A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words

I recently came across an interesting blog/website called Humans of New York, a photo blogger, Brandan Stanton, who spends everyday wandering the streets of New York to capture pictures of everyday New Yorkers. He finds people who seem interesting, talk to them for a little bit and then take their portrait. He then posts the portrait on his blog along with a caption, either from him or a quote from the subject. It is his aim to really capture the spirit of New York through all of the different people the public never hears or sees about, the average American just like us.

Through spending a lot of time looking through many of his portraits, I really felt that I could get a feel of someone, a snippet of their life. I was also able to get a feel of what Stanton wanted us to get out of his photos. For example, he posted the photo of a family reading at a train station with the caption, "The Readertons." From this photo, I was able to see a family reading in a train station, see that it is probably a mother, a father, with two similarly aged daughters. I can also see that they all hold a book. I am also able to interpret Stanton's message from this image. I noticed that he framed the family inside of closing train doors, and to me it seems to imply that we, as Americans are closing our doors or shutting out the processes of reading, and instead turning to other things. While this may not be the message that Stanton intended, the ability to interpret photographs differently allows for different, interesting viewpoints.

Because photographs can tell us so much either about the photographer, the subject, or society, it let me to wonder what photos are chosen to display in the media. Often, the front page of any given news website is a photograph of a politician or a celebrity of some sort. Instead of focusing the public's eye to real issues in America by showing photos that make us think, we are left with photographs that nearly go along with a story. According to Neil Burgess, who runs his own picture agency, NB pictures, the art of photo journalism is dying. Publications "no longer fund photojournalism. They no longer fund photo-reportage. They only fund photo illustration." We are no longer supplied with photos that provide insight, but maybe through higher quality photographs, it would be possible to direct people's eyes to see the bigger picture instead of  just tiny parts.

Additionally, more and more people are going away from newspapers because they are unwilling to read the articles when they could just watch T.V. According to a 2012 study, only "23% of Americans say they read a print newspaper the previous day." This percentage continues to decline. It is possible however that newspapers could draw a readers attention, while maintaining the quality of journalism, by inserting photos that tell us something interesting about society that require thought and interpretation.

What benefits do you see in valuing high quality photo journalism? To what degree do you believe that adding better photojournalism to newspapers could help stop the decline of newspapers?