Panos Pictures, Reportage by Getty Images and VII Photo all hosted events at the Club and a half-day seminar with VII Photo took place at the Royal Institution of Great Britain. A short video with a selection of clips from Photo Week can be viewed below.

Freelance photographers contributed images for a slideshow which was on display in the Club throughout the week. You can view their contributions in the following video- enjoy!

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On 20 April, 2011 photojournalists Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros were tragically killed while covering the civil war in Libya.

In the aftermath of this tragedy, Benjamin J. Spatz and the American literary magazine Alaska Quarterly Review brought together 68 of the world’s leading photographers to proactively honor Tim and Chris. The result,  Liberty and Justice (for All): A Global Photo Mosaic, is an exploration of the many facets of liberty and justice through images and personal narrative.

Join Spatz and Giles Duley in the final event in Photo Week 2012 for a presentation of the proactive tribute and to discuss the challenges to interpret and depict these universal themes in a dangerous and changing world.

Chaired by filmmaker and journalist James Brabazon.

Giles Duley worked for 10 years as a fashion and music photographer before becoming accomplished humanitarian photographer. His work has been exhibited and published worldwide in many respected publications including Vogue, GQ, Rolling Stone, The Sunday Times and The Observer. In February 2011 Duley was severely injured while working in Afghanistan.

Benjamin J. Spatz is Guest Editor of the Alaska Quarterly Review and is a Truman National Security Fellow. He recently served as Special Advisor to the Government of Liberia and has worked with a relief and development NGO in Darfur, the global political risk advisory firm Eurasia Group, and the United Nations Mission in Liberia. Saptz‘s photography has been recognized by Pictures of the Year International and the National Press Photographers Association.

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On 20 April, 2011 photojournalists Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros were tragically killed while covering the civil war in Libya.

In the aftermath of this tragedy, Benjamin J. Spatz and the American literary magazine Alaska Quarterly Review brought together 68 of the world’s leading photographers to proactively honor Tim and Chris. The result,  Liberty and Justice (for All): A Global Photo Mosaic, is an exploration of the many facets of liberty and justice through images and personal narrative.

Join Spatz and Giles Duley in the final event in Photo Week 2012 for a presentation of the proactive tribute and to discuss the challenges to interpret and depict these universal themes in a dangerous and changing world.

Chaired by filmmaker and journalist James Brabazon.

Giles Duley worked for 10 years as a fashion and music photographer before becoming accomplished humanitarian photographer. His work has been exhibited and published worldwide in many respected publications including Vogue, GQ, Rolling Stone, The Sunday Times and The Observer. In February 2011 Duley was severely injured while working in Afghanistan.

Benjamin J. Spatz is Guest Editor of the Alaska Quarterly Review and is a Truman National Security Fellow. He recently served as Special Advisor to the Government of Liberia and has worked with a relief and development NGO in Darfur, the global political risk advisory firm Eurasia Group, and the United Nations Mission in Liberia. Saptz‘s photography has been recognized by Pictures of the Year International and the National Press Photographers Association.

Sponsored by:

In an evening of contrast, colour and laughs, Reportage by Getty Images showcased two of their key talents, Peter Dench and Tom Stoddart.

After reviewing portfolios at Getty’s Open Edit with his team all day, Vice President of Photo Assignment for Getty Images Aidan Sullivan introduced the evening with a short overview of the kind of work Reportage by Getty Images engages in. He explained that Reportage, five years old this September, is an autonomous agency within Getty and was launched as:

“an agency [to] represent what we believe to be some of the finest photojournalists working today. We set about creating this website, bringing in the photographers, and I’m very privileged to work with not only some of the greatest photographers around today, but also the greatest editors, many of them are here this evening. It’s a joy to work with them and share their passion, and it is real passion.”

Peter Dench demonstrated some of that passion as he took the audience through a sample of images featured in his crowd-funded book England Uncensored.

“I think it’s appropriate that Tom is here giving a talk tonight as well, because visually we’re both very, very different, but I think we still share the same drive and enthusiasm to tell an engaging story through our photographs.”

Dench‘s playful delivery buoyed the audience along as he provided an irreverent look at this green and pleasant land and its relationship with getting pissed. Full of bright colour, Dench made a point of contrasting his work with Stoddart‘s:

“When I joined IPG Tom […] gave me some advice. He said “Peter, if you photograph a woman in a yellow dress, all you see is the yellow dress, but if you photograph her in black and white, you see her soul”. After I’d wiped up the wine I’d splattered down my top I said “Tom, you’re wasting your breath, all I see is a picture without colour.”

