We’ve mentioned photographer Rob Hornstra and his unorthodox and perhaps revolutionary ideas on funding his book projects before. He is currently working on a project about Sochi, Russia and the run-up to the next Winter Olympics, funding the trips via crowd-sourced donations (see link for more info). He discusses his ideas and methods about funding his own project on the New York Photo Festival’s website, and its a nice thing to hear. Inspiring.

There is also a small slideshow of posters he put up around Rome during an exhibition there, which is a cool thing to see and harkens to my old post Bringing Photos Back to the Street.

‘You must also ensure you show the effect of the NGO’s work rather than just the vulnerable members of society and their stories,’ [David Graham] says. ‘Providing such context is extremely important as otherwise you are just picturing misery without suggesting a solution – which in this case is the work of the NGO.’ -Telegraph “Common Goals“

The Telegraph has an interview/feature with David Graham, the photographer behind Changing Ideas, an organization which works with NGOs and photographers to develop communications strategies for the organizations. As we’ve mentioned previously photographers working with NGOs is relatively new and unexplored terrain. As NGOs fill the gap left by news media in funding and using photojournalism, Changing Ideas‘ mission will become more important.

Magnum’s Georgian Spring is an incredibly interesting project, and possibly a turning point in photojournalism and agency work. This book, print, web and ‘multimedia’ project is a collaboration with the Georgian state itself, funded by the Ministry of Culture and arranged by photographer Thomas Dworzak with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, and independently curated by publisher Chris Boot.
As Scott mentioned when this project first went live, 10 Magnum photographers are involved and are a very interesting cross section of what is being done in photojournalism today. Jörg Colberg, of Conscientious and photojournalism criticism fame, agrees in his review of the book. To quote him, “So there are ten photographic voices, all from the same photojournalistic agency – how could there be a crisis in photojournalism when there is such variety? Or asked in a different way: What kind of crisis?”

I see Georgian Spring as the latest in a series of interesting photographer and agency-driven productions where people are “doing it themselves” with alternative funding methods. I think of two other Magnum projects directly that I’ve always respected: Euro Visions, about the ten new EU states in 2004 in collaboration with Centre Pompidou and Magnum Off-Broadway (a project that deserves a post in itself, definitely coming soon).
Beyond being a necessary development to continue doing the work we’re out in the world to do, these agency and photographer-led projects almost invariably produce more interesting and personal work. (But maybe this is because I’m a photographer? Wonder if there is a breakdown between publication-designed and producer-designed projects with the public?).
There has been some hubbub around VII’s recent efforts (especially on the public relations front) to get ahead of new funding opportunities, such as working directly with NGOs and then maneuvering to have the work published. In an era where the number of assignments is shrinking and our archives are our pensions, finding any way to photograph important stories prior to selling them is intelligent. So likewise getting countries to pay for portrayals of themselves is an interesting idea that just brings this idea to a new level, and shows impressive lateral thinking. The multifaceted distribution is terrific too, from podcasts to an impressive book (so says Colberg, I haven’t seen it in person yet), to an exhibition and interactive website (with maps and breakdown by region in Georgia, which is nice to see). All around, from ideas to photographs to presentation, extremely well done and I think (at this early moment, juries will tell in time) a new landmark in photojournalism.

Thomas Dworzak has a long personal history of working in Georgia, having been (or continuing to be, as the website suggests) based in Tblisi. And maybe because of his close relationship with the country, and the president, his photographs in this project are the most contentious to me. Dworzak presents a love letter to Saakashvili, which is a curious choice given the mix of other work by his colleagues and the nature of the project itself. By all means I’ll defend his right to publish what he feels like but in such a project it is so strange to see this photo-profile of the president traveling the world, wooing its leaders and his domestic successes. The video presentation is especially strange, with lighthearted music, rapid pictures of the smiling president and running tourism-board commentary by Saakashvili himself. As PDN brought up in its piece Magnum on Georgia, For Georgia a “photojournalistic” project about a State funded by that State on the surface is begging for careful scrutiny of its objectivity. There seems to be ample distance between the creative and journalistic freedom of the photographers and their curator Chris Boot from the state itself, and many of the essays and their subject matter probably would not be picked up in tourist literature by Georgia.
Also enlivening from the PDN article is this quote:

According to Dworzak, the project set off some debate within Magnum. “It’s nothing extraordinary, Magnum has done it and other agencies have done it for many other countries, it’s just usually done in a very shitty way,” Dworzak says. That the Georgian government agreed to a completely hands-off approach “made it really easy to accept,” Dworzak relates.

