Lessons from POYi - Freelance/Agency Issue Reporting Picture Story

This week, I've gotten to attend several sessions of POYi, notably the Freelance/Agency Feature Event Picture Story and the Freelance/Agency Issue Reporting Picture Story.

For the Issue Reporting picture story, it was defined as: A story or essay that explores an important social, economic, or political issue.

"Love Me"

Story Description: Love Me reflects on the cultural and commercial forces that drive a global obsession with youth and beauty. The project explores how a new form of globalization is taking place, where an increasingly narrow Western beauty ideal is being exported around the world like a crude universal brand. The project spans five years, and involves photography in 17 countries across five continents.
Image Caption: Katie, age 9. Winner. Universal Royalty Texas State Pageant. Texas, USA.

The first picture of the First Place essay kind of creeped me out because it reminded me of JonBenet Ramsey and the very evil things that happened to her. It was cool to see an essay, rather than a photo story win something. The judges really responded to the message of the essay - how the Western 'ideal' is seeping all over the world, despite how negative it is.

Caption: For more than 20 years strict social rules have required modest dress and covered hair. Laws forbid women to publicly sing, dance, or wear make-up. There are reportedly more nose jobs being performed in Iran than in any other country in the world. Elham, 19, and her mother, 55. Rhinoplasty "nose job" operation. Tehran, Iran.

One of the judges mentioned how the images were from societies that are not a part of ourselves, making us examine ourselves. Another commented on how clinical and scientific the images were, encouraging the viewer not to want this ideal.

Caption: "Miss Atom". Elena Kamenskaya, 24. Winner. Russian Federal Atomic Energy Agency annual beauty contest, for female staff aged 18-35. Moscow, Russia.

I have to say that the more I looked at the essay, the more that most of the images bothered me. That clinical light really did seem to expose the 'wrongness' of this issue. At first I didn't understand why this story won, but the more I ruminate on it and sit with it, the more I feel like it was really effective in communicating its message.
Other thoughts about the first round:

• The picture story by the Feature Story winner didn't make if past the first round. None of the winners (or awards of excellence) from that category made it past the first round of judging. An illustration of how *all* the images in a story need to be strong.
• There were a lot of stories in the first round of judging where the pictures were mainly details and objects. One was all detail. I just wondered, how does this tell a story? What story is it telling?
• Other stories had a lot of repetitive images, or they were too far away. They seemed to suffer from my problem of wanting to encapsulate everything in one image rather than tell the story through the moments.
• Some stories I wish just had a different edit, because I think the images were probably there, just not included... It makes me think about how we were talking about 'what do I want to say' and how in class Catalin's story had three different edits and it produced three different stories.
• Deformed people seemed to be a popular story - and I have to ask 'Why?' The stories didn't seem to really communicate why it was important to tell their story. The other topic du jour was the drug war.
• There were some stories that they kept into Round Two that I didn't understand why they were kept. It might be because the judges wanted to hear what the story was, but there were alot where I didn't think the images were strong, especially one on Native Americans, where none of the images seemed well composed and only a few were in focus. The story was strong, but the images didn't really tell it.

In the third round, there was an eskimo story that I liked because of how the images were paired so that they echoed each other. But I agree with the judges that it didn't quite capture the image is professed to be dealing with: the Inuit confronting the future and finding a new way of living and a new identity. One of the other judges also didn't feel that the issue was as compelling as some of the others. Eventually, there was a debate over this point - whether the issues that the essays dealt with should be the thing that makes them winners. The judges decided no, but at one point the "Untitled" Award of Excellence was considered for Third Place because it dealt with the drug issue.

Another essay that didn't make it past the second round was on Nazis in Italy. The "photographs were strong but the content wasn't that strong." The judges really wanted the content to be there but the photographer really undercaptioned his work, to the point that it didn't really explain anything at all. A judge commented: "it's wonderful when a photographer can communciate the hidden meaning that they are aware of," and it made me think about how we can become so fluent in what our images mean, we forget to look at them objectively. (Just like when we're editing and we think our image says something it doesn't because we know the context.)

"To quote out of context is the essence of the photographer's craft." - John Szarkowski

The judges liked the Second Place winner because of how it treated the issue of Alzheimer's: a tender look, beautiful light, images full of intimacy. How it was treated made them feel very connected to these people.

