| Photography Forum: Philosophy Of Photography Forum: |
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Q. Front page photo
Asked by Ales Ojstersek
(K=0) on 11/22/2000
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I am working on my high degree diploma - discovering the role and importance of cover photo at daily newspaper. Can you help me in following topics: Why do you think, the cover photo is realy important relating to the fact that "written news" is the one on which quallity newspapers are based on. Is there any other role than for instance better selling results. Thank you!
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Rick Lang
(K=970) - Comment Date 11/22/2000
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The photographs that run in the newspaper play a very important role beyond just marketing the news. People are visual, we process information through seeing. The news photograph gives the reader a closer feel for the story that they would not have without the photograph. In journalism, words are stronger with the use of photographs. They invite involvement in the story. They help tell a more complete story. There is a story about the famous photograph of the migrant worker by Dorthea Lange. When the photograph ran in the San Fransisco newspaper it brought out compasion for the plight of the stranded farm workers. Even in the middle of the Depression there was a ground swell of efforts to help those people. News photographs become icons of the events that they portray. The one photograph of the fallen student at Kent State University has come to symbolize that tragic event. Those photographs, and many others remain in the public view while the great writing of those events are at best filed away somewhere. Think of any major event in your lifetime and it is the photograph of it that remains in your memory. This is not to say that the writing is not important, but the words are stronger because of the photographs. It is also true that the words make the photographs stronger as well. It is not a issue of this over that, but rather that they make a stronger story when they are put together. I hope that this helps you.
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chuc k
(K=199) - Comment Date 11/22/2000
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For what its worth, people have been learning from visual stimuli far longer than with written words. The picture is the story.... the words are the detail.
Do you think that HCB's pictures would be stronger with a narative?
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Pico
(K=944) - Comment Date 11/26/2000
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For what its worth, people have been learning from visual stimuli far longer than with written words. The picture is the story.... the words are the detail. -- chuck k (kleesattel@msn.com), November 22, 2000.
Because people have been using their eyes longer than the written word does not mean the word is less important. If it were true that the age of the sense is most significant, then you would have to say that the moving picture is more important than the still picture because people have been seeing movement as real longer than the still representation. To this day there are cultures that cannot see still photographs.
The picture is not the story. Neither is the written word. The story is mediated in history. For better or worse.
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Dan Smith
(K=1407) - Comment Date 12/6/2000
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Without a photo to lead on the front of the paper, most papers circulation will drop. Some, such as Wall Street Journal, try to cater to those who can think, read and want the information inside. Others, like Nasty Inquirer & its ilk, depend entirely on the image printed on the front page-reality & truth be damned. A photo on the front gets people looking. FEW headlines ever do so. Think back to a major headline you remember seeing... chances are it is "Dewey defeats Truman", a photograph of a headline.
As far as 'written news' goes, most of it isn't written that well, nor is it written in depth or the papers wouldn't sell to most people. And, much of the finest photographic work would show poorly in a newspaper since it takes both vision and thought as one views it. So we get the simple stuff or RED in the color photos. "If it isn't any good, make it red. If it still isn't any good, frame it in a red frame". Most of the cover photos are designed to sell papers and this short changes way too many news photographers who can do a great job, only to see a banal image on the front because some fool at the paper can't understand quality.
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