(see the pictures by clicking on the picture above)

The discussion heated up quite fast, when Damon Winter published a feature story about American soldiers in Afghanistan taken with the Hipstamatic app. He recently got award third prize at the Picture of the Year award for this. The discussion and critique is a lot about the issue of using a iPhone app for documentary work and the applied aesthetics the app is producing. For anyone who haven’t used this app, it applies a certain toy camera felt the pictures with some basic manipulations in color, vignettes and things like that. At the same time in photojournalism all kinds of manipulation is widely forbidden in the idea to not change the content/ story.

Photography is a widely subjective business that is depending on the composition, framing, light situation and last but not least the use of the tool to shoot the picture, all influenced by the point of view of the photographer. A shallow depth of field is a tool to give the photograph a certain aesthetic or in it’s best way to tell the story how we think it is right. Same applies to use of b/w, use of flash and so on. None of this choices are manipulating the image in a sense of taking something away from it or adding content, but they lead our eyes to specific parts of the story. How difficult that could be is something I discussed in a former post.

Damon Winter now made a statement that discussed the critique and one of his core points and in my opinion misunderstanding of the discussion is that he sees it as a discussion about aesthetics. He is right when he says that basically “the heart of all these pictures is a moment or detail or an expression that tells these story of these soldiers day to day lives while on a combat mission.” No content has been added or taken away in his opinion. The difficult question I think here is the question of how the aesthetics drive the story in this photoessay. When it would be only about the aesthetics, it might not be such a big problem, but I think the main problem is how it leads us in a certain feel, thoughts and atmosphere that is created by the app and not by the content of the photograph. The filter of the app is quite powerful in creating a certain feel, to some extend, no matter what picture you take. The aesthetics is driving the story and not the story is driving the aesthetics. And this is in my opinion the main point of critique that leads to the question what these pictures tell us and what that makes us think of the situation in Afghanistan. It is hard to say how the response would be if these pictures would be made without the stylized aesthetics of the app. Would the pictures have told us the same?

With taking the picture we make a lot of decisions on how we tell the story, but still it should be about the story and how to tell it in the best way. If the feel of the pictures tells the story he was experiencing in the best way, he might be right in using the app, creating some youth adventure camp atmosphere, with pictures that feel as if they could be taken by the soldiers themselves, but then it might be more honest to ask the soldiers for their cellphone pictures documenting their lifes. Not as compelling aesthetically maybe, but more honest I think.

I can imagine that showing the war in Afghanistan from an unseen point of view is difficult to tell from the widely photographed perspective on American soldiers on the ground, so I could imagine that is was one of the reasons for Winter to use this approach, but wouldn’t it be better to look for other stories instead of telling the same story with another aesthetic?

Is awarding pictures like that with an award for documentary photography the “End of photojournalism” as Hendrik Kastenskov of the Bombay Fc questioned some days ago? Maybe not, but at least it is a big alarm bell I think to focus on the story and make the choice of aesthetics to tell the story in the best way and make it not take over so that the aesthetics become the story in itself or at least is overlaying the story to an extend that a lot of it gets lost. No matter if your tool is f1.2, an iPhone app, tilt-shift lenses, pinhole cameras or your DSLR with a 50mm.

Recently, when I had Benjamin Chesterton of duckrabbit fame back in Copenhagen for a visit, we had a long talk about what drives photography in the photojournalism biz (You can hear a bit of it in the Skype talk we had a week later here). Aesthetics are for sure one of the driving forces in photography. And it is also alright, but the question is more, what comes first. What is more important to you? The story you want to tell or your aesthetic expression of it? The artist or the subject?

A lot of photographers I know, tell me that they love photography and are not so interested in other forms of media like audio and video for instance. Also that is alright of course, but talking about my own motivation, I use these forms not first, because I’m interested in them, but because they allow me in certain stories just another, sometimes better way to tell the story. Take a story like the one of Clotide, only the combination of the different forms give you the depth the story deserves. The pictures might tell a good part, but they are capturing the moment, not the history. The audio gives another layer to it and the video as well. So we get more of the story. So that was in this case the main reason for recording the story in that way.

