Pretty pictures but journalism my arse
Written by duckrabbitCiara Leeming summed it up beautifully on the BBC recently when she said the problem with many ‘photojournalists’ is that they have little understanding of journalism.
Dominic Nahr’s set of pics in TIME is a great example. Why? Where is the coherency and where is the story?
To be fair to Dominic he’s run around hard looking for nice shots and that’s exactly what he’s got. It’s the kind of scatter gun approach that photo editors seemingly demand, but does little in connecting audiences to important stories outside their backyard.
I’m sure the photo editor at TIME was delighted.
Author — duckrabbit
duckrabbit is a production company formed by radio producer/journalist Benjamin Chesterton and photographer David White. We specialize in digital storytelling.
Discussion (8 Comments)
Well, if you’ve seen how emaciatingly thin a TIME mag is these days, coupled with your average American’s attention span- it’s not at all surprising. Although, there should be no excuse for the online version.
Now contrast that scatter shot style to the more visually cohesive piece on George Clooney in Sudan, where the pictures seem to cling to his every movement and facial expression (and thank god for him).
Yeah … with George there everything is going to be hunky dory.
It’s hard to criticize Mr. Nahr… (think I’ll just blame the editors).
Agreed.
Far from hunky or dory- but he’s not the usual empty headed Hollywood publicity monger. He’s decided to use his celebrity status for whatever good can come of it (in addition to being quite proactive concerning several social causes)- that’s light years ahead of most of his peers and setting a much needed example…
Stan you are right. He’s committed to this cause no doubt. Took it to the White House.
Illustrator or investigator? Mr Nahr’s seems to be the former, but who knows the brief, the circumstances or the editor? What was published was very limited.
Whatever we think, Time is one of very few magazines still assigning. We should be encouraging them to do better.
‘We should be encouraging them to do better.’
Exactly. But I think they need a bit more stick.