D ernière victime de la crise des agences de presse photographiques, L’Œil public déposera le bilan en janvier 2010.” – Le Monde, Dec. 23, 2009 (google translation)

There’s sad news this holiday season. Oeil Public, a small and very interesting French collective photo agency, will file for bankruptcy in January 2010 (original French). The reasons are familiar: declining assignments, declining fees, shrinking space for photography in print, etc. It’s sad to see this one go. The collective showed much promise over the past decade and had a great roster of photographers. Thoughts of a Bohemian has some analysis.

Be sure to check out Oeil Public’s 2009 Photos of the Year.

(via Thoughts of a Bohemian)

Tomasz Tomaszewski - Hades - SocialDocumentary.net Winner

SocialDocumentary.net has announced the winners in the site’s “Documenting the Global Recession” contest. Tomasz Tomaszewski’s story “Hades?,” a story documenting widespread loss of industry and jobs in Poland, took the top prize with honorable mentions going to Khaled Hasan, Michael McElroy, and Shiho Fukada, and the People’s Choice awards going to Matt Eich and David Wells. Lots of great work to see behind those links, but I’m especially interested in the contest being used as a way to generate interest in work addressing the economy. We’ve written previously about tired images of financial crises and the difficulty of photographing something as nebulous and abstract as a recession related to complex financial derivatives. These stories recognized in SocialDocumentary.net’s contest humanize complicated international financial issues from a deeply engaged and emotional perspective. Definitely worth a look.

Newsweek - The Valley of Shadows - photos by Ken Light

Newsweek’s just published a brilliant and far-reaching investigation into California’s growing economic and water crises. The Valley of Shadows, a five-part series comprising wonderful photos by Ken Light, original reporting, interactive maps, and audio, is a great example of what most journalism might look like in a few years: hard-hitting visuals backed up by well-researched facts and figures in a relatively easy to navigate package. It’s exciting to see this sort of long-form journalism continuing in uncertain economic times; producing this sort of content isn’t cheap (just look at the list of names involved in the production: Photographer: Ken Light. Reporter: Katie Paul. Photo Editor: Margaret Keady. Audio Editor: Dylan Isbell. Project Editors: Mark Coatney, Kathy Jones, Carl Sullivan. And those are only the people that get listed; there’s a slew of people behind the scenes making sure all the i’s are dotted).

(via Dylan Isbell, audio editor for the package)

Eugene Richards - from The Blue Room

The more you said, in some ways, the more you took away” -Eugene Richards on the lack of text in The Blue Room

Foto8 has just published a short slideshow and accompanying artist’s lecture featuring Eugene Richards‘ latest book, “The Blue Room” (previously). This is the largest selection from the book that I’ve seen online. There’s sparse information about the talk on the Foto8 website, but I think it’s likely a recording from this event.

update: Here’s foto8’s official page for the slideshow.

Reuters reports that storied French photo agency Gamma, now a division of Eyedea, is on the edge of financial collapse. Rising to prominence through its coverage of the 1968 Paris uprising and the Vietnam War, Gamma “can no longer pay its bills.” The Reuters report notes that “Other units [of Eyedea], like the one producing celebrity photographs, are still profitable.”

(via NPPA)

Mannequins display clothing for sale in a window display in the Bund area of Shanghai, China.

I’ve recently completed a body of work on China’s domestic consumer market. Long dormant, recent years have shown the billion or so potential consumers make an attractive target for the companies throughout the world. Coca-Cola knew this early on, but now companies such as Wal-Mart, Carrefour, Mercedes-Benz, H&M, Louis Vitton, Pizza Hut, and any other brand you know have opened shops in major urban centers in China.

Politicians in Beijing have been downplaying the severity of China’s share of the global economic crisis. Outlooks remain optimistic and, thanks in part to half-trillion-dollar stimulus plans, the country’s economic growth has not declined as rapidly as some had predicted. Through tax incentives, government-provided shopping vouchers, a lowering Consumer Price Index, and a nationwide “Buy China” movement, consumer spending in China has remained strong throughout recent months and is expected to grow in the near future. While many doubt that the country’s domestic market will bring swift respite to the world’s economies, evidence suggests it has done much to soften the blow to China’s bottom line.

A jewelry merchant passes out free bracelets and necklaces to a few lucky passers-by outside a supermarket in Nanjing, China. The merchant hoped the giveaway would act a promotion for his store.

