Archive for September, 2009

Revolutions in the media economy (3) – photojournalism’s futures

September 20th, 2009

How do the revolutions in the media economy (detailed in the first and second post of this series) affect photojournalism? Given both the crisis in the distribution of information and the new opportunities for the structure of information, what futures are there for photojournalism?
This assumes ‘photojournalism’ is an accepted category of photographic practice.  It is [...]

Revolutions in the media economy (2) – the changing structure of information

September 16th, 2009

Is there actually a crisis in news and journalism? We must not ignore the historical perspective that locates the current problems in the media economy, as my previous post detailed, but Jeff Jarvis is right – if we start from the assumption that there is a crisis for all concerned we will ask the wrong [...]

Revolutions in the media economy (1) – the context of crisis

September 14th, 2009

The way news and information is reported and delivered to citizens is undergoing profound transformations, especially in the United States and Europe. In the last twelve months commentary has been rife with claims about “the death of newspapers,” the end of journalism, and the impact this crisis will allegedly have on democratic politics.
In a series [...]

Photographing Gaza – AP, Franklin and being political

September 11th, 2009

Ten days on from learning that the Associated Press had forced Stuart Franklin to withdraw his essay about Gaza from part of the Noorderlicht exhibtion, questions and concerns remain about this affair.
The photographic press has failed to unpack the whole story, although the British Journal of Photography ran an updated account on 9 September. Neither [...]

Photographing Gaza – more questions in the case of AP vs. Stuart Franklin

September 4th, 2009

The controversy surrounding the forced withdrawal of Stuart Franklin’s essay in the Noorderlicht Photofestival exhibition of Palestinian photojournalism has received some coverage in both Photo District News and the British Journal of Photography.
Those reports don’t delve very deep into this issue. As such, there remain a number of outstanding questions that, given the importance of [...]

Photographing Gaza – do pictures speak of politics?

September 1st, 2009

Do photographs speak? Do they have an intrinsic politics? Or do they rely on the text that accompanies them for political meaning? An unfolding controversy about the photojournalism of Palestinian photographers contracted to western picture agencies is broaching these questions.
As I’ve written here, although many claimed that Israel’s media controls meant few pictures of the [...]