The latest issue of Photo District News (PDN) contains a Q&A with Stephen Mayes, Managing Director of the photo agency VII, where he is asked: "Are photojournalism contests still relevant?"<\/p>\n
The question that really begs for an answer \u2013 "Is photojournalism itself relevant?" \u2013 comes up in Mayes response that photojournalism has become more romantic than functional: "There are certain [visual] codes that recur. What I tend to find is that so much journalism we see is about affirming what we already know…."<\/em><\/p>\n That's been true for some time now, but with the ubiquity of visual images and the increasing sophistication of the audience, one may argue that the genre of photojournalism \u2013 a single image or series of images revealing a previously hidden truth \u2013 has been exhausted.<\/p>\n However important images may be to us as we process world events, they no longer have the ability to shock and inform. Images from the heyday of photojournalism like those of the RFK assassination or the Vietnamese girl burned by napalm and running naked down the street are no longer possible. Not because horrific events are no longer occurring, but because, by ongoing and frequent exposure to the wider world, we've become naturally desensitized.<\/p>\n When we learn about an event, say the tragic shooting of Representative Giffords in Arizona, we can easily predict the imagery that will follow: medical crews and police behind crime scene tape, shocked and mourning groups of bystanders, shrines created with candles, signs and photos, marchers protesting violence….etc. We view them and appreciate these images in the same way we enjoy comfort food \u2013 for the assurance they provide.<\/p>\n But relevant? Not so much….<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The latest issue of Photo District News (PDN) contains a Q&A with Stephen Mayes, Managing Director of the photo agency VII, where he is asked: "Are photojournalism contests still relevant?" The question that really begs for an answer \u2013 "Is photojournalism itself relevant?" \u2013 comes up in Mayes response that photojournalism has become more romantic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3064\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}