Photo Journalism

The Decisive Moment

 

"Il n'y a rien dans ce monde qui n'ait un moment decisif" (Henri Cartier-Bresson)

Photo Journalism is seen as a distinct style of journalism, its main purpose revolves around taking pictures and producing those images into news stories.

Photojournalism is individualized by four main traits, these being timeliness, objectivity, depict and narrative.

The much respected “Godfather of modern photo journalism”, Henri Casier-Bresson, developed and mastered a technique which we now know today as ‘the decisive moment’.

The trick of this term is to be able to display an uncanny knack for being in the right place at the right time, which isn’t always possible. The strategy is somewhat trying to capture the essence of that moment, for example, a mans final seconds of his life, a lovers embrace, or even a picture with hidden underlying messages. Maybe its how we perceive or interpret those messages communicated to us which makes the images of Cartier-Bresson so powerful. Although some critics claimed Cartier-Bresson’s work to be no more than ‘lucky snap shots’, this was far from the truth. Sometimes he would sit there for hours just to enable to him to clasp that fraction of a second in which it would produce that decisive moment.

In terms of cameras, Cartier-Bresson used what was called ‘amateur photographer’s equipment’. For most of his life work he was known to use only a Leica 35 mm rangefinder camera, with a regular 50 mm lens.

The reasons for him using this particular camera was for its ability of speed to snap a photo and also due to its small size which enabled him to mould in with the crowds, making people unaware he was photographing them so he could capture the sober world.

(Henri Cartier-Bresson, taken from Wikipedia NEED URL) - "I prowled the streets all day, feeling very strung-up and ready to pounce, ready to 'trap' life."

This picture on the left was one taken in India, by Henri Cartier-Bresson, moments after Gandhi had been assasinated. In this picture it shows the Prime Minister of India, Mr Nehru, annoucning the murder of Gandhi. You can almost hear the anguished cries and fierce wails that are to come from the crowds as they are told that the hero who had lead  India through indepedence, was dead. The light reflecting of Prime Minister, Mr Nehru, and at various different angles, almost seems to be highlighting this crushing moment captured.

Finish off with the last quote from henri? Or add more to this section?

War Photography

War photography is mainly situated in capturing those moments of conflict on the battle field.  It’s these powerful images that are used to document our history and inform the public, but the question is do these photos actually show the truth about war?

Carol Popp De Szathmari

Photographers were expected to be able to take these mind blowing pictures of the war in rapid action, but the truth is there technology back then wasn’t advanced enough to be able to produce these sort of images. The images took only minutes to develop but a huge amount of time to produce due to the daguerreotype which meant they were not able to capture action photography. The first known war photographer was the Hungarian Romanian Carol Popp de Szathmari (1812-1887). He took photos of war scenes and officers in 1853 and 1845. Only nine surviving photos remain today.

Daguerreotype

The actual first war photographer was in fact an anonymous American. In 1847, during  the Mexican-America war, he took a number of pictures with the daguerreotype.

Although already unsafe, war photography seems to be becoming increasingly more dangerous, especially with today’s war photographers in Iraq, many have been injured, taken hostage and even killed due to terrorist style armed conflict. One of the main reasons for war photographers to be killed is to prevent them producing the facts they don’t want anyone else to know in the photos taken by them.

Even though a lot of war photography is based around the deadly action, not all of the photographers decide take pictures of the conflict.  Some photographers prefer to focus on the aftermath of the fighting. Take Roger Fenton for example, he famously took the picture of a road full of cannon balls in 1855 which he named “Valley of the shadow of death”. This picture to me is as powerful as any active fighting photo, he only had cannon balls to work with but it seems to let the imagination stray to thoughts of what it must have been like  to be walking as a solider down that valley with all of those cannonballs repeatedly being hailed down on to you.

Valley of the shadow of death (Roger Fenton)

Comparing past and present day war photography I would say that not a lot has changed except, as technology progresses, the cameras the photographers use. Present day war photographers are still risking their lives everyday to capture these graphic images to be able to show the world what is taking place.

Here are a few quotes I found from present day war photographers, relaying their experiences and personal views of the job they undertake everyday.

Adam Ferguson, Afghanistan, 2009

“As a photographer, you feel helpless. Around you are medics, security personnel, people doing good work. It can be agonizingly painful to think that all you're doing is taking pictures.”

Alvaro Ybarra Zavala, Congo, November 2008

 “I really hate this shot. It's the worst face of humankind. I always ask myself, "Why do I do this job?' And the answer is: I want to show the best and worst face of humankind. Every time you go to a conflict, you see the worst. We need to see what we do to be able to show future generations the mistakes we make. What's important is that we show what human beings are capable of. The day I don't do that with my photography is the day I'll give up and open a restaurant.”

