I always believed that photography was subjective, interpretive and certainly did not represent the truth, but I did think that its status as a societal and historical referent needed to be both safeguarded and illuminated....now photojournalism is devolving into yet another medium perceived as intending to shock, titillate, sell, distort.

Fred Ritchin

Categorized in : Thinking Photography Historical

Many who are making cellphone images are advocates with a stake in the outcome of what they are depicting. In some ways this makes their work more honest and easier to read - they can also manipulate, although the work of professionals can be quite manipulative as well.

Fred Ritchin

honest outcomes way

In fact, the new malleability of the image may eventually lead to a profound undermining of photography's status as an inherently truthful pictorial form... If even a minimal confidence in photography does not survive, it is questionable whether many pictures will have meaning anymore, not only as symbols but as evidence.

Fred Ritchin

photography doe profound

The photograph that discovers and uncovers the world is harder to simulate than an image that simply illustrates one's ideas about it.

Fred Ritchin

photograph world ideas

Photographs need to demand the viewer's attention, often implicitly, posing questions as to the nature of what is being depicted. Photographs are not there to show us the world, but to show us a version of what may be happening.

Fred Ritchin

attention world needs

Photojournalism has become a hybrid enterprise of amateurs and professionals, along with surveillance cameras, Google Street Views, and other sources. What is underrepresented are those "metaphotographers" who can make sense of the billions of images being made and can provide context and authenticate them. We need curators to filter this overabundance more than we need new legions of photographers.

Fred Ritchin

surveillance-cameras google views

Word, image, and sound all must have primacy in the development of the narrative.

Fred Ritchin

narrative development sound

One cannot always summarize massive issues by looking at the life of one person or one family, or even one community.

Fred Ritchin

issues community persons

We have to tell people how images are made. And, the first step is to abandon the idea we're looking at photographs. We're looking at entry points to information and to the world in which the image was made.

Fred Ritchin

people world ideas

We have faith in the photograph not only because it works on a physically descriptive level, but in a broader sense because it confirms our sense of omnipresence as well as the validity of the material world.

Fred Ritchin

levels have-faith world

The inherent non-linearity of the digital allows for more input from others, including the subject and reader as collaborators. The top-down, bedtime-style story is of limited use. A non-linear narrative that allows for increased complexity and depth, and encourages both subject and reader to have greater involvement, will eventually emerge more fully from the digital environment. This, in a sense, is the more profound democratization of media.

Fred Ritchin

top-down media profound

Multimedia is not more media, but the employment of various kinds of media (and hybrid media) for what they each offer to advance the narrative.

Fred Ritchin

employment narrative media

We have a long history of snapshot photography that appeared to many to be more arbitrary and idiosyncratic than much of the work of professionals. We valued it for what it could tell us about the details of people's daily lives.

Fred Ritchin

photography long people

The decisive moment, the popular Henri Cartier-Bresson approach to photography in which a scene is stopped and depicted at a certain point of high visual drama, is now possible to achieve at any time. One's photographs, years later, may be retroactively rephotographed by repositioning the photographer or the subject of the photograph, or by adding elements that were never there before but now are made to exist concurrently in a newly elastic sense of space and time.

Fred Ritchin

photography drama years

There are very few instances where writers have also been effective image makers - different skill sets are required.

Fred Ritchin

different skills makers

I hope that many visual journalists will be hired or funded along the way as well - we urgently need their perspectives.

Fred Ritchin

perspective way needs

There is enormous need for professionals who know how to tell stories with narrative punch and nuance, who can work proactively and not just reactively, and whose approach is multi-faceted. We need more "useful photographers."

Fred Ritchin

narrative stories needs

What does a professional photojournalist do that others cannot? Depicting photo opportunities as if they are authentic, covering press conferences, or making subjects play their assigned roles (the poor as passive victims, celebrities as glamorous) are hardly adequate responses. In fact, these might be reasons to ask for the help of amateurs who do not know how to stylize their imagery and are not interested in making a publication seem more palatable to its potential consumers.

Fred Ritchin

covering play opportunity

The slideshow "is a very primitive form that quickly becomes predictable and repetitive."

Fred Ritchin

repetitive primitive form