Photojournalism as an industry has experienced a highly dynamic development in recent years. The present study aims to provide an encompassing image of this industry and its emergence, as well as its ...challenges in the current context. The cultural dimension of this sector, as well as its prevalent connection to the book industry, constitute two of the main perspectives elaborated in this study. Lastly, an entrepreneurial perspective on photojournalism as a profession is adopted, while a detailed DESTEP analysis is provided further to illustrate the practical implications of this field of work.
How does a photograph become a news image? An ethnography of the labor behind international news images, Image Brokers ruptures the self-evidence of the journalistic photograph by revealing the many ...factors determining how news audiences are shown people, events, and the world. News images, Zeynep Gürsel argues, function as formative fictions – fictional insofar as these images are constructed and culturally mediated, and formative because their public presence and circulation have real consequences in the world. Set against the backdrop of the War on Terror and based on fieldwork conducted at photojournalism’s centers of power, Image Brokers offers an intimate look at an industry in crisis. At the turn of the 21st century, image brokers—the people who manage the distribution and restriction of news images—found the core technologies of their craft, the status of images, and their own professional standing all changing rapidly with the digitalization of the infrastructures of representation. From corporate sales meetings to wire service desks, newsrooms to photography workshops and festivals, Image Brokers investigates how news images are produced and how worldviews are reproduced in the process.
Contrary to the scholarly literature frequently associating digitization with external threats to professional photojournalists, this study focuses on internal factors: the new routines and practices ...of digital photojournalism, embedding them in the broader context of growing threats to cultural industries and labor markets. Using a longitudinal perspective, and based on in-depth interviews with 15 Israeli photojournalists with experience of both the chemical and digital eras, we suggest that digitization has had much wider ripples than just accelerating the speed and efficiency in which news photos are taken, transmitted, selected, manipulated, stored, and retrieved. Although not “causing” the crisis in the employment and work conditions of professional photojournalists, the implementation of digitization created a negative synergy between their old and new weaknesses. Further new routines may help restore the supremacy of professional photographers if they succeed in emphasizing their reskilling and upskilling enabled by new technology.
A photographer in the forest Adhikari, Bipin
The Lancet infectious diseases,
June 2023, 2023-06-00, 20230601, Volume:
23, Issue:
6
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
The mixture of author's lived experience and an entirely different world through the lens of a camera cannot be more captivating than the living stories in the book. The book starts with Almasy's ...real-life experiences of how he left his home country, Hungary, to explore and settle in London, New York, Shanghai, Kuala Lumpur, and various other cities in southeast Asia. Almasy has shared some of the compelling stories in Stung Treng as he walked through the villages, sometimes through the forests, visiting schools where children participated in engagement activities, and reporting their stories on what has afflicted them in the community.
This study explored the photojournalism and news presentation of the Middletown (NY) Times Herald-Record before and after the newspaper laid off its entire photography staff. Differences between ...professional and non-professional photographs were compared. Following the layoff, the paper published fewer images, and presented less prominently. Professional images captured significantly more elements of photojournalism than non-professionals, including emotion, action, conflict, and graphic appeal. Professional images were presented larger and more prominently. Results of this case study provide evidence that—despite clear differences in image content—photojournalists are struggling to assert their professional legitimacy in the digital age.
This study explores the impact of organizational changes on newspaper photo departments, an area of newsrooms that have arguably been particularly affected by structural changes in the field of ...journalism Through qualitative interviews with editors responsible for photojournalism at five Swedish newspapers that have experienced recent changes to photo staffing and routines for the sourcing of images, the study explores the following questions: Which routines do the newspapers have for sourcing images, in terms of in-house staff and external sources? How do notions of visual quality and external factors, such as audiences and competition, contribute to shaping the newspapers’ visual strategies? Findings indicate that newspapers rely on staff photojournalists for unique and in-depth coverage, but less for routine and breaking news. A certain expansion of photojournalism was found in some newsrooms where it is seen as a competitive edge; which, in part, challenges a “discourse of doom.” Uncertainty about the support for visual strategies in newsrooms lacking visual leadership was also found.
Expendable or valuable? Maria Nilsson
Journalistica (Århus.),
12/2021, Volume:
15, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Open access
This study explores the impact of organizational changes on newspaper photo departments, an area of newsrooms that have arguably been particularly affected by structural changes in the field of ...journalism Through qualitative interviews with editors responsible for photojournalism at five Swedish newspapers that have experienced recent changes to photo staffing and routines for the sourcing of images, the study explores the following questions: Which routines do the newspapers have for sourcing images, in terms of in-house staff and external sources? How do notions of visual quality and external factors, such as audiences and competition, contribute to shaping the newspapers’ visual strategies? Findings indicate that newspapers rely on staff photojournalists for unique and in-depth coverage, but less for routine and breaking news. A certain expansion of photojournalism was found in some newsrooms where it is seen as a competitive edge; which, in part, challenges a “discourse of doom.” Uncertainty about the support for visual strategies in newsrooms lacking visual leadership was also found.
The Violence of the Image Kennedy, Liam; Patrick, Caitlin
2014, 2014-07-23, 2020-09-13, Volume:
15
eBook
Photography has visualized international relations and conflicts from the midnineteenth century onwards and continues to be an important medium in framing the worlds of distant, suffering others. ...Although photojournalism has been challenged in recent decades, claims that it is dead are premature. The Violence of the Image examines the roles of image producers and the functions of photographic imagery in the documentation of wars, violent conflicts and human rights issues; tackling controversial ideas such as witnessing, the making of appeals based on displays of human suffering and the much-cited concept of compassion fatigue.
The article addresses the issue of the alteration of images in the digital age, and therefore the question of the authenticity and truthfulness of documentary photographs, through the analysis of ...some cases that involved affirmed reporters (awarded on the occasion of international contests by major photojournalistic institutions) and their professional integrity; vicissitudes that had important aftermaths and stimulated (especially on websites and blogs) technical, deontological and theoretical debates concerning the legitimacy of manipulative operations and their ethical implications.
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