Photo-journalism: leaving Nachtwey behind

The excellent dispatches magazine recently organized a debate at Brooklyn's VII Gallery with Gary Knight, one of the magazine's co-founders, and Tim Hetherington, a young photo-journalist (and 'thinker') who has made some interesting attempts to break out of the dark corner in which photo-journalism finds itself. The debate is available in its entirety on the dispatches website and is well worth a look.

At the conversation I attended earlier this week one of the panellists, a former journalist for the NY Times, kept steering the discussion towards his experience of photo-journalism, blurring the lines between it and photography. I found that there was a palpable feeling of discomfort in the air each time that he drew this parallel: as if  'photo-journalism' has become a dirty word which is not really supposed to be mentioned in a discussion of Photography with a capital 'P'. The fence (or is it barbed wire?) between these two fields has always seemed a little artificial to me and thankfully up-and-comers like Hetherington are contributing to tearing holes in it (see Sleeping Soldiers for a good example of this). I have been wondering whether the recent turmoil that is hitting newspapers and magazines (the traditional homes of photo-journalism) so hard is going to further contribute to blurring this distinction. In the dispatches debate the Knight explained his concern that the only images of war that get distributed are overly legible, presenting the extremities of war (tragedy, suffering, violence) and not the body of it. This used to be precisely what photo-journalists searched for in conflict photographs—James Nachtwey still seems to think that by presenting the most dramatic forms of these images that he can single-handedly change the course of history—but thankfully this is changing. Maybe that, as photo-journalists are forced to find new ways of distributing their images, we will start to see a less selective picture and one which will be a lot harder to categorise as unrelated to 'fine art photography'.

State of play: art criticism

Recently it seems like you cannot turn your head in the art blogosphere without reading about one of two things: the imperilled state of arts journalism or the existentialist quandaries of art bloggers. This question is even being discussed in the real world: last night I attended a conversation at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson on the the future of art criticism. With newspapers collapsing like the proverbial houses of cards, and even the best art bloggers only making lunch money from their sites (France's leading—1 million unique visitors last year—art blogger, Lunettes Rouges, claims that his blog doesn't even pay him enough to travel to all the exhibitions that he reviews), everyone is looking anxiously at the horizon wondering where art writing is headed. Most of the coverage that I have read offers few credible answers (try András Szántó or DLK for exceptions to that rule).

Last night's conversation was heated, if pretty inconclusive. The most entertaining comments of the evening were quoted from a recent issue of Cabinet magazine, in which an Iranian contributor laid out her vision of the art world of the future. In this quite wonderful art utopia every critic would be forced to produce one piece of art every year, and every artist one piece of criticism; art sales would be decided by every wannabe buyer writing a two-page letter to the artists explaining what the piece means to them and why they are the most suitable owner for it, with the artist deciding on the buyer on this basis.

Much of the time was spent knee-deep in nostalgia for the good old days. One of the speakers suggested that over the last few years we have seen the chain of influence in the art world essentially reverse itself. Twenty years ago critics were those who spotted talent, museums and dealers followed, with collectors completing the cycle. Today the collectors call the shots: dealers scurry around behind them trying to dig up more of whatever was selling last month, museums put on shows based on secondary market values, and critics get called in at the end of all of this in order to write the requisite eulogies. It's a generalisation but one which certainly explains why most arts criticism has lost its teeth. Everything seems to be ranked somewhere between good and excellent, or simply shrugged off. Partly this is due to the staggering proliferation of exhibitions, art fairs and book launches and the even more staggering proliferation of opinions. Most arts writers are trying to keep up rather than having any time to digest anything, let alone spend the time writing about something that left them unimpressed.

What emerges clearly from all of this is that any writer on the arts that thinks that thinks they limit themselves to art criticism will be crashing back down to earth by the time I have finished writing this blog post. I recently reviewed Dans L'Oeil du Critique at the National Museum of Modern Art. Interestingly, this might be the first show in France (or anywhere?), which is based on the work of a critic, the late Bernard Lamarche-Vadel, rather than an artist, theme or movement. What I found even more striking is that by the time a museum got around to taking such a 'bold' step, it seems that the role of critics has dwindled to the point where there isn't anyone left worth making such a show about.

NY Photo Festival Blogging Panel

Photo-bloggers of the world, rejoice. Photo-blogs have reached that critical mass where 'blogging panels' like this one at the NY Photo Festival now take place about the role of blogging in photography. If you missed that defining moment in photo-blog history (chaired by the almighty JM Colberg of Conscientious fame), you can see practically the whole thing here (or the full audio here if you're not into the shaky handheld video thing). This could change your blog forever...ok it won't, but some of the panellists do have some interesting thoughts on the subject.