A welcomed birth

April 24, 2007 by pmelcher.

While everyone is trying to find things to bury, form the death of photojournalism to the end of vertical images ( yes, I read that somewhere), in a desperate competition to be the first to announce “the end of..”, there is good news to report. The launch a new photo journalism agency. Not only that, but it is based in Algeria, instead of the traditional western hemisphere.

Photojournalism has traditionally been the monopoly of a few wealthy countries, France, USA, England and Germany. Because of its fundamentally subjective perspective, we have been submerged by a very one sided vision of the world, brought to us by photographers and photo editors raised and bred in the same culture. Even wire services, who would like to be the most objective in their coverage, are either French, English, American or German. What does this say about our perspective of world events ?

NEWPRESSPHOTO , five years in the making, is a very welcome addition to photojournalism. It will bring a welcomed fresh eye to world events. Already countries like Brazil or India are starting to emerge as a pole of new, hungry, unbiased, extremely talented photographers and photo agencies who fear not the Getty’s of the world. They do not have much so they have nothing to loose. They are used to working in harsh and difficult situations. They have seldom worked on assignment with all their expenses paid thus can work with little and no resources. Unlike a lot of western hemisphere photographers, they do not become photo journalists because it’s cool and sexy but because they have something to say. They will work for pennies and spend more times on the world battlefields than on blogs.

As more and more US and European news photo agencies are shutting down, succumbing to the unbearable costs of maintaining a fleet of over fed prima donna’s with an unlimited supply of temper tantrums, lesser fortunate countries are exploding with a new generation of self taught, well trained, sharped eyed photojournalists that will soon take over this business. And it will not be a moment too late.

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