Chicago 2009

The Postmodern Condition

Congratulations to this year's winners of the Grand Prix Paris Match du Photoreportage, Guillaume Chauvin and Rémi Hubert!
Their winning entry, which exposes the harsh conditions that their fellow students at Strasbourg University face, is tough and uncompromising, the kind of reportage that signifies at once a photography concerned with suffering while also revealing the photographers' deep-seated humanist values. Take a look at their incredibly well-done photo-essay here, and then continue reading below...
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From the British Journal of Photography:

Every year, Paris Match, which remains one of the last weekly magazine to give predominant space to photography, organises its ‘Grand Prix Paris Match du Photoreportage.’ This year, the prize, which comes with €5000 and ten pages in Paris Match, was awarded to two students attending Strasbourg’s university.

Guillaume Chauvin and Rémi Hubert won for a reportage chronicling the harsh difficulties some poor students encounter while studying at the Strasbourg university. Their images showed students living in basements or offering sex to pay their rents. Another image portrayed a young man falling asleep in a bus as he embarked on a two-hour commute to his university. The reportage can be seen on Paris Match's website here.

The trick? All of the images had been faked, the two winners announced as they received the coveted prize on 24 June. ‘We though it was a bit caricatural,’ says one of the students to Le Monde newspaper. ‘We thought it would never win.’

However, terms and conditions don’t forbid faked reportages – a situation that is likely to change next year. Already, Paris Match has withdrawn its cash prize, offering it, instead, to the two student’s university of decorative arts in Strasbourg. The weekly magazine, which is now warning readers that the images have been faked, has also announced that next year’s cash prize will be increased to €10,000 as a result of this year’s ‘fraud’.
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Regardless of whether you feel vindicated or outraged after seeing their photo-essay, it definitely leaves an impression--and in my opinion, it's an important commentary, not only on the photojournalism profession but also (and, it seems to me, predominantly) on viewer expectations about what photojournalism is or should be.

Pride, prejudice, zombies

OK, this has nothing to do with photography, but I wanted to mention it anyway...a really cool book, and a brilliant concept. All the emphasis on well-bred country gentlemen and ladies that you've come to expect from Jane Austen with all the brain-eating gore that you've come to expect from zombies. Plus there's some sweet ninja action thrown in too.