Photojournalism Now: Friday Round Up - 10 November, 2017

This week on Photojournalism Now: Friday Round Up - Lauren Greenfield's epic Generation Wealth at ICP New York, World Press Photo exhibition in Washington DC and the 24th Noorderlicht Festival in Groningen, The Netherlands. Photojournalism Now is on hiatus now until 24 November. See you then!

Exhibition: New York
Lauren Greenfield - Generation Wealth



Las Vegas strippers showered in dollar bills and LA rappers weighted down with bling; celebrities and socialites consuming more than they could ever use; teenagers crippled by eating disorders; parties for children that cost thousands; luxury homeowners now homeless...these are just some of the scenarios photographer Lauren Greenfield has captured in her expansive study of what it means to live the so-called American Dream.

In this massive, and incredibly impressive, retrospective that spans more than 25 years of Greenfield's work, including photographs and videos, Generation Wealth paints an extraordinary picture of the age of consumerism and a world driven by rampant consumption where the dollar is worshipped beyond comprehension. This is a must-see. I'd go so far as to say, it is the exhibition of the year, for me. If you are in New York check it out. Also Phaidon has an amazing deal on shipping - only $10 to the US for the book! Much cheaper than excess baggage or postage!














(C) All images Lauren Greenfield

Until 7 January, 2018
International Center for Photography
250 Bowery

Exhibition: Washington DC
World Press Photo 2017

This week I had the opportunity to see the World Press Photo exhibition in Washington DC. In the awesome space that is the Dupont Underground, a disused tram (or trolley car) station underneath Dupont Circle, the exhibition presented by World Press Photo and Lightscape DC, is truly impressive. I've seen many of the images before, online and in print, but on the walls of this super cool venue, the large prints, and the numerous projections, make the work even more impactful. If you're in DC, check it out.









Until 26 November
Dupont Underground

Festival: The Netherlands
Noorderlicht  


Jay Gould
The 24th edition of the Noorderlicht International Photography Festival features the work of 74 photographers from 26 countries. With the theme ‘NUCLEUS, imagining science’ this expansive festival celebrates science and its representation with exhibitions across six locations in Groningen, Eelde and Assen. I visited Groningen and Noorderlicht in 2013 and it is one of the best festivals of photography in the world. Here is a brief selection of work I've chosen from this year's programme. Visit the website for more information.


Karin Borghouts


Monica Alcazar Duarte


Francesca Catastini


Edmund Clark


Marcus Desieno


Todd Forsgren


Michael Najjar

Henk Wildschut

Ulrike Schmitz

Caleb Charland

Until 26 November
Various venues
Visit Noorderlicht for more information

Photojournalism Now: Friday Round Up - 25 August, 2017

This week on Photojournalism Now: Friday Round Up - my musings on the 2017 Ballarat International Foto Biennale which opened last week and FotoEvidence and World Press Photo join forces.

Musings:
Ballarat International Foto Biennale

Last Friday I headed to Ballarat for the launch of the 2017 Ballarat International Foto Biennale. The festivities kicked off on Friday night with the opening of the blockbuster David LaChapelle exhibition at the Art Galley of Ballarat. The festival has clearly pinned its hopes on this show with the city's mayor revealing they hoped to attract 50,000 this year to the festival when the last one in 2015 drew an audience of 15,000. You have to admire their ambition and I hope it is a success. But with pretensions to such grandeur, there are some concerns with the festival that need to be aired.

In general I was underwhelmed by the core program, and thought the use of venues could have been better. In particular the Tell exhibition in the Mining Exchange seemed swamped by the size of the venue. And the exhibitions in the little ante rooms or alcoves in the Exchange were so poorly lit and presented that they might as well have been hung in the bathroom - in fact the lighting was better in there! There are some highlights of course. Ich Werde Deutsch (I become German) is an interesting show, and the Post Office Gallery is one of the better venues. Also the group show Rearranging Boundaries has an impressive international line up of documentary photographers, but the lighting of the show was disappointing and I was particularly irritated by lamps clamped to the top of photographs.

So let's cut to the chase. The biggest problem I have with this year's festival is that it promotes a facade of international standing, but underneath is wracked by amateur practices. There, the elephant in the room is now visible!