But what has that to do with the aesthetics? In this example the story came first, the use of media and also the use of visual language, aesthetics came second to find a way to tell the story in the best way I could do. But what would have happened if I would have put the aesthetics first? I would used maybe a certain style that I like, like always open aperture or everything with 1/4 of a second to get things blurred moving or I would have thought of some series to do, like portraits at any place that is important to her. Light, lines, shapes would have maybe become more important than what we see in the pictures. I would have way more been on a track to actually create art and not tell a story. That does not mean that aesthetics are not important, but I think we should think more of what we want to tell rather than how we could make a compelling picture. The compelling picture is for the ego first, the story is about the person, not about us.

I remember one day in this old school in Rwanda where during the genocide 50.000 people were killed. Part of the dead bodies are conserved in the rooms and I was there to take photographs. A horrific place and the purpose of taking pictures was the only thing that kept me from emotionally breaking down while I was there. Later I was looking at the pictures and it striked me that some of them had this powerful aesthetics in it, what I loved at that time. Today I look at them and I’m not sure if I did a good job. Aesthetically, ya, maybe, but did I tell the story properly? I’m not sure. Another picture is nothing less than a lie for me today. There is nothing staged or so, but it is a lie, because of where it takes people that look at it. While I was in one of the rooms, I saw this big dirty part on the wall (no painting or something like that) that looked a bit like Africa in it’s form. With the head of one of the bodies in the foreground, a picture would create a powerful connection and tell a story. I was fascinated by that at the time. Easy to tell, easy to understand. But what I created was a stereotypical lie about Africa and the perception of the continent in the western world. It is just another excuse to make it easy to see no need to learn and understand more of the continent or ask.

This example is not only about aesthetics, but about how easy it could be to be driven to simplify or even lie with your pictures, when it makes a compelling image. There are thousands of examples for that out there, especially from the developing world. But isn’t it time to move on from that? Photojournalism is full of those lies and it does not have to be staged or over-photoshopped to make aesthetics taking the lead over the story or to tell lies in the worst case. Photography is highly subjective, but that is why a business like photojournalism can only can only be important in any way when integrity and the story comes first and is what drives the aesthetics. As long as we celebrate “style over substance” as Benjamin called it, we are moving photojournalism into art galleries and make it a club for itself, but with no further value for someone who is not interested in photography but in pictures as a form of communication as the pictures don’t tell me enough or something new. They just encourage to keep the relaxed picture in black and white of the developing world and don’t start thinking further or even ask questions.

You wanna know how to find THE iconic picture from Africa? So here are some tips. First, you have two choices in which direction you want to go. Dig into the world of the wild animals and even wilder tribes, that run around naked and eat raw flesh. Or you can go in the direction of the “Starving African”.

The first one is easy. Make sure you get on some Safari and see lions next to some dancing Massai with bushdrums. Take pictures of that. Make sure that you never show anything what could even remind of civilization. When you take the picture, try to get a look as if these people are from before our time. That is important to tell later, how crazy it is that they are still living in such a primitive way. Maybe artificial light is even a good idea to make it even more statue like and away from this world. Focus on the exotic and do everything that people can’t see anything related to our world. It would destroy the feeling of far away.

You are more the hardcore warphotographer type of person? No problem, Africa is your feeding ground. As we know, Africa is a country full of war, famine, rape, corruption  and suffering. So you will find plenty of work to do. Make sure you don’t fall in the trap of looking for something else. There isn’t (beside the wild animals of course). So don’t even look for it. What you look for are a couple of important elements for your pictures. An AK-47 is one of it. But even better could be a club or machete. Yes, this is how they kill themselves every day. So make sure to have it in your pictures. You can only find them using it in the field? Then make them pose in a proper way. Good is always combination of the machete, powerful hands and a naked body (to underline the wildness). No one will care. And if someone asks, just make sure you have a bunch of horror stories to tell about how they use it. That will keep people silent. The starving African is another important element for your pictures. Because they are doing both, they starve or they kill themselves, when they are not right now dying of HIV/Aids. Starving children work especially. There is nothing more moving as a crying starving child, left alone in the wild, without any help in sight.

