1980
An ongoing project
As a starting point, I took ‘World Press Photo’ which I found representative for news photography. Every year experts (journalist, photographers, editors, critics) from around the world come together to select the news photo of that year. It shows the important events that took place in that year but also what is being considered good new photography at that moment. As World Press Photo also adapts its guidelines on what photographers can and cannot do with regard to the post-processing of the photo and it is not permitted to stage the image or control the moment.
To examine how our (western) way of depiction meaning has changed, I’ve cut out the children of one yearbook of World Press Photo and placed them together as a group. The group refers to the classic classmate photo, the photo that is made every year of school classes that symbolizes that year. If you look at the collages you see the different children sometimes happy and sometimes depicted in terrible situations. By putting them together as a group, it creates a tension due to the inequality and shows the different ways of depiction.
Entrants to the World Press Photo contest must ensure their pictures provide an accurate and fair representation of the scene they witnessed so the audience is not misled.
- source: Worldpress photo, Photo Contest Code of Ethics
Rule number 5
Entrants must ensure the editing of a picture story provides an accurate and fair representation of its context.
