Last month I had the opportunity to see the world. If you’re wondering whether I went on some multiple country world tour, or just returned from Disney World’s 11-country-buffet at Epcot Center, you can rest assured that I did neither. Instead, I saw the Real World—and I don’t mean MTV’s pseudo reality-television show. What I did see, though, was untainted by a hotel view, a television screen, or a ten-foot grinning Mickey Mouse. It was candid and sincere, and it was a display of press photography from the 2008 World Press Photo exhibition.

I was invited by Getty Images to cover the event for our website (you can find the story in our Online Exclusives section), and was made a witness to the many different realities of the people showcased on the clean walls of the United Nations building. My experience seeing a world unscathed by a political pundit’s quick-speak, or a news network’s agenda, was for lack of a more exotic description, simply eye opening. Though the realities of those subjects that I watched from a distance that night, with a pen in one hand, and a pig-in-a-blanket in the other, seemed unreal in the context of my own, sheltered reality, I also saw a world shared by people in significantly different places, but who unknowingly affected one another. I have not been able to quiet that vision since.

I thought of that vision again this morning when my web editor asked me about my blog topic; she was putting together this week’s newsletter and needed to know what I would be blogging about. Forever in the throws of procrastination, I embarrassedly asked her if she had any ideas. I received an email with three appropriate topics along with a 1pm due date. The items she sent me were: “UK Government to Discuss Photography Guidelines with Police”; Brangelina’s Baby Pics; and “Astronaut Photography Researcher: A Space Journal.” Never one to discuss science before noon, I sat at my chair staring at the remaining two topics which were indignantly staring back at me. Brangelina’s Baby Pics vs. UK Government to Discuss Photography Guidelines with Police. My thought-process was as follows: “The Brangelina story is national, and I have an American readership. Do British people read my blog? Is the term ‘British people’ politically correct, or are they people of the UK? Press Photography, Brangelina…”

It went on this way for some minutes, and then my eyes scanned a couple of lines in the UK story:

“The announcement was made in the House of Lords on 16 July after Lord Rosser submitted an oral question on public photography rights. Addressing Lord Bassam of Brighton, who represented Her Majesty’s Government in the House of Lords, Richard Rosser said ‘Is [Lords Bassam] aware that magazines for photographers are reporting that photographers, including professional press photographers, are being challenged by police and private security guards when taking photographs in the street and other public places?’ He continued: ‘Photographers are sometimes filmed themselves; they are told to move on or asked for their name and address. They feel that they are being harassed.”

Right there, the last line: they felt that they are being harassed…stuck with me. I again returned to that feeling I had the night of the World Press exhibition; it was as if my conscience was harassed by those images.

Like the pictures of the body bags returning home in droves from Vietnam that my parents always told me about, these images of soldiers, citizens, women and children in Iraq was my first uncensored glance into a world unclaimed by popular media circuits, but of which was my own, and it was affecting my reality again. Press photography is the last of a dying breed of mediums that showcase the truth. Irrespective of eloquent sloganeering, good lighting, and convenient historic narratives, it is a vision and a reflection of ourselves and our world. If I didn’t step foot into the United Nations building that day, I most likely would have been blogging to you about Brangelina’s baby pictures. Before you read my next line, stop a minute, as I did when I wrote it, and think about that.

I say let the photographers do their job, because if we don’t, then the only news items we will find in our own industry and in, dare I say, contemporary culture as a whole, will be Brangelina’s new baby photographs.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 21st, 2008 at 12:34 pm and is filed under Tara Propper. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.