If you want to make sure that people also see the help that is arriving, never forget to exclude every African aid worker. They are anyway only servants for the wonderful whites that come to safe this dark and lost continent. So, don’t confuse people with including them in your pictures. When you show people in the IDP camps, make sure that they are either looking sad and angry. Yes, because even with all our so selfless help they are not even a little bit thankful. So show this contrast of the caring aid worker and the unthankful African. And only show long lines of hands, begging for food. Make sure that it always looks like chaos. That will implement that there is no way to actually bring any order and structure to this people. Also make sure that there is nothing else to see than their miserable homes or the white aid workers that bring the food. Always good is also the caring celebrity. Show them listening, always and also to Africans. That is important, because they care. And you care too, so make sure your pictures transport that.

When you come across dead bodies make sure to make as many pictures as possible. That are the bread and butter shoots. Don’t think about composition or stuff like that. Who cares about that when you see this great example of the real cruel world of Africa. Never show bodies as something human. It doesn’t matter who the person was as there are thousands of others that are killed too and it also avoids feelings of the spectator to get a too close relation to it. It might only disturb him over the one minute of donation giving. So it’s also good to use some symbols, like some blood and a necklace in the form of Africa. That tells enough. Horror. Africa. And you can of course also change the symbol easily, for instance the AK-47, machete or an empty plate.

Important, and I guess you already came to this conclusion yourself, ALWAYS shoot in black and white. This world is just black and white. It’s the story about the good and the bad. And Africa is a dark continent and choosing black and white also gives all the suffering the for us abstract feel. It’s also more like Art and at the end this is more how it should be. Otherwise stuff might come too close. Also make sure that some vignettes appear regularly in your pictures and the general setup is dark. Even try to rise the contrast to get out the texture in the faces if you can. Always good to create some dynamic is also to make sure the horizon is never straight and some hand, in the best case with a machete, is coming into the picture from the side. It must feel that you were close in the action. Or don’t you want people asking you how you get so close and how you survived this unimaginable horror that is happening down there? Never forget: this is about you. YOU want to change the WORLD with your pictures, not the life of a person. You think BIG! The people you photograph are objects that tell the story of something way bigger and way more important. So never get too close on a personal level. People might start thinking they have their own voice and own opinion.

Ok, you are a critical person, I can see. You tell me there are also good things happening and you want to photograph that? Make sure you get to a school. Because education is really the ONLY thing that helps. Make sure to photograph a classroom with at least 70 children. This will give the perspective that even in this difficult circumstances they are so happy to learn. Make sure you have that, that they all look really happy to learn something, when you take the picture. They are the future of this continent and because we build all those schools, they can learn and get out of the horror. And if you show any kind of joy, make sure it is when they are dancing. Because the only joy they have is singing and dancing.

Before I come to an end, a little advice: If you are doing some lectures or interviews about your experiences, make sure you always talk about we and them. Also make sure that you mention that you expected it horrific, but not that much out of control, hopeless and horrific.

You have read all of it? Now there is only one more step to do. Keep all of that in mind and look for everything else but that. Find the daily life, find the modernization and the joy of life. Find the hope and hospitality. Find the hard working and the specialities of each country. And most important find the beauty. There is a lot going wrong in many countries in Africa, without a doubt. But there is also a lot where each one can learn from and get inspired by. And I promise, what you will find the most is the daily life, the normality and the maybe even a bit boring parts of it. And that is something to explore and might give a more in depth and diverse picture of a continent that is the most diverse and rich in history on this planet.

“The problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete.”

Why do we do, what we do? What drives us? Where do we wanna go with what we create and share with the world? This is not about a certain style for me, it is more about what i want to tell. So let’s dig a bit into my vision for what i do.

When I started photography almost 15 years ago it became my way to express what i saw and what was important in my life. I never felt so good in words and being a shy kid, photography was a great way to express myself. I saw so many amazing things out there, so many beautiful moments that i wanted to capture them – for me, but also for others to share it with them. What that has to do with my vision?

Photography never was more than a tool for me. A tool that felt natural to me to use. I always felt comfortable with a camera in my hands. It was something what belonged there and felt right. But mainly my motivation was to show what i saw that people could understand it. I never felt as an artist, someone how was creating something new. I was more the one who was recording what i saw and experienced, experimenting with that maybe to some extend. Something what not changed till today.

