Stephen Mayes, the director of the VII Agency in New York, one of the most demanding today, calls on photographers to break the codes of photojournalism’s fixation with horror. “The representations of war are bound up in stereotypes. Certain visual codes regularly recur. They show us what we already know, instead of attempting to open up new horizons,” he says, denouncing the standardisation of images. He suggests that photojournalists tell other stories, ones that are closer to daily life or the economic world.
This salutary advice is not only addressed to
photographers. It must also be heard by those
who finance their reports, namely the press. Photo reporters
anticipate the requests of newspapers or
festivals, even sponsors, which favour
social subjects, preferably dramatic ones.
Some days, the 6Mois editorial team feels as though
we are discovering one single report infinitely
duplicated, with each photographer reproducing more or less
the same subject : Roms, migrants, prisons, the homeless,
minors, refugees, battered women, and
the sick. Why is there such a concentration of reports
relating to the same small cluster of subjects, with infinite
geographical variations (South African mines,
Indonesian mines, Ukraine mines, etc.) but always the same
bird’s eye view, hunting down emotion ?
These subjects immediately generate compassion. They are
suggestive but the fear that they provoke places us at a
distance. Above all, they do not tell us everything about reality and
how the world is getting on. There are so many subjects that still need
to be identified, told and taken out of the shadows !
Photojournalists can tell different stories in different
ways if they look elsewhere, if they dare to leave the
beaten path, and if newspapers give them space.
Among the most powerful stories published in 6Mois,
several were dedicated to men or women
from a neighbouring street, followed for months, or years,
by a photographer engaged in long-term work.
Who among our readers could forget the tale of Julie the lost
junkie, fighting to keep her family, or that of Scott,
a veteran from Iraq, or of the German
Wandergesellen (journeymen) ?
The back of the issue you’re holding is
a good illustration of the way in which it is possible
to go beyond clichés. The world of gangs, paramilitary
camps and skinheads effectively lend themselves well to bloody
and spectacular images. It was by going further,
into the intimacy of beings – into their homes and their moments
of release – that another kind of truth emerged under the photographers’
lens, encapsulating life itself : a truth that is troubling, ambiguous
and hence more true to life.
Beside the fury of living of these young desperados,
there are also hunters in the vast North, young
teenage mothers in Naples, people who are a bit far out
or simply dreamers who see themselves as immortal,
afro-cosmonauts, little old ladies in their dacha
picking gooseberries... In their own way, these men and
women also embody our 21st century.
Laurent Beccaria, Patrick de Saint-Exupéry, Marie-Pierre Subtil
N°15 - WINTER 2018
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Investigations CRAZY LAGOS
Portfolio A LIFETIME OF SERVICE
Photobiography GÉRARD DEPARDIEU
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September 2018