On the other hand, I was blown away by many of the other projects. In some sense this was a narrow assignment, to bring photographers into one country and have them all cover it in their own way, perhaps putting photographers in positions they are not suited for in an obvious time crunch (the book was published roughly a year after the conflict with Russia). But just the opposite has happened, it opened each to do what they do best and it really compounds the impression of contemporary Georgia. As I said above, this project brings together ten unique voices and gives them freedom to search out their own stories and it is a treat to see it come together. I haven’t had a chance to watch through all ten ‘Magnum in Motion’ video presentations but two really have stuck with me, perhaps for obvious reasons.

Alex Majoli has long been an important photographer for me but his work in Georgia, both here and in the recent war, has taken my respect for him to a new level. Please have a look at his piece for this project on Magnum in Motion. From two stark black and white title cards that tie his personal experience (and relationship to music, which is dear to my heart) to his early photography and then straight to the emotions and people he was photographing in Georgia. The soundtrack, from Italian punk band CCCP, provides stark cohesion with the best of movie scores. The images are raw, beautiful and confounding.

Russian photographer Gueorgui Pinkhassov provides a similarly personal dispatch from Georgia, with terrific commentary (I believe his words, read by another person). Most of this piece is short video clips, fitting for a man who began his career as a cinematographer and working with Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. And they are ridiculously beautiful, absolutely in Pinkhassov’s ’style’ but in motion. Indeed some of the videos are from scenes that became final photographs for his contribution to the book, such as the one posted alongside here. It is a moving and unique vision, and I can’t recommend strongly enough seeing his work on Magnum in Motion.

And have a look at the Jonas Bendiksen video, you just might spot him having a drink with the people at the party (in another short video clip, again used nicely). Glad to see the photographers getting involved personally!

Another question, which I admit not giving much thought to yet, is the new “Hollywood” film about the war tentatively titled “Georgia”. Wired’s terrific Danger Room blog riffs on an AP story in a post titled One Year Later, Hollywood Re-Fights Georgia-Russia War. What does this other project Georgia-supported project mean for this Magnum work? The film isn’t funded by Georgia it seems but it has gotten state support, and Wired is framing it as pro-Georgia. Does this paint the Magnum Georgia a different hue?

In the end, I think it is a wonderful thing to have such a portrait about a nation in an interesting point of its history, and I of course want to see more projects of this sort of subject matter as well as innovative funding strategies like this. But the final product of Georgian Spring does still leave me with some caution, particularly with Dworzak’s piece included. Maybe it is the newness of this idea, having the subject fund the project themselves, or having potential conflicts of interest so close to the surface (that’s a good thing, but still something new to deal with), but I’m a touch uneasy still. A bold approach, ingenious in many regards, and its bound to ruffle feathers, and I’m happy that it has affected me that way too. Can’t wait to see what is next, and I’m inspired to think about all of these issues anew.

Sheryl Mendez post a long list of fellowships for early- and mid-career journalists over at lightstalkers. The list has a great variety, from country of interest to subject of concentration. You may need to be a member of lightstalkers to see the list. Contact me if you need an invitation to become a member of lightstalkers.

Just a news brief with a few minutes of internet while traveling through Bosnia: Alessandra Sanguinetti Wins National Geographic Magazine Grant for a project about food production.

I had the pleasure of seeing her speak about her work as part of a Magnum workshop last year and was utterly enchanted. She has a beautiful, unique voice in documentary pictures right now and I hope you take some time to look through (and think) about her work. I was very confused when I first saw the pictures but came around when I thought about the message, the truthful beauty in her pictures. I can’t wait (just like Jonas Bendiksen last year, and Eugene Richards the year before that) to see the pictures that are made from this grant.

(h/t PDN’s Twitter feed)

Brian Ulrich can’t believe he’s alive because he’s just been named a 2009 Guggenheim Fellow. Other photographers awarded the fellowship this year, most previously unknown to me: Thomas Joshua Cooper (examples), Osamu James Nakagawa, Suzanne Opton (you may have seen her Soldier Billboard Project), Anna Shteynshleyger, Cheryle St. Onge, and Byron Glen Wolfe (can’t find anything online for Wolfe… update: link found thanks to Tom in the comments).

Brian Ulrich has long been a favorite of mine. His work documenting retail stores, thrift stores, and store backrooms, explains the current American economy (starting about when George W. Bush told the American public that the most patriotic thing they could do after Sept. 11 was to go shopping) better than any photojournalism I’ve seen. Ulrich’s recent essay on closed stores in the suburbs for Time left me a little wanting (except for a picture or two), but the rest of his work is top notch, for sure.