My vision has nothing to do with a tool or any special form of media i guess. My vision is about expressing something that is so important to me and in my opinion way to often taken for granted. With more or less everything i do i want to create understanding for situations, connect people with what they see and make them feel what the people i show go through or experience. I want to tell stories. And i think that showing just the hard and sad parts of the stories is by far not enough. There is so much beauty in many of the stories and even when it’s about war, poverty or Aids, i feel that there is more to tell. Maybe this is one of the reasons why I like long term or longer term stories, because this projects allow me to dig deep into the story and tell it in a way that goes beyond just one picture of it. I might be emotionally affected by a series of b/w pictures of some refugees in Congo, but do I really understand what it means to live under this circumstances, how they organize themselves or what they have gone through? Aren’t we just seeing what we want to see, when we take this pictures as the one and only reality?

After some time doing all this it became clear to me that what i wanted to do with my work was creating understanding. Understanding for livelihoods, different cultures and situations people live in as i truly believe that in the moment something gets personal and we start to understand what it means, we also hardly can look away so easily. And at the same time I want to do justice to the people I photograph, film or interview. I want people to know that every life has so much beauty and passion and power in it. And every person I met in my life could teach me something, no matter if it was a streetkid in Kenya, a monk in Ladakh or just the guy next door. Maybe that is my motivation for what I do, my vision what i want to achieve with my work and my thoughts how the world could be a better place.

The little piece below is still one of my favorites of what I did. We asked people in Rwanda a bunch of open and easy questions and one of the things I saw in the reactions of people when i was showing it in lectures was that they were surprised how equal wishes, thoughts and needs were to the ones they had. A reaction I was hoping to get. You can find the whole series here.

I have a special relationship to Rwanda for some time now. It is one of a few countries in the world that became a little home far from home, a place that is close to my heart, with all it’s struggles, beauty and extremes. So when the first grenade attacks happend earlier this year, newspapers got forbitten till after the elections and opposition leaders got killed, i was more then worried that a situation that in many ways seems to be fragile under the surface might get violent.

Rwanda is fascinating in many ways. Many of us have the horrific pictures of the genocide 15 years ago still in our minds when we think of this little country. A genocide that killed around 800.000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. But at the same time Rwanda made a extraordinary development in the years after, not least because of Paul Kagame and his government. Rwanda is a country that was celebrated internationally for this and when we think of a country that was in it’s ruins not only in it’s outer appearance but also in the minds of the people that lived there, it is extraordinary what happened there after. For instance health insurance. 90% of the Rwandas have a health insurance, made available for small money to make it affordable even for the poor. The agriculture is even exporting, something pretty amazing for a country that is small and very densely populated (with this as one of the biggest problems and also a reason behind the conflict). The school system is also developing well and Kigali, the capital is a capital on the move with construction sites all over the place. One of the policies of the government is that development and wealth is an important factor to fight hate, enviousness and conflicts. The logic is: ‘When everyone is doing good, there is no space for hate and violence.’ And for sure this logic is one that works is an impression you get when you first come into the country.

Under the surface and more out in the countryside things are different. First, the development is pretty much focused on the cities, the people living in the countryside are seldom direct benefit from that. And the structured preset agriculture is not in the interest of many that have side incomes that get destroyed through a governmental organized agriculture. And also in the smaller towns the modernization is not always seen with joy. One of the strongest stories of my students at the ‘With our own eyes’ project was the one that covered the building & modernization process of the houses happening in Butare that more or less will destroy every piece of flavor and history and replace it with a series of same looking buildings.

And even when a lot might be political decisions that have a clear purpose and are made with a hard hand, a even more important factor is under the surface, the old, officially not talked about conflict of Hutu and Tutsi. It is in the society wherever you look, even when it might not be obvious. It is under the surface, a dark monster that is working in many minds, forbitten to come close to heart for most of the year, but it’s having it’s place. As amazing as it is that it is possible today that Hutus and Tutsis can live together, work together, interact together again after such a short period of time, it still is a brutal part of the history of more or less everyone that is hard to really forgive and even forget. There are still murders every year that are related to it, around 200 or more related to the conflict are assumed. There are small things happening, hard to understand in first sight, like people that do not want to sleep in the same house with another person or other stories that show a mistrust, a hard hitting glimpse of the history still working. Just recently a man called in a live radio show, saying: “It’s sad, we did not get done with our business.”

