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Photoartistjournalist??????
Recently I show a photo from a famous Greek photojournalist Kontos that won a prize and made me so angry. What the hell is finally a photojournalist?
Is he a journalist? Because if he is then the incentive that drives him to these war zones risking his life must be to inform the public, honestly, driven by humanistic concerns
and not personal ambitions to win competitions. Is he an artist? Because if he is doing art on dead bodies, seeking for Bresson’s harmony on the suffering of others then seriously
he should go to a doctor and not given to him prizes. How the hell you can make art when people are dying in front of your eyes???
In my opinion if you are really concerned and depressed from other people’s sufferings and you want to so sth about it then you go out there recording what’s going on with the simplest method of composition and not over estheticizing the subject, trying to get the best possible picture. Then
it is clear to me the your are driven there out of personal interest, ambition, adrenaline, motives in other words totally unethical that has nothing to do with the humanitarian causes that
a so- called photojournalist should serve. And sth else I am telling to these hot shot photojournalists- artists that no one significant photographer during history became significant because of the importance of the subject but on the contrary because of the unimportance of the subject, because he took images of ordinary people living an ordinary life..Please help me out with this confusion.. and i dont try to insult anyone i just try to understand
by
Stratos Vogiatzis
at
Wed Apr 09 16:02:33 UTC 2008
(ed. Apr 11 2008)
Chios,
Greece
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09 Apr 2008 00:04
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What you are saying is pretty clear and I totally agree..but what’s going in the field and how art and photojournalism are related when you are taking images?
My point is that when you are trying to get the best possible image when for example someone documenting war or poverty, when the esthetic becomes more important than the message he or she tries to convey then there is the danger to miss the whole essence of photojournalism..which is, I believe, to inform the public with the greatness honesty and humility about the destruction that takes place and not trying to make images that will win photography competitions..
I tell you an example, once I saw in Visa pour l’image one video story of Magnum photographer Pellegrin about famine in Ethiopia, very beautiful images,very personal photographic language, a well constructed story, great atmoshere…but fuck this was a story about famine in Ethiopia and not a story about Pellegrin as an artist!! When this was finished I left having very beautiful images in my head and respect about the talent of this photographer but not at all my friend with the idea of a famine in Ethiopia, a human tragedy that should leave our conscience unrest..You see at the end this was a story about the photographer not about the event, somehow he missed the point that he wanted to make..
Of course I’d love to see u in Thessaloniki, call me when you are there, we can hung out together..before one week was in Turkey photographing fishermen, it was great..+306936824914
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If you really care about something, you put your heart into it an try to reach people. Try to publish work widely and in a variety of different venues. It helps to get work published if it is of a high aesthetic standard. Furthermore, distinguishing one set of photographs from all others is a good way to make people pause on those pictures for a moment. Photos can’t really force people to think or change their minds. But good photos with distinct personal vision can make more people pause and pay attention for a moment.
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