Learn from the best source on the planet how photography, art, and journalism go together

I have just discovered "Proof", National Geographic’s new "online photography experience". It was launched, the editors say, to engage ongoing conversations about photography, art, and journalism. There's more:

In addition to featuring selections from the magazine and other publications, books, and galleries, this site will offer new avenues for our audience to get a behind-the-scenes look at the National Geographic storytelling process.

I can't think of a better way for media students and practitioners to learn how to take pictures and understand what kind of pictures will go with the stories they are working on. Brinda Das, Nikita Sinha (Class of 2015) — remember the conversation we had on this subject a couple of days ago? Check out Proof now.

• I especially recommend "Why it Took Me Eight Years to Photograph My Own Backyard", a masterpiece of story structure (see how the author makes use of the e-mails he exchanged with his editor) and extraordinary photographs of ordinary, everyday scenes.

• ALSO READ: "When you have two hours to shoot ace director James Cameron for a National Geographic magazine cover, how do you do it?"

If you really need a reason to buy this magnificent National Geographic book...

...here it is:

In these pages readers can follow the evolution of the photograph. Techniques aside, some of the earliest photos compare favourably with those today. Why? Because, like the chicken and the egg, imagination and image must go together. It is the photographer, not just his camera, that catches the moment.

~ From the foreword by Gilbert M. Grosvenor, chairman of the board of the National Geographic Society

What a wonderful phrase that is: "Imagination and image must go together." And this is exactly what happens in National Geographic magazine all the time, every time. Not only are the photos uncommon; the captions are also works of art. (By the way, that excerpt from the foreword also contains an example of a sentence that begins with because. I am pointing it out here because every year I am asked in class if it is "correct" to begin a sentence with because. And I respond, "Yes, it is.")

Now, in National Geographic: The Photographs, the photographers themselves tell us the stories behind their pictures. Here's an excerpt:

Anxiety accompanies Jim Stanfield on every assignment, so he photographs everything he can think of. "I blanket a subject. I maul a story until it's lying on its back like a turtle," he says.

For a piece on Poland, he felt he needed a technology picture. He discovered a self-taught heart surgeon who had read scientific papers about transplants. Stanfield photographed the doctor performing two consecutive (and successful) heart transplants in a marathon that lasted almost 24 hours.

"I kept studying the doctor and watching his eyes," says Stanfield. "He was so focused, he didn't even know I was there."

About 20 hours into the ordeal, Stanfield made a picture of the surgeon that shows the drama and exhaustion.

The photograph is among the many that are part of the collection in the book, so you can study it after you have read about Stanfield's experience. Isn't that a great way to learn more about taking, sorry, making pictures from some of the world's best photographers?

National Geographic: The Photographs was apparently the gift book of the year when it was first published. In my view, it is the gift book of the year, no matter what year it is.

• Also read: "When you have two hours to shoot ace director James Cameron for a National Geographic magazine cover, how do you do it?"
  

India's First Lady of Photojournalism

Homai Vyarawalla's pictures, currently on display at Bangalore's National Gallery of Modern Art, and her storied career are an inspiration to news photographers everywhere. As film director Shyam Benegal says in a review he wrote for Outlook back in 2006 — he was commenting on the just-released Camera Chronicles of Homai Vyarawalla — her professional career spanned three of the most decisive and crucial decades in India's 20th-century history: 1940 to 1970.

Benegal continues:

In these 30 years, Homai lived in Delhi mainly photographing the political elite and their activities as a press photographer. She may not have been aware at the time that her work would become an important visual testimony of India's transition from a colonised country to the Indian nation and its travails over the next quarter of a century.

The book also contains anecdotes about Vyarawalla's encounters with the powerful and the famous. Here is another excerpt from Benegal's review:

Homai was not only the first but the only woman photojournalist in this entire period when press photography was considered an exclusively male domain. Not equipped with either a telephoto or a wideangle lens, she had to be either extremely close to her subjects or go great distances and heights to get composite shots. At one of Jinnah's last press conferences before Partition, she decided to get top angle shots from atop wooden packing cases stacked up in a corner of the room.  The packing cases gave way and she came tumbling down at the feet of Jinnah. His bemused response was, "I hope you are not hurt."

When Vyarawalla came to Bangalore earlier this week for the exhibition of her photographs at the National Gallery, Commitscion Raagamayi Rajsekhar (Class of 2011), who is working as a photographer with Bangalore Beat, rushed to meet her.

ONE FOR THE ALBUM: Raagamayi Rajsekhar with Homai Vyarawalla.

Raagamayi, whose ambition is to be a top-notch news photographer, says seeing Vyarawalla in the flesh and talking with her was a privilege. Raagamayi wrote in an e-mail today:

What differentiates her work from that of others, I think, is her brilliant composition. Imagine the situation in Vyarawalla's time: grappling with those heavy cameras, running around taking photographs while wearing a neatly draped saree, and having to make do without the innumerable editing programs now available to us.

