A Few Wise Words About Photojournalism

Last week, American Photo contributing editor Eliane Laffont received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Griffin Museum in Boston. Eliane and her husband, Jean Pierre Laffont created both the Gamma and Sygma photo agencies, which changed the business of photojournalism and made the medium immensely more important. Along the way, they helped create the careers of a number of now-famous photographers. In the photo above, you see Laffont being congratulated by Jean-Francois Leroy, the driving force behind the Visa pour L'Image photojournalism festival in France, and Kathy Ryan, the photography editor of the New York Times Magazine. (By the way, the museum also gave a Focus Award for Writing to AP Executive Editor Russell Hart, so we felt very well represented.)
     Accepting her award, Laffont spoke passionately about the important role photojournalism plays in our society. I thought readers of this blog would like to hear her words. What follows is a transcript of her speech.

GQ, National Geo, and New Yorker Win National Magazine Awards for Photography

Award season continued last night, as the American Society of Magazine Editors announced the winners of the 2009 National Magazine Awards.

PHOTO PORTFOLIO (honors creative photography and photo illustration)
Winner: The New Yorker, for "Service," a series of portraits of American soldiers by Platon (above).
Finalists: Bon Appétit (for "A Heritage Feast" by by Tim Morris; GQ  for "Whot It Takes," by Jeff Riedel; Gourmet for "Out of Sight" by Romulo Yanes; and W for "Come on Down to Nawlins" by Bruce Weber; styled by Karl Temper, April.

PHOTOGRAPHY (recognizes excellence in magazine photography over three full issues)
Winner:  GQ  Jim Nelson, editor-in-chief; Fred Woodward, design director; Jim Moore, creative director; Anton Ioukhnovets, art director; Dora Somosi, director of photography, for August, November, December issues.
Finalists: Bon Appetit; National Geographic; T The New York Times Style Magazine;  and W.

PHOTOJOURNALISM (recognizes photographic documentation of an event or subject in real-time)
Winner: National Geographic, for "Who Murdered the Virunga Gorillas" by Brent Stirton (photo below)
Finalists: Harper’s Magazine  for "Life and Death" by Lynsey Addario;  The New York Times Magazine for "A Cutting Tradtion"  Stephanie Sinclair; The New York Times Magazine for "The Children of God" by Stephanie Sinclair; Time for "The Forgotten Plague" by James Nachtwey
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Seven Photographers Win Guggenheim Fellowships

The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has announced the recipients of its 85th competition. Among the 180 Fellowships to artists, scientists, and scholars, seven were awarded to photographers.

Thomas Joshua Cooper, Professor and Senior Reseacher in Fine Art, The Glasgow School of Art. Seen here: Broken Boulder in the Late Afternoon Sun (Remembering Timothy O'Sullivan) Along the Snake River, Pillar Falls Canyon, Jerome Co. Idaho, USA, 2003-2004

Osamu James Nakagawa, Associate Professor of Photography, School of Fine Arts, Indiana University. Seen here: Glory, 2003


Suzanne Opton, Photographer, New York City. Seen here: an image from her Soldier Series

Anna Shteynshleyger, Faculty Member, School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Seen here: City of Destiny (Portrait with Mordechai)

Cheryle St. Onge, Photographer, Durham, New Hampshire. Seen here: An image from her Offerings series.

Brian Ulrich, Adjunct Faculty Member, Columbia College, Chicago. Seen here: An image from his Retail series.

Byron Glen Wolfe, Photographer, Chico, California. Seen here: An image done in partnership with photographer Mark Klett.--David Schonauer

Eyes of History Contest Winners Named

The White House News Photographers Association has released the names of the winners of its 2009 Eyes of History photo contest. Washington Post photographer Andrea Bruce was named the Photographer of the Year, and Charles Ommanney of Getty Images/Newsweek won the Best Political Photo award.
      This is the fourth time Bruce, who learned of her win while on assignment in Iraq, has won the Photographer of the Year award. Her previous awards came in 2003, 2005, and 2006.
      Ommanney's award came for his photo of President-Elect Barack Obama inside the Capital, moments before he walked onto the viewing stand to be sworn in as Commander in Chief (above). Contrast that image with another winning photo made by Ommanney that day showing President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney and their wives waiting for the arrival of the Obamas at the White House (below). What can we learn from these two pictures? (For a complete list of the winners, go here.)--David Schonauer

Pulitzer Prizes Go to Damon Winter and Patrick Farrell

The 2009 Pulitzer Prize winners were announced today. In the Feature Photography category, Damon Winter of the New York Times won for his "memorable array of pictures deftly capturing multiple facets of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign." Above in Winter's shot of Obama after speaking to veterans in San Antonion. Most memorable, of course, was his picture of Obama speaking during a rainstorm at Widener University in Chester, Pennsylvania (below). Has a presidential candidate ever looked as cool?

