Let's Be Honest - Part 1

Kenneth Jarecke, Contact Press Images

Haiti doesn't have much to offer its own people, but it does have two important things that photographers can appreciate.

1) There's a constant stream of personal hardships happening there, that normally a would-be contest winner would have to travel all the way to Africa to capture.

2) They have an abundance of great light.

Which brings us to this image by Danish photographer Klavs Bo Christensen.

Klavs Bo Christensen

This is how Klavs interpreted his image (above).

Below is the original raw image.

Klavs Bo Christensen

Yes in my opinion Klavs went a little heavy on the shopping here, which is a big problem. Let's give him credit though. He didn't have to share his raw files, and he's gotten a worldwide beating for it in return.

Here's the story (in english).

If you read the story, you'll see the judges of the Danish Pictures of The Year contest requested the files (plus the files of two other photographers).

Originally, I decided to ignore this. Not because it didn't need to be talked about (it does), but because I felt that at a certain point it became an exercise in beating up one photographer.

I do believe it's an important responsibility of photography judges to call attention to and start debates in regard to journalistic standards and practices, but I was also a little concerned that there could have been some personal motives behind this. I'm not overly knowledgeable in the subtle political dealings of the Danish photojournalism scene, but I had the feeling there might have been some payback happening here.

It could be, that Klavs was getting a lot of work, that others weren't.

That said, this story keeps floating around and I think, OK, the truth is I've been provoked into commenting at this point.

So here are a few points that should be made;

1) Regardless of anything else, this isn't much of a photo to begin with. Like I said above, Haiti has plenty of good light and more than its fair share of strife. As a photographer, you need to look, see and then capture GREAT images. Klavs, from what I can see, didn't do any of these things. He never gave himself a chance to do great work.

There was no looking or seeing or experiencing anything, just grabbing a file as a starting point to be photoshopped later. This is a con job. Fancy colors and selective contrast to trick the viewer into thinking they're seeing something insightful.

2) The judges knew this image (and others) had problems. I'm not sure who is paying for Klavs' photo adventures, but why didn't they (see this was overly manipulated)? Somewhere there must be an editor that not only likes this kind of stuff, but pays for it to be made.

That seems like an even bigger problem to me, that there's a publication willing to reward a photographer for this kind of work.

It's not the internet that is killing editorial photography, but the lack of quality content. This is a prime example.

Evidently, Klavs isn't working in color anymore, just black and white. Which I guess means that Klavs is still working as a journalist, and neither he nor his editors have learned any lessons here.

It's not the color, or the hyper-color for that matter, it's the lack of content. The lack of seeing. Black and white is just the next trick for this pony and isn't going to fix the real problem. The willingness of publications and editors to ignore great photography (yes there's plenty still being made) for instantly forgettable garbage.

Sadly, I'm not sure there are too many editors left working today that can tell the difference.

Comments

[Dave]

Hi Kenneth - this issues has been on my mind all day, since I joined a thread about it over on Lightstalkers:
http://www.lightstalkers.org/image-disqualified

I have to say, I agree. The bottom line here is that there's not much happening in the image, and that ratcheting up the saturation doesn't add anything to the image.

[Nowhere-man]

Personally, I love the obvious "marketing" side step to B+W, it's a great move for the guy. LOL. I think if nothing else he's reopened the whole can of worms about picture manipulation and that was probably his whole point. Why not then move to B+W? That will cover the whole gambit and make his work famous for nothing more than the controversy that it brings. Remember, there's no such thing as "bad press", it's all good press in the end.

Now, there's a couple of things that you said that I'd like to address.

Item 1. "There was no looking or seeing or experiencing anything, just grabbing a file as a starting point to be photoshopped later. This is a con job. Fancy colors and selective contrast to trick the viewer into thinking they're seeing something insightful."

Happens all the time. You've probably taken a few and had them published yourself. I literally see stuff like this everywhere. If we excluded images because of these criteria we'd have very little to look at, which probably wouldn't be a bad thing. Images like these are the ones that make good images so meaningful. Think Captain Crunch with Crunch Berries.

Item 2. "The judges knew this image (and others) had problems. I'm not sure who is paying for Klavs' photo adventures, but why didn't they (see this was overly manipulated)? Somewhere there must be an editor that not only likes this kind of stuff, but pays for it to be made."

Okay, tell me the difference between this and say someone like Chip Simons' work? As for the editors, the easy answer is, "...they liked his 'style'..." Again, happens all the time. Just stroll over to the Strobist blog there's a whole bunch of people trying to figure out 'style' techniques with strobes on that site as well as learning how to use their strobes.

