It was a sad week for the World Press Photo—sad and a little hypocritical. These outbursts of political correctness have become unbearable. Michele McNally, president of this year’s jury and director of photography for The New York Times, was handed over to the angry mob. Michele is a wonderful person, one of the most important figures in contemporary photography for the past 25 years. She has been responsible for the reinvention of the way photographs are used in The New York Times. The real problem isn’t using your cousin, or an electric flash. The real problem is that photography has never been so fashionable, that everybody takes pictures, that it has replaced language as a means of communication. This change occurred by devouring and eradicating its natural children: professional photographers. First the photojournalists, then the paparazzi, now fashion and commercial photographers. Apart from a few thousand people willing to risk their lives to bear witness at any cost, nobody is interested in the World Press Photo today. Photojournalism bores everyone, and now the only appeal of Perpignan is nostalgia. It’s sad but true.
More sad news comes this week with the death of Ray DeMoulin, the former director of Kodak. He was the most flamboyant mentor a photographer could have in the 1980s and ‘90s. Thanks to him, a lot of them lived happily.