This is especially evident in the hanging of the Martin Kantor prize (above a photo I took of one of the finalists). With a first prize of $15,000, it's no measly photo comp. It was revealed to me today that 18 of the 27 finalists have penned a letter to the festival organisers to complain about the way their work was treated. Hung on industrial wire fencing, without any covering, you could see the backs of images, as above. The lighting was awful, and there was no information about the photographs save for a few scrappy pieces of paper marking the numbers and names, which we were told to give back as they didn't have enough. It was amateur hour! And knowing the efforts and expense photographers went to in order to put forward their best work, framed and delivered, it is no wonder the majority of entrants were furious.

This amateur approach is also evident in the lighting of the fashion retrospective Reverie Revelry which featured the amazing work of the late Robyn Beeche and Bruno Benini amongst others. I was horrified at how badly lit this show was, the high ceiling fluorescent lights throwing an awful, flat cast over the dim room. I've seen Beeche's work before and it is transformational when handled properly. I was also one of the last to interview her before her untimely death and know she would have been incredibly disappointed.

It is difficult enough for photography to hold its head up in the art world without these kinds of impediments. For all the bluster of the festival and its new direction, some money should be spent on curators who have training and know how to hang and light a show. Curating is an art in itself.

And lastly, there is the trend for festivals to charge photographers several hundred dollars to enter the Fringe. These photographers pay for the privilege of hanging their works in cafes and businesses where it is virtually impossible to view them with any semblance of sophistication or respect and that is infuriating. This grab for money at the expense of the artist is an age old rort and quite frankly photographers deserve better.

One Fringe exhibitor confided that the venue where their work was to be exhibited was less than cooperative, charged them the full rate for catering (they were encouraged by the festival to hold an opening), plus there was no hanging system and no lights. After the festival had taken their money there was no help forthcoming either. It's no wonder that after that experience, this unnamed photographer won’t be exhibiting at the next festival.

I'm always hopeful that things can change. Let's see a festival in the future that is more about celebrating the actual photographs and showing respect to the photographers, than talking a good game and coming up short.

News:
FotoEvidence and World Press Photo join forces

It was announced yesterday that FotoEvidence and World Press Photo Foundation will collaborate on the annual FotoEvidence Book Award which will be known as the FotoEvidence Book Award with World Press Photo.

As a previous jury member for the FotoEvidence Book Award I am very excited about this collaboration and the opportunity for even more people to see this important work. It's great news!

The annual FotoEvidence Book Award recognises one photographer whose work demonstrates courage and commitment in the pursuit of social justice. From 2018 the newly named award will see the winner and two other selected finalists also exhibit their work during the World Press Photo (WPP) exhibition in Amsterdam where the winner’s book will be featured. Additionally, the book will be shown at various other WPP events around the world.

This is a great achievement for Svetlana Bachevanova the publisher of FotoEvidence who has worked tirelessly to bring these important stories to publication.

She says: “We at FotoEvidence are excited about our partnership with the World Press Photo Foundation because of our shared commitment to excellence and new initiatives in documentary photography and photojournalism. After seven years and sixteen FotoEvidence books, we expect the FotoEvidence Book Award with World Press Photo to expand our reach to a worldwide audience, strengthen our mission promoting social justice, and increase our support for photographers who demonstrate courage and commitment in the pursuit of human rights.”

Lars Boering, managing director of the World Press Photo Foundation also commented: "We’re delighted to be working closely together with FotoEvidence on the book award. The World Press Photo Foundation is expanding all areas of its activities, and as part of that we’re more committed than ever to promoting visual journalism that addresses social justice. We understand that photo books which address these topics occupy a special but challenging place in the photo book market, and we want to bring this work to our large global audience. The FotoEvidence Book Award with World Press Photo will build on the commitment of Svetlana and her team and help to further our joint mission.”

Friday Round Up - 18 November, 2016

This week on Photojournalism Now: Friday Round Up I'm sharing a couple of stories I wrote that were published recently in New Zealand Pro Photographer - a book review on Stuart Franklin's The Documentary Impulse and also a Q&A with Susan Meiselas. But first, Donna Ferrato...

In the News:
Donna Ferrato

Yesterday TIME published the long waited list of the 100 Most Influential Photographs of All Time. Last week I had the pleasure of interviewing photojournalist and activist Donna Ferrato for New Zealand Pro Photographer (out January), and she told me how thrilled she was to have a picture in this collection.

