Photojournalism: A Faded profession

A picture is worth a thousand words. Especially when it comes to journalism. There is just something about photographs that capture us, that hold our imagination, that galvanize us. When we see what’s happening around the world we are more likely to react emotionally.

We have all seen the famous photographs from the Vietnam War. It was really the first war that was documented extensively by journalists. Never before had journalists the technology and the access to war. The reporters’ efforts were a large reason there was such a huge opposition to the war.

The United States Army learned from their mistakes and never granted journalists the same access as they did during Vietnam. Unfortunately we now get very controlled reports from war and rarely do we see reality unless footage is stolen as in the Collateral Murder video.

Photographs move people more than news stories. People across American became much more sympathetic to the Civil Rights Movement after a photo of a black demonstrator being attacked by a police dog ran in many major papers across the United States and the world.

Kevin Carter won a Pulitzer Price for his photograph of a vulture hovering by a starving child in Ethiopia. The single frame did as much to raise millions of dollars to help stop the famine as anything else during that time period.

Unfortunately, the photo didn’t just haunt news readers across the globe but it also haunted the man who took the photo himself. The photograph was one of the reasons Kevin Carter took his own life.

Another example is of, Ron Hivav, who in 1989, took a photograph of a supporter of Panama’s Dictator Manuel Noriega beating the Vice President while a police officer looks on. This photograph appeared in many important publications and was cited as a reason President George Bush decided to invade Panama. It became the photograph that launched a thousand ships.

The problem we face today is it’s extremely hard to make a living as a photojournalist anymore. The Chicago Sun-Times tried to eliminate all of its 28 photographers, U.S. News and World Report fired all of their photography staff, while many publications now only hire freelancers.

It is ironic that we rely on photographs as a form of communication now more than ever before but news sources are cutting back their staff and relying on armatures to take their pictures.

How many people around the world use Instragram, Flickr, and Snapchat? Yet the professional photographer is becoming a thing of the past. A lost art form. And I fear with it, the photograph will be less of a powerful tool to educate and inform of world events. Of Time Magazines 10 best photographs in 2013 nine were taken by professional photographers. You can take a look at the photographs here and judge for yourself. Let me know if you think Time missed an important photograph.

In a world where everybody has a cellphone camera ready to capture the news in a flash of a second that says it all.

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