The Times of Malta Picture Annual is a celebration of photojournalism – a category that may be dying in the digital world, according to some naysayers
Photojournalism is an essentially contested category. A number of different accounts of what is or isn’t crop up frequently in discussions on the net. Some prefer to call the photographic practice in which someone tells a story about some aspect of the world. This encompasses what others call documentary photography, editorial photography and the like, but excludes works of visual fiction generated with computers. I am quite comfortable to wear this label when it comes to defining this form.
With its roots in the 1920s and the advent of small 35mm cameras, combined with the emergence of picture magazines, a surge of photojournalists the likes of W. Eugene Smith, Dorothea Lange, etc, could publish their photo stories more easily.
Most leading photojournalists in the late 1950s wanting to exercise their editorial freedom opted to work freelance and chose to bypass periodicals to publish their work in their own books. This was a significant development in photojournalism as the form began to outgrow its origins.
Nowadays, there seems to be a persistent dichotomy with the present state of photojournalism and, as much as the importance of this form cannot be underestimated or ignored (we all know how a single photograph can change the opinion of the entire world, such as Nick Ut’s Napalm Girl 1972), yet currently a good number of bloggers on the subject and, especially the recent analysis of photojournalism’s role published in Reuters Annual Report 2015, all speak about the demise of photojournalism.
This situation is further highlighted by top photo editors and critics such as David Campbell, who frequently refer to the ‘death of the photojournalist’ in their blogs. The scepticism about photojournalism has become so pervasive that it has sparked worldwide debate and has rightly been confronted by Susie Linfield, director of the cultural reporting and criticism programme at New York University, and Peter Galassi, the curator of photography at MoMA, who argue in favour of the continuing moral relevance of photojournalism.
So, what is actually happening out there? Well, on the surface it is undeniable that, with the onslaught of social media and, more specifically, the web and digital space that is built on the internet, photographers all over the world have fewer and fewer opportunities to publish their work in the print media. They get fewer and fewer paid assignments. And there is less and less money for photography. The print media is in crisis and there isn’t the necessary financial support.
This is what Chris Anderson, a Magnum documentary photographer, calls digital ‘disruption’: “The arrival of the internet did not herald a new entrant in the news ecosystem. It heralded a new ecosystem, full stop.” (Anderson et al, 2012:83).
This brought about the transformation of the audience into producers and, with technology growing in powerbytes and shrinking in cost, a new generation of amateur and citizen image-makers has emerged.
With the onslaught of social media and, more specifically, the web and digital space that is builton the internet,photographers all over the world have fewer and fewer opportunities to publish their work in the print media
Now, digital images from the tsunami in Indonesia, the London underground bombing and the final moments of Muammar Gaddafi were transmitted, shared or published as the events took place by ordinary people who happened to be there.
This upheaval has generated diverse understandings about the nature and trajectory of changes in photojournalism. If we dig below the surface, then we need to understand that the tandem of journalism/photojournalism is the information while newspapers, magazines, books and galleries are the means of distribution. And it is the latter that heralds profound changes but this does not translate into the end for the modes of information. Hence, this repositions any debate about the ‘death of photojournalism’.
In our country, a bunch of photojournalists working for the Times of Malta are blessed with the opportunity of having their work published in a handsome soft cover picture annual, now in its 10th edition.
New faces have been added to the group with the talents of Mark Zammit Cordina and Steve Zammit Lupi. One can scroll endlessly through the press photography contained in this annual and I shall, as usual, select my favourites for their photographic technique and staying power.
A former British police officer is pinned to the bastion walls of Valletta in a photograph by Darrin Zammit Lupi on page 37. The sheer scale of the bastions make the task of abseiling in a wheelchair even more impossible and we hold our breath as the force of gravity decides on the fate of this monumental endeavour.
As I flip through, I encounter a double page spread (p40/41) with a photograph that should disturb any decent and loving parent when a young boy is seen carrying a hunter’s ammunition belt around his chest and hoisted shoulders high celebrating the outcome of the hunting referendum. This dramatic photograph, by Matthew Mirabelli, is about the loss of innocence when as young kids we all played with toy guns and ‘killed’ each other. In this case a child is on the threshold of being reckoned with power through the materiality of the gun.
Chris Sant Fournier delights us with a picture of robust contrasts on page 81. His keen eye, coupled with his knowledge of a society in constant flux, captures and isolates the moment from an otherwise boisterous celebration. So is his other light-hearted photograph on pages 120/121. It’s about the interaction of a man and an animal in a futile exercise of dragging an enormous aircraft on the tarmac, but one which, in its absurdity, creates spectacle for the purpose of raising money for charity.
Another double page photograph by Darrin Zammit Lupi (p58/59) shows a gathering on a popular beach in Malta. This picture is rife with a duality which, on one hand, at a first glance, gives the feeling usually associated with riparian entertainment in summer but then suddenly soon translates into a sombre mood as we realise that a vigil in remembrance of a tragic event is under way.
The next double page, also connected with the loss of life in the Mediterraean Sea, is a photograph by Mirabelli who skilfully isolates the nameless coffin surrounded by army personnel and camouflage uniforms.
In direct response to ever-increasing doubts about the truthfulness and ethical significance of photojournalism, Linfield contends that, in order to construct a politics of human rights that isn’t merely an abstraction, we need to look at and into photographs of suffering, degradation and defeat in order to make sense of a violent world or what James Agee termed “the cruel radiance of what is”… whatever the cost.
Mr Fenech is an artist and lecturer of photography at the University of Malta.