(always) Learning to See ...

PTP (point to ponder a new category!) 3 Quotes in the spirit of LTS from todays great rant by The Spinning Head

What Ails Photojournalism Pts I-IV

“There is another underlying reason why photojournalism is dying, and that we are still not prepared to confront. The reason is that most photographers and photojournalists are purveyors of cliches and repetitive, predictable stories. Mental asylums, prostitutes in third world countries, drug addicts in third world countries, the homeless, street kids, dying HIV/AIDS patients in Africa, polluted cities, Latin American migration pathways, KKK, burqa/taliban/fanatics in Islamic countries, China pollution, China growth, China mingyons, China modern, China rich, India AIDS etc. etc. One could create a Chinese menu of a couple of pages to represent a belief amongst photojournalists that photojournalism is about pathos and emotions, and that there are some ’subjects’ that are what it does.
We have lost our love of the story. We are no longer telling interesting stories. In fact it could be argued that photojournalism today is basically middle class voyuerism. It carries with it the stifling and infantile morality of a middle brow suburban family and attempts to deliver ’shock’ stories to titilate them into watching. Or it just reduces to historical and charter-tour cliches stories that could be rich, complex and eye-opening.”

“Just look at National Geographic - if its Iran, its Persipolis. if its Bolivia, its the Antiplano. if its Pakistan, its the Taliban. Tiresome, boring, repetitive, predictable, uncreative, uninteresting stories about some of the most interesting and evolving countries in the world! Even the formulas and mechanics of photojournalism are boring and predictable. This magazine refuses to go and explore places in new ways, to produce angles that arecreative and interesting, and that challenge our thining and ideas about a place. Is Persipolis really all that one has to stay about Iran today? This incredibly complex and incredibly interesting country is left silenced!”

“Photojournalists will have to liberate their minds from these constraints - the weekly magazine editor looking for the ’sensational’, and the printed page looking for the simplistic, to go after stories that are beyond news, beyond crisis, beyond the sensational and concentrate instead on the creative and the excitingly compelling. Too many pander in the obvious. Too many are purveyors of cliches. I see so many photographers on your blog who continue to represent the world through the false exotic. Steve McCurry too, with his recent work on Buddhists, carefully eradicated any evidence of the presence of the Han Chinese and the oppression of the Tibetans by the Chinese administration. Instead, wereceived an idealized, fossilized, pre-18th century vision of the place. Everything that would suggest our engagement with the current dilemmas facing Buddhism, Tibet etc. were just not there. Cliches, false exotics. They may have technique and such, but they lack story telling creativity and often just plain curiousity that could reveal new ideas and new ways of telling. Furthermore, they have to stop ‘documenting’ the obvious that is in front of them. For I am not talking about story telling as a method to layout photographs. I mean the very ideas themselves - the issues and the subjects that are pursued, need to take a leap forward.”