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From the deaths of legends Gordon Parks, Arnold Newman and Joe Rosethal to the scandal surrounding digitally altered and set up pictures in the Lebanonese conflict, it's been an interesting year for photojournalism.
I've been taking a look at some of the more unsettling trends in the industry and have come up with list I call the Lamest Moments. The categories are limited and very unscientific of course. The big winner, or loser, depending on your perspective, was in my opinion, Reuters not only for the digital manipulation debacle this summer, but also for its latest scheme in trying to attract citizen shutterbugs to contribute pictures to the wire services. Much attention was given to the events of June when a Reuters' photographer sent manipulated pictures of the conflict in Lebanon. Reuters' editors, for their part, dropped the ball by not using common sense and vigilance over what got put up on the wire. The fall out from all this continues to be the increased distrust of mediate visual images.
In the end, photojournalism also took some serious hits in terms of credibility this year from using pictures of the “Green Helmet” guy, which was alledgedly a Hezabollah insider. Bloggers started connecting the dots when pictures of the “Green Helmet” guy was shown at multiple scenes carrying the same body of a dead child and directing photojournalists to make images.
In the "Under reported visual reportage" category, much of the mainstream media missed or played down the release of hundreds of more abuse pictures from Abu Ghraib. Perhaps the images were too graphic for audiences or that since this was just a "follow up" on the pictures originally released in 2003, editors decided that enough was enough.
The New York Post, true to form, gets the "Lamest Headline and Caption" award with its layout showing the bloodied face of Iraqi insurgent leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The use of a text call-out to put the words "Warm up the virgins" in Zarqawi does little to ease tensions between the Islamic and Western worlds.
Newsweek magazine walked away the the "Lamest Cover" award by violatiing of every known principle of design, not to mention common sense. Newsweek out did itself with this collage of representative Mark Foley’s fall from grace.
Finally, in the "Lamest Use of Digital Technology" category, a picture claiming to be the world's largest digital image (8.6 gb) tests the boundaries of "so what". Although a highly debateable, I still think that making an 8.6 gigabyte image using multiple smaller pictures was a bit misleading in claiming to be the world’s largets digital picture. In the end, the PR this picture generated seemed more like a stunt than an actual technological achievement.