The widely respected Tom Stoddart, who has worked with Aidan Sullivan for 35 years, also picked up on Sullivan‘s comments about passion.

“It’s the one thing that I think that people trying to get into the industry don’t really understand. This is not a job, it’s an existence.”

Referencing the great Don McCullin, who had popped by the Club earlier, and his commitment to photography still at the age of 75, underlined his point.

Like McCullin, Stoddart is known for his images of war and human suffering. Stoddart‘s Perspectives exhibition, featuring classic images of disasterous world events he has covered over the years, opens on the 25th of July to highlight the International Committee of the Red Cross’s Healthcare in Danger campaign.

While speaking of going back to Sarajevo to meet the Bosnian war’s survivors who he had photographed, Stoddart said:

“It’s great- it’s not very often you get the chance to square the circle in our work, you’re normally in someone’s face for 5/100th of a second- I once worked out that I probably worked only 2 minutes in my life”

Stoddart’s work couldn’t be more different from Dench’s, but Sullivan pointed out that they are both storytellers with serious messages behind their work. A true showcase for Reportage, the evening demonstrated how varied their stories can be and the breadth of subject-matter photojournalism can cover.

Watch the event in full or subscribe to the Frontline podcast on iTunes.

With the Frontline Club’s Photo Week 2012 drawing to a close, join us for this photography networking party sponsored by Chivas Regal.

We will be celebrating 25 years of Panos Pictures with a clutch of Panos photographers. A presentation of their work will be on display throughout the evening.

This event will be a chance for those in the photojournalism industry and those with an interest in photography to come together to meet, network and enjoy themselves in a relaxed environment.

Drinks will be provided courtesy of Chivas Regal.

On Tuesday the Royal Institution of Great Britain was flooded with both aspiring and established photojournalists who had come to hear 13 photojournalists from the prestigious VII Photo agency.

Vaughan Smith, the Frontline Club’s founder, started proceedings by giving a brief overview of the challenges facing modern photojournalism. He explained that the decline of the traditional news model means that photojournalists cannot expect the kind of investment they once had from the print media, but that this development can be viewed in positive terms because they “can define the future of journalism”.

Smith believes that freelance journalists can take a more prominent place within the media landscape through social media and the Internet, and the members of VII Photo are doing just that. An agency “by photographers for photographers” they are “helping to change the media landscape”.

The first discussion of the morning was lead by Max Houghton, editor of Foto8 magazine, who was joined by two of VII Photo’s founders, Christopher Morris and Ron Haviv, and long time members Seamus Murphy and Franco Pagetti.  

Firstly, Houghton wanted to know how their work has evolved over the years. They all agreed that they had become more thoughtful in their practice, but they had differing views on how they and their work fitted into the new media landscape.

Ron Haviv asserted that “new tools are enabling us to become full authors”, and that a lesser dependency on print media is liberating the photographer from the constraints placed by picture editors. 

Conversely Christopher Morris has “struggled with the new marketplace” and has had to reinvent himself as a fashion photographer. He explained that in the past large media corporations would fund lengthy projects abroad, whereas now photographers are forced to turn to methods including crowd funding and self-financing.

The second panel lead by the London College of Communication’s Paul Lowe was comprised of VII Photo co-founder Gary Knight, alongside Ashley Gilbertson, Anastasia Taylor-Lind and Ron Haviv. Their discussion began with the role of mentoring and education within the field of photojournalism. Ron Haviv stated that “its integral to all…photojournalists’ to give some thing back to the next generation.

Anastasia Taylor-Lind, who was mentored by Haviv, felt that she gained invaluable guidance from the experience and his “generosity of ideas”. 

Gary Knight expressed his hope that “a greater diversity of people and communities” would begin to engage with photography, in the hope of opening up the field of photojournalism to new perspectives.

Paul Lowe then asked the panel whether research prior to shooting a project was important. All agreed that it was essential, with Ron Haviv asserting that the journalism aspect of photojournalism is often ignored, but that in fact it is essential:

“the more knowledge we have of what we’re photographing the better”

Ashley Gilbertson agreed but explained that invariably all one’s research takes on a different meaning when you are actually in the field, and that covering a story ends up being very “organic process”. 

