UO :: Intro to Digital Photography: 2015-02-15

Friday, February 20, 2015

Bell, Tyler_Photojournalism Writing

“The difference between art and journalism begins with intention. Art derives from a contemplation of ideas, while journalism reports on facts and events.”

Page One: A Conversation with Philip Gefter, Picture Editor of the New York Times’ Front Page

In this essay, Veronica Vienne holds an interview with artist Philip Gefter. Gefter, a page-one editor for the New York Times, began his work by attaining a BFA in painting and photography at New York’s Pratt Institute. He moved onto teaching photography at several schools, becoming a photography curator, and published his critical writings and stories. This passage is important because Vienne demonstrates the importance of text in combination with images, as seen in Gefter’s work. Vienne asks questions regarding how long Gefter puts into his work, how many words he reads, and how many pictures he views on a daily basis. Photographs in photojournalism are described as rather than being ‘illustrative’ of the event, they are ‘edifying’ of the event—the photographs illuminate themselves, telling a story rather than supporting one. Because of this, Gefter searches for images that live up to these standards, photos in which provides an “open window to a story” rather than just “proof” that a story exists.

History’s First Draft Looks Much Better With Pictures

This essay states the publication of Things as They Are, a new book published in the United States by non-profit organizations Aperture and World Press Photo. The point of the book is to “see [circumstances of our time].” Being made of 120 photo-essays, the images displayed in the book emphasizes how photography helped influence the development of photojournalism. Photographs define the past witht heir ability to capture a moment of time. For example, as shown in a photo of Lee Harvey Oswald being in pain and panic after the shooting, in which “contort his face.” Indefinitely, even in the world of digital photography, to display the truth in photojournalism, and person must have “the decisive moment” to capture a photo that tells and shapes a story.

Reflections of New York’s Luckiest: Look Magazine

In this essay, Philip Gefter depicts the difficulties people submerse themselves in to pursue their passions. The Museum of the City of New York gained access to Look magazines photos—an astonishing 200,000 of them. One boy, Stanley Kubrick, took a photo at the age of 17 of a new headliner saying that Roosevelt died, ultimately landing him a job that’d he keep with Look magazine for 5 years. The Museum of the City of New York held a gallery show called Willing to Be Lucky: Ambitious New Yorkers in the Page of Look Magazine, where they displayed 130 of these photos of all types of people who inhabit New York. In summary, this section wraps up how many artists find themselves being in the right place at the right time, attaining success from pure luck.

Reading Newspaper Pictures: A Thousand Words, and Then Some

In this essay, Philip Gefter describes how a picture “may not be worth a thousand words, but a picture with a good caption are worth a thousand and ten.” As he states, a photograph is commonly approached with an inherited blind spot, and a viewer needs to have background before viewing it. This is the importance of a good caption for photojournalism, it tells the viewer how the image should be interpreted. Language is crucial to communication, and a good caption helps communicate and support a photo’s meaning. A great example is the image taken by Tyler Hicks, a depiction of fallen soldiers in Iraq, metaphorically showing the fall of a tyrant. He states that “the difference between art and journalism begins with intention. Art derives from a contemplation of ideas, while journalism reports on facts and events.”

Cornell Capa, Photojournalist and Museum Founder, Dies at Ninety

This essay recollects on the life of Cornell Capa. Capa was a photojournalist for Life magazine. Capa’s greatest interests of photography were politics and social justice. Robert Capa was Cornell Capa’s biggest influence on becoming a photographer. Capa originally planned to be a doctor, but when he moved to New York, Robert Capa payed him a visit which led to him eventually becoming interested in the world of photography.

Personal Reflection:

This chapter stuck out to me, especially with the writings by Philip Gefter. He explains the difference between art and photojournalism. It made me think of the importance it is to decisively capture a moment, if the intent is to tell a story. Instead of focusing just on a subject, tell the story of the subject and it’s importance to the frame. Overall, this was a good read and I enjoyed seeing photography being described in another way, outside of a fine art context.

