(Museo Franz Mayer, 10 August 2024)
A good photographer seeks beauty. A war photographer is no exception. That is why many a war photographer (e.g., the Turnley twins) has settled in Paris to photograph beautiful people and things (see also Greg Williams).
The war photographs at the World Press Photo exhibition are ugly and staged. When everyone has a camera and an X account, most photojournalists are redundant. They are rarely in the right place at the right time. The smartphone-brandishing crowd always is. Or that is the impression the exhibition conveys.
To make a living, a photojournalist must differentiate his product from that of the crowd and must search for a paying audience beyond X. Exhibition juries are one such audience, hungry for photographs that would indulge their political agenda du jour. The same goes for journalism. It is harder to make a living as a competent reporter than a partisan columnist. Or that is the impression the press conveys.