The discussion was concluded with a question from the audience on the importance of a formal education in photography. Anastasia Taylor-Lind explained that her extensive education – the completion of a BA, MA, numerous workshops and a mentoring scheme had been incredibly useful in her development as a photojournalist. While Ashley Gilbertson felt that his lack of formal education meant that his progression into a “thinking photographer” was slower than his peers, and that he had to force himself into academia later in life.  

Gary Knight emphasised the importance of a rounded education, because he believes that to be a good photojournalist “you need to be a thinking person”.

The final panel of the day, moderated by the director of VII Photo in New York Stephen Mayes, included VII Photo members Venetia Dearden, Ed Kashi, Tomas van Houtryve, Gary Knight, Donald Weber and Jon Jones, the director of photography at The Sunday Times. 

Mayes opened the discussion with an optimistic interpretation of the current climate faced by photojournalists. He believes that photographers are in a better place to get funding because they are liberated from the previous “monolithic model”. At present there is not just one “singular solution” but instead many ways to fund work. He concluded that “the greatest challenge” faced by photojournalists is “the challenge of imagination”.

The panel members then described their own wildly different approaches to funding projects. Jon Jones and Gary Knight collaborated on the compilation of a book of photographs from the Bosnian conflict. They described raising half of the $35,000 needed from licensing and the rest from crowd funding through social media and personal emails. 

Donald Weber explained that his approach to funding projects was through corporate and private sponsors. Consequently he has “complete freedom and control” over his work, something he would have to relinquish if being paid by a magazine. 

Tomas van Houtryve felt that he didn’t “want to be held hostage” by the constraints of a commission. He therefore looked to individuals to help him fund his book Behind the Curtains. Through his website and blog he was able to interact with his audience throughout the process of shooting the project, which gave his backers “a sense of investment beyond the financial”. 

The corporate world, as Venetia Dearden explained, has the resources to fund work. Therefore photographers need to look for companies that have “a natural fit” with their work. In her case it was the fashion brand Mulberry. Her relationship with them was forged after they saw her project ‘Somerset Stories’. Mulberry, which has strong connections with Somerset, have gone on to publish three of her books, as well as commissioning a book to celebrate 40 years of Mulberry. 

She urged fellow photographers to find “imaginative and resourceful” ways to fund their projects. 

Reportage by Getty Images covers a huge diversity of topics in the news: from famine and conflict to documenting the quirkier side of life. Two Getty photographers Peter Dench and Tom Stoddart will be in conversation with Getty’s Vice President of Assignment Aidan Sullivan about their distinctive projects and their experience of photographing diverse subjects.

Peter Dench joined Reportage by Getty Images this year and is about to publish his first book, England Uncensored which was crowd funded through Emphas.is . His work takes a humorous look at the state of the nation. Dench has won a World Press Photo Award in the People in the News category and an exhibition of England Uncensored was displayed at Visa pour l’Image in 2011.

Seasoned photojournalist Tom Stoddart has covered the fall of the Berlin wall, the wars in Lebanon, Bosnia and Iraq as well as famine in Sudan. He works closely with Getty Images to produce photo-essays on significant world events. Stoddart has recently returned from Southern Sudan and will be showing work from this trip and other work he has produced in conjunction with the ICRC campaign, Healthcare in Danger.

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Photography agency VII’s latest publication, Questions Without Answers, not only spans over two decades of world history, but it also spans the evolution of photojournalism and the photographers who have pioneered their own take on the industry.

The book reflects the independence that the VII founders established for themselves when they set up their agency in 2001 – the ability to change and develop and evolve. Three out of the original seven founding members were on the panel for Monday’s event, Gary Knight, Christopher Morris and John Stanmeyer. All have been able to escape the constraints of the major agency, setting their own agenda and timetables.

Three years in the making, Questions Without Answers covers a broad spectrum of reportage. Chairing the event, Alexia Singh, Editor-in-Charge of the Wider Image Desk at Thompson Reuters, remarked on the contrast of Gary Knight’s coverage in Iraq – “a terrifying blood, sweat and tears story” – to his slower paced, contemplative documentation of poverty in India.

Knight said: “I got a lot more than I bargained for. . . . I really grew a little tired of the violence and I started to think of ways to move away from that kind of photography.”

But non-conflict work also brings its horrors. In 2004, John Stanmeyer’s reached the tsunami-torn shores of Sri Lanka within 24 hours of the waves hitting, before moving on the cover the impact in Aceh.

“I’ve been in a lot of natural disasters, of course a lot of conflicts, but natural disasters have a different psychological effect,” said Stanmeyer. “In a natural disaster there is no one to blame. Who are you going to blame? Are you going to blame God? Allah? Buddha? It was a calamity of a scope that is beyond human scale. It was beyond photography, it was beyond a camera, it was beyond me.”