No doubt DSL cameras are important because we need to send the pictures across to our publications immediately, but in the process we miss out on learning the finer aspects of photography. For example, we readjust the settings if our photographs are over- or under-exposed, but photographers of Vyarawalla's generation, who used film, had to know the exact camera settings for every situation.

The fact that Vyarawalla hails from Baroda, as does Raagamayi, "has been even more of a boost". Meeting this venerable pioneer was "a great, great, great inspiration", concludes Raagamayi.

• For more information about the exhibition of Homai Vyarawalla's photographs at the National Gallery of Modern Art, Bangalore: "Homai Vyarawalla: A Retrospective Curated By Sabeena Gadihoke".
• Also read: "An incredible lesson in portrait photography".

GOOGLE PAYS TRIBUTE
UPDATE (December 9, 2017): Google paid tribute to Homai Vyarawalla on what would have been her 104th birthday by making her the subject of today's Google Doodle (see image below).

ALSO READ...
...in The Hindu: Who is Homai Vyarawalla featured in today's Google Doodle?

How does an editor take the decision to publish pictures that can upset readers?

Time magazine, in its issue of August 9, put an Afghan teenager on the cover with the caption: "Aisha, 18, had her nose and ears cut off last year on orders from the Taliban because she had abusive in-laws".

How does a magazine editor decide that a picture that has the potential to upset readers can be published at all, let alone on the cover? The managing editor of Time, Richard Stengel, says he thought long and hard about putting Aisha on the cover. "First, I wanted to make sure of Aisha's safety and that she understood what it would mean to be on the cover," he writes in the "To Our Readers" column in the magazine. "She knows that she will become a symbol of the price Afghan women have had to pay for the repressive ideology of the Taliban. We also confirmed that she is in a secret location protected by armed guards and sponsored by the NGO Women for Afghan Women."

He continues: "I apologize to readers who find the image too strong, and I invite you to comment on the image's impact."

And then he explains why it was important to feature Aisha on the cover: "But bad things do happen to people, and it is part of our job to confront and explain them. In the end, I felt that the image is a window into the reality of what is happening — and what can happen — in a war that affects and involves all of us. I would rather confront readers with the Taliban's treatment of women than ignore it. I would rather people know that reality as they make up their minds about what the U.S. and its allies should do in Afghanistan."

Predictably, the publication of this picture has stoked a fiery debate, according to the New York Times Kabul correspondent Rod Nordland, with "critics of the American presence in Afghanistan calling it 'emotional blackmail' and even 'war porn', while those who fear the consequences of abandoning Afghanistan see it as a powerful appeal to conscience".

• In Bangalore, both DNA and The Times of India reproduced the NYT article (with permission), though DNA, which had a better layout, inexplicably and unforgivably deleted the last two paragraphs.

In the light of the Time cover story and the ensuing debate, here's a question: Would an Indian magazine have featured Aisha on the cover?

• Read the Time cover story: Afghan Women and the Return of the Taliban.
• In class a few days ago, there were questions about how photographer Jodi Bieber managed to take those pictures of Aisha. Here, in a Time video, she talks about the experience: Photographing Aisha for the Cover of TIME.
• Read readers' letters to Time: Inbox. 
• Read my earlier post on publishing grisly photos here.
• Outlook editor Krishna Prasad's take on the Time cover: "Yet, they won't print pix of dead US soldiers"

UPDATE (October 14, 2010): Aisha now has a prosthetic nose, which, according to a report in The Hindu, she revealed proudly in Los Angeles this week. Read the report here.

THE BADAUN PHOTOGRAPH
On July 24, 2014, "Lens", the photography blog of The New York Times, reflected on the impact of the photo published around the world, which showed the bodies of two teenage cousins raped and then hanged from a tree in Badaun, Uttar Pradesh. Read the blog post here.

MH17 PHOTOS, GAZA PICTURES
And on July 23, 2014, the head of photography of the highly respected Guardian newspaper weighed in with his comments on the merits or otherwise of publishing graphic pictures in the wake of the MH17 crash and the strife in Gaza:

Two headline-grabbing and violent events — the downing of Malaysian Airlines MH17 in Ukraine and Israel's assault on Gaza — have generated some horrific photographs on a seemingly unprecedented scale. Of this flood of images, there are hundreds that we would not choose for publication because they are either deeply shocking, insensitive to human dignity, would be painful if seen by relatives or friends, or ultimately run the risk of forcing readers to turn away from the story, which would negate the purpose of photojournalism.

Read the post in its entirety here: "Graphic content: when photographs of carnage are too upsetting to publish".

The BEST blog on photojournalism

Lens — the New York Times blog on "photography, video, and visual journalism" — is a magnificent web classroom for photography buffs, especially those keen on photojournalism.

In the section titled "Art of Photojournalism", you can study "the finest pictures, past and present". In "Craft of Photojournalism", you can go behind the scenes and on assignment with news photographers around the world.

And these are just two of the gems waiting to be discovered by Commitscions.

Dig into this veritable treasure here. 

And here's a topical post on the Pulitzer Prizes for photography.