What happened to photojournalism?

[rxmd]

Hi,

I was wondering recently what's wrong with photojournalism. Here's a series of photos I saw on a major German news website, documenting the Opernball in Vienna: http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/0,5538,28608,00.html (Here is the accompanying article, in German, but you don't really need it)

Some of the photos are actually quite decent, such as these:

(Credited DPA)

(Credited AFP)

(Credited DPA)

But some of the photos are actually amazingly cruddy. For example this one:

(Credited DPA)

Her expression is pretty sheepish, as is the one of the PJ to the right. The radio commenter on the left has his eyes closed and is yelling into his microphone, the policewoman on the right looks completely bored. Who selected this picture for publication?

Or this one:

(Credited Getty Images)

This is an Ukrainian opera singer, the PJ colleague has made her look like a disoriented sheep on ether, and his photoredactor thought this was representative for the Vienna opera ball.

(Credited DPA)

This is an Austrian businessman with his wife. (The man is famous for inviting a celebrity every year, which is why he has to be part of the photo series. In the past this included Angelina Jolie and Paris Hilton, this year it was Dita von Teese who is apparently a stripper; you learn from the article accompanying the photos that yesterday she gave a striptease performance in one of his shopping malls. Makes you wonder whan the Vienna opera ball is all about and what's the point of media reporting, but I digress). Anyway what's the impression you get from this photo about the Vienna opera ball? That it's a completely boring society event, with sleepy middle-aged women defining themselves by their decolleté, and disgusting rich middle-aged businessmen making advances to said women out of inebriation and sheer boredom. If the article was moderately critical about the event this would be fine. If it was some kind of subversive humour on behalf of the editors this would be quite good, even. But judging how humourless Der Spiegel's society section generally is I have trouble giving them even this benefit of the doubt. but I'm afraid the redaction was serious about this. Who selected this picture for publication?

My gripe is not so much with PJs as with editing work. Everybody shoots cruddy photos and PJs are no exception. But where have the standards of reporting gone if this kind of **** gets published?

Philipp

 

[Peter_Jones]

In the 4th pic, the policewoman looks about 12 years old !!

They say you know you're getting old when police look young 🙂

 

[Tuolumne]

I actually liked all of the photos except the last. It is lame and looks like it was taken at exactly the wrong moment.

/T

 

[rxmd]

The last one looks as if he wants to steal her handbag. As a subversion of society reporting the last one is my favourite. Unfortunately I'm pretty sure that this is not how it's meant.

Philipp

 

[robster180]

i think it's down to the publication to keep standards up, maybe with the dawn of digital and a saturation of the media accepting shots or video from the general public we've become a bit de-sensitized to a lower quality control.

Here in the UK we're lucky enough to have papers which pride themselves on high standards, take this Independent front cover from a few months back, detailing the riot in protest of Pakistan trying to reinstate Martial law

 

[ClaremontPhoto]

I agree that many European newspapers consistently make good use of photos, such as The Independent above, also The Guardian, and Publico, and many others.

It's not just the quality and newsworthiness of the photo, it's how it's used in relation to the text - and that is often stunningly good. The photographer and the art editor clearly are working well together to achieve top rate newspapers with photos just as important as the words.

Unfortunately many of the included weekend supplements are nothing but lifestyle magazines. They could so easily carry powerful photojournalism stories of people-trafficking, homelessness, and living on minimum wage. Yet they go for food, fashion, and gadgets.

 

[pfoto]

Food, fashion, and gadgets are more interesting to most people than people-trafficking, homelessness, and living on a minimum wage. That's just a consequence of our consumer-based societies. But the photos in most newspapers are abysmal, especially in the free papers like the Metro.

 

[Sparrow]

I agree that many European newspapers consistently make good use of photos, such as The Independent above, also The Guardian, and Publico, and many others.

It's not just the quality and newsworthiness of the photo, it's how it's used in relation to the text - and that is often stunningly good. The photographer and the art editor clearly are working well together to achieve top rate newspapers with photos just as important as the words.

Unfortunately many of the included weekend supplements are nothing but lifestyle magazines. They could so easily carry powerful photojournalism stories of people-trafficking, homelessness, and living on minimum wage. Yet they go for food, fashion, and gadgets.

I remember the Mirror magazine, was it in Mondays’ Daily Mirror, back in the 70s superb publication

 

[varjag]

This photo could actually be from Winogrand's "Public Relations" book, it is fairly good to me. Maybe too artsy for what people expect from "serious reportage" though, but it conveys the mood and emotion at red carpet pretty well.

 

[rxmd]

This photo could actually be from Winogrand's "Public Relations" book, it is fairly good to me. Maybe too artsy for what people expect from "serious reportage" though, but it conveys the mood and emotion at red carpet pretty well.

The problem I see with that is that the reporting in general does not seem to care much about the emotion at the red carpet. You see that best from the text of the article that this series of pictures goes with, which is plain old celebrity glamour sensationalism, not concerned with either authenticity or conveying an overall picture of the event in its facets, some glamorous, some down-to-earth. That would require a somewhat distanced, maybe even critical perspective on behalf of the redaction. However, the only comment in the article text on the situation depicted here on this particular photo was that Teri Hatcher wore a brown and green robe, and if that is what this picture is supposed to be about, then it's just a badly chosen picture with little journalistic and no artistic ambitions whatsoever.

Whoever chose this picture didn't choose it because it accurately conveys the atmosphere of red-carpet photoshoots, because that would require the redaction to actually care about more than just producing a celebrity glamour panorama, which they in all probability didn't do (judging by the text as well as some of the other pictures). It probably was chosen because it was cheap.

Philipp

 

[Spider67]

Actually the last photo was choosen exactly because of its quality. The guy's name is Richard Lugner and he tried and tries to buy his way in the Viennese Socitey and is not afraid to make an idiot out of himself. So that photo like similar one of him are not unusual. He was recently divorced and chose his current gf in a series of TV-shows were women had to compete for becoming his new partner. So for Germany & Austria you could consider the photo exactly what people expect him to so making it "good" yellow press photjournalism

 

[Damaso]

I don't know why but Speigel tends to run crappy photos (at least on their website). In some respects there has been a decline the the quality of work being produced in this digital age (I still know too many photogs who use AE and don't knwo the zone system) but if you look at World Press or some of the great work being shown at places like THe Times or Washington Post then you knwo there are still plenty of good shooters out there.

In my experience as a photojournalist is doesn't seem like there is a lack of good work as much as there is a lack of good editors and publishers willing to take risks and show their readers not what they want but what they need to see...

 

[Spider67]

It's strange with Spiegel as sometimes he tends to use photographs sometimes as illustration and not for providing further information e.g. showing a group of Iranian clerics near a burning Iranian Refinery during the very fist Gulf War (Iran vs Iraq) as an Illustration in an article on the War of 91.

 

[robster180]

whoa! Check this out...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2008/feb/05/germany?picture=332374942

 

[Florian1234]

Btw, is that really "Mörtl"'s wife? I thought she was very pale and with dark red hair.


Anyway, there's for example the Stern View magazine which has a major part of its content dedicated to photographs. However it is not the classic way of photojournalism.