PHOTOGRAPHY: Hazel Friedman
IF the success of an exhibition can be measured by audience attendance figures, the World Press Photo Awards at the Standard Bank Gallery belongs somewhere on the Richter scale. A week after its opening, the cavernous gallery space became a thoroughfare, beckoning to a public normally intimidated by an art world that is increasingly shrinking into itself, insulated in the rarefied ambience of the cultural refrigerator.
By contrast, the photographs still speak in a language understood by all.
Rated as the leading international press photography exhibition, the World Press Photo Awards includes the best in photojournalism and simultaneously reflects the year’s foremost global events.
Commentary accompanying the images provide ideological and historical context and helps direct our responses.
The exhibition is as much about the changing image of photojournalism as it is about images and events. For a public subjected to a constant barrage of technicolour tragedy, escapism is the effective opiate, via the scandals and escapades of the famous and favoured. The World Press Photo organisers haven’t pandered to the trend towards all things tabloid. But they have introduced another category to the exhibition – portraiture – which has enabled photojournalists to focus on quieter subjects while indulging in their and the public’s fascination towards various forms of human “otherness”.
As is evident from several of the works on show, photographers, more emasculated by an increasingly profit-driven industry, are focusing on telling other stories, trying to give their images a voice that resonates above the high-tech hum, free from the dictates of text. Such is the case with Stephan Vanfleteren’s essay on nomads raiding US railroads.
The images bear testimony to the fact that while the world seems to have shrunk – and with it many traditional opportunities for photojournalists – there are still so many stories waiting to be told.
The World Press Photo Awards exhibition is on at the Standard Bank Gallery in Johannesburg