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)

Been in a little funk over the weekend after hearing that I didn’t get an important grant from my university that was to fund my Russia story.. there are other paths and I’m pursuing them vigorously but this was a bummer. Spent much of the last few days reading, looking, listening and thinking and, since I haven’t come up with a big post to write from any of them, I’ll have to dump on you another massive link roundup. Lots of interesting things and terrific photographs, hope something suits your fancy if you’re looking for a little education or entertainment.

I’ve had a borrowed copy of Joe Sacco’s Safe Area Gorazde on my desk for a few weeks and I just found time to read through. Fucking brilliant, and utterly heartbreaking. If you’re not familiar, it is a illustrated piece of journalism .. war journalism in ‘comic book’ form. Brought me right back to all of the people I know and the things I’ve seen in Bosnia .. Gilles Peress had it right, first, with the sentiment behind his book “Farewell to Bosnia”. Gone, gone was the idea of a true multi-ethnic Bosnia. And this isn’t something that has gone away, warns Richard Holbrooke in the Guardian. I’ll be delving into this deeply when I’m back over there.. (also, reading this inspired me to go find my copy of Eugene Richard’s The Fat Baby.. which has a story I haven’t seen anywhere else about his trip to a Serb war hospital in Bosnia in 1995.. if you have the book go look and read.)

Got up this yesterday morning and found a particularly interesting post by Kevin German on his blog Wandering Light, featuring a new body of work he is starting on mental illness in Vietnam. I think it is a tremendous start of a story with beautiful photographs .. well worth a look. Very interesting timing, too, as I saw Friday for the first time Eugene Richards’ new book A Procession of Them at the bookstore. An important topic and I admire these photographers for pursuing this difficult story .. I spent an hour in an institution in Kosovo this past June (one that Richards covered much better in his own book) and it was a draining situation.. hats off to these men.
(c) Kevin German

I know that at least a few of you out there are interested in the Balkans like me, and I’ve got to recommend a story in Vanity Fair about Ramush Haradinaj, “House of War”. A remarkably well done piece about this man, who is a former KLA general and PM of Kosovo and an acquitted war criminal. Plenty of background about the war in the West of Kosovo too.

I’ve mentioned Jason Eskenazi and his new book Wonderland a couple of times now (1, 2), and last week NPR published an interview with him, and you can listen online. Eugene Richards even pops up to give some nice commentary. Seems like everyone is noticing and writing about this book these days, also see the write-up on The Fader’s website.

Here is an interesting (if slightly formulaic) article from the Washington Post (signin might be required .. try bugmenot.com if you need one) about Barack Obama’s transition from ‘normal guy’ to President. “Much to His Chagrin, ‘Plain Old Barack Is Gone’”. Odd picture of a scary secret service guy, but otherwise I enjoyed this peek into the transition.

From the wonderful Wooster Collective blog: Old photo-street art, and Michael Rakowitz’s ParaSites, inflatable shelters for the homeless, and an example (with Gaia) of Wooster’s revived and terrific “The A’s to our Q’s” series. Beyond cool art, they’re great little interviews .. inspiration for our series here on Dva too.

I have no idea what kind of reputation the magazine MONOCLE has, I only ran into it while traveling through Heathrow some months ago. Beyond way too expensive items recommended, there is a terrific design and feel to the mag. I’m curious to know more about it.. (chime in please if you know something). On their website I just saw a nifty little video-story about “New designs on diplomacy”, the process behind designing new embassies (in this case UK and Norway) in stressed locales. Quite interesting.

For anyone out there who is still wanting to wallow in the Digital Railroad mess, here is a lengthy piece (which I admit I haven’t read completely) by Photoshelter CEO Allen Murabayashi: “What Happened to Digital Railroad?”.

I can’t remember where I first saw G.M.B. Akash’s work from Bangladesh, but I was reminded again when he wrote on Lighstalkers that he won the 2008 Kindernothilfe Media Award in Germany for a story on Child Labor. See the story, which includes this World Press winning picture, on his website.

11th Annual Postcards From the Edge: A Benefit for Visual AIDS seems like a very interesting opportunity to donate a small piece of work for a good cause. Check it out.

More music (video): “Create Your Own Rainbow”, a chance to mix your own version of Radiohead’s “15 Step” off of In Rainbows via a crazy interface and 12 camera angles. I don’t have enough bandwidth where I’m at, apparently, to make it run smoothly but maybe you’ll have more luck.

Lastly, Colberg at Conscientious writes On photography collectives. In short, he is ‘pro’ photographers working together and can’t figure out why there aren’t more Congrats again to Luceo for being ahead of the curve.

We’re working a lot of interesting things for the coming weeks, some more interviews and I’ll have more to chat about my near-term plans for a marketing trip to New York and the move to Belgrade. Stay tuned!