Dominick Tyler - Autumn Leaves
News that Grazia Neri has gone into liquidation after 42 years at the forefront of photojournalism is just the latest in a series of deaths that begins to seem like the falling of autumn leaves. And for the first time I'm feeling a little panicky. I'm not by nature an optimist, even so I've resisted the urge to mourn the death of photojournalism and until now I've held to the conviction that photography is just too powerful a medium to fall victim to market forces (or media trends, or social trends or whatever...). But for heaven's sake, things do look bleak when great agencies like Grazia Neri find their incomes nearly halved in less than a year.
This Editorial over at The Digital Journalist has an novel suggestion about how to save photojournalism (a kind of pump-priming from philanthropic donations until the public awaken from their slumber and become interested in news again) the comments make interesting reading too. Another post I read recently on Photo-Muse bemoans the invisibility of the heirs to Don McCullin, James Nachtwey and Gilles Peres: "Who [now] is doing work of a similar calibre, work as powerful and searing as this and getting it published?"
Everywhere you look there are signs that winter's coming, and it might be a harsh one.
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