Tuesday, September 21, 2010

World Press Photo Competition.

Earlier on this month I went to the Auckland Exhibition of the World Press Photo Competition, for those of you not familiar with the competition, their website's mission statement says;
"Our Mission is to encourage high professional standards in photojournalism and to promote a free and unrestricted exchange of information. World Press Photo aims to support professional press photography on a wide international scale. Promotional activities include an annual contest, exhibitions, the stimulation of photojournalism through educational programs, and creating greater visibility for press photography through a variety of publications."
Their focus has been on professional pictures which highlight issues which the world is dealing with at the time of the contest. Kind of like a'The Year That Was' in photos.
Now if you think back over the last year you may recall that after the disputed Iranian Election all foreign journalists were kicked out of Tehran so they couldn't report or show the rest of the world footage of the protests taking place by opposition supporters. What Iran couldn't stop was the flow of images, and videos of the events that Iranians were managing to load on to the internet.
This year, the World Photo Press, acknowledged that these images were hugely influential on our comprehension of what was really going on in Iran by giving a special mention to a still shot taken from protesters Neda Agha-Soltan's death (please beware the image is not pleasant. and the original footage even less so)
Although only a special mention, one must remember that this is a competition run in order to promote images from the Professional Press Photography. To me this is highlights the way in which our world is changing and the line between Professional Journalism and the civilian is blurring, so much so that now civilians are even mentioned in events so sacred to the Press as 'The World Press Photo Competition'.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.