Respect Authority

Black and white photography has a lot of practical applications — emo band album covers, MySpace profile self-portraits, and every amateur photographer’s portfolio ever. Its inherent artfulness has lead to a great overuse of the style, subsequently wounding its artfulness through the strangling choke of cliché. Nonetheless, English photographer Michael Kenna’s monochrome images of stark, sweeping landscapes remind the viewer of the potential beauty of black and white photography. His shots have all the mood your average emo kid could only dream of.

Kenna’s photos scream silence; the quiet stillness makes it feel as if every shot was captured in the wee hours of Christmas morning. The pictures are also an agoraphobic’s nightmare — the vast emptiness Kenna regularly captures, highlighted by strongly contrasted trees or fences dotting the surrounding abyss, would have Emily Dickensen lighting the oven with just one glimpse. But if you’re anything like me, you’d be too busy falling into the enveloping void to smell the burning hair. Read More ›

I love photography. I especially love viewing prescreened award-winning photography because it allows me an opportunity to stretch my iconoclastic legs.

I recently stumbled upon the Best of Photojournalism website which oversees an annual photojournalism contest. It is a “contest designed by photojournalists for photojournalists” and its panel of judges is, so modestly, made up of “some of the most prominent and visionary photographers, editors, and educators in visual journalism.”

Pretty quickly into my perusal, I noticed the same trend I had identified years before. A lot of the winners captured disturbing pictures of people who were either dying, dead, severely injured, suffering, starving, or sad. It seems the road to photojournalistic success is easiest if traveled on the back of an unfortunate soul. This has always really bothered me and a few years ago I got into a pretty passionate argument with a professional photojournalist and an aspiring photojournalist about this same topic. I conveyed my sentiments to the photojournalist and my ideas were, as Cher would say, brutally rebuffed. I forget his exact words, but his implications about my artistic knowledge, or supposed lack thereof, were less than flattering.

So I figured, what better place to express my opinions than in a forum that deprives the said photojournalist the opportunity to refute my assertions?? Nothing like an argument you can’t lose! Read More ›