Rosas_Marion_Response to 'Photojournalism' from PAF

“Intention is what distinguishes the photojournalist from the artist.”

This chapter conveys the “camera as witness” in photojournalism, which reminds me of a point made in ‘The Staged Document’ that photography decides what is and what is not remembered. I feel as though these two points can be contradictory at times. If photography determines the events that are remembered, then there are cases in which the camera could portray a witness with limiting or even false information. This essay begins by discussing the different ways in which Time-Life and Magnum practiced photographic documentation during the rise of photojournalism. Time-Life pursued images with “clarity of subject matter, strong composition, bold graphic effect, and often, a touch of wit.” This intention strays from the portrayal of certain ‘truths’ that artists described in the previous essays were so devoted to unveiling because too much attention to the aesthetic quality of a photograph can often distract the audience from its deeper meaning. Magnum was created to give photojournalists more control over the way in which their work was presented to the journal’s subscribers. However, devotion to expressing the ‘truth’ relies on the photojournalist’s intention in this case. Although this essay describes the core value of photojournalism as an “unwavering adherence to fact” in its introduction, it appears as though photojournalism became a tool that could either be used for its original purpose or manipulated to disguise important information. This essay does not take a definite stance on photojournalism, but rather it describes the conflict between fact and interpretation that photojournalism presents in an informative manner.

Page One: A Conversation with Philip Gefter, Picture Editor of the New York Times’ Front Page

In this essay, Véronique Vienne documents her interview with Philip Gefter about his 1999 appointment as Page One picture editor for the New York Times. She conveys that this title is simportant because it describes a job that will on the combination of text and images that will be published for not only the general public to peruse, but also for “the most prominent leaders and thinker” to analyze as well. Vienne expresses that Gefter attempts to distinguish between photographs that are “‘illustrative’ of a news event, and pictures that are ‘edifying’—that is, pictures that are not merely additions, but illuminating in themselves, integral to the report.” In other words, he searches for images that assist in describing certain ‘truths’, and would change the meaning of a report if they were not included. Throughout this article, Vienne asks Gefter questions about the decision-making process as Page One picture editor and how he deals with the challenge of creating a report that is as honest and informative as possible.

History’s First Draft Looks Much Better With Pictures

This essay introduces the new book, Things as They Are: Photojournalism in Context Since 1955, as a motion to strip away the false associations that have evolved around various iconic images in a series of 120 photo-essays that were published in the latter half of the twentieth century. This is a display of the manner in which photography has dangerously altered our memories of the past. The motive is to display a “fuller historic record” of the context in which the image was published. The book also conveys how the technological advancements in photography and printing affected the portrayal of significant historical events and the way that they are perceived today.

Reflections of New York’s Luckiest: Look Magazine

In this essay, Gefter describes New York as a place where the people are known for their resilience and ability to cope under difficult circumstances in pursuit of their dreams. The Museum of the City of New York held an exhibition titled Willing to Be Lucky: Ambitious New Yorkers in the Pages of Look Magazine that showed 130 photographs of the people who found a home in New York because they “ ‘didn’t fit in anywhere else’”. New York was their place of good fortune. The essay discusses how the work of many artists came to light because of a serendipitous moment, and ended up changing their career paths for the better.

Reading Newspaper Pictures: A Thousand Words, and Then Some

This essay expresses how the layers of meaning within an image can distract from the photographer’s intended message: “A picture may not be worth a thousand words, but a picture and a good caption are worth a thousand and ten.” Gefter describes how—because an image opens the door to a world of interpretation—a caption is what narrows down the meaning in an image and makes it relevant to an audience. As a general population, language is our primary method of communication and images are secondary, so it makes sense that a caption would help to clarify a photograph’s meaning. The essay continues to explain that the caption associated with an image is just as powerful as the image itself.