People walk through a wholesale market near the Fuzi Miao area of Nanjing, Jiangsu, China. This market supplies consumer goods to smaller markets and shops in the rest of the city.

Tourists and shoppers walk into the Nanjing East Road subway station in Shanghai, China.

Shoppers check out at a discount clothing section of a large department store in Nanjing, China.

People look at recent offerings of the revitalized MG car company in Nanjing, China. Originally a British company, MG Nanjing has taken over the brand and will market cars in China starting in 2007, with plans to move to the British market in later years.

Shoppers ride an escalator from Wal-Mart in Wanda Plaza in the central Xinjeikou shopping district in Nanjing, Jiangsu, China.

A family loads consumer goods onto a truck in Guilin, Guangxi Province, China.

People look into a Mercedes-Benz car dealership in central Shanghai, China.

People walks past high-fashion stores and billboards at the Deji Plaza shopping mall in the central Xinjeikou shopping area of Nanjing, Jiangsu, China.

People shop for small electronics at a wholesale market in the Fuzi Miao area of Nanjing, Jiangsu, China. The market acts as a distributor of consumer goods to shops and smaller markets throughout the city.

A Trust-Mart supermarket employee rests on an escalator between floors of the supermarket in Nanjing, China.

More work from the series can be seen on my website, “Hao shaoxi, hao shaoxi: China’s domestic consumer market”.

You heard me right: Publicly traded newspapers stocks have been doing quite well lately.”

Rick Edmonds the Poynter Institute’s Biz Blog analyzes the stocks of publicly traded newspaper companies and finds some interesting results. Of the nine stocks listed almost all are up at least double from their 3-month low (the Washington Post Company’s stock, now at $370, isn’t because the stock price is so high, and McClatchy at 69 cents a share (finally more than the cost of a single issue of many its papers!) is up only 75% from its 3-month low). Many of the stocks are still quite low–well below 5 dollars a share–so they’re still considered risky buys. The news is good sign, however, after weeks and months of bad financial news for all media companies. And, if you’d bought any of these stocks in early March, you would’ve doubled your money by now. Long-term prospects, of course, remain dismal. Warren Buffett’s recent pronouncement that “For most newspapers in the United states, we [Berkshire Hathaway] would not buy them at any price,” does little to reassure.

John Francis Peters - from Just a Dream

There’s been no shortage of coverage of the current economic crisis affecting the US, but John Francis Peters‘ “Just a Dream” project has really drawn me in. To see the essay, go to Peters’ website and find “Just a Dream” under “New Work.” As in other essays on the topic, especially in essays on “destination du jour” Detroit, the decay and abandonment are prominent. This essay, though, in the still-inflated balloon or the damp spot on the garage floor under the house, communicates the currency of the economic violence ripping through towns across the country. Not only have these houses been ripped out from under their previous tenants, but the removal happened swiftly, fiercely, and probably just last week. I saw these pictures a few weeks ago, but the communication in these little details keeps drawing me in.

From the artist statement:

After a few minutes wandering through oddly colored rooms and taking in the dull smells of animal dander and black mold, something else begins to absorb into my sense. It can only be described through how I feel the energy in the rooms, distress, sadness, loss. Something else is still in the home and it hints at its existence through violent holes in the wall, children’s stickers, an old lamp, curdled milk, a pink rubber ball, a suicide note written in magic marker.”

The British Photographic Council recently surveyed more than 1,000 photographers, press agencies, and picture libraries and found some disturbing trends. Editorial Photographers: United Kingdom and Ireland has the results. 93% of photographers have come under pressure to hand over greater rights to clients for no increase in the fee, with 76% saying that their income has fallen as a result.

Some more key points:

These findings are only representative of the UK, but I imagine some similarities in the worldwide photo industry. More data in the full survey results PDF.

(via The Click)

Alec Soth’s work from the US and China from last summer seems downright prescient in hindsight. Time and the New York Times Magazine have been playing catch-up with recent pieces on Cleveland and Detroit. And of course, there’s Anthony Suau’s excellent work from Cleveland, which we’ve recently written about previously, and which just got the Digital Journalist treatment.

And while Soth’s work was created for the Telegraph, the pictures seemed to have vanished from their website, except for a couple of instances. I grabbed the video above, created by the Telegraph, from Exposure Compensation. And a few pictures are available in the Magnum archive.