{"id":5009,"date":"2015-02-27T12:00:31","date_gmt":"2015-02-27T12:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=5009"},"modified":"2015-02-27T12:00:31","modified_gmt":"2015-02-27T12:00:31","slug":"je-suis-chaleroi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=5009","title":{"rendered":"Je Suis Chaleroi?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new controversy has emerged from the latest World Press Photo, with exception being taken to the winning entry, The Dark Heart of Europe<\/em>, by Italian photographer Giovanni Troilo<\/em> in Contemporary Issues Stories. There are 10 images from the story at the WPP<\/a> and a dozen on the photographer’s own web site<\/a>, under the title Charleroi, La Ville Noire – The Dark Heart of Europe<\/em>, which omits several in the WPP selection.<\/p>\n

In this case the complaint is not about the processing of the images, though some might feel this is at least a touch over-dramatised, but about staging and the false image they give of the city, whose mayor Paul Magnette<\/em>, while professing not to be and expert in photography complains that the story is anything but photojournalism, hiding aspects and distorting reality through staged images.<\/p>\n

In his letter the mayor goes on to repeat some of the criticisms of the work raised immediately after the award by Belgian photographer Thomas Vanden Driessche<\/em> who is quoted on the web site OAI13<\/a> (Our Age is 13):<\/p>\n

\nL\u2019utilisation de la mise en sc\u00e8ne, l\u2019\u00e9clairage artificiel mais surtout le caract\u00e8re falsifi\u00e9 et mensonger des l\u00e9gendes participe \u00e0 la construction de cette fiction prenant les apparences d\u2019un reportage. Cela ne me causerait aucun souci si cet ensemble \u00e9tait le r\u00e9sultat d\u2019une \u0153uvre artistique tr\u00e8s personnelle. Mais le photographe ne pr\u00e9sente pas son travail comme tel. Au contraire, il donne manifestement une r\u00e9elle dimension journalistique\/documentaire \u00e0 son approche. Le simple fait que cette s\u00e9rie a \u00e9t\u00e9 soumise au World Press Photo et surtout le fait qu\u2019elle ait \u00e9t\u00e9 prim\u00e9e lui conf\u00e8re une cr\u00e9dibilit\u00e9 journalistique.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Driessche is saying that staging, the artificial lighting and above all the false and lying captions result in the making of a fictional story in what appears to be reportage. This would not worry him in a personal artistic work, but this is not how the photographer has presented it. On the contrary he clearly presents it as a journalistic\/documentary story and submitted it as such to World Press Photo who have given it credibility as journalism by giving it the prize.<\/p>\n

The mayor’s letter, reproduced in part on the same site gives some details about who and what appear in some of the images, arguing that the reality they show is very different to the story implied by the photographer through the highly stylised images and deceptive captioning, ending his letter by stating that the photographer has deformed reality for the sake of a story which discriminates against the city of Charleroi, its people and the profession of photojournalism. He says that you will not find a single person living in the city who would recognise it from the story, and that is seems to be more a settling of grudges than investigative reporting.<\/p>\n

Time Lightbox’s report of the story<\/a> includes some translations of the comments in the mayor’s letter and includes a statement from WPP:<\/p>\n

“We are currently verifying the facts behind the photo story, as we do with all the prizewinning pictures, and we are in touch with the photographer Giovanni Troilo.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, if photographers and journalists are doing their job properly they will often offend some people. Few organisations welcome any critical investigation, as many people, particularly whistleblowers, have found to their cost. For those of us who have no knowledge of Charleroi (and I imagine few of us have heard of it before this, let alone been there) we have only the opposing views and the nature of the photographs to inform us.<\/p>\n

Photography cannot exist without a point of view, though in much we see that may well be a rather confused one. The strength of Troilo’s work which led to its success is in the clarity of his view and the dramatic way he has presented it. We all have to dramatise the situations we photograph, to give them some form in order to communicate with an audience. <\/p>\n

For many photographers, the guiding principle was stated clearly by one of the legends, W Eugene Smith in his credo “Let truth be the prejudice”. Perhaps in this case truth may have given way to prejudice. It will be interesting to see what WPP responds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new controversy has emerged from the latest World Press Photo, with exception being taken to the winning entry, The Dark Heart of Europe, by Italian photographer Giovanni Troilo in Contemporary Issues Stories. There are 10 images from the story at the WPP and a dozen on the photographer’s own web site, under the title … Continue reading Je Suis Chaleroi?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5009"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5009\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5010,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5009\/revisions\/5010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}