Photojournalism Dead? It's Just Changing With the Times
In the next 50 pages Nieman Reports take stock of photojournalism today. While problems are noted, the report is positive. The articles and the photo essays by 10 Nieman Fellows demonstrate the special value of pictures to news. As noted photographer Edward Steichen summed it up at the dinner celebrating his 90th birthday in 1969: “The mission of photography is to explain man to man and each man to himself. And that is no mean function.”
© David Turnley/Black Star, “In Times of War & Peace,” 1996
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"The Best Picture I Never Took"
- David TurnleyIn his introduction to “In Times Of War And Peace,” a book of photographs by my brother Peter and me, Howard Chapnick, one of the pillars of photojournalism and President of the picture agency Black Star for decades before he died last year, wrote:
“Photography is a way of turning memory incarnate. To that end, some photographers have stormed the world’s battlements to bring back photographs that testify to the chaos, disarray, death and destruction that man and Nature have wrought. In the process, they have produced a visual memoir that records history, stirs conscience and affects the collective psyche…. Their photographs reflect their respect for the dignity of the individual, a compassionate solicitude for the plight of their subjects. Though photographing a stormy and unsightly world, they often find oases of kindness and reverence for life that generates hope for the future of mankind…. These photographs remind us that ours is still an imperfect world.”
From 1992-1996 I made several trips to Bosnia trying to make pictures that might inform the public and bring home the tragedy of that war. My efforts concentrated on the realities Bosnians of all ethnicities faced trying to cope with a war that left tens of thousands as refugees, displaced from the homes and villages where many had lived their entire lives.
© David Turnley/Black Star, “In Times of War & Peace,” 1996.
© David Turnley/Detroit Free Press/Black Star, “Bosnia Essay,” 1996.
© David Turnley/Detroit Free Press/Black Star, “Bosnia Essay,” 1996.
© David Turnley/Black Star, “In Times of War & Peace,” 1996.
© David Turnley/Black Star, “Ethnic Cleansing,” 1995.
© David Turnley/Black Star, “In Times of War & Peace,” 1996.
David Turnley is a photographic correspondent based in New York covering world events for The Detroit Free Press. A 1998 Nieman Fellow, he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1990 and was a runner-up four times.