Now, where the elections were no real elections as most real candidates that could fight Kagame were killed or their parties were not allowed to run at the elections, where media is forbitten or suppressed, one face of the rapid development of Rwanda is becoming obvious: First development and wealth, second comes the democracy and freedom of press. Rwanda is ruled with a strong hand and the western world now might react surprised, it is not new, it is only becoming more visible.

Interesting enough something many of my friends down there told me was that they believe that Rwanda needs a strong leader, someone with a clear vision, willing to fight for it. It is hard for our understanding of the ‘right’ political system, but it is not only propaganda that there is a deep believe in what Kagame is doing. He is popular and the result of this is are votes that show that, no matter if because of a lack of alternatives or of a true believe in what he is doing.

Many things that happened before the election are not right in any way and I truely believe in the freedom of speech and press, but I also believe that if we want to get an understanding of the situation we have in some cases first to forget of our understanding of things and learn to understand the situation and believes of the Rwandans.

The interesting question was never if Kagame would be elected again this August. The interesting question is what happens in five years. Then the constitution is not allowing Kagame to be re-elected again. If he is not changing this, in five years will be the moment where things could become more obvious than many think of right now. Where old and new conflicts could erupt, when there is no clear vision or guideline. Right now the clear vision of the Kagame administration (not the administration itself) is also something what unites the people. Even when just yesterday another grenade attack happened in the center of Kigali, leaving at least one dead…

Here is a short video from Time magazine about the elections and the history affects the elections.

I’m on a early flight this morning what made me skip to publish another series of pictures from Iceland but instead use the time and share with you some thoughts on the concept of transmedia I got pretty obsessed about recently after hearing about it. The concept is simple, actually that simple that it barely feels as new information. But I think it is something what we often forget about. And it is also a bit scary when you think of labels like photojournalist.

One of the basic concepts always has been cross-media, what more or less means to take your produced material, let’s say pictures and publish it in as many channels as possible, for instance a book, magazine, newspaper, web, you name it.
Multimedia is now another way of expressing the story. It is web-based what also means it has a lot of limitations in further distributing into other channels. 20 years ago everyone was thinking that pictures for newspapers, that is the deal. Now that changes, but what is in 10 years? But there is also a big chance in multimedia. We might not be able to bring the multimedia stories out of the online world, but we have a whole bunch of material. A audioslideshow without audio is still a great series of pictures, the audiofile maybe still tells the story. Only thing is, each form of media has to be really good in itself to also work in other channels or in other combinations.

The concept of transmedia is exactly about that. Last week i was talking about the chance of multimedia to combine the advantages of each form of media to tell a stronger story. This of course is for stories in the web. For a book words and strong pictures might be the best combination. For radio the audiofile with a good mix of interviews, atmo sounds might do the trick. Transmedia is about different forms of media and but rather than making the format define how we work, for instance taking pictures, we choose the best forms of media to capture and tell the story. At the end this also defines in which channels we are able to tell the story. There might be stories that are to big or deep to get into it that they never find the space in a feature article or a three minute multimedia piece, but they could work in a book for instance. So we adapt how we communicate the story to the structure of the story and then choose the best media, rather than choosing the form of media and adapting the story to it. This is a big and major difference to think about. It is all about looking for the best way to tell the story.

When we do multimedia this is inside of the concept where we decide how to tell the story. Is video for this part of the story best or can the picture tell us more? Does the audio maybe brings the story further the most? We think of the same things. How can we tell the story in the best way, just for the online distribution. Transmedia is taking the needed step further and thinks of what channels are good to tell the story and what tools do I need to do so.

I personally think that times couldn’t be more exciting right now when it comes to things like that. It is for sure hard when you focus on one tool as your storytelling tool, but with the willingness to learn also other tools and their advantages there are many opportunities i think. Even when capturing a story might be more challenging then before as you have to be able to switch between the forms of media constantly. But who said it’s gonna be easy?