Cornell Capa, Photojournalist and Museum Founder, Dies at Ninety

This essay was written to commemorate Cornell Capa’s life and work with Life magazine as well as to describe his contribution to the world of photojournalism after his death. Capa’s love for photography was fostered heavily by his father Robert Capa, and Cornell Capa’s wife played a major role in his professional career as a photojournalist. Upon looking back at his own life, Capa was most concerned with the legacy that he would leave behind as a photojournalist and what would become of his work after he died. This parallels the general concept conveyed throughout the majority of this chapter—the reality that a photographer’s work often evolves over time into something other than what it was originally intended to be.

Thursday, February 19, 2015

Bell, Tyler_Assignment 6

Harmonic - Triad

Dominant Color

Isolated Color

User's Pick

Christine Gray: "Photography After Frank; Photojournalism" Summary/Reflection

In the former sections of Photography After Frank, Gefter talked about photography in terms of artistic value. In the next section, titled “Photojournalism”, we are introduced to a completely different type of photography. Gefter lays out a definition of photojournalism, which is crucial to analyzing the differences between it and photography as a solely artistic practice. “Photojournalism: a breed of photographic imagery assigned or conceived to capture news-worthy events or to document conditions in the world expressly for publication in a news-based journal. At its foundation lies an unwavering adherence to fact. The photojournalist will shoot an event as it transpires without altering its anatomy with his or her presence. The ‘camera as witness’ is, perhaps, the profession’s essential rule of thumb.” This section provides a new perspective on the idea of a photo representing reality.

“Intention is what distinguishes the photojournalist from the artist.” This statement by Gefter reminds me of a discussion we had in a public relations class I was taking last term. Photojournalists work to answer the same questions any journalist is working to answer: “who, what, where, when, and why.” The artists discussed in the last two sections were not trying to capture images of things that would be most desired in the media, nor were they even trying to capture images of things that are well known. Photojournalists have a different agenda than those who are pursuing photography in an artistic sense. Gefter makes it clear that these two categories of photographers can overlap, but generally are very different.

When Gefter first mentioned that photojournalism was solely based on fact, it made me think about today’s photojournalism images. I feel like things are falsified more and more, especially because of new technologies in photo editing. Sure enough, Gefter mentions that today’s photojournalism is less based on facts than it has ever been. However, while technology aids in a veer from integrity, it also aids in the success of photojournalism.

Being a photojournalist sounds like an extremely stressful job. When reading about the artists in the other sections of the book, I had a way more relaxed feeling. Artistic photographers are able to guide their work as they see fit, at their own pace (usually). Reading about Philip Gefter’s typical day working at the New York Times made the difference between artistic photographers and photojournalists very clear. You are not simply responsible for the work that you produce, but the news stories that make your work possible. You need to constantly be in contact with people and there are very specific times you need to be at very specific places. You must be prepared for anything and everything at all times.

Photographer Giselle Freund made an interesting observation: “Before the first press pictures, the ordinary man would visualize only those events that took place near him, on his street or in his village.” Photojournalism made it possible for people to see what was happening in the world outside of what was immediately surrounding them. It is one thing to read about events happening in the world, but few would argue that photographs accompanying news stories add a whole new level to their meaning and ability to be taken in. Reactions to visual images can be much more powerful than those to just words. Sometimes things are made more believable when accompanied by pictures because it’s a type of proof or validation of the occurrences. I know that I am much more interested in news stories when they are accompanied by pictures. I can’t imagine what it would have felt like to be reading newspapers when images were first added to them. Like Freund said, people didn’t have a visual image of anything that was happening in the world if they didn’t see the things first hand.

I found it interesting when Gefter wrote about how looking at a picture is like learning a second language. There are things that need to be processed and connected when first looking at a picture before you can understand it. You can’t just look at it and immediately know everything about it and what it means. He also talks about how different types of photographs have to be read in different languages, depending on its purpose. Artistic photos need to be read differently than advertisement photos, which need to be read differently than journalism photos. There are so many contexts in which a photograph can be read, all of which affect its meaning. In other words, if you look at one photograph in different contexts or “read it in different languages”, the meaning of the photograph could change.