“I wanted to show the range that photojournalists do, and I wanted to somehow grasp the idea that they could be doing a basketball game in the afternoon and going to Haiti that night. I think it’s one of the most remarkable things that these people are able to do so many things and do them so well.”

In Deadline Every Second, director Kenneth Kobre did exactly that. Following 12 photographers from the Associated Press, Kobre captures the working lives of those journalists on assignment in locations across the world, from Downing Street to Gaza. Lefteris Pitarakis, one of those featured in the documentary, joined Kenneth at the Frontline Club for a screening of the film and a Q&A session on 21 September.

The wide ranging discussion with the audience opened with AP photographer Pitarakis defending the emergence of citizen journalism:

“It’s great if everyone’s able to take pictures on the spot and report what he or she sees especially local people in areas where I can’t go, then it’s great for all of us. The mainstream media has very strict ethical rules about how we validate the work and make sure the truth is there so there are some issues that have to be addressed every time.”

Kobre added that professionals always bring a different perspective to a story and produce quality work:

“During the Arab Spring, the first pictures out were those citizen journalist pictures but very soon afterwards you saw the professionals start to arrive and the quality of the photos improved immensely. Photojournalists see the world in a very different way than an amateur sees the world and even if the equipment is the same, the pictures are rarely the same.”

The discussion then touched on technological developments and their impact on the profession. Pitarakis acknowledged the benefits and the downsides of digital technology and rolling news coverage:

“For me the most important thing is that I’m able to stay in a place for longer … because I have a satellite modem and I can send my pictures right there. Sometimes it causes trouble because of the volume of pictures. Personally it causes me overload and I over work. I’m lucky if I sleep three hours.”

Turning to a question on the power of photography, Kobre stressed the cumulative impact of a series of photographs.

“No single picture changes history. A picture doesn’t end a war, but they start to add together. They are used over and over again and become burned in to our minds. I can’t point to any picture that’s changed history recently except for one and that’s the one in Somalia, with the dead soldier being dragged, Black Hawk Down. That caused Clinton to have a fear of that ever happening again and when Rwanda occurred he didn’t send in American troops in part, they say, because he feared that kind of publicity. But short of that I don’t think individual pictures do, it’s like drops of water that add up.”

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!

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.

Sponsored by:

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.”

Join more than 15 photojournalists from the prestigious agency VII Photo for a half-day seminar on photojournalism at the Royal Institution of Great Britain.

The seminar will be split into three panel discussions with opportunities to ask questions and learn more about the work of VII and the state of modern photojournalism.

9:00 Keynote address 

Director and Founder of the Frontline Club Vaughan Smith 

9:30 The Creation of VII – The role of photojournalism in the 21st century

With Ron Haviv, Christopher Morris, Seamus Murphy and Franco Pagetti. Moderated by Max Houghton.

11:00 Photographic Education: Finding your way

With Ashley Gilbertson, Ron Haviv, Gary Knight and Anastasia Taylor-Lind. Moderated by Paul Lowe.

12:30 The New Economy: How to fund your projects

With Venetia Dearden, Ed Kashi, Tomas van Houtryve, Jon Jones (The Sunday Times),  Gary Knight and Donald Weber. Moderated by Stephen Mayes.

14:00 Book signing of Questions Without Answers – The World in Pictures by the Photographers of VII and more.

The seminar will be followed by portfolio reviews with eight VII Photo photographers. More details on how to book a portfolio review are available here.

Sponsored by:

Since its formation in 2001, VII Photo has represented some of the leading photojournalists of the 21st century. As a collectively owned agency, it has grown from seven to 23 members, diversifying from conflict photography to all branches of photojournalism.

VII’s new book, Questions Without Answers, tackles issues that have shaped the world in our lifetime.

A powerful visual history of the world from the end of the Cold War to the present day, the book features a startlingly wide variety of work; from coverage of the war in Iraq and the events of 9/11 to an exploration of Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath, from portraits of our most significant cultural figures to dispatches from the current economic crisis.

VII photographers Lynsey Addario, Gary Knight, Christopher Morris and John Stanmeyer will be at the Frontline Club to discuss the key themes in the book and their individual experiences of covering history in the making. The event will be moderated by Alexia Singh, Editor-in-Charge, Wider Image Desk at Thompson Reuters.

Lynsey Addario began photographing professionally in 1996 for The Buenos Aires Herald in Argentina, with no professional training. Since 2001, Addario has freelanced for the daily New York Times, National Geographic, and TIME while living in Mexico, Iraq, Turkey, and India, covering feature stories worldwide, in addition to conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Darfur, Lebanon, and Congo. Addario has won many awards and was part of the NYT team to win the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting, for her Talibanistan photographs.