In the last two weeks in Iceland i had time to think about multimedia and how it is used. One of the thoughts that came to my mind was that the time for multimedia how many photographers see it, will maybe soon be over as long as it is something only web-based. Or maybe over is the wrong word, more that it will need a lot of development to become something what is strong enough to become equally important for reporting than video for instance. Ben at duckrabbit called the audioslideshows, we so much like to call multimedia, recently photofilm, a term that makes it even closer to video, that makes them even more direct competitors of video. But first maybe some words on what i mean when i talk about multimedia as this term is so much fashion and used for more or less everything nowadays. In my point of view (and i guess in the understanding of many photographers) multimedia is the combination of different forms of media in one piece. That could be text, video, photography, audio, graphics, you name it. Each one of those forms of media has advantages and disadvantages so combining this different forms gives us the ability to use the advantages and skip the disadvantages (at least in theory). In a photo-audio-slideshow this concept is not working as it only adds a new form of media, but still has to fight with disadvantages the picture might have in communicating the story. There might be stories where it works (and some of my stories are exactly told like that), but it is not always the best way. Just to keep that in mind. Now, it is for sure difficult to learn all that different forms of media when the only thing you have done before is photography or audio for instance. One important thing for me was to understand that multimedia needs or allows new ways of telling stories, but it needs an deep understanding of each form of media and what is the best way to use it for telling the story. Not easy to say the least as many of us also need the ability to capture the story with this different forms in a compelling way with great pictures, video, audio and so on. So we need this knowledge in the capturing and in the editing of the story.

Why am i now even go further with the headline and state the question: Is multimedia already old? As i said, for most multimedia is a combination of different forms of media at the end combined in a video by using the advantages of the different forms to tell the story in the best way. And here we have an important point: We want to tell a story. And multimedia is right now a web-based way to tell stories. And if done right, it is very powerful, brings us stories closer and more direct. So why do i think it is already old? The web developed a lot in how we use it through social media, web 2.0, however you want to call it. The one-way communication we were used to in the past is here at least getting less and less powerful. When we had before a world of only consuming information/content, we now interact with the content. The easiest expression of that might be comments where ever we look at or the possibility to share more or less everything with other people through Twitter, Facebook & co. But what does that mean for multimedia? Multimedia (always to be seen in the understanding described above) is first of all a linear way of telling stories. Maybe not the story in itself, inside the film, but how it is communicated. It tells the story how the journalist, editor, whoever thought it would be best. He decides where the story starts and ends. But one of the big advantages of the internet is in my opinion that we have so many possibilities to connect content with each other, make people interact with it, share their thoughts, and therefore decide how they approach the stories. As we no longer just watch TV or listen to radio or read newspapers without direct connection (maybe beside reader letters, most of the time without replies) the possibilities of the internet in communicating are massive. My goal for all the stories that I do has always been to tell them in a way that engages the people who see it, makes them understand and connect with the people who’s stories I tell. And with the combination of the different forms of media, it is a first step. Interactivity, in my opinion, will be the next step.

Interactivity truly brings the one who watches out of the passive consuming role into a active role and when it is only about where to start the story, what approach to choose. When that leaves to making comments or sharing it, that is great. Most of the time comments are maybe not important for the content, but they are the result of a thinking process and the creation of a vision. In this case the quality of the comments could also be seen as an indicator how good the project was able to engage and connect people with the story. Interactivity offers us many opportunities. When the journalist was the one who was doing the combination of content and the guiding through the story, maybe now this is something the user is able to do by themselves.

Now, it is nothing new. There are many powerful interactive projects out there and blogs like Innovative Interactivity write about it on and on. But most of this projects are big, long-term projects, flash-based and need a big amount of programing. Nothing what you consum when you are not 100% into the story. Only speaking of myself, i barely made it all the way through one of the features. Even the great ‘Prison Valley’ has a long start film giving you a multiple minute introduction without being visually compelling that makes me want click away after a short time. I think one of the biggest steps sometimes in interactivity is that we have to learn to trust the ones who are interested in the story that they will search for the information themselves as long as you make it easily accessible. And that we have to get away to see interactivity as something what needs this big projects. I think the future will be made with interactive multimedia, done with easy programming, links, lightboxes and so on. It might not look that fancy as this big projects, but it could do the trick and tell exactly the same. Only that it could be done in a short amount of time.

