In Whats wrong with global photojournalism? Russian photographer Vladimir Vyatkin “ruminates on results from the worlds top press photography contest“, the 2011 World Press Photo, and I have a great deal of sympathy with his diagnosis:
International photojournalism is seriously ill, suffering from an acute cerebrovascular disease complicated by cardiac failure a common diagnosis for the many mortals who suffered significant physical and psychological stress as a result of the past years natural disasters, revolutions, ethnic conflicts, terrorist acts, government provocations and social and domestic tensions.
Of course you can avoid all that nastiness by sitting at home in front of your computer and walking around the world on Google Street View – and still win an honourable mention at WPP. It’s a prize that I think went to the wrong person – it was after all produced by those guys at Google – and for the wrong work, which clearly has nothing to do with photojournalism. You can read what Michael Wolf (who I think is otherwise an interesting photographer) thinks in an interview with the British Journal of Photography.
I saw his show show of work from Street View in Paris, and didn’t feel it was worth writing about, and still feel much the same about it. You can see more on Wolf’s own web site, along with some other work which I find of much more interest.
Paris – I found the streets more interesting that Wolf’s Street View
So my advice to all who want to succeed next year is to throw your cameras away, invest in some good ray-tracing or virtual reality software and start working on some pictures for WPP 2012. Or may be they will go retro and you should be in your darkrooms making photograms about the Arab revolution.