The debate over the future of photojournalism has come to a head again as citizen media proponent Dan Gillmor started beating his drum once more. Gillmor's commentary is ruffling a few feathers from professionals and media observers not willing to accept, at this moment, any assessment of the field with the word "demise" in the title. In fact, Gillmor's prognostication for photojournalism is anything but new. For more than a decade people have been talking about the changes brought about by digital photography. However, what is striking here is that Gillmor's tone seems to be taking a much more emphatic quality. For example, Gillmore contends:
The pros who deal in breaking news have a problem. They can’t possibly compete in the media-sphere of the future. We’re entering a world of ubiquitous media creation and access. When the tools of creation and access are so profoundly democratized, and when updated business models connect the best creators with potential customers, many if not most of the pros will fight a losing battle to save their careers.
At the heart of this debate resides a tension between how some people define photojournalism as a professional occupation, and how others define it has an art and self-expression. The problem is that people confuse making pictures with making money. For the average consumer of images questions of aesthetics take second-place to content, especially if the subject is recognizable. How else can anyone explain why a fuzzy and overblown picture of Angelina and Brad on a beach in Africa can command millions of dollars from an agency, while freelance photojournalists risking life and limb in Iraq make barely a living wage.
In many cases, people don't even notice compositional flubs such as a telephone pole growing out of a subject's head. The average image consumer just looks through or over looks such annoyances. What the average image consumer sees is the center of focus, even with all the imperfections. At the same time, people aren't idiots. People do recognize quality and photojournalism offers a lot of it. The conventions developed in photojournalism such as the decisive moment, framing, and layering have helped to make the craft into an art form, even in the eyes of the elite. The average image consumer, armed with a camera phone,will be hard pressed to replicate a picture made by a trained photojournalist. Unfortunately, the professional photojournalist is being outgunned in terms of the increasing numbers of people willing to send in images for publication.
Gillmor's conclusion reveals the heart of the matter here:
Remember, there was once a fairly healthy community of portrait painters. When photography came along, a lot of them had to find other work; or at least their ranks were not refilled when they retired. Professional portrait photographers, similarly, are less in demand today than a generation ago. But portraits have survived — and thrived.
The photojournalist’s job may be history before long. But photojournalism has never been more important, or more widespread.
There may be a day, when the average Joe or Jan with a camera phone will start to think beyond the snap shot and produce images that are not only of-the-moment. People have the capacity to learn and put knowledge into action. What we may see, then, are people making images not just of breaking news or spot news scenes of train wrecks and police beatings but also images that have aesthetic appeals as well.
This day may not be too far off, and it is this fear that is troubling many professionals. As one photojournalist argues on the National Press Photographer Association list-serve, "Hire them, and get garbage images with trees sticking out of back of heads." Another more rational professional observes, "Eventually, I want to believe, the public and marketplace will again respect that good cameras don't make good pictures. Good photographers do. And good photographers aren't necessarily good photojournalists."
What remains important to the profession as well as to democracy is the authenticity of the frame and the credibility of the individual who produced the image. As Gillmor argues, "What does matter is the utter authenticity of the image, made so by the fact that the man was there at the right time with the right media-creation gear."
A similar battle is raging in the newswriting world as well -- one in which bloggers continue to encroach on the domain of the so-called establishment press. But just because someone can blog doesn't mean they have all the facts.
If the citizen shutterbug movement does take hold, as Gillmor predicts, it is reasonable to assume that photojournalism as an art form will continue to thrive, while photojournalism as an occupational group will suffer.
As an educator, this issue raises a lot of questions. Why continue to train photojournalists in a world where just about everyone can claim they are photojournalists? What does getting a degree in photojournalism mean when the credibility of the field continues to be attacked as it did last summer during the Israel-Hezbollah conflict. What does getting a degree in photojournalism mean when opportunities for employment seem so dismal?
The best answer to this question is reconciled by the fact that photojournalism teaches us to experience and see the world in ways that few other disciplines can match. Photojournalism is the practice of being engaged in capturing and fixing moments so that we can learn and grow from those moments. What philosophy seeks to do for helping students to think more critically and ethically, photojournalism does in helping students to see, feel, and act in the world. Photojournalism is a visual response to light and life -- one that seeks to render, explain, interrogate, expose, and discover what it means to be human.
If more people, with camera phones, come to understand and appreciate the complexities of our times so be it. At issue is not the need for more people with cameras. What is needed are more people with cameras that know and appreciate the device as a tool for illuminating and edifying, connecting and communicating, the richness of our universal human condition.
In the end, what appears to be happening now is that far too much energy is being expended on fretting over the loss of a professional occupation and not enough energy is being spent on the implications of an informed and visually literate citizenry.