Do i still think multimedia is already old? Maybe not. But there are still a lot of possibilities that will be more and more developed in the future, i guess. Interactivity is just the next step. Something else what we have to learn how it works. What i truly think is that future storytellers will either work in small teams or will be masters of different forms of media. I think we will come away from labels like photojournalist, that is for sure, to something broader. As a little story on that to the end: I was recently asked in a pre-talk for an assignment how i would describe what i do. I thought for some time and said: ‘I tell stories.’ Even when that might not be all, but the rest are mainly tools to do so for me. I got the job right after.

Do you have other opinions or thoughts on the topic? Let me know.

What you see on the picture below is the poor rest of Sulukule, one of the neighborhoods with the longest history in Istanbul (some even consider it older than the city itself.). It was home of Roma community for hundreds of years. After a long fight to save this quarter it is lost now to a ‘gentrification’ project and the Roma were moved to outside neighborhoods. Sulukule was once famous for it’s music, culture and art.

One of the interesting things you could see on the picture are the metal fences that go through the whole area. There are likely three or four houses were still people live. You go through this long corridors to reach them and i can’t help but having this feeling of being in or outside a prison. Long walls, where you can’t look behind.

Istanbul is a city on the move in many ways and being the European Cultural Capital 2010 (with a budget around 500 million euros) might have paced up some processes even when no one really could tell me, where that is. “We have so many events here all the time that you can’t see a difference when there are some in the name of the Cultural Capital.”, one of the students from the project i was documenting the last days said. But at least it seems to me that many projects on the line and in the planning for a long time got through the Cultural Capital at least an extra push. And maybe it is not a surprise that Sulukule was finally poured down at the beginning of the year.

It is always a difficult conflict city-planning is in, keeping the old, the history, the culture, but at the same time modernize. For a long time (and still happening everywhere..) city-planning focused on creating something people afterwards can connect with. Nowadays participation is the way how to do it many say. But also here you have to get people together and actually talk about it. A process what i was told is hardly working in Istanbul.

In Sulukule no one asked the Roma families. And the Roma culture as in many other countries, seemed to be not something worth saving or keeping alive. One of the problems i was told is in this case also not only the rude city-planning that just planned to re-build the whole neighborhood, but also the lobby of the Roma that was weak. Part of the Roma are integrated fully into the islamic culture and consider themselves as such, the other part not, what makes the inner communication more difficult i was told.

In any way it maybe was a fight hard to win against financial interests, a strong islamic community that should become a new center there. We have seen things like that happening all over the world but the people without a voice, the poor and weak are the ones that lose at the end, no matter if it is in Mumbai, Nairobi or here in Istanbul. But here it is beside that also a culture slowly getting destroyed.

Some of the Roma families already came back to Sulukule, now living hidden in the ruins. The main reason is that they can’t afford the new houses they were moved to or the way into the city is to long.

Sidenote: I had planned to work on a little story on that, while i was in Istanbul, but my main assignment kept me busy so that i only had the chance to visit it once and talk to people there and some city planners i was working with on another project this week. So no pictures, but maybe this little insight gave you a glimpse of the story, even when there would be way more to write about it. If you are interested in more, check Ciara Lemming, who was attending the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop the week before and worked on a story about a Roma family. You can find her pictures here.

UPDATE: Ciara made a new tight edit of her work from Istanbul. You can find it here, also downloadable as a pdf. Great stuff!

I’m a big fan of the DSLRs with videofunction. Actually it was exactly what i was looking for for a long time as it now allows me to combine photography and video in one tool. For multimedia it is even better as i can mix video and photography with the same visual look. So i first see the advantages of that incredible tools. But i’m maybe also an exception in the way that i was always doing video and stills. In the time before the HDDSLRs i was carrying both DSLR and a videocamera with me most of the time, most of the time resulting in a lack of videoquality as i carried only a small cam. It is crazy to look at older films of mine like the Laos Diaries when it comes to the videoquality. The DSLRs nowadays allow me to shoot both in high quality. Right now a big market is coming up for all the tools that should help to make it actually usable for shooting video. There are limitations for sure, but i think even without big extra gear you can rack it up to something working also for many documentary shoots. I’ll post about that maybe at a subsequent date.