I know plenty of people are following our dvafoto Deadline Calendar, which you can always find on the right-hand column on our site. I just wanted to send out a reminder that a number of popular grants and contests are coming due, because they definitely caught me off guard.

First, the ever-popular Emerging Photographer Grant for 2009 sponsored by David Alan Harvey through his online Burn Magazine along with Magnum. This is due Wednesday, April 1 via online submission with Photoshelter.

Also two big European awards from manufacturers are due now: the Linhof Young Photographer Award has a postmark date of Tuesday March 31 and the Hasselblad Masters Awards (with a handy ‘up and coming’ category) has an online submission due Wednesday April 1. All of these have free entry.

Lastly Hey Hot Shot’s next entry period is due May 1st, online submission for $60.

So finish your edits. There are more prizes down the line, be sure to keep your eyes on the calendar which we’ll update when we can with the prizes and grants that we’re interested in. Feel free to email us suggestions for things we’re missing and we’ll work on sharing them too.

UPDATE: Since posting this earlier I’ve found a few more things that are happening this week: Px3: Prix de la Photographie Paris has apparently extended their deadline until Tuesday March 31, with student and pro categories. Also you can submit for exhibitions at two major photojournalism festivals: Visa Pour L’Image is due Friday April 3 and The Noorderlicht International Photofestival has submissions due Saturday April 4. Good luck!

Let’s have a look at an interesting monologue, in the form of a letter to a friend of his, from the always engaging Asim Rafiqui on his wonderful young blog The Spinning Head about What Ails Photojournalism.

Photos are not journalism. Journalism is an endeavor with a commitment to communal and social responsibility. It is a public service with the objective of keeping check on abuses of power, the rights of the individual, the protection of the well fare of the community, the exposure of the illegal, the tracking down of the downright unjust. I said this before in a lightstalker post, journalism will rely on amateurs the day it itself become amateurish. It is not multimedia that will save journalism or photojournalism, but a commitment to quality and a commitment back to the public service. We are far from this realization.

There is a lot in here, and while he admits that it “was written in a single breath and hence carries within it errors of insight and judgment” I definitely agree that it “remains interesting enough”. He calls to task the whole culture and ‘machine’ of publishing and photojournalism. “There is another underlying reason why photojournalism is dying, and that we are still not prepared to confront. The reason is that most photographers and photojournalists are purveyors of cliches and repetitive, predictable stories.”; he calls for innovation in both our stories and our way of storytelling. Culture all around us is moving forward and evolving through new media and at new speed. What has been good (W Eugene Smith-type) remains so, but it is not enough … innovation must take place, the same in any field.

Not to quote too much (just go read the whole thing, it is worth your time and I’d love to hear the different reactions it is sure to bring up in our diverse readership), but this seems to me to hit directly on the point. As a photographer banging his head against walls trying to get stories produced I’ve gotten to the point where I really am taking into consideration what kind of story each publication would want to see by looking at what they’ve done before and exporting it. In some sense I’m honestly trying to find the cliche that will mesh with an editor’s preconceived notions of what is happening here, just to sell a picture. Its not what I want or why I became a photographer, but somehow it is becoming ingrained as ‘how its done’:

We have lost our love of the story. We are no longer telling interesting stories. In fact it could be argued that photojournalism today is basically middle class voyuerism. It carries with it the stifling and infantile morality of a middle brow suburban family and attempts to deliver ’shock’ stories to titilate them into watching. Or it just reduces to historical and charter-tour cliches stories that could be rich, complex and eye-opening.

Just look at National Geographic – if its Iran, its Persipolis. if its Bolivia, its the Antiplano. if its Pakistan, its the Taliban. Tiresome, boring, repetitive, predictable, uncreative, uninteresting stories about some of the most interesting and evolving countries in the world! Even the formulas and mechanics of photojournalism are boring and predictable. This magazine refuses to go and explore places in new ways, to produce angles that are creative and interesting, and that challenge our thinking and ideas about a place. Is Persipolis really all that one has to stay about Iran today? This incredibly complex and incredibly interesting country is left silenced! (sic)

