Pick up and Run

I was talking with a good friend the other night and he was marvelling over a photograph, from Libya, that had been taken by a French photojournalist. During the conversation he mentioned several times, that he would love to be in Libya, at the moment, as he had worked there,in another life, before photography and he knew the country and the people well. Subsequently, he felt that he would be able to get some exceptional images. What came next, was very interesting, he commented, that he did not think, that he would have gotten the image, that we had just been looking at, despite his belief that he should be there. His reasons for the statement are really not important, nor in my mind even relevant, but the statement itself was revealing. Here was a photographer, a very good one and one for whom photojournalism was a passion and yet he felt that he would not have been ready to capture this iconic, once in a lifetime( and it was ) image. I was actually quite surprised and it started me thinking. Having worked as a photojournalist and to an extent still doing so, I began to ponder the role of the photojournalist as documentarian, rather than news gatherer. Was my friends belief that he could capture unique images of the turmoil,false, or was his definition of his presence, that of a photojournalist,gathering news,inaccurate? Larry Towell, a renowned Canadian photojournalist and member of Magnum, does not gather breaking news, but rather documents the depth and the affects of a struggle on the people involved. Larry is a documentary photojournalist, rather than a hard news gatherer.Was this what my friend was trying to describe when he referred to his desire to be in Libya? Could he, subconsciously, have felt that he would not have gotten the aforementioned shot, because he would have been prepared not for hard news,but for life stories?

The traditional vision of a photojournalist, in the vein of a Burrows, or a Capa, was an individual whose bags were always packed and who could be expected, at a moments notice, to pick up and run, to whatever conflict or event, wherever in the world it happened.To the extent that that, is possible, in today's highly complex and profit oriented world, that may still be the case, but more and more, it is not. Today, such ventures must be intricately planned and authorized. Winging off to Vietnam, with a borrowed camera and a lust for adventure, as Tim Page did in the sixties, is not that realistic today. The glory days of photojournalism, are mostly, behind us now, replaced by the corporate dictates of profit and loss, versus, acceptable risk and exposure. Yes they want the stories, but not at great cost in relation to responsibility for photojournalist's remains or health care. Hence, you will see many more images from highly experienced shooters, from VII, or Magnum, or a news agency such as AP, or Reuters, than you will from some adventuresome individual with a camera and a dream. Such is not the case however, with the photo-ducumentarian. Here lies the path of the photojournalist of old and here lies the true recording for posterity, of world events. The risks, financially, are high. There are no guarantees of a front cover and an inside spread, after the initial public impact subsides, but here are where the real stories get told. Here are the people, left behind, to pick up the pieces of their broken lives and their broken countries. Here in the aftermath of the trouble and strife, are the images of the real cost of conflict and disaster. Here is where the photojournalist's eye is most challenged and most needed and all too often, absent.