Things As They Are

8220;Things as they are8221; provides a sense of the distance travelled by press photography, from the days when print magazines carried long photo-essays, to the present time, when digital methods and media have altered the practices of photojournalism in a fundamental way. But apart from showcasing a history of journalistic photography, this show also communicates the catastrophic nature of press-worthy events since the Second World War, thus presenting world history in the latter half of the 20th century as being dominated by wars, genocide, industrial accidents, natural disasters and political assassinations. It8217;s quite a shock to realize, nay, to see 8212;by looking at major photojournalistic stories in publications like Life, GEO, Stern, Time, Newsweek, National Geographic, The New Yorker, etc., and also in The Times, Le Monde, The New York Times and other leading newspapers in Europe, North America and Japan 8212; the extent to which the last five decades have been defined by extreme violence across the globe.

Jonathan Klein, co-founder and CEO of Getty Images, one of the world8217;s largest

photo-banks, inaugurated the 50th year celebrations of World Press Photo with a talk. He spoke about the effects of media consolidation i.e., the concentration of media ownership in the hands of a few and digital technology on photojournalism. Both these factors, Klein warned, result in the growing manipulation of imagery and severely compromise, if not outright destroy the documentary function of photography.

But many photographers who had occasion to join the debate in a series of symposia over the following two days, did not regard digital photography as an impediment to quality journalism8212;for them, it was just another kind of tool in their trade, an innovation to which they could adapt. Very few, notably American photographer Stanley Greene, world-famous for his astounding work in Chechnya between 1994 and 2003, defended old-fashioned cameras on matter of principle rather than on the basis of pragmatic considerations. However, the rapid shrinking of independent spaces within the media: this phenomenon did seem to alarm almost all committed photojournalists, as well as their editors in big and small publications.

Prashant Panjiar, a leading freelance photojournalist in India, now consulting for this newspaper, smiled when I recounted to him the issues that were agitating the global photography community represented in Amsterdam. 8220;We don8217;t even have photo-editors here,8217; he pointed out, 8216;the very institution of the photo-editor does not exist yet in our print media.8221; Pablo Bartholomew, another prominent Indian photographer who was present at World Press Photo 50, described himself to the gathering as operating from the margins, 8220;the outposts,8221; as he called them, of photojournalism, despite that fact that he has published and exhibited his work internationally. Panjiar and Bartholomew have both been jury members on the World Press Photo Awards selection committee at different points in time; Bartholomew has also been a winner of the Award in 1985 for his unforgettable image of the half-buried corpse of a blinded child in the Bhopal gas tragedy.

In fact, the winner of the Award in 2004 was also an

Indian photographer, Arko Dutta, whose image for Reuters of a tsunami survivor, flattened on a beach lamenting her dead, encapsulated the crushing nature of the tragedy. Judging from his interventions in Amsterdam, Dutta was impatient with the niceties of technology 8212; for him, what seemed to matter was the story, and what was important was its capture using a camera, of any description whatsoever. But the discussion about documentary photography and photojournalism in this country also needs to address the effects of impending media consolidation, foreign investment, and emerging permutations of public and private, as well as Indian and international ownership.

Howsoever haphazard the business of press photography in India, surely the images it generates do play an important part in the proper functioning of our democracy. This is why we lament the passing of a magazine like The Illustrated Weekly of India that gave equal credence to image and text, forcing the reader to dwell on both 8212; an attentive mode of reading that has become increasingly difficult in the avalanche of information and images to which we are now subjected.