The photograph (below) was taken in 1982. Donna was shooting a story on swingers for Playboy and suddenly the scene erupted into violence. Donna says "I also was thinking if I get a picture of this, at least people will believe that it really happened”. This photograph propelled Donna into a lifelong journey to fight for the rights of women and to raise awareness of the terrible impact of domestic violence on women and children. It was first published in 1991 in her book Living with the Enemy. I can't say more about my interview with Donna until it is published, but she's one hell of a photographer and an amazing person.

The TIME special edition is also incredible. Each photograph has a backstory and there are also videos. This link will take you to Donna's story on the TIME site.

 
(C) Donna Ferrato


Book Review:

Stuart Franklin - The Documentary Impulse

Former president of Magnum, photographer Stuart Franklin was this week named the chair of the 2017 World Press Photo jury. I interviewed Stuart recently for a profile piece in New Zealand Pro Photographer. I also reviewed his book for the magazine and thought I'd share it with you this week.

In 1974 W. Eugene Smith said, “…to some, photographs can demand enough of emotions to be a catalyst to thinking”. This statement underpins the motivation for many documentary photographers as is demonstrated in Stuart Franklin’s ‘The Documentary Impulse’.

Franklin is a photojournalist, or documentary photographer, although labels seem superfluous in this context. Both work to capture the world as it is, and shine a light on subjects that are often invisible. A member of Magnum Photos, Franklin is famous for the photograph known as Tank Man, which he shot from a balcony overlooking Tiananmen Square in 1989, although his oeuvre is far greater than this single iconic image.

The desire to show the human condition in all its glory, horror and multiple truths is, says Franklin, what propels photographers to cover stories of war and conflict, natural disaster, and social injustice. Throughout the book he uses a range of examples to convey the lengths that photographers go to in order to create visual narratives that will hopefully move people to act.

In ‘The Documentary Impulse’ the usual suspects are present, those heroes and heroines of documentary photography that appear in every recounting of photographic history; the aforementioned Smith, Dorothea Lange, Lewis Hine and Jacob Riis as well as more contemporary photographers including Don McCullin, Sebastiao Salgado and James Nachtwey. While it is impossible not to mention the luminaries of the field, this book is not a rehash of existing material.

The most interesting aspect of the book is the discourse around deception and what passes for documentary photography. Manipulation in photography stems back to the medium’s nascent years as Franklin acknowledges, but he quickly moves the conversation on to address contemporary forms of manipulation including military embeds and the staging of events or scenes and how these can impact the reading of an image.

In the chapter on staging Franklin references the work of Gregory Crewdson to ask if there are any boundaries for documentary photography? The suggestion is there isn’t, the implication being the visual literacy of the audience is great enough to read the complex layers of a picture and unearth its multiplicity of meanings. That may be a leap too far in an image-saturated world where the viewing time of images can be clocked in seconds.

Ultimately visual storytelling is personal, but the commonality is our humanity. This is where the documentary impulse stems from and where the power of the photograph resides. 

Interview:
Q&A with Susan Meiselas

Caption: The American photographer Susan Meiselas
Credit line: Courtesy of Jean Gaumy/Magnum Photos

Another piece I wrote for New Zealand Pro Photographer was a profile on Susan Meiselas. Last year Susan and I were going to meet after Paris Photo, but of course the tragic events in Paris on the night of Friday 13th November threw plans into disarray. Finally almost a year later we got to talk and she shared with me her thoughts for the section "What I Know Now". Here's the Q&A.

Who or what taught you the most early on in your career? What taught me the most was just working. When I look at what is very common now – internships, mentors, workshops – there’s a whole culture of supporting emerging photographers, but that wasn't in place when I started out. Being in the field and confronting questions and problems and trying to solve them, that’s what really taught me the most.

What was the biggest career risk you took? Obviously there are different kinds of risks, there’s the physical and also the psychological. When I began working with the media it was a different culture to the documentary process I’d come from. The risk, specifically with Nicaragua, was that my judgement to stay for an extended period of time was not understood. As a career choice it might have been better to move around a lot to different kinds of conflicts in that classic photojournalistic way. But I didn't really define myself like that. I wanted to invest and to immerse myself.

Which of your personal projects taught you the most? That’s a difficult question because I learn such different things from each project. When I was doing the work with carnival strippers, taking the time to build relationships was probably the lesson. But I’ve learned the most I guess from the Nicaragua work because time has been such a factor in my perspective.

