When the line blurs between sport photography and photojournalism

It is an often debated question, when should a photographer put down their camera and help. We have all seen pictures where it is assumed the photographer has chosen to continue photographing rather than doing the human thing and helping, what should we as photographers do?

Like Hillsborough before it, the Boston Marathon bombing has highlighted how sports stories can quickly turn into breaking news events. When this happens, photographers have to decide whether to help or keep on shooting The Photography Blog at The Guardian asks, read what they think here

 

Don’t shoot? … the second explosion at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Click on image to enlarge. Photograph: John Tlumacki/Boston Globe/AP

Perhaps one of the most iconic images that brings this question to mind was taken by Nick Ut during the Vietnam war

This picture Kim Phuc running away from her bombed village when she was just nine is now instantly recognisable and seen as a defining image of the Vietnam war

This article about Nick Ut in The Daily Mail tells some of his story about being a photographer in the Vietnam War

It is one of the most recognisable pictures ever taken and an image that not only defined a war, but defined the career of the man who took it.

Kim Phuc was just nine years old when she ran naked towards Associated Press photographer and Pulitzer prize winner Huynh Cong ‘Nick’ Ut screaming ‘Too hot! Too hot!’ as she headed away from her bombed Vietnamese village.

She will always be remembered for the blobs of sticky napalm that melted through her clothes and left her with layers of skin like jellied lava. Her story has been told many times over the last 40 years since the shot was taken.

But now, to mark four decades since Ut took the picture he has released more moving images that he took during the Vietnam war that chart the horrors of that fateful day in 1972.

The following picture is of the attack that preceded the event that led to his memorable image

Huynh Cong ‘Nick’ Ut took this picture just moments before capturing his iconic image. It shows bombs with a mixture of napalm and white phosphorus jelly and reveals that he moved closer to the village following the blasts

When compared with the first image it becomes apparent that Ut actually started heading towards the village following the napalm attack. The sign to the right of the picture appears larger while what looks like a speaker to the left of the road is no longer in shot.

As he headed towards the town and took the photo, which Kim Phuc has now found peace with after first wanting to escape the image, he would have been unaware the effect his picture would have on the outside world.

It communicated the horrors of the Vietnam War in a way words could never describe, helping to end one of the most divisive wars in American history.

He drove Phuc to a small hospital. There, he was told the child was too far gone to help. But he flashed his American press badge, demanded that doctors treat the girl and left assured that she would not be forgotten. 

‘I cried when I saw her running,’ said Ut, whose older brother was killed on assignment with the AP in the southern Mekong Delta. ‘If I don’t help her – if something happened and she died – I think I’d kill myself after that.’

Read the full story and see more of Ut’s pictures from that war here

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2154400/Napalm-Girl-photographer-Nick-Ut-releases-work-Vietnam-war.html#ixzz2TwdINL00

The power of photography: time, mortality and memory

In the Guardian there is a really interesting article featuring a selection of artists, writers and photographers showing a photograph and talking about it’s importance and the importance of photography to them.

We take thousands of pictures nowadays, but do we still cherish them? We asked writers and artists, including Grayson Perry and Mary McCartney, to pick a shot they treasure – and tell us the role photography has played in their lives

Grayson Perry in his Camden squat in 1985, making a Super 8 film

When I was about five, my mother made a bonfire in the back garden and burned a suitcase full of family photos taken by my father. He had been a keen photographer with his own dark room. I don’t know why she burned them, but it coincided with them getting divorced and my stepfather moving in.


For the rest of my childhood, no one in the family possessed a camera, so I have very few photographs of myself before art college. Family snaps are somehow celebratory of the good times so there was little motivation to record our lives. As soon as I could afford it, I bought a clunky Russian Zenith SLR….read more of what Grayson Perry and the other contributors say here

The Guardian has followed up this article with a space where mere mortals can share their most important pictures,

Photography – share your most precious photo

Share with us your most memorable photograph with a line to tell us what or who we are looking at and why the image is so special to you

You can do that here

Garry Winogrand’s classic and unseen photographs

In the Guardian/Observer culture section we find this gallery of images by Garry Winogrand

Garry Winogrand is seen by many as the father of American street photography. His output was so prolific, he left many images unseen in his lifetime, on contact sheets and thousands of undeveloped rolls of film. The best of this treasure trove is included in a new collection of his photographs

Los Angeles, c 1980Photograph: The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

See all of the images here

Photos: Moore Oklahoma Tornado

From The Denver Post we see the devastation that has been brought to Moore, Oklahoma by a tornado that had winds over 200mph.