Christopher Morris has also made a move from conflict photography, which he initially considered “the ultimate in photography – man trying to kill another man – the ultimate evil in humanity”. But that move away from conflict photography has allowed him closer focus on the decision makers:

“For me it’s fascinating to cover politics because you cover conflict all your life and these are the people that actually carry it through, these are the people that make the decisions.”

The agency seems to have created the space for its members to explore the space that surrounds the actions of war and conflict. The fourth panellist, Lynsey Addario, said that she was always drawn to “the issues surrounding war – on the margins”.

Addario is one of the seven women who now make up the agency of 23, helping to tip the scales in this once male-dominated industry. Admitting that the work can be “physically gruelling and emotionally draining”, she said that a person’s reactions depend on their own sensitivities: “It doesn’t matter if you’re a man or a woman.”

Knight expanded on this point:

“Too much can be made of [the gender issue] – they’re out there and they’re doing it, and they’re doing it very, very well. . . . Over the course of my career, you see many, many more women photographing, one of the problems is you don’t have many ethnicities photographing.”

To try and rectify this imbalance, VII launched a mentor programme to try and encourage photojournalism globally, giving budding photographers a chance to develop and find their own voice and audience.

In Stanmeyer’s words, this is the kind of “empowerment” that VII has brought to its members, a freedom to act independently, which Knight likened to the lunatics taking over the asylum. But Questions Without Answers is a testament to the lunatics’ success. “The challenge now,” said Knight, “is building something that will last . . . a legacy.”

By Rosie Scammell

An intimate evening unfolded at the Frontline Club last night, as Argentine photojournalist Adriana Groisman talked through her photography commemorating the Falklands/Malvinas War.

In a venue famed for its images of conflicts, Groisman’s work presented an unexpected calm – rolling waves in black & white; stark island landscapes in grey hues tinged with colour. But rather than see beauty in the images, it is the scars within the landscapes she urged the audience to understand.

‘Voices of the South Atlantic’ began when Groisman accompanied National Geographic on its search for the Belgrano, the Argentine warship sunk by the British to the loss of 323 lives. Soon after, however, the project gained its own momentum:

“I showed it in Buenos Aires, and was able to see how it was received. That was what     inspired me to keep working on the project; the fact that people were seeing somethingtotally different, because the work did not force them to stand on one side or another of theconflict.”

With politicians ruled by their own agendas on both sides, Groisman sought out another avenue, and united Argentines, Brits and islanders affected by the conflict to reconcile with one another.

Bringing together the man who took a fateful torpedo shot at the Belgrano and one who received the blow, for example, seems an ill-fated venture. Yet granting the men innovative opportunities, such as writing down one wish from the other side, resulted in an openness Groisman said many had thought themselves incapable of.

“It’s strange that we would try to kill each other, when we have so much in common,” said one participant in a short film of the project.

This desire to close the divide plays out throughout Groisman’s work; in one piece she has united all those who died in sea-related hostilities, and notes that with many names it is impossible to tell which side they fought on.

While the tide may be turning in Argentina, with veterans at last receiving better treatment, Groisman said raw emotions still rule: “The few people that are proposing a new way of looking at this are being dismissed as traitors.” Just last month, for example, a television advert was aired depicting Olympic athletes training on ‘Argentine soil’ on the Falkland Islands. The British government responded with furore, while still plotting oil exploration in the region.

But while some are still unwilling to open dialogue, Groisman explained that in getting people together (in a studio lifeboat, no less) to see the faces and hear the voices of the war, reconciliation is achievable:

“The experience between these people made me realise that for former enemies, it ispossible to find common ground and understand each other, and acknowledge eachother’s pain. What this work is proposing is to include rather than exclude, and look at each other as humans.”

Adriana Groisman:Voices of the South Atlantic is showing at Photofusion in Brixton, London, until 25 May.

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Established and budding photojournalists are invited to bring their portfolio (all the portfolio review slots are now filled) and network with others in their field. This event is free, but advance booking is required.

The event will take place between 10am and 5pm with a lunchbreak from 12pm to 2pm.

Click here to book lunch in the restaurant.

Throughout Photo Week 2012 a presentation of images by freelance photojournalists will be on display in the Club. If you would like your images to be included in the presentation, please send three landscape images of around 300KB each to events@www.beta.frontlineclub.com.

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