TNR

Is photojournalism dead? That’s a question that gets bandied around a lot in our industry. I’ve always believed that rumours of it’s demise are vastly exaggerated. It’s a view I’m pleased to say that new Phaidon publication ‘DECADE’ endorses. Billed as ‘the definitive photographic history of the first decade of the 21st century’ it weighs in at a pretty comprehensive 500 pages and nearly 3 kilos. If photojournalism ain’t dead, it’s certainly heavy!

The new Phaidon publication 'DECADE'.

However what ‘DECADE’ does do is vividly illustrate how photojournalism has changed in the first years of this new century, both in the volume of material that documents our age and the new nature of a small but significant proportion of that material.

Florida, 911, July 7, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Euro, Pope John Paul, Enron, Bush, Obama, Bin Laden, Katrina, the Tsunami, Blair, Brown, Cameron, Concorde, Haiti, Kelly, Lehman Brothers, Michael Jackson… It’s all there in a flurry of frames, clamouring to meet our ever growing need for a visualisation of a seemly faster world. The fact printing deadlines meant a photojournalism encyclopaedia of 2000 – 2010 missed the Chilean miners, student riots and WikiLeaks only highlights what a visually saturated age it aims to record.

DECADE documents an era that saw newspapers change their formats to accommodate more of these images. Tradition was torn up as papers went tabloid and full colour with photos at the forefront of the new commuter friendly designs. Little more than a few years later such concerns would seem quaint with the sudden coming of age of newspaper websites and the computer friendly designs of phone apps and ipad editions. But again, from coalition to celebrity, the demand for photos continued unabated.

Yet amid that volume of images DECADE also highlights how a proportion of those pictures have changed. Not every memorable photo is the preserve of the professional and a picture’s legacy is not always measured in terms of it’s dots per inch. From the Al Quaida video stills, Abu Ghraib snapshots, Tube bombing captured on cameraphone; the very nature of what photojournalism is evolved as technology made film and photography ubiquitous in the first years of the 21st century.

This in turn adds to the sheer volume of imagery & perhaps now means the key to lasting photojournalism is in the editing as much as the taking. Insomuch DECADE is put together by the most astute of eyes; Eamonn McCabe, photographer and former picture editor at the Guardian.

However to focus too much on the editing would do a disservice to the photographers. Those who at one time found themselves in the right place and those who regularly put themselves in the right place to bring us these images that not only captured the moment but held it or us to look back on.

http://www.phaidon.co.uk/store/photography/decade-9780714857688/
http://www.eamonnmccabe.co.uk/

Post by Tim Kerr (Head of Photography for TNR Communications)