A monstrous tornado at least a half-mile wide roared through the Oklahoma City suburbs Monday, flattening entire neighborhoods and destroying an elementary school with a direct blow as children and teachers huddled against winds up to 200 mph. At least 51 people were killed, and officials said the death toll was expected to rise. (AP)

A tornado moves past homes in Moore, Okla. on Monday, May 20, 2013. (AP Photo/Alonzo Adams) #

A child calls to his father after being pulled from the rubble of the Tower Plaza Elementary School following a tornado in Moore, Okla., Monday, May 20, 2013. A tornado as much as a mile (1.6 kilometers) wide with winds up to 200 mph (320 kph) roared through the Oklahoma City suburbs Monday, flattening entire neighborhoods, setting buildings on fire and landing a direct blow on an elementary school. (AP Photo Sue Ogrocki) #

Rescuers recover a horse from the remains of a day care center and destroyed barns, Monday, May 20, 2013 in Moore, Okla. A monstrous tornado roared through the Oklahoma City suburbs, flattening entire neighborhoods with winds up to 200 mph, setting buildings on fire and landing a direct blow on an elementary school. (AP Photo/The Oklahoman, Steve Sisney) #

A woman carries her child through a field near the collapsed Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, Okla., Monday, May 20, 2013. (AP Photo Sue Ogrocki) #

See more of these images from The Denver Post blog here

Cardiff International Festival of Photography

This festival has been running throughout May and ends on the 31st so this Bank Holiday weekend might be the chance you need to go and see what looks to be a really impressive range of exhibitions. as it says

A month long festival of exhibitions, discussions, screenings, performances, events and celebrations in both physical and virtual spaces and places.

And Where are We Now?

This was the question we asked artists, cultural producers, curators and programmers to address with their contributions to Diffusion2013, and the one we will be exploring with audiences and participants.

People encounter photographic images daily not only in newspapers, magazines, on TV and in advertising, but also through online channels, mobile phone applications and social networking sites. We live in a time of image glut, and with the boundaries increasingly blurred between artist and audience, amateur and professional, we might ask and where is photography now? The world has never before been so visualised, yet the nature and meaning of photography and its status in art has never been so hotly debated……MORE

 

Maybe the most famous photographer showing is David Bailey, no the real one not the one you are associated with every time you bring out your camera as in “who do you think you are….”

Lewis Merthyr Colliery, Trehafod, from The Valleys Project, 1985 (c) David Bailey

At The Tramshed

Attack of the Killer, 2012 © Paul Duerinckx

Paul Duerinckx is a documentary photographer based in Swansea. His practice is based primarily on documenting people and place with a specific interest in street photography and the evolving roles of documentary photography and photojournalism as they respond to the ever-shifting mediums and institutions in which they manifest.

Tom Leyshon Watching the News, 1985 © Mike Berry at Tramshed

Drift, 2011 © Tim Davies at National Museum Cardiff

There are many more exhibitions, photographers and artists have a look here

State of the ART: The Purpose of Fine Art Photography

Photo.net member, Pete Myers, is a fine art photographer based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. This is the first of four installments called State of the ART. You can visit this artist and explore his captivating portfolios here.

The debate or beliefs about what makes art can be absorbing and/or tedious depending on the person holding forth. I have had many conversations in class and with other photographers about fine art photography and the changes that came about due to digital photography. Some hold that fine art photography is a product of film and darkrooms, where the more organic approach to print making is apparent, others claim this is just evidence of an interest in the craft based aspects of an earlier photography model and is not relevant to a discussion about whether an image is fine art or not.

This article by Pete Myers on Photo.net address this question, we accept that any view on this is personal and therefore open to challenge, Pete makes many extremely valid points and this article is worth reading and thinking about

Image caption: American Grasslands Homestead—Image 4 © 2013, Peter H. Myers

For me, the purpose of fine art photography is to ennoble the beauty of what is in front of the lens. It is the photographer’s job to fortify the photograph with a clarity of view unique to his or her passion for the subject. But the image is not about the photographer; it is not about the photographer’s camera system; it is not about the photographer’s technique. The photographer is the conduit for the formation of the image, and what tools and techniques are used should invisibly support the beauty within the photograph in celebrating what is before the lens………

That full-stride moment comes when the fine art photographer simply FEELS. The rest is irrelevant. And it comes at a personal cost of gaining maturity of self that is beyond ordinary “things.” It is beyond the point of worrying about what the photographer is getting out of the process in art or reward. It is beyond the point in what others might think of the work. The photographic tool simply has become the means for the photographer to connect with the meaning of life’s truth, through beauty. What is seen through the lens is a metaphor for truth as shown through beauty. And to get there, the artist must give up all the rest. The perfect light is that which is imperfect.

So how does this all have relevance to your own personal work? For most, photography is an advanced hobby or part-time vocation as part of a very hectic life. Driving one’s passion to the limit might not be fully achievable with the time available. But nevertheless, there is a lot that can be ventured that will have immediate benefit upon the direction of your own work……….