As someone who just recently moved to Belgrade in part to put a lot of my time and focus on the Balkans it kills be to be told again and again, by editors and photographers alike, that this “story is over”, that I missed my chance to photograph here now that the wars are over. Are you kidding me? There is so much happening here, worthwhile stories around almost every single corner that I’m convinced would be engaging and interesting for audiences if there were presented to them. But I’m told that people aren’t interested, that they’ve moved on. Or is that the editor’s inference? I honestly think that if you make an interesting story with interesting photographs, the readers and viewers will come. The disconnect is that access to viewers, and while plenty of us are trying to publish our work ourselves (see below) there is a realistic gap in time and technology to gaining a critical mass of viewers. It will take time, yes, but we’re not being helped very much. I think Rafiqui would agree that our community itself is stifling these possible stories, forcing us to look for the exotic or sensational (or worse, “newsworthy”), in other words, the cliche. Yes there is news, and sensational exotic moments and places in our world. But that is so very far removed from most anyone’s daily life and I really don’t think our interest is limited to this. A ‘day in the life’, no, but a creative look at something we’ve never seen before is worth much more of our time, and I think our audience would agree with their own attention span, than another look at something we’ve seen time and again. I’d ask what came first, the audience for celebrity-based, false-exotic ‘journalism’ or the publications that provided it? I think there must be some element of the top-down here, something must have started with the publications and their editorial decisions.

Not all of Rafiqui’s arguments are new, but I give him credit for putting this all together into an essay and not being afraid to really call out the mainstream institutions (publishers, festivals, editors and photographers) for their assumed wisdom and conservatism toward moving beyond antiquated traditions and conventions of storytelling and of what is an ‘acceptable’ story in the first place (see Part II/III especially). They and our peers don’t understand what is happening (not that I, Scott or Asim necessarily do either, as Rafiqui rightly admits at the end of his piece: no one knows the future. But I think we can agree with some thought that there are wrong paths and bad ideas to be following right now). Conventional wisdom and the most popular outlets and photographers are doing us wrong; that is the problem. It is up to individuals and small teams to push new models forward, and we’re all on our own for now.

And people are doing it. I’ll start from this old post of mine titled Doing It Yourself where I look at Alec Soth’s observation about Magnum needing to become its own producer to survive. A precursor to this discussion and Rafiqui’s piece I think. Along these lines look at the Luceo Images crew who are pulling things in tight and developing their own systems for distribution, promotion and funding. Of course Magnum Photos is actually the best example in my mind of attacking these issues head-on with their growing social networking (Facebook, Twitter, blogging) and the development of their Educational arm alongside their existing Cultural wing to expand their brand and marketing opportunities with partnerships with media-related companies like HP, Photoshelter and Blurb to create a series of Grants (Burn) and Awards (Expression Award) for photographers outside of Magnum while retaining some funding for parallel opportunities with their own photographers. Old school business tactics I’m sure (I’d have to ask my brother the business major…) but innovative all the same in this market.

Good pictures are not enough. We all need to be smarter and more creative in how we do stories. From the very idea to the approach to funding, distributing and publishing the pictures. If we want to keep doing work that matters to us we are being forced to find a way around the current logjam. Left out on our own (M Scott and I are perfect living examples of this) we must adapt and survive somehow. There aren’t many scraps to be had from the MSM at the moment so we look elsewhere. Where to is the question, and I think Rafiqui’s astute pressure for elevated and evolved stories and storytelling is part of the answer.

And so he ends with a positive look at the coming opportunities, which is somewhat similar to Vincent LaForet’s much ballyhooed essay on Sportsshooter titled The Cloud is Falling (which I think Rafiqui calls out earlier in his piece). This is not a contradiction though: we agree that in this time of shrinking budgets we must see that there are other markets and outlets beyond the ‘old guard’ of magazines that will have potential for growth, profit and excellent work that are just now developing or are yet to. We’re thinking too narrowly. A lot of people are talking about this point right now (and Colberg follows up with another interesting post citing examples), and no one either knows or is willing to share exactly how to exploit it (with the exception of LaForet who is essentially flaunting his recent successes on his blog, especially around the ridiculously fawned over film “Reverie” that debuted last year as an example of the ‘next big thing’.. DLSRs with HD Video capability. Personally, this falls right into the sights of Rafiqui’s quote about multimedia). Scott is quite correct in pointing out that LaForet’s latest successes are not in photojournalism. There’s nothing wrong with this work, but there’s little use advocating it as a savior model for real photography. $10,000 budgets for a 5 minute video don’t come from nowhere, no matter what ridiculous music you put in it. They’re based on advertising calculations and in LaForet’s case they’re directed toward photographers themselves (is that sustainable?). These budgets don’t, and probably won’t, materialize for the stories we need to see; It is great for LaForet to be able to pursue his interests with these sponsored videos but I dare say they’re not “a public service” nor apropos to our society’s needs of finding a sustainable source of photojournalism in the future. We need to produce work that engages on its own merit.