"For Better or Worse"

Story Description: People in rural areas are often the hardest to reach for help in terms of getting health care. Rather than seeking out health care providers because of the remote nature of their environment, they often end up with out care, and most frequently they turn to each other, their families and depending on themselves. The vast majority of care giving takes place in the home. This story is a look at the struggles of aging in southern Ohio through the eyes of Bernard and Mary Triplet. The elderly couple who have been married for 62 years live everyday affected by the harsh realities that come with the onset of Alzheimer's Disease. The disease has robbed Mary of her memory over the last five years and forced Bernard to become the primary care giver to watch over her constantly.
Image Caption: Mary Triplet receives anointment while surrounded by members of her congregation at church. Mary suffers from severe arthritis in her lower back making it extremely uncomfortable to sit through an entire sermon. A neighbor described the couple by saying, "They are both just clinging to life becasue neither one wants to die and leave the other behind."


The judges felt like their story was told in a very subtle, poetic way; the photographer wasn't *trying* to tell a story, s/he was just telling it. One judge noted that, with the exception of the picture of Mary's back, Bernard and Mary were in all the pictures, which they liked because it was telling their story, and it was emphasizing that they were together. This continuity, they said, created a new layer to the story. And one of the judges really liked it because it showed how "we don't have to go across the pond to find stories," that "so many issues are happening in our won neighborhoods." This was comforting because sometimes I struggle to figure out how to make what I find interesting relevant to other people. Like: why are my sheep farmers relevant? It's a story I want to tell but how is it relevant?
 
This was also a story that several of the judges felt like grew on them. One commented that it was "the power of sitting with the photos and letting them seep into you." Unlike the rest of the stories, which were very direct in what they were saying, the judges felt like there was a humility on the part of the photographer and the subjects.
 
The judges liked how each image in the Third Place winner was a small story about a place that we don't think about that much. They were also really taken with the use of light and color by the photographer. It was really nice how each image seemed to embrace a different color - kind of reminded of Monet's house in Giverny. Each room embraced a different color. I loved it! The judges did mention how the distance to the subject didn't really vary very much - I wonder if it might have placed higher if it did.
 

"Moldova - The Outsiders"

Image Caption: A worker inside a walnut packing factory pauses in Chisinau, Moldova on 27 May 2009.

I really liked Award of Excellence story from Kyrgyzstan. I have a fondness for these Soviet-type images because of my undergraduate major in Russian and the large number of classes on Russia (culture, literature, geography, political structure) that I took.
 

"Faded Tulips"

Story Description: The 2005 Tulip Revolution brought hope of more democracy and justices to Kyrgyzstan. Motivated mostly by social injustices, the Kyrgyz people overthrew the authoritarian and corrupted regime of President Askar Akayev and elected in his place Kurmanbek Bakiyev, an opposition leader and former prime minister. The international community broadly welcomed the uprising. Four years later, hope is fading. Inequalities and poverty are still strongly part of the Kyrgyz daily life and democracy seems to be regressing. Elections are rigged, Bakiyev's opponents are arrested while some 15 others have sought political asylum abroad since 2005 and parts of the media are censored. The economic situation is dire: 40% of the population live below the poverty line and the country is one of the most indebted in the world. Nearly half of the population say that they regret the passing of the communist era. In July 2009, Bakiyev was re-elected with 78% of the vote. Local and international monitors reported that the contest was marred by widespread irregularities and the misuse of administrative resources. The president has played a skilful balancing act between Russia and the United States, both of which have military bases in Kyrgyzstan. The US base, used as a supply hub for the war in Afghanistan, was supposed to be closed in 2009 but Bakiyev allowed the Americans to stay in exchange for a tripling of the rent. Observers speculated that the move had also encouraged the US government to muzzle its public criticism of the Kyrgyz regime. The revolution, it seems, is dead.
Image Caption: During a demonstration against president Bakiev in Bishkek on the 27th of March. On this day demonstrations occurred all over the country.


The judges felt like the images were like windows, where you could enter someone's life and feel what they feel. They felt like the hopeless feeling really came through in the images, with the photographer choosing the type of lighting to emphasize the bleak and hopeless mood. "You feel the cold more." But, what held it back was how it was shot: "you can feel the photographer's eye" in the images.