Gary Knight made his name covering the breakup of the former Yugoslavia and conflicts arond the world. His work has been widely published by magazines all over the world, exhibited globally, is in the collections of several museums and private collectors and has been the recipient of numerous high-profile awards. Knight lectures on photography an journalism at Tufts University in Boston.

Christopher Morris is also a founding member of VII. He spent the first twenty years of his career covering conflict and a further eight years as the White House photographer for Time Magazine. He has won numerous awards, including the Robert Capa Gold Medal award, the Visa d’Or award and numerous World Press Photo Awards.

John Stanmeyer another founding member of VII, has witnessed nearly every major historical event in Asia in the past 12 years, photographing the rapid changes taking place throughout the entire region. Working regularly for National Geographic Magazine and Time Magazine, Stanmeyer has been awarded the Robert Capa and numerous World Press Photo awards. In 2008 he received the National Magazine Award for this in-depth essay on the global Malaria epidemic.

Questions Without Answers will be on sale at the event and available for signing.

Sponsored by:

For 25 years photo agency Panos Pictures has been operating as the commercial arm of the development NGO the Panos Institute (now Panos London). Over that period Panos Pictures’ photographers have covered events at the epicentre of history and on the peripheries of the world, focusing on social and development stories globally.

This event will bring together key voices in Panos Pictures to discuss the developments at Panos and in the photojournalism industry over the past 25 years, and what the future holds.

Award-winning photographer and Senior Lecturer in Photography at the University of the Arts, London, Paul Lowe, will be in conversation with the Director of Panos Pictures, Adrian Evans, and two Panos photojournalists, Andrew Testa and Chloe Dewe Mathews.

Freelance documentary photographer Chloe Dewe Mathews joined Panos Pictures in 2011. She has worked all over the world, and her most recent project Caspian won her the 2011 British Journal of Photography International Photography Award.

Andrew Testa began his career freelancing for the Guardian and Observer in the early 90s. Covering a wide range of topics, from the emerging environmental protest movement, to the war in Kosovo, he quickly made a name for himself. Since then has accumulated an array of prestigious awards, including three World Press Photo Awards, and has twice been named Amnesty International’s Photojournalist of the Year.

LET’S CELEBRATE 365 allows us to glimpse the diverse, colourful and sometimes obscure festivals, ceremonies and rituals celebrated around the world.

Artful and anthropological in equal measure, Jeremy Hunter‘s photographs are a snapshot of a world of truly disparate cultures and their celebrations, many of which have remained unchanged for centuries.

Hunter has travelled to more than 60 countries in 30 years, collecting images that explore the cultural landscape of the world that may help to create a better understanding of the essential “glue” that binds all societies together.

Hunter will specifically explore, through their celebrations, the cultural DNA of North Korea, Tunisia, Bangladesh, Papua New Guinea and India.

This event will be moderated by Paddy O’Connell of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House and the Frontline Club’s First Wednesday strand.

Picture credit: Jeremy Hunter, North Korea

 

View in iTunes

Over the past century, in common with many capital cities, Cairo’s population has increased exponentially. In recent years luxury private developments have popped up in the desert surrounding Cairo, making room for Egypt’s business elite with backing from the Mubarak regime. The boom in the construction of wealthy suburbs away from the chaos of the over-crowded city is sharply underlining the vast gap between rich and poor in Egypt.

Photojournalist Jason Larkin chose these desert construction sites as the subject for his latest project, Cairo Divided. His two-year collaboration with journalist Jack Shenker has produced a long-form essay, accompanied by Larkin’s pictures, which has challenged traditional publication methods. Larkin will be speaking at the Frontline Club about photographing Cairo Divided and the means through which it was published.

Released just before the much-anticipated November elections in Egypt, the publication is a free paper supported by academic institutions, cultural centres, architectural organisations and Panos PICTURES. Its production is a novel attempt to bring long-form journalism and photojournalism to a wider audience.

The talk will be moderated by Max Houghton, Course Leader of the MA in Photojournalism at the University of Westminster and co-editor of 8 magazine. Larkin was one of Houghton‘s first students at the University of Westminster and she takes a particular interest in photographic projects that combine images with the written word.

Jason Larkin is a British photojournalist who specialises in under-reported issues in the Middle East and Africa. He was recently awarded the Arnold Newman New Portraiture Award.