READ MORE HERE

Pictures of the Week: April 29, 2013

From the Denver Post:

A Bangladeshi woman survivor is lifted out of the rubble by rescuers at the site of a building that collapsed Wednesday in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Thursday, April 25, 2013. By Monday, the death toll reached over 350 people as rescuers continued to search for injured and missing, after a huge section of an eight-story building that housed several garment factories splintered into a pile of concrete.

Honor guard stand in front of caskets prior to a memorial service for first responders who died in last week’s fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas, Thursday, April 25, 2013, in Waco, Texas. Firefighters and other first responders were among those killed when a fire at the plant erupted in an explosion last week. Hundreds of people were injured.

Pictures of the Week is a Denver Post Plog that gathers the strongest photojournalism from around the world.

A Bangladeshi woman survivor is lifted out of the rubble by rescuers at the site of a building that collapsed Wednesday in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Thursday, April 25, 2013. By Thursday, the death toll reached at least 194 people as rescuers continued to search for injured and missing, after a huge section of an eight-story building that housed several garment factories splintered into a pile of concrete.(AP Photo/Kevin Frayer) #

TOPSHOTS This photo taken on April 23, 2013 shows children saluting rescue workers with banners reading “thank you” along a street in Lushan county of Yaan, southwest China’s Sichuan province. Tens of thousands of homeless survivors of China’s devastating quake are living in makeshift tents or on the streets, facing shortages of food and supplies as well as an uncertain future. AFP PHOTOAFP/AFP/Getty Images #

Pro gay marriage activists pose during a gathering at Paris 4th district city hall after French lawmakers legalized same-sex marriage, Tuesday, April 23, 2013, in Paris. Lawmakers legalized same-sex marriage after months of debate and street protests that brought hundreds of thousands to Paris. Tuesday’s 331-225 vote came in the Socialist majority National Assembly. France’s justice minister, Christiane Taubira, said the first weddings could be as soon as June. (AP Photo/Francois Mori) #

A Pakistani girl, who was displaced with her family by 2010 floods in Pakistan’s Sindh province, lies on a bed next to the rubble of her makeshift home, after it was destroyed along with other homes by the Capital Development Authority for being built on illegal lands, on the outskirts of Islamabad, Pakistan, Tuesday, April 23, 2013. Many slums which are built on illegal lands have neither running water or sewage disposal. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen) #

See so much more here

Andrea Gjestvang wins L’Iris d’Or at Sony world photography awards

Norwegian photographer, 32, holds off competition with poignant portraits of Anders Behring Breivik massacre survivors we read in The Guardian by Sean O’Hagen

Andrea Gjestvang has won the L’Iris d’Or at the 2013 Sony world photography awards.

The 32-year-old Norwegian photographer beat over 62,000 competitors from 170 countries in the professional competition with One Day in History, her poignant series of portraits of the young survivors of the massacre on the Norwegian island of Utøya on 22 July 2011.

On that day, 69 young people who were attending a summer camp organised by the ruling Norwegian Labour party were killed by a lone gunman, Anders Behring Breivik, a 32-year-old rightwing extremist. Around 500 young people survived the massacre.

The series was commended by the judges for its “dignity and beauty” and described as “a quiet, thoughtful and ultimately powerful voice for the children and survivors of the massacre in Norway

A picture from Andrea Gjestvang’s One Day in History, L’Iris d’Or winner at the Sony world photography awards 2013. Click to enlarge. Photo: Andrea Gjestvang/Momen

Adam Pretty, Australia
Category: Professional/Sport
Melissa Wu of Australia practices during a diving training session ahead of the London Olympic Games on 25 July 2012

Alice Caputo, Italy
Category: Professional/Lifestyle
Series: Summer Family
The images show the photographer’s family on a seaside holiday in Liguria in the summer of 2012

Klaus Thymann, Denmark
Category: Professional/Fashion and Beauty
Series: i-D Iceland
This shot was taken on the slowly moving edges of a glacier

See more images and read the Guardian article here

Photography Graduate Summer Shows 2013

Seeing graduates work is often extremely valuable as it can show where the industry is going. Images created by artist photographers with access to equipment, knowledge and support but without the commercial concerns of working photographers can produce truly ground breaking work.

Photofusion is a great supporter of emerging artists, and have always enjoyed seeing the new and exciting selection of work by graduates in the local university degree shows. Therefore, we have compiled a list of upcoming Photography Graduate Summer degree shows that we think will definitely be worth a visit.