In the last months there was a discussion coming up over at the DSLRnewsshooter blog about this DSLRs being too cinematic. One of the major stones of contention was a short piece by Khalid Mohtaseb who covered the aftermath of the Haiti quake and in his spare time shot this very stylized footage with a 5D Mark II. Before i go on with my thoughts about it, here is the piece first.

When i first saw this montage i loved it right away. What i loved about it, beside beautiful pictures, so powerful? Mainly that this was at that time one of the first pieces that actually also showed a life beside dead bodies and looting where most media outlets focused on. This piece is in my opinion not a documentary, it is a montage of moments, a capture of atmosphere enpowered by the music. It points us in a certain direction, but this in a very powerful way. It lacks any story, but in my opinion at that time it was a great extension to what we have seen. And imagine that powerful pictures in a documentary with a powerful story. Wouldn’t it rise the level of the production? Critics pointed that this is a disaster zone, not some hollywood set. That this romanized the situation. But i think this is not the reality we could see in Haiti, but also the disaster porn we could see for the first two weeks. Journalism is for me all about balance and trying to tell a story right. I always saw that piece not standing alone, but as part of a bigger picture that was created at that time. And it was for sure some of the most powerful footage i saw as it was powerful without the drama of the disaster porn and suffering that we saw for weeks.

The visual quality of this DSLR footage is amazing, why shouldn’t we start to use it for documentaries and journalism? It is like saying you can build the house by hand instead of using tools. It is a development in the tools and at the end it will give us more possibilities to tell the stories than we had before. New visual language, new possibilities because of it’s size. Maybe a bit less unmotivated usage of a slider than here. But at the end it is all about using it to tell the story. 70% story, 20% craft, 10% tools – something like that. It is about the story. All the rest is only about how we are able to tell it in the best way. And when that DSLR is the best tool for what we wanna tell (what is not always the case of course), why not use it?

One of my driving forces in my development in photography and film always have been personal projects. One of the biggest struggles in creativity and also in finding out what you want to do with that, is the time and freedom to develop. I’m not talking about the technical part, what might also be  a struggle in itself, i’m talking about the vision and a form of personal language you bring into your work. Normally you start with that early, way before you start working professionally, so you do more or less only personal projects. And you learn with that, also how to get the organization behind it done, like contact work and so on.

But also later, when you have grown in what you do, personal projects can be a driving force to try out new stuff. Clients have normally a special need and you need to fullfil that need with your vision. So you work with a special need. Or you want to sell certain stories to magazines or newspapers what also has special needs and approches. Anyway is limiting you in experimenting with stuff. Maybe you have for a long time this idea of doing this HDR documentary project or the story about this guy hunting frogs in southern france is something you want to tell for a long time. Personal projects give you the freedom back to try out things, not with the pressure of doing it for a specific reason, but doing it out of your own curiosity.

Personal projects are for me an important driving force in my inspiration, my creativity and is a constant chance to turn ideas into reality that normally would not happen as they might not find the funding. For me i’m always searching for a reason for what i do and a personal project is a great reason for trying out new things. And i feel like that especially this personal projects help me a lot to grow in what i do and they are quite often also bringing me to new levels and give me new power. They also make me curious and help me to forget about a normal routine that might come in from time to time, what also helps me at the end to develop a different point of view to other projects that i do for clients. It takes of course time and energy, but it is a great way to keep this eyes of a small child on what you do and never stop learning. Personal projects are my way to stay out of routines and develop as a person and an artist (even when i do not like this word for what i do), also in the way that they allow me to approach a story exactly in the way i think is right.

So here is my tip for you today: Get yourself a personal project. Design a project you are motivated for, what maybe also gets you out of your comfort zone. Something what makes you produce something regularly and makes you try out new stuff. It helps you to work on something frequently, when it’s a bigger project. Small client work could be nice and brings the money, but long term projects help me way more to develop something and also tell a bigger picture of the story then a small project could do. Some of my personal projects got commissoned afterwards, but that that is not the motivation behind it. The motivation is pure curiosity and creativity.

So get out and get a project. Or do you maybe already have one?