Do you consider you have a particular style? I have an approach, but I’m not interested in style per se. I’m not sure I want people to be thinking this is a Meiselas photograph versus being engaged with what’s in the frame. My intent is to be successful in creating a kind of narrative space.

How do you define approach? It begins with finding something I’m curious about, often for reasons I’m not even sure of. It could be a particular group of people such as a project I did very early on, that few people know about. It was on a group of Santa Claus’ from the Bowery in New York near where I live. Or it could be about a place like Nicaragua, a culture in transition, a social conflict evolving. I’m drawn often to history and the evolution of an historical process like in Kurdistan. So my approach is building off that curiosity a set of relationships and engaging over time.

Can you define what has been the most artistically or personally satisfying work that you’ve done? I can’t judge one project over another. I’m not invested in having the same style or representation of the work. In fact I am more committed to exploring different approaches to represent the ideas I’m trying to make more visible. The aesthetics may change, so for example the work I did on the border of the US and Mexico was done with a panoramic camera, which creates a different dynamic. I think the aesthetics are influenced by what I’m trying to achieve with the work.

When you started out did you have an idea of what you wanted to do, did you think you were having a career? No not at all. First of all I started doing photography in a teaching environment and I was very interested in what we called at the time visual literacy. At that time I was not so much focused on my own work, although I was doing that on the side; that’s when I began the carnival stripper work. I stayed with teaching for a number of years, but I didn't see myself as a teacher in the long term. I didn't have a road map to how to be a photographer for life. That’s what I’ve done but I didn't know how to get there.

What turned out to be the most helpful thing you did to advance your career? The invitation to join Magnum was a definite shift and created many different kinds of opportunities, but most importantly a community with which I’ve related for forty years. There’s something about Magnum’s integration of multiple generations, which is particularly special and watching those lives evolve, and looking at the sustaining choices they’ve made in their practices, that’s invaluable. It’s not always what you talk about, but what you see around you. There’s a lot of diversity in Magnum more than similar notions of photography.

What's the most important thing you could tell someone about creativity? That it comes from within, it’s the process of engagement with what you see, and it’s about interaction. Ultimately creativity is solving the problems you create for yourself.

What’s your next big challenge in the world of photography? Participatory media interests me a great deal. I’ve just reprinted the third edition of the Nicaragua book with Aperture, which will have a modest augmented reality element. The pages of the book have icons and you download a free app and from the image on the page you can link to a short film clip from the film I made ten years after the first Nicaragua book. So you’ll have this interaction of a still photograph and the moving image. I’m quite curious to see how that activates audience engagement with the material. 

-->

Susan at the Magnum book signing at the Aperture stand at Paris Photo 2015

(C) Alison Stieven-Taylor

Friday Round Up - 4th March, 2016

This week on Friday Round Up - POYi Awards, exhibitions in Melbourne, Brisbane and New York, an article on Why We Need Professional Photojournalists by Alison Stieven-Taylor and another article on the need for diversity in visual storytelling by Anastasia Taylor-Lind.

Awards:
POYi 2015

This week features photographs from the winners of three categories - Photographer of the Year Reportage, Feature Picture Story and World Understanding Award.

Photographer of the Year - Reportage
Paolo Marchetti for The Price of Vanity 

This story was featured on Photojournalism Now in February last year when Italian photographer Paolo Marchetti was named Professional Winner 2015 in the Alexia Foundation Awards for this extraordinary body of work that exposes the reality of breeding animals for the fashion industry.

Feature Picture Story
Newsha Tavakolian

Freelance and Magnum nominee for Iran Coming Out of the Shadows 

World Understanding Award
Hossein Fatemi

Freelance for An Iranian Journey

View the full winners list at POYi.

Exhibitions: Melbourne 

NO LILIES

Is the 6th annual exhibition by women photographers for International Women’s Day and a fundraiser for UN WOMEN.

Artists featured: Wendy Currie, Judith Crispin, Maggie Diaz, Pam Davison, Joyce Evans, Jill Frawley, Amy Feldtmann, Carole Hampshire, Susan Henderson, Sue Jackson, Cheryl Lucy, Helga Leunig, Ilana Rose, Carmel Riordan and Margot Sharman.

