it comes to grants, the latter is far from irrelevant.
Click to expand...


Roger, I disagree about the term artist being used by those lacking confidence or ability to call themselves photographers. Do you say the same about painters and sculptors? The term 'photographer' encompasses anyone who uses a camera to make photographs, including many who are not trying to make art. The guy who photographed the bowl of Frosted Flakes on the front of the cereal box is a commercial photographer. He wasn't making art, he was photographing a product for a client. The woman who makes $7 an hour pushing the button at Olan Mills is called a photographer, despite her images all using preset lighting and requiring no knowledge of how to do anything but push the button. They all look the same, which is fine, because her customers all want the same thing, not a work of art.

Someone who makes photographs for personal expression, like me, is an artist. Medium is photography, but thats no different than another artist saying his medium is lithography or sculpture or fresco. Yes, they are also Lithographers (or printmakers), sculptors, and painters...those are types of artist and a photographer can be too.
 
I assure you, i am one of the most serious 'possibilities' guy you will ever know.

sirius said:
I've been hearing a lot of McLuhan quotes these days and they seem appropriate to what's happening now.

“Obsolescence is the moment of super abundance.”

“Obsolescence never meant the end of anything, it’s just the beginning.”

He also talked about how a new medium transforms the message through the quote everyone knows, but as an addition, he talked about how the new medium also transforms all the old ones too.

Looking for certainties in times of change is just an exercise in frustration. I'm glad that the profession still exists, as it's a wonderful tradition. For me, people like Anthony Suau and Tomas Van Houtrye are doing some beautiful and important work in the "still" photograph news tradition. Many of my favorites like Alex Webb and Christopher Anderson and Alex Majoli are still out there doing their thing and making relevant art.

I hope that makes you feel better. It's easy to focus on what's getting "lost" and not notice what is new and exciting. It seems a hard way to make a living these days so I wish working photojournalists and students the best and hope there are more innovations that enable their work!

cheers
Click to expand...
 
Chris101 said:
Good photojournalism has always been art.
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That's very nice, Chris!

When photojournalism is really moving (and I don't mean simply photographing sad situations or blood) it has a huge power... A great photojournalist is a great artist to me too, because we're talking about a genius finding, through form and based on reality, ways to communicate at very deep levels, far beyond literal levels, and that's especially hard to do...

Cheers,

Juan
 
Hi Roger, to answer your title question, no, I don't see much difference between now and the previous decades: yet there are lots of people proud of being and being called photojournalists, and like before, they go from covering news, to more intellectual/cultural or personal photography, and just like before, some of the best/deepest works are called art... I really haven't found lots of people calling themselves artists and doing photojournalism...

Cheers,

Juan
 
If you look through the magnum galleries for a while it's easy to see that they are all artists at heart. What chris said is very true and I think photojournalists have always been artists and huge amounts of thought goes into their work.

However, photojournalism is a dying art.
 
Neare said:
If you look through the magnum galleries for a while it's easy to see that they are all artists at heart. What chris said is very true and I think photojournalists have always been artists and huge amounts of thought goes into their work.

However, photojournalism is a dying art.
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i hear that a lot these days and i truly wonder... is 'dying' really just 'undefined'? this isn't me being yoda, really quite curious.
 
Yeah a few people are still paid to do it. But the market for photo journalistic types of photography has changed, there is far less demand for it than there once was.
Once upon a time photojournalists were given a brief to go to xxx country and "get a feel for it" or something similarly broad like that. The general market nowadays has clients wanting more specific sorts of photos.
Magnum, larger newspapers and things such as life magazine still employ photojournalists but, at least from what I see, the market is a shell of what it once was. Job's these days are more "get xxx shot showing xxx etc.", the photographers have less wiggle room.

Edit: also, from another point of view the old photojournalists were considered the greatest photographers of their day. Nowadays the greatest photographers by popular vote are usually found in the fashion industry.
 
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