Greg Marinovich

  Greg Marinovich, Soweto, 1990

"I told them I'd stop shooting if they stopped killing him. They didn't. I tried not to smell the burning flesh and shot a few more pictures, but I was losing it. I got in my car and, once I turned the corner, began to scream."

 War photography tends to be displayed on news web pages, they can be found in newspapers but only ones that aren’t as graphic for obvious reasons. You can also find books on war photography such as War Photography: From The Crimean War to World War 1 - Photography at the Musee D'Orsay S. by Joelle Bolloch, or they might create a web page with an online gallery displaying their photos. The photo I have used, taken by Greg Marinovich, I found on the online guardian website which displayed several.

                                                             

But are these photos showing the true reality of war? Or like many other photos have they been manipulated to show a different story of the picture. Photos freeze that moment in time and the image is burnt into people’s minds, but what happened before and after that picture was captured? What is the story behind it?

Execution photo- Eddie Adam's

Looking at an example of this misinterpretation of an image is one taken by an AP Photographer Eddie Adam’s. His took the famous photo of a prisoner being executed by South Vietnam's national police chief, Nguyễn Ngọc Loan. The event was filmed by an NBC cameraman and that evening parts of the events were shown on TV that very evening. The man executed was given no trial, but simply captured and executed on the spot. This image was one that had a huge effect and changed the whole course of history and photojournalism.

When it soon emerged that this was something that Nguyễn Ngọc Loan did all the time, America decided this was not something they wanted to follow or support.

 

Eddie Adams quote-“ The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera. Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them, but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths ... What the photograph didn't say was, 'What would you do if you were the general at that time and place on that hot day, and you caught the so-called bad guy after he blew away one, two or three American soldiers”

Another famous image which questions how much we can actually rely on the truth of the photo is one taken by Thomas Hoepker.

Hoepker captured the idyllic photograph of a group of American citizens, seemingly relaxing on a beautiful day, while in the back ground you see the destruction of the twin towers on that tragic day of 9/11.

Hoepker decided not to publish this photo as he felt it did not reflect what had befallen America on that crushing day.

It wasn’t until four and a half year later that the photo came to America’s attention and soon people began to ask questions that no one had the true answers to. How could these people just sit back and seem so calm and relaxed? Or was the photo in fact telling a devious lie to us all, and really these people were in a pure state of shock. Would the photo have gained so much controversy if on that day it had been pouring down with rain?

“The young people in Mr Hoepker’s photo aren’t necessarily callous. They’re just American.”

These were the critical words from a New York columnist named Frank Rich. His words seem to assume that no matter what catastrophes engulfs their country, or even our world, the world keeps spinning and humans move on.

Not long after this comment was made Walter Siper, the man on the far right in Hoepker’s photo, got in touch to reveal his identity and tell his story of that day. He blasts Rich for his comments saying how “A snap shot can make mourners attending a funeral look like they’re having a party”.

He goes on to say how Hoepker never asked for their permission to take the photo and if he had taken a moment to come over and introduce himself he would have seen a group of Americans “in a profound state of shock and disbelief”.

So was this really photographed in a way to misinterpreted their feelings and behavior? Or was the image an exact truth of American’s moving on?

Robert Capa

Robert Capa is a world known famous war photojournalist. He is described as one of the greatest in his time and has photographed exceptional images which grant him his distinguished reputation.

The Fallen Soldier

Capa photographed in many wars such as the Spanish Civil War, World War Two, The Battle of Normandy and many more.  He mainly took action photography and lived by his rules of photojournalism which was one, to get close and the second, to get even closer. It was this kind of dedication and motto that he lived by which earned him great respect. Not only did he earn respect, but Capa had a lot of influence over people when it came to his photos. People believed the photos when they saw Capa’s name under it because he focused on capturing reality and this it what the power of photography is.

Capa risked his life for photography and he soon became known world wide for his memorable photo named ‘The fallen Soldier’. Even so, this photo led to much controversy saying that it had in fact been staged because is couldn’t have been taken where, when or how Capa had alleged.

I think what made Capa’s photos stand out so much was that he was in the middle of these battles where the soldiers were taking the photos, and not on the sideline. This I feel reflects in his famous saying “If your picture isn’t good enough, you’re not close enough.”

Tony Vaccaro

Argus C3

One man named Tony Vaccaro was pushed even closer into the battles. Vaccaro was a soldier photographer, with the camera around his neck and a gun in his hands, Vaccaro captured some of the undoubtedly best pictures of World War two than any other soldier photographer. Vaccaro was expected to use the standard army equipment camera which at the time was a speed graphic. The problem with these cameras was that they were extremely slow. The photographer had to change the film sheet, focus the camera, cock the shutter and then finally press it for each exposure.  As you can imagine in normal circumstances for a photographer this can be problematic, but for a photographer in the middle of a war where you don’t know what is about to happen or where, it proved impossible to get good shots. Vaccaro understood that to be able to achieve his ambitions of becoming a photojournalist he needed another camera. Unlike Capa, he couldn’t afford the Leica so instead settled for a less expensive ranger finder camera called the Argus C3.

