On April 19, 2000, I wrote an email, the second part of which appears below, to Árpád Gerecsey, then the director of the World Press Photo Foundation (henceforth WPP) in Amsterdam, in response to that year’s World Press Photo exhibition. Seeing an installation of the 2011 edition of the World Press Photo show on November 6 at Mesiac Fotografie (Month of Photography) in Bratislava — where I’d spent time with several earlier editions of the WPP show in 1998 — reminded me that nothing much had changed 11 years on, so this commentary still pertains, especially since WPP asserts that “We exist to inspire understanding of the world through quality photojournalism.” For the first part of this open letter, click here. — A. D. C., London, UK.
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(Continued.) This year’s show and catalogue, though first-rate in terms of production values and presentation, struck me as the same-old-same-old, with the crises and the photographers having played the usual game of musical chairs. I’m proposing to you that it could be, and should be, much more than that, and that it’s within your capacities to change it. I realize that this is asking a lot, but I think that’s what I’m supposed to do — stir you up and piss you off and ask a few hard questions.
World Press Photo opening, Bratislava, 2011. Copyright © 2011 by Peter Prochazka.
Keep in mind that I come to these exhibitions and catalogues — and to this awards occasion — not as one of you, an insider and colleague, but as an outsider. And I have to assume that this is at least in part exactly why I was invited there in the first place: to provide you with some feedback as to how this project — these awards and, particularly, the public presentation of the results — affects the audience for it.
World Press Photo, Bratislava, 2011. Copyright © 2011 by Roberto Muffoletto.
I can tell you how the press in New York City — the photography press, that is, those of us whose work involves writing about photographs and photographers and photography — relates to these exhibitions, which are usually held in the World Trade Center: most of us don’t bother to attend, and those who do come mainly for the food and drink (which is dependably good), and very few of those who show up bother to write about them — because, in the way that you present yourselves, when you’ve seen one World Press Photo show, you’ve seen them all, and what you write about any one WPP exhibit would serve to describe them all.
And the people I talk to outside the profession, the adult exhibit-goers I’ve discussed these shows with in the various locales where I’ve seen them — Bratislava, Manhattan, Gothenberg, and elsewhere — tell me without exception that, while this or that image moved or satisfied them somehow, they entered the exhibit looking for something that would give them a handle on some little aspect of this increasingly complex world and left feeling even more confused and less informed than they were to start with. I’m convinced that’s not true of the readers and viewers who came across these prize-winning images and stories in the media where they were originally presented. Why should it be so in this prestigious showcase that seeks to celebrate the profession’s highest accomplishments?
World Press Photo opening, Bratislava, 2011. Copyright © 2011 by Peter Prochazka.
As I said, I don’t think you see this. And I don’t know how to help you see this show as I do, from outside the profession. Perhaps you need first to simply see it the way you usually do — as a family album about your peers and colleagues (and perhaps yourself), and as a tutorial on current tendencies in the field. But then perhaps you should return to it when the party’s over, to eavesdrop on what people say as they walk through the show and — without revealing your identity — to ask them what they’re learning, or not learning, as they engage with this exhibition as a cumulative statement.
The answers, I guarantee, will surprise you — and, I’m willing to predict, will disappoint you as well. Not because these respondents are unintelligent or inarticulate or uninterested, but because this presentation leaves all these pictures — including the most eloquent ones — largely mute. Is that the sense of the world (and press photography’s relationship to it) that you want to promulgate? Multiply the few people you talk with by the estimated two million-plus who’ll see the show in more than 40 countries, and perhaps you’ll understand why I’m urging you to think harder about this annual project’s social consequences.
World Press Photo, Bratislava, 2011. Copyright © 2011 by Roberto Muffoletto.
World Press Photo was founded in the Netherlands in 1955 — not coincidentally, the year in which Edward Steichen’s curatorial extravaganza, “The Family of Man,” made its debut as a traveling exhibit and a catalogue. That enormously influential show and book undoubtedly exerted a considerable influence on the way that the WPP exhibitions took form when they began. That influence can still be felt today; the individual images for the most part reiterate the classic tropes of that era, the show itself collects and sorts its contents into little more than a yearly variation on the Steichen model.
I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but it’s time to move on — time to rethink that model from the ground up, time to ask what instructive, educational, informational functions this annual project could accomplish if it were used boldly, imaginatively, innovatively, viewed as a collective action within the public sphere rather than an industry-oriented congratulatory event. The congratulations are deserved, and I join in them. But whatever nostalgia you have for the 1950s — I have none myself, but that’s another story — they’re over, long over. And “The Family of Man” as a model is exhausted. But the possibility of creating annually a powerful, coherent, meaningful, socially useful exhibition and publication based on the cream of what’s produced by press photographers worldwide is very much alive, and the 21st century can certainly benefit from it.
You’re not making that show and book now. You haven’t been making that show for years, if you ever were. I believe that you can. And I’m asking you to do so. Possibly the potential uses of your website that we discussed, in which it would serve as an extension of both the exhibition and the catalogue, could make a major difference. But the starting point, I think, must be a rethinking of the purpose and structure of the public function of the exhibition and the catalogue.
World Press Photo, Bratislava, 2011. Copyright © 2011 by Roberto Muffoletto.
Both are by definition political acts — influential annual working definitions of press photography presented to the polity, the citizenry, by the most reputable figures in the field. According to your statistics, the shows are seen by somewhere between 2 and 4 million people in up to 40 countries each year. Through the trickle-down effect of that impact, plus the audience reached by the catalogue in its various editions, that number grows even larger. The impact of the results is considerable, and the definition of “press photography” advocated by the project in its present form is not politically or socially neutral.
I do understand the complexity of the context in which this project is produced — its history and momentum, the demands and restrictions from various political systems under which it’s presented, etcetera. I certainly respect the energy and devotion and professionalism that goes into it on the part of all concerned. But the rush and press of events, the presumed need to keep things moving along, can often serve, subliminally and unconsciously, as a convenient excuse for maintaining the status quo. I hope that, amid all the pressures that you and your colleagues at WPP will face as soon as you return from your well-earned vacations, you’ll find time to sit down and reassess this project from the ground up.
World Press Photo, Bratislava, 2011. Copyright © 2011 by Roberto Muffoletto.
There’s no need to answer this letter; it’s meant primarily as food for thought. I was pleased to learn, during our conversations, that many of these questions are also on your minds, and that changes are being contemplated. Should you decide to establish an advisory committee for that purpose, I’d be happy to volunteer my services.
All good wishes,
/s/ Allan Coleman
(Postscript: The version of the 2011 WPP exhibition that I saw in Bratislava earlier this month had undergone severe editing by WPP itself, reduced down by almost half from its full size of 300 images to 170 images, in order to fit in the space allocated to it at the festival. In what they extracted from the full show, WPP’s exhibition committee emphasized small clusters of images by individual photographers, represented by between two and eight pictures apiece. But these constituted the exceptions, not the norm, and not just in the truncated version but in the show as a whole, as its catalogue indicates.)
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