"photojournalism; its intellectually bankrupt"

Glory Trip 197 © Simon Norfolk

These words are from Simon Norfolk in an interview in the latest issue of Foto8 - pages 13-17 of this online PDF, which sadly is too lo-res for reading the text. The magazine itself carries it over pages 32-41 and makes for a great investment, buy it or subscribe.

His work is unusual on many levels, having left photojournalism behind in 1994 in favour of landscape photography - he only shoots with large format wooden cameras - but his topics stay in the realm of war, war zones and war technology.

I saw one of his lectures a few years ago when he came to visit my university and it really was memorable. At the time he was in the process of shooting his Supercomputers project and one of the girls at the lecture ended up being his assistant for the project there and then as he needed a German speaker.


Glory Trip 196 © Simon Norfolk

Simon from the Foto8 article: "The problem with photojournalism is that it is hooked on the visible. When these photographers are invited along on a little jolly ride to be embedded with the troops, the military know where the real war is taking place. So the reason they allow people to tag along is because they know that what they will be able to see is unimportant. Hegel says that the Owl of Minerva spreads its wings at dusk. When the thing is over, that's when you get access to it. It's because its irrelevant that they allow you to embed and watch them fire some guns through a slit."

"Once the war has moved into this other realm, its completely unstoppable, because no one is talking about it. That's the powerlessness of photojournalism; its intellectually bankrupt, locked in a mode of operating that came to an end in the 50's, its heyday. Like an old bloke who still listens to the records he got into when he was 18, photojournalism is unable to unhinge itself from the modes it learnt in its puberty."


Glory Trip 195 © Simon Norfolk

His images of missile launches - or glory trips - are perhaps more painterly than journalistic but if you bother reading his extensive captions they take on a whole new depth of meaning, something which is a rare thing today.

From the Foto8 article: He admits to spending as much time writing these days as he does photographing, decrying those those who feel the caption is some kind of poor relative.

Related: blog interview with Simon from just under two years a go. Interesting Flickr thread.

The commitment

Photojournalist John D McHugh grimaces in pain as a medic examines and dresses his gunshot wound at Kamu Outpost in Nuristan, in north-east Afghanistan, 14 May 2007. The photographer was shot through the stomach during a firefight between the US and Afghan National Army (ANA), who he was embedded with, and insurgents. 17 ANA died, one is still recorded as "missing in action", and 4 more were wounded. 7 US soldiers were also wounded in the fight. Photo: John D McHugh

I've talked a bit about war photography here before and when it comes to photojournalism it is seen as the ultimate assignment, mainly because you put your own life at risk simply to report on a story, so I always find it both alluring but also completely frightening - why work in a situation that can kill you at any moment? The money is more or less the same, the risks are extreme and you dont see your loved ones for long periods.

Irish photographer John D McHugh was on assignment in Afghanistan for AFP last year when he had his stomach blown out in a scary firefight with insurgents. I think that for most people, just surviving would have been enough to stay away from those kind of missions in the future.

Not so for our John. After surgery and rehabilitation he resigned from his agency and went back to Afghanistan as a freelancer - i.e. without any employer backing him - as soon as he could. Of the few war correspondents that I've met, they all seem to have this streak in them, to get back up in the saddle ASAP.

His commitment has finally brought him an employer willing to pay for his great desire to report from this extremely dangerous situation; check out his new regular page on The Guardian's website here, but most of all, read his extraordinary account of the day he got shot here. Makes you think twice before romanticizing war photography.

Gone but not forgotten

I'm sad. The great Philip Jones Griffiths is dead. Long live free-seeing people.

He was a momentous man in the scope of mankind's imagery, whether you like it or not.

If you were an American in the 60's or early 70's, chances are that you changed your whole perspective on the Vietnam war because of his images, let alone if you lived outside America.

He chose to report sideways - i.e. side step the issue of the day and move away from front line news in order to report on a broader scale, giving a highly critical account of a war which was still going on, critical in terms of contradicting the American propaganda machine at the time, something which had never been done before. From 1966 to 1971 he devoted his life to this, and in the in the meantime established what photojournalism is all about. The result was Vietnam Inc.

I had the rare luxury of meeting the man in the flesh last year, and seeing him in full flow at a Q&A at the Frontline Club. He laid down the foundations of photojournalism.

Admittedly, we are forever moving into an era where everything - sound and vision - becomes more and more easily recordable and accessible. Anyone can report.

But to do it with the integrity of Philip Jones Griffiths, to report against the might of the American military machine, takes one hell of a man.

R.I.P. PJG

Picture ( July 2007): Lucy (left) and her friends lived on the same estate in Peckham as the now deceased Stanley Rymkivic. When he passed away last month, aged 80, they took it upon themselves to arrange his funeral as he had no immediate family anymore. If it wasnt for this group of teenagers, no one would have attended his funeral.