In the Breaking News category, the award went to Patrick Farrell of the Miami Herald for coverage of Haiti in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike. The jury called Farrell's work "impeccably composed images of despair." The photo below shows four-year old Veronica Lonis, malnourished and weighing 16 pounds.

 The image below, also by Farrell, shows a woman washing her clothes and dishes in muddy flood water.

In the Feature category, the finalists included Carol Guzy of the Washington Post for coverage of risky childbirth practices in Sierra Leone and Sonya Hebert of the Dallas Morning News for coverage of Texas medical center.

In the Break News category, the finalists were the Associate Press staff for coverage of the earthquake in Sichuan, China, and Carolyn Cole of the Los Angeles Times for coverage of political violence in Kenya.--David Schonauer

2009 Griffin Museum Focus Awards Go to Some Friends of Ours!

The Griffin Museum in Boston has announced the recipients of his fourth-annual Focus Awards, which honor people who are not photographers but who have made important contributions to photography. And we're happy to report that two American Photo crew-members are on this year's list.
    Contributing Editor Eliane Laffont, the former president and guiding light of the Sygma photo agency, is receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award. And Executive Editor Russell Hart will be receiving the award for photographic writing.
    Other recipients are: Robert Haggart, founder of APhotoEditor.com; and  Rosalind Smith, a writer for Shutterbug, Photographer's Forum, and Black and White. The awards will be presented on May 7.--David Schonauer

Emerging Talent at Hearst 8x10 Photography Biennial

I walked up the street yesterday to the magnificent Hearst Building on Eighth Avenue to view the winners of the company's first major photography contest. First, let me say it was wonderful to see a big media company (with magazines like Cosmopolitan, Esquire, and Harper's Bazaar) stepping up to promote photography, while also enhancing its own profile as a source and patron of great photography. (I know of another media company that is bailing out of this area, but I won't say which one, for now.)
      The new competition, called the Hearst 8x10 Photography Biennial, aims to find and celebrate emerging photographers. The contest's judges did a good job, and I was happy to see that a number of photographers featured in American Photo's own Emerging Artists surveys were in the Hearst show. That includes Edith Maybin (photo above).

I also liked the work of Blake Fitch, who is definitely emerging as a hot young artist--she's got a show up at the ClampArt Gallery now (above).

Amid all the new art--predominated by fabricated scenes of young women exploring their identities, the standout work (at least for me) were portraits of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan by Louie Palu (above). The well-lighted work had real emotional depth, and a basis in reality, that is increasingly missing from photography.--David Schonauer

Annie Leibovitz Tops List of ICP's 2009 Infinity Awards

The International Center of Photography has announced the list of recipients of its 2009 Infinity Awards. This year's Lifetime Achievement award goes to Annie Leibovitz, who previously has received the Infinity Award for Applied Photography.
     The awards will be presented on May 12 at Chelsea Piers, Pier Sixty, in Manhattan. This marks the 25th anniversary of the prestigious Infinity Awards.
     Other nominees include Italian photographer Letizia Battaglia, who receives the Cornell Capa Award for her work in documenting the Sicilian mafia in the 1980s. Japanese photographer Rinko Kawauchi wins the Art award. Geert van Kesteren receives the Photojournalism award for work in Iraq. And London-based Tim Walker is recipient of the Applied/Fashion/Advertising award. Continue reading for the full ICP press release list of winners--David Schonauer

Extreme Ice Survey News Update

I've been reporting on the Extreme Ice Survey for a couple of years now, and there's some nice new things to take note of right now. EIS is the brainchild of photographer James Balog, an old friend and intrepid artist and journalist. Back when climate change was something only Al Gore spoke about, Jim decided to take still cameras and place them in some of the globe's most remote and forbidding places to record the melting of glaciers over time. The results, which you can see here, have been spectacular and spectacularly scary.
    I just learned that Jim has received the Visual Arts & Design Award from the Aspen Environmental Forum. Congrats to him and the entire EIS crew.
   There is also a NOVA documentary about EIS scheduled to air on PBS stations in March.--David Schonauer

Don't Call Him Sir Harry...Yet

I’ve been on a bit of a break for the past couple of weeks, visiting one family and then another. Hope you enjoyed your holiday season as I did. Now it’s time to start probing the news of the photo world.
    And wouldn’t you know it? While I was on vacation the Queen of England went and made photographer Harry Benson (above) a Commander of Order of the British Empire. When I saw the announcement late last week I sent off a quick email to Harry’s wife, Gigi, who confirmed the news. “We are happy and amazed,” she said.
    She also confirmed that, as a CBE, Harry is not to be called Sir Harry. Yet. That would be the next step up in the awards the Queen gives out.
    Harry has been living in the United States for years, but he’s always maintained Brit citizenship (along with his Fleet Street enjoyment of snapping newsmaking images of the rich and powerful). We send our congratulations to him and his family.