PHOTOGRAPHY:SHOOTING THE TRUTH: March 2010

Press photography versus art photography

There are many differences between press photography and art photography. The main reason should be their different purposes. Press photography, shot usually by photojournalist, is basically used to record facts and tell news stories to public. Art photography is for displaying the art photographer’s feeling or opinion in some scenes. I picked two press photographs and two art photographs.

We can see many people in these press photographs. They had variable gestures and expressions, but the scene was just in that frame. For example, there might be thousands of photojournalist shooting an incident at the same moment. The result was that we can get the same news about what happened at that time, whether they were shooting at the same point of view or not. But if there was just prosaic things, such as birds flying, a tree in the wind, etc. , we still can feel something different from a variety of photographer catching pictures at different angles. Although the target can also be people, the model should exactly do what the artist wants in order to achieve the art goals. When we are looking at the other two art photographs, I think the first impression for us is a flower and a vestibule. Then we start to think what the artist would like to show us. And we may get different results.

However, there are also some similarities between press photography and art photography. Through those four photographs, we can see that both types of photography should have key targets. It’s an atmosphere. No matter that is for art or for press, photography requires to catch the moment. In 1952, Henri Cartier Bresson expressed his much quoted credo: The Decisive Moment: “To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms which give that event its proper expression” (Salgado, 1990, p.147). He mentioned that the essential component in photography, which is Decisive Moment.

In conclusion, press photography is the press, which tells us news. And Art photography is the art, which tells us a sort of feeling.

Photos:
1. Cartier-Bresson: India: Funeral of Gandhi 1948 (The World of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Photo 170)

2. Cartier-Bresson: Michigan 1960 (The World of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Photo 146)

3,4. Andre Kertesz Photographs at Photography
http://www.photography-now.net/andre_kertesz/portfolio1.html

Photojournalism is the use of photographs in conjunction with the reporting of news in media such as print newspapers, magazines, television news and internet reporting.¹To tell news stories, journalists create images through shooting the photos of the scenes, combining the groups of pictures, and presenting them in publication. Today, the role of the photo journalism is general and even essential for the press releasing. Photos can show you the events visually, which is more stunning, direct, and effective than the text.

Because of the technical development, the smaller, lighter and more advanced cameras greatly enhanced the role of the photojournalist. There are not any the limitations of film roll length, information timeliness, and photography accuracy. Thousands of images can be stored on a single memory card. Photos can be promptly transmitted to the newsroom at the same time. Photographers can easily catch the key moments. Thus, the incorporation of photographs into news reports is so ubiquitous that a story without photographs to a contemporary audience feels incomplete, as though they were only getting half the story.¹

In our opinion, there are several rules that photojournalists should follow. Photojournalism distinguishes itself from other forms of professional photography by its adherence to the principles of journalism: timeliness, accuracy, fair representation of the context of events and facts reported, and accountability to the public.¹ Basically one of the rules is formed by itself because it is the journalism, which is authenticity, timeliness and accuracy. The other rules are some requirements of photographs, such as clear topics, strong atmosphere, and accurate freeze-frame. For combined editing of photographs and texts, there are some rules like connection between words and pictures, and appropriate layout. Therefore, photojournalists should follow both rules of journalism and photography, and also the photography skill is in high standard.

Besides, photojournalists have to follow many potential rules such as government policies and business partners’ point of view. For instance, the government doesn’t want the public know for security purpose, and then the photojournalists will have to follow it to meet the government purpose.

There are some differences on photo journalistic and journalists with the presentation format. Journalists could give some comment on the event directly by words. However, photo journalist has to reflect the truth and personal opinion by pictures indirectly most of the time. This difference makes the ethics to be diverse. Journalists have to be careful with the words they use. In other word, they have to pay attention to distinguish between their own opinion and the facts which could directly affect the ethics in their story. Photo journalists need to figure out how the truth from pictures will create ethics problems with what to shoot, how to frame and how to edit.²
However, both of them are responsible for their performance. Therefore, they always try to avoid the ethic problems from happening.