362694234 by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub

In the late 1970s Susan Meiselas went to Nicaragua, prompted by the murder of Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, publisher of La Prensa and an opponent of the country’s military dictatorship. She had been a photographer in search of a subject; when his death united opposition to the government she chronicled the rise of the Sandinistas. The New York Times Magazine picked up her photographs, which have become icons of that revolution.

In photojournalism, the subject is considered more important than the aesthetics of the image. While clarity, composition, and exposure have always been taken into account, it is news value that drives the profession. But in the 1980s and ’90s, photographers like James Nachtwey and Gilles Peress established distinct visual styles in their coverage of war-torn regions like Bosnia and Chechnya; the way they observed their subjects, discerned in what they chose to shoot and where they stood, added new layers of information to the editorial image.

Getting the facts right is at the heart of good journalism; the more accurate the reporting, the closer to the truth. So, too, with photojournalism, even though digital technology has now created the potential for greater ambiguity when it comes to photographic fact versus fiction. For the truth-seeking, socially motivated “concerned photographer,” fact-finding has always driven the pursuit of “the decisive moment”—what Cartier-Bresson long ago described as happenstance turning into visual logic before the lens. Things as They Are is a record of decisive moments that underscore not only the history of the last half-century but of photojournalism, too.

Originally published in the New York March 26, 2006.

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