(C) Judith Crispin

(C) Cheryl Lucy

(C) Pam Davison

Until 2 April
Magnet Galleries
2/640 Bourke Street
Melbourne 

Exhibitions: Brisbane

In Situ: New photodocumentary work 

This new exhibition at Brisbane’s Maud Gallery features the work of graduates from the Queensland College of Art Documentary stream. Curator Doug Spowart says, “The documentary photographs in this exhibition are made by photographers working not as the casual iPhone snapshot ‘photographer’ of today, but rather individuals who embed themselves in human and natural environments to witness, to empathise and to document with a camera so a story can be shared. The documentary photographers in this exhibition present their work as evidence of what they have seen, felt and been touched by. This work represents new photodocumentary practice and will place viewers in situ – surrounded by issues of contemporary life”. 

(C) Elise Searson

(C) Marc Pricop

(C)Thomas Oliver

(C) David Mines

(C) Cale Searston

(C) Richard Fraser

The contributing photographers are: Chris Bowes, Richard Fraser, Gillian Jones, Louis Lim, David Mines, Thomas Oliver, Marc Pricop, Elise Searson and Cale Searston.

9-20 March
Maud Gallery
6 Maud Street
Newstead (Brisbane)

Exhibitions: New York

Meryl Meisler

Currently showing at Steven Kasher Gallery in New York is an exhibition featuring early work by Meryl Meisler who is considered one of the great visual diarists of Americana. This show spans photographs from the 1970s from the “kitsch-filled” rooms of her hometown of Long Island and portraits of her family to New York’s disco-era. This idiosyncratic collection features portraits taken in suburban settings as well as more notorious New York clubs such as CBGB, Studio 54 and The Magic Carpet.  

Man in a 3 Piece Suit Dancing Within the Circle at a Wedding

Rockville Centre, NY, March 1976 

(C) Meryl Meisler, Courtesy Steven Kasher Gallery

Mom( Sylvia ""Sunny"" Schulman Meisler) 

Reading A Scholarly View of the Jewish Mother, 

Thanksgiving, North Massapequa, NY, November 1978

(C) Meryl Meisler, Courtesy Steven Kasher Gallery

The Meisler, Forkash & Cash Clan Welcoming a 

Sweet New Year, North Massapequa, NY, 

Rosh Hashanah , September 1974 

(C) Meryl Meisler, Courtesy Steven Kasher Gallery

Butterfly Bedroom Telephone, East Meadow, NY , June 1975 

(C) Meryl Meisler, Courtesy Steven Kasher Gallery

My 2nd cousins Milton and Betty Schwartz's grandson 

Todd jumping off their couch in the den, Florida, 1978

(C) Meryl Meisler, Courtesy Steven Kasher Gallery

Mom Getting her hair Teased at Besame Beauty Salon, 

North Massapequa, NY June 1979, 1979

(C) Meryl Meisler, Courtesy Steven Kasher Gallery

Kissing in Black Leather Jackets During last 

Dead Boys Concert CBGB, New York, NY April 1977

(C) Meryl Meisler, Courtesy Steven Kasher Gallery

Until 9th April

Steven Kasher Gallery

515 West 26th Street

New York

Articles: 

Why We Need Professional Photojournalists

© Robin Hammond/Witness Change

One of the tenets of photojournalism is to give voice to those who are unable to speak for themselves, but what does this mean for our digital world where the photograph has never been more potent or more accessible? Are photojournalists still needed to tell stories when everyone supposedly has a camera-enabled smart phone and can tell their own stories?

The truth is that more than 2 billion people are still disadvantaged when it comes to digital communications and many of these people are those whose stories need to be told. The notion that everyone has a smart phone is a privileged thought and the digital divide that exists across the globe is widening despite advances in technology…(you read the full story published on L'Oeil de la Photographie here)

Why Photojournalism Needs Diverse Storytelling Approaches

© Daniel Ochoa de Olza

Photojournalist and artist Anastasia Taylor-Lind has written an article on why photojournalism needs diversity in storytelling. This article discusses the issue through 'Victims of Paris', a photo project by Daniel Ochoa de Olza that was awarded third prize in the World Press Photo People Story category only to be withdrawn by the Associated Press.  Read the TIME article here.

Her article feeds into the growing debate on defining photojournalism in the new media environment. It's an exciting time. Approaches like that of Daniel Ochoa de Olza and this year's FotoEvidence Book Award winner Daniella Zalcman's Signs of Your Identity are fine examples of how important stories can be told in creative, engaging ways without losing their integrity or message.

© Daniella Zalcman

See last week's post for more images from Daniella's project.