And on multimedia not being a savior (a cry both M. Scott and I have been shouting for ages): “multimedia is merely a mechanism that can never hide the banality or predictability of a subject. It is a means to an end, but if the end if poor, no amount of flash and dash will save anything.” Scott has always said something to the effect of, ‘unless a multimedia piece has a perfect photo story coupled with perfect audio (think This American Life) the sum will be less than its parts’ and thus the multimedia would be less important, useful and worthwhile than doing just pictures or just audio.

I say this as I sit here and stare into the void – confident that I have strong new ideas, scared that no one will value them, determined that i have no choice but to step into the void itself. Your second reference about ‘tenacity’ was right on the mark. Like any field where you pursue a passion a love and a need to be free of the machinery of the capitalist, you must be prepared to pay a heavy price. Our societies do not value those who do not serve the interests of others, but merely their own whims, curiousities, loves and fears.

Amen. And good luck to us all. I know we will succeed but it will be a rough road. I am scared too that no one will value the pictures, ideas and vision I have and that I know seriously talented friends and colleagues, all of us underemployed and struggling, possess. Rough going now and for some future, but the good ideas and great stories and images will rise. I hope this is just the start of a dialogue, I know my thoughts are not fully reasoned out, and that we need to keep thinking and talking about this. Let it rip in the comments please!

Be sure to follow up with some of Asim Rafiqui’s own work. He is the 2009 winner of the Aftermath Project grant for his innovative project The Idea of India that I think is a great example of this new storytelling and distribution that he is preaching in this essay. Have a look, tell us what you think.

(And lastly, sorry if there was any funny business with double-postings or with the RSS as this went up, I was having some backside publishing problems)

Getty Images has (finally) announced the winners of the February 2009 prizes. The two big winners of the $20,000 professional grants are dvafoto favorites Alex Majoli and Paolo Pellegrin, both Italian photographers from Magnum. They are continuing large projects of theirs that we have seen previously: Majoli produced a terrific ‘Magnum in Motion’ piece of his project Requiem in Samba a year or two ago and Pellegrin’s project “Iraqi Refugees” was shown in an exhibition at Visa Pour l’Image this past year as ‘The Iraqi Diaspora’ to rave reviews. Deep congratulations to both for extremely worthy projects (be sure to read their proposals on the Getty site), I cannot wait to see more work from both.

Also announced were the first in a series of Student Grants of $5,000, to Bolivian photographer (by way of the US) Maximiliano Braun for his project “Stay With Me”. He writes, “The Getty Images grant will allow me to continue a project I began in South Africa, looking into the lives of families caring for a relative living in a vegetative state due to brain damage.” The other winner is German photographer Andy Spyra for his ongoing work in Kashmir documenting the results of the long-simmering war there. Terrific pictures.

On a side note, I’m so excited to see that Alex Majoli is shooting more editorial work again. (And that picture I posted above has long been a favorite of mine). For example, see his coverage of Pakistan, to the Russo-Georgian Conflict and most recently the latest Israel-Gaza Conflict on the Magnum site.

A. C. Thompson’s Nation article about racist vigilante killings during Hurricane Katrina has been on the edges of the news recently, but what I noticed when I first saw the article was the italic type at the top of the page.

A.C. Thompson’s reporting on New Orleans was directed and underwritten by the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute. ProPublica provided additional support, as did the Center for Investigative Reporting and New America Media.

We’ve written here before about the need for funding for in-depth and long-term journalism about what might be unpopular subjects as newspapers are drying up, and I think we’ll see a lot more of these sorts of underwriting disclosure statements. Maybe every article will soon start and end with “portions of this article have been funded by readers like you,” ala the American Public Broadcasting System’s “Viewers Like You”. (And here’s a short wikipedia history of “Viewers Like You”)

And while the portrait for the Nation article doesn’t make me swoon, I’m always curious when I see two names underneath a photo. Chandra McCormick and husband Keith Calhoun have been photographing New Orleans culture for 30 years (NYT slideshow, MSNBC article with video). They’re also fellows at the Open Society Institute (unfortunately, not too many photos there or elsewhere online, it seems). Their house was destroyed during the hurricane, and it was where they ran their photo studio. Much of their photo archive was damaged, but the water transformed the pictures into a visceral record of the damage caused by the storm and floods. This page at Architecture for Humanity suggests that the Calhoun Center for the Arts has been built, and it might be the new L9 Art Center which is mounting the Prospect.1 exhibition right now, featuring McCormick and Calhoun’s work alongside others’. Wish I could see it.