Item 3. "That seems like an even bigger problem to me, that there's a publication willing to reward a photographer for this kind of work."

Drum roll... Happens all the time. But you already know all of this. Here's my counter to that argument. To my knowledge there is no publication around that is quantifiably better top to bottom at providing intellectually sound judgement in what they report, assign, run, and ultimately print. It's a fantasy to think that mediocrity isn't going to be the norm in this business at all levels as it is in all businesses. Pointing out bad work without sanctions or correction only provides conjecture. Then there's the whole "artiste" debate so, even if sanctions and corrections were handed out there'd only be one more spot more than likely "back filled" with another "artiste" hocking his/her bend on things.

This industry IMHO has always been every (wo)man for her/himself. You are what you shoot and can sell, if it works for you and you can make a living doing it, great. If it doesn't work for "the industry" (...what/who is this anyhow?) well, then it's probably ultimately left between yourself and god to sort out somewhere down the road, because there ain't no photo police enforcing any standards for anything and the Internet and Photoshop have only made that more visible. So, enjoy your Crunch Berries, but don't even try to sort them out you'll be wasting your time and ultimately not enjoying your cereal.

[ciara]

great post. Yes there's no discernible story here but to me he crossed an invisible line that all journalists and photojournalists should understand and respect. It just makes me wonder about people's motivations for doing their job...is it to tell people's stories effectively and give them a voice or is it some kind of twisted personal ego trip?
I just don't find this kind of approach appropriate for documentary work. In any case, it looks rubbish.

[Klavs Bo Christensen]

Hi there

I am Klavs Bo Christensen. You have an article about me being disqualified in the Danish POY. Could you please remove the image on your page and referr to this link instead:

http://www.pressefotografforbundet.dk/index.php?id=11708

Your homepage does not reproduce the image correct, which I think is very important in this situation.

[Kenneth Jarecke]

Klavs,

The images have been removed.

I will say that the images reproduced exactly the same way here as they are on the Danish site (that's where I stole the files to begin with).

Regardless, they are your property, so I'll honor your request.

Ken

[glen]

Ken,

I think you show quite a bit of hypocrisy here.
First, you don't agree with Klavs' way of processing. That's fair enough and worth a debate. Then you start criticising the quality of his pictures. That is not the issue here. Klavs only let the Pressefotogafforundet website publish them to start a debate of how much we can process our pictures and still be within the limits of credibility.

You piss on him and then say he stinks.

And to make things even worse - you STEAL his pictures from the website and publish them. You even changed them a bit to emphasize the issue ???

No, you probably just took a screenshot and then published them, now with the colorspace of your monitor.

Ethics in photojournalism. You are not the not to throw the first.

PS. Don't bull**** me about "fair use" etc. The are clearly marked as Klavs' copyright.

[glen]

sorry about the typos ;o)

[Kenneth Jarecke]

Glen,

Normally I would never publicly criticize another photographers published editorial work. As photographers we normally don't have a whole lot of say in how things look, or what images are used in a magazine.

I would guess that Klavs had a very limited time in Haiti. Which might explain the poor quality of content in his work (from there).

That said, these images were submitted by Klavs to a contest. Which means he had a lot more control in what was chosen and how it looked.

The point is that Klavs made a poor judgement in both image selection and image interpretation. So in my opinion the stink is coming from his own piss, not mine.

Which leads to the other point the runs through all three of my posts on this subject. Regardless of how fancy you get with the photoshopping, content is still king.

Yes, I readily admit to (briefly) using Klavs' images without his permission. I immediately removed them when Klav contacted me and requested that I take them down and I did also post a link to the Danish site.

That said, the files were originally stolen directly off the Danish site. They reproduced here in exactly the same manner as they did there. I compared my site with the Danish site side by side in both Safari and Firefox (which as you know do make use of embedded colorspace profiles), and they looked identical.

But as you say, after I admitted as much in my response to Klavs above, the images are his property.

I suspect that the comment Klavs left here was a cut and pasted note that he sent to dozens of different sites around the world. I also suspect that many commercial sites who are selling advertising, have not complied with Klavs' request.

Let me stress one thing, I did not change the files in anyway. As you have wrongly accused me of doing.

As far as Fair Use is concerned, I'm sure there are a thousand lawyers that would argue to the fact that this does fall under Fair Use. Personally, regardless of what the lawyers say, I fall firmly on the side of a photographer getting paid for their work.

I'm not really sure what you meant in your second to last sentence.

All the best,
Ken

[Robert Pljuscec]

I like this blog :D ...really! Finally someone speaks frankly about the problems in photography.

Greetings from Croatia