Vaccaro claims to be compared to Capa many times, but one difference between them was that Capa believed War to be romantic, whereas Vaccaro believed it to be anything but.

As his job, Vaccaro had to be close to the action, even closer than Capa, and thought only of photography, not survival. Because he was a solider as well as a photographer he managed to record the war from a soldier’s standpoint which was what made his pictures so outstanding.

So why was it that Vaccaro didn’t get the same great recognition as Capa?

Stalin

So do photos truly tell us what’s happening in that single moment frozen in time? Or have they in some way been tampered or skillfully manipulated to distort the image and control how and what we feel to resemble the same opinion of the photographers? In some cases not even the photographers, take Joseph Stalin Premier of the Soviet Union, as a prime example. Stalin, on more than one regular occasion, had enemies air brushed out of photos taken with him so it seemed that they never even ceased to exist. So even back then, in a time when technology was no where near as advanced as ours today, when digital cameras hadn’t even been invented, the possibility of photo manipulation was present and is something that has been used throughout history.

9/11 Photo

“A snap shot can make mourners attending a funeral look like they’re having a party”

The undisputed words spoken by a one Mr. Walter Sipser, is just a small atom of truth into the undeniable manipulation of photos, which has been going on since the very beginnings of the creation of cameras.

What Sipser is referring to, is the famous controversial image taken off him and a small group of people on that tragic day of 9/11.

Thomas Hoepker, a German photographer known for his stylish colour photo features, photographed the image of a group of ‘young looking New Yorkers’ sitting around on a beautifully sunny idyllic day, seemingly unaffected by the disaster unfolding in front of them.

This was how the photo was labelled. Which truth be fair, this is how the image does in fact come across. However it most certainly doesn’t mean this was what was actually taking place within the picture. This being exactly what Sipser was trying to pinpoint.

How many times has someone snapped a quick photo of you, for it to give of a complete different perception of what you were actually feeling or even doing?

A great example for this is paparazzi. When shooting pictures of celebrities, there could literally be one split second in which the celebrity’s eyebrows knit together.

The very next day it could be that photo chosen to be spread out across the front pages of newspapers and magazines, claiming the celebrity to be under a huge amount of pressure and stress.

And how would we know any difference? This is certainly what the photo shows us so how could it possibly be wrong?

What this is called is photo manipulation, without the editing or Photoshop. Its a way of taking a snapshot at a certain moment so it will be perceived as something entirely different to what it actually is. And what it’s perceived as is in fact that opinion of the photographer or publisher.

How do we know what these people could possibly have been thinking or feeling? We don’t know what was happening before or after this photo was taken. Tell me, if in that photo it was pouring down with rain instead of being sun drenched, would we have felt the same cold feelings towards that image? Would it have caused such an outrage across America?

I think as people, we have a lot more trust in photos than we should truly possess.

Especially with the daily increasing growth of technology, who knows what it’s going to possibly progress to within twenty years time.

For such a harrowing event in our world history, instead of publishing a photo so far off from truth of not only itself, but how America came together that day, I would use that camera to capture how the American people did come together. To comfort and help one another through this, and how  such an unimaginable devastation inflicted on America and it’s people that day brought them to stand side by side, it broke through those social barriers that consume our world.

Because this is the real trueness of human nature, not just “the callousness of a generation”.

(Need Portraiture)
(Need Tate Modern)
(Next- Fashion Photography)

Need to write about the current and historical photos of fashion, not just about the photos but also how it has changed.
Comment on different styles of photography and how they mimick eachother in some aspects e.g. Fashion magazines front covers all look similar but you can still kind of tell what fashion magazine it is because they each have a different style.
What effect does it have on the people looking at the magazines?
Some magazines are so air brushed, you cannot even see a pore, what kind of impact would this have on the reader? All these perfect images, with not a single blemish, it makes people want to strive for perfection, physically.
How now days were not even looking at photography but a canvas print of a recontruction of someones face. - Dove advert

At what point is a picture a portrait? And at what point is a photo a fashion shot?
The only real difference is is that it is in a glossy fashion magazine. - Context - where you see the photo.
It could be a photo that goes either way. Maybe started out as a portrait and then got put into a fashion magazine.
List differences- Portrait pictures are about capturing essence of personality
Fashion shot is about capturing certain idea of artist - say more on this
Blurring between the images