Since yesterday, the world once again excites a new installment of the World Press Photo contest, where you can watch the "world's best shots." This because the formula upatrzyły the media and pat it every year. Without a doubt, a professional press photographer for the award of WPP is a matter of great prestige and recognition, even longer from the mere fact that the edition of 2007 sent more than 80,000 photographs, so finding a group of winners is not easy. Personally can not stand, at least for several years, the formula of the competition - indeed increasingly, it seems to me predictable. And not just when watching about on TV (you can then pick out the very considerable probability that subjects will be addressed in the WPP), because the aesthetic canons of certain issues seem to dominate. Koenig King in "Gazeta Wyborcza" ( Interview with Stephen Mayes, secretary of the jury of World Press Photo , GW, 02/09/2008) asked the question: "Photo of the Year is different from those that winning the previous editions. Tim Hetherington's photo does not represent strong emotions: pain, fear, anger. Is this choice is an attempt to break the current trends? ". It sounds interesting, but whether he actually does not show strong emotions? And is it really an American soldier in a bunker, it just fatigue, as suggested in an interview the secretary of the jury? Finally, a picture of the war - the most dramatic and deadly events ... Mayes says, "Hetherington's photo carries a metaphor. When I look at them, I see a man whose back fatigue limits. It is finished. Like all soldiers involved in this war. " Chained themselves quickly and found the earlier editions that picture does not break the trend of year, but pretty good at not enter. Just mention the even photographs of Yuri Kozyrev of Russia (first prize in the category "message - a single image", 2000 edition), Thomas Dworzak report from Germany (first prize in the category of "events - report", in the edition of 2001 - I am thinking mainly portrait of a wounded Chechen fighter in Alkhan-Kala) and Luca Delahaye'az France (first prize in the category "message - a single image", edition 2002). Interestingly, all these works, along with this year's winning photo by Tim Hetherington (incidentally, just pretty good), formed in areas of conflict in Afghanistan and Chechenya, so can specific gray light, and thus a blurring of all these photographs? What is certified? The depletion of the formula and the emergence of the dominant aesthetic canons, which cumulates annually WPP, as well as topics (how many times we watch the wrestlers from India or Ghana?). And there is nothing surprising in this - certainly not going to deny that, because the same thing has happened for example in circulation galeryjnym or art fairs. In 2005, Artforum Berlin, photography was, in addition to painting, Probably the most common medium, and about 40% of all photographic presentation was not related to the aesthetics worked out by artists from Scandinavia. Only a lack of freshness for me is already heavily tedious ... The aesthetic canons of the contest also says awards in this edition of WPP Raphael Milach (by the way congratulations!) In an interview with Beata Skate ( more poetry and two Poles , GW, 09/02/2008), who notes that his "reportage" (for me it is rather a series of portraits) of retired cyrkowcach "part of a trend that popped up (and really existed before - editor. My ) this year for WPP. Materials distinguished intimate, poetic (...)". Miles sums it up thus: "You have to be reconciled with the fact that everything has been photographed and it's time to answer the question, how do I interpret a topic to interest viewers." Leaving aside the question that the world is so dynamic that it is difficult to keep up with him, let alone to photograph everything, worrying it seemed the last sentence. Because if the photograph was a surprise the audience should walk?
Tim Hetherington, UK for Vanity Fair - an American soldier in the Restrepo bunker, Korengal Valley in eastern Afghanistan, 16.09.2007
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