Is JF Leroy, a man riding a donkey who says he’s not stuck in the past?

Artdaily.org is running an interview with Jean-Francois Leroy, the heart, soul and brains of the great photojournalism festival that is Visa Pour L’Image.

It makes for fascinating but grim reading.

Basically commitment to photojournalism by the world’s media is dead. We already knew that. And as a result he’s struggling to fill the the festival this year.

‘When you see a photographer under contract with a leading American magazine calling his editor on December 28 to say “I’m off to Gaza” and being told “We’re not interested in Gaza” – and that’s a true story – then you can draw a clear and straightforward conclusion: photographers can no longer make a living from the press.‘

Leroy goes on to show his antipathy for multimedia:

“For years now I’ve heard people saying “Visa isn’t multimedia,” “You’re stuck in the past” and so on. I have always refuted this, saying that we were open to all sorts of things. But if you take fourteen photos and turn them into a slide show with Vivaldi’s Four Seasons as the sound track, that doesn’t mean you’re producing multimedia.”

Its easy to write off Leroy as a man riding a donkey who says that he’s not stuck in the past.  Sure there is some bloody awful multimedia, but no more so than there is bloody awful photography, as Leroy himself points out again and again and again.

It’s quite a rant.  I could feel his spittle coming off the page as I read it …

‘I’m not going to mention any names, but there are some well known sites allegedly presenting multimedia, and the photos are atrocious.‘

He could be talking about all of the worlds major news orgs who have published some terrible multimedia, as well as specialists like FOTO8 or VII, but they’ve all also published some fantastic work and at least they’re trying to move things on.

Leroy has such a deep feeling for photography, that goes beyond paper, beyond light, its a kind of religiosity.   Because of this I suspect that he will  always have a very narrow view on multimedia. The truth is, multimedia is only partly about the photographs but industry insiders like Leroy, and all those judging multimedia awards, rarely seem to get beyond the photographs.  If they aren’t perfect than the feature sucks, but the audience simply doesn’t see it that way.

If you look at many of the great documentaries much of the footage (especially archive) is often of very poor visual quality (this is true of many documentaries that have won Oscars).   On the whole this doesn’t diminish the impact of the story, or the power and integrity of the journalism. The work still resonates because it connects with the audience through the power of storytelling.

Ultimately Leroy can sound a bit like a prophet of doom, and on the face of it he has good reason.

But here’s a question worth asking.  Apart from the photojournalism world, has anyone really noticed, let alone cares,  that magazines are no longer committed to reportage? If you’re a photographer the answer to that question is very, very painful.

But read between the cracks of Leroy’s interview and you can see that somewhere very deep inside he’s genuinely excited about the new possibilities the net offers photography. That’s because he knows that sooner or later if the Visa L’Image doesn’t take a lead on it, there simply won’t be a festival anymore. As he so typically bluntly points out,

‘Its a matter of survival‘.

RESPONSE:

DAVID DUCKRABBIT WHITE

Good post…doesn’t answer why he won’t let duckrabbit into his hallowed spaces…oh…maybe it does…

He keeps banging on about the death of photojournalism….well…in my view all that has died is the traditional outlets for photojournalism.

Has no-one noticed we now have the greatest medium ever invented for telling stories?

Why is everyone so hung up on bloody magazines and newspapers?

IT”S ALL ABOUT THE STORY….not how it’s published.

What’s upsetting photojournalists, and the young wannabes, is the fact that they may not get paid to have an adventure, to see their by-line, to show others how great they are because they’ve been published in some poncy profit driven rag.

Bollocks to that. It is not about YOU…it’s about the story, the subjects. I can understand the young photographers confusing themselves by thinking it’s all about the author….but not the experienced togs. The ego is a dangerous thing. Let it go.

If any one man could lay claim to killing photojournalism, it’s Leroy himself.

TOAST

DavidWhite: “IT”S ALL ABOUT THE STORY….not how it’s published.”

I’m very surprised by this comment tbh. – Its a lovely thought and I agree in the sense of say traditional photography where the story of the photographer can get in the way of the photograph but I have always perhaps incorrectly assumed that Duckrabbit was behind the marshal mcluhan adage of ‘the media is the message’ – to my mind this has never been more true than now and what duckrabbit does, has always to my mind, been the very embodiment of embedding the media into a story to allow it to be told in ways that cannot through ‘traditional’ means. The nearest thing i can come up with is comic books Maus or any other great comic book is as much about the media as it is about the story – the media embeds itself within that story – whether you realise that or not – so it is with a great multimedia…. it *is* the message.

ALM

Look at the history of the exhibits at Perpignan: show after show of images that reduce conflict, famine, and poverty to the status of freakshow. The world is reduced to an adventure playground for vacuous first world (utterly un-)concerned photographers hungry for personal glory and acclaim. There’s nothing inherently unethical about reportage photography, but Leroy is fixated on photography at its crudest and most simplistic, leaving no space for the more thoughtful practitioners.

He, and his equally simplistic and self-congratulatory friends at World Press Photo and Getty, have been greater assassins of photojournalism than celeb culture and plunging editorial budgets could ever hope to be. If Visa pour L’Image dies, then reportage can begin the necessary act of re-invention appropriate to the modern world/economy. Lead Leroy to the guillotine, it’s time for a photo revolution…

duckrabbit@ALM

Interesting comments, but don’t you think its too easy to criticize whilst at the same time leaving an anonymous comment?  If a man on a donkey is still leading the parade what does that say about all those following behind?

If you want a revolution, stand up and lead.

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