Eh, no one’s swallowing that bullshit this year, man. Can we please have some of these people banned from further participation as judges in the future?

And shouldn’t there be an artsy-fartsy contest somewhere with a ‘Still Life’ category in which Li Jie Jun’s toy soldiers could be entered? Regardless of whether or not they have a place in today’s media, I doubt it is in the category of Portraits, the category in which they placed 3rd. Is it even POSSIBLE to have a portrait of a non-living object??

There is room for toy soldiers, absolutely, in a pop art gallery. I’d even buy one myself to give someone as a joke. (maybe to the Capa foundation) Not in the press, (it has never been published in a newspaper or mainstream magazine as far as i know) and all those judges would never actually publish most of this (or last) year’s choices in their own magazines. it’s easy to see, the vast majority of last year’s choices never made it the main-stream media, and i doubt any of this year’s will. So World Press Photo, has little to do with the World (toy soldiers mimicking famous photos) and almost nothing to do with the Press this year.

You attack the photojournalists, for trying to abide to the travesty that is WPP to photojournalists, a freak show that you had a large hand in creating (look at the years that preceded you). Young photographers submit the crap that they do because that’s what you award, year after year.
When judges knowingly chose photos they themselves would never print, it says something about ego…

Not once did i hear you say anything in public about the editors or the wires killing our profession. Never did i hear you go out against the photographers that work with you when they give away their work for free (or almost free) thus putting another nail in the coffin of our younger generation.
And don’t get me started on the role your former employer (Getty) has in destroying what’s left of photojournalism.

How many of these awarded photos where pre-commissioned assignments? How many of these photographers make a decent living from their chosen profession?
Where are the voices of our time? The one time you have a public stage to the world of editors and publishers you turn around, (not that you don’t have their ear any day of the week) you turn around and shoot your poison at us. another nail in the coffin, like we needed that.

I had a lot of respect for you, you said you went to stock in order to come back and learn how to make money from photojournalism, i’m sure you’re pockets are full now, (ours are empty) but you forgot about responsibility towards your peers. I expected you to stand for us, not against us.

It’s time to give back, to use your power and status to show that you can make a positive change in our industry.

So, what follows are two comments that I would normally be inclined to block. You decide. JH

“The overwhelming impression from the vast volume of images is that photojournalism (as a format for interpreting the world) is trying to be relevant by copying itself rather than by observing the world.”

As a sometime editor (always a shooter as well) I am seeing a lot of “great photographs” that have no relation to reality… I see this especially in the new breed of “war photographers,” and I use that term loosely, who have imitated the style of Gilles Peress and others. This abstracted work [...] bears little relationship to what they are photographing. This is most often seen in embeds where there is clearly nothing happening, yet the photographer comes back with blurred juxtapositions of heads, strange compositions that are really about waiting for something to happen… “great” photographs that are stylistically derivative and really dishonest.

The harder work of digging for a deeper meaning, or bringing an understanding to the viewer and letting the truth just emerge, is not accomplished. Instead the photographer shoots abstract compositions, often because the photographer is there on a one week trip and has absolutely no idea what is really happening. Just to show you an example I refer you here, Ricardo Garcia Vilanova, which is a really extreme case of this. These are all pictures of pictures, visual cliches of blurs, looking through mirrors, reflections, etc. never really dignifying anybody as a human being. I would suggest that this is exactly the kind of work presented at World Press.

The world is an amazing place… do the hard work and find images that one can look at and say “wow, that really happened” as in for example the picture of the mountain gorilla being carried off after its death. Did this photographer have to stick a 50mm lens up someone’s nose to create a great “photograph?” Not at all, because there actually was some content which had significance. Going even further, because of the prevalence of image manipulation in Photoshop, the kind of obfuscation that Gilles achieved strictly with camera and lens, is all over the place now, but achieved in post-production. Viewers have trouble believing anything. So where in 1984 Peress was radical, in 2009 it is exactly the opposite, its now the norm. Not easy to do, but a cliche nevertheless.

Please allow me a link to 100eyes Magazine where I think you will see photographers who have gone a bit farther in understanding their subjects than many. This month’s issue is on prison in America.

Why do we even go anywhere, risk our lives and spend all this money to capture that “reality” he talks about when at the end of it, they award posed pictures of toy soldiers representing famous photos?

He’s talking about copyist? It’s WPP who created the kind, photographers understood a few years back that WPP doesn’t award excellence in photojournalism, but rather satisfy the ego of the judges by choosing “something different” so THEY can be remembered. So young photographers try to follow those last wins in hope to get chosen for having photographed something that fits into the twisted judge’s mind.

How about standing behind your words and choosing only newspaper and magazine editors as judges, and actually rewarding the “real” photojournalism.

Your responsibility as a photo industry leader is to educate, but it’s too easy to slam the photographers, there have always been crappy photographers and there always will be, WPP is the only one who publishes them. Let’s see you open your mouth this wide about the editors. Let’s see you make a change and help the industry.

Last thing, as soon as any newspaper or magazine will publish those other 90% of stories, we’ll all be out there taking those photos, it’s hard enough to get the 10% sold these days.

When looking at many publications, the things that get published or are wanted by the editors are very often very similar. So, if you want to get published, [if you want to] make some money, you have to jump on the bandwagon I suppose.

Sure, if you are not taking pictures for a living, then I assume it is easier to invest the huge amount of time to cover an issue, to create the kind of intimacy the judges seem to miss. But otherwhise it turns out to be a spare time project and therefore again is not the “reality” of photojournalism.