I can’t understand why so many blogs publish a small selection of the winning images from World Press Photo and don’t write anything about the images they use. Just what is the point, when at the click of a mouse you can go and see the whole of the work of the winners? Online at World Press Photo.
I’ve only had a quick glance through the whole lot of them – there are quite a few – and don’t really want to say anything about them yet, other than an overall impression, which is that I think they show that 2010 was a disappointing year for photography. Of course there are exceptions – and the set of pictures by Eugene Richards is one.
Of course, as two well-regarded photographers were saying to me today, World Press Photo is very much a lottery (and one went on to suggest perhaps even more so because the judging is held in Amsterdam, and at the end of a day looking at far too many pictures the judges may well indulge in recreational activities that could well cloud their judgement.)
Among the outstanding work there do seem to me to be some rather pedestrian images, and while in recent years there have been some surprisingly interesting pictures or sets in some of the generally more tedious categories such as sport, arts and entertainment and nature, this trend seems to have reversed somewhat. Perhaps too the portraits fail to excite me this time.
I’m not a great believer in contests and competitions. I seldom enter them and am unconvinced they generally improve the general standard of photography not least because I suspect the best work very seldom wins. Partly because selection is often a matter of political trading between the various judges (as we occasionally hear when judges spill the beans after the event) but also because at least in some competitions the judges often include people in whose judgement I have little or no faith. Not purely out of prejudice, though probably I’ve plenty of that, but because of the visual quality of magazines they edit or exhibitions they have curated etc.
Certainly the most interesting comment on last year’s World Press Photo was UNCONCERNED BUT NOT INDIFFERENT by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin who were among the judges. I first read this in Foto8, but it seems no longer to be available on their site but can be downloaded from the authors’ Chopped Liver web site – listed under Information / Selected Articles. Worth reading after you’ve looked at the pictures.