Arts University Bournemouth: Higher Education Show

Dates: 21 – 30 June (closed Sunday)

Location: Arts University Bournemouth, Wallisdown, Poole, Dorset, BH12 5HH

More info: http://bit.ly/10iAu5M

University of Brighton – Faculty of the Arts Graduate Show

Dates: Saturday 1 June – Wednesday 12 June | PV: Friday 31 May (invite only)

Location: Faculty of Arts, University of Brighton, Grand Parade, Brighton, BN2 0JY

More info: http://bit.ly/15kCnUo

Camberwell College of Arts, featuring BA Photography

Dates: 15– 22 June 2013 | PV: Monday 17 June (invite only)

Location: Camberwell College of Arts, Peckham Road, London SE5 8UF

More info: http://bit.ly/12VdWd1

Central St Martins: Show 1, featuring MA Photography

Dates: Saturday 25 – Monday 27 May | PV: Friday 24 May (invite only)

Location: Central Saint Martins, The Granary Building, 1 Granary Square, King’s Cross, London, N1C 4AA

More info: http://bit.ly/15pDxBQ

Kingston University: Faculty of Art, Design & Architecture show

Dates: 16 – 21 June | PV: Saturday 15 June, 1 – 7pm

Location: Kingston University, Knights Park Campus, Kingston upon Thames KT1 2QJ

More info: http://bit.ly/lCasVb

London College of Communication

MA Photojournalism & Documentary Photography Degree show

Dates: Monday 13 – Friday 17 May 2013 | PV: Wednesday 15 May 2013, 6-9pm

Summer Show 1, featuring BA Photography

Dates: Saturday 1 June – Wednesday 5 June 2013 | PV: Monday 3 June 2013

Location: LCC, Elephant & Castle, London, SE1 6SB

More info: http://bit.ly/KEcHYi

Portsmouth University, featuring BA Photography “Show 2013″

Dates: 14 – 18 June 2013, 12 – 7pm | PV: Thursday 13 June, 7 -10pm

Location: Candid Art Gallery, 5 Torrens Street, London, EC1V 1NQ

More info: http://bit.ly/10q6iGJ

Royal College of Art MA Degree Show

Dates: 20 – 30 June, 12 – 8pm (closed 28 June)

Location: Royal College of Art, Howie Street, London, SW11 4AY

More info: http://bit.ly/15pHJSk

Free Range: Graduate Summer Shows

Featuring work from universities including: Westminster / Roehampton / Edinburgh Napier / Nottingham Trent / UCA Farnham / De Montford / Falmouth / Lancashire / Derby and many more

Dates: 29th May – 15th July

Location: The Old Truman Brewery, 91 – 95 Brick Lane, London, E1 6QL

More info: http://bit.ly/13i1Hee

 

THE ROYAL PHOTOGRAPHIC SOCIETY INTERNATIONAL Print Competition

EXHIBIT YOUR WORK IN THE WORLD’S LONGEST RUNNING PRINT EXHIBITION

The Society invites professional, student and amateur photographers worldwide to submit their work. This year, for the first time in its history, we are inviting digital entries alongside print entries.  Both will be considered equally and the final exhibition will be displayed as prints, with online entries being printed professionally by Redcliffe Imaging Ltd.  All entrants will receive a copy of the exhibition catalogue.

Image: Meoto Iwa – Study II by Stefano Orazzini.

Entry is open to everyone (RPS members and non-members) until 17 May 2013.  Entrants can submit up to 4 images online or as prints, into one of two groups;

Over 30′s
Under 30′s*

All styles of photography will be considered including documentary, fashion, fine art, photojournalism, travel, portraiture and nature. Each image submitted will be judged as a single, stand-alone image so you can enter a varied selection of work. 100 images will be selected for the printed touring exhibition, including the three award winners!
Guide to entry:

Step 1: Decide whether you want to submit prints or digital entries (you cannot enter both)
Step 2: Read the Digital Advice / Print Advice page
Step 3: Read the FAQs page for common questions
Step 4: Submit payment AFTER you have added your digital images OR complete payment and send with an Entry Form and prints. See Payment Advice for more information.

Entry Cost for up to 4 Images:

All entrants will receive a printed copy of the exhibition catalogue in July/August 2013:

RPS Member - £15 per person
Non Member - £20 per person
Entry for Under 30′s* - £10 per person
* entrants will need to be under 30 on the closing date, 17 May 2013

The Exhibition showcases a wide range of genres and styles of photography, with cutting-edge prints being shown alongside traditional work – from the artistic to documentary, from portraiture to natural history.

Having a print selected for the touring exhibition offers great exposure for photographers just starting out in their careers as well as professionals and gives enthusiasts well deserved recognition. Previous selected International Print Exhibition photographers have included Simon Roberts FRPS, Laura Pannack and Julia Fullerton-Batten. The exhibition will tour for nearly a year from July 2013.