BJP editor Simon Bainbridge writes this week:

Leica's souped-up 37.5 million pixel digital SLR, the second coming of the EOS 5D, a grown-up, 18th anniversary edition of Photoshop, the arrival of an ultra-compact, mirrorless DSLR system, Hasselblad's massive 40% price reductions, Sony's bid to compete with Canon and Nikon at the high end... There was even a new medium format film camera on show for Christsakes. With bellows. This year's Photokina delivered more of note than any trade show I've attended in the past dozen years. Finally, we have the promise that photo manufacturers are taking the pro photographer market seriously again, plus evidence of real competition with the emergence of true market differentation, from diminutive Micro Four Thirds cameras up to the whopping resolutions of the latest digital medium format systems.

But that shouldn't distract from one story that might just overshadow all these exciting new innovations - the news that the US Senate has approved an amended version of the Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act, which would allow publishers to reproduce an unknown author's work without permission. Despite some last minute amendments, the legislation still represents the biggest threat to copyright protection in two decades. Under current law, a copyright holder has the undeniable right to profit from their work, in the knowledge that unauthorised usage is punishable (in theory at least) by severe fines.

If orphan works legislation now passes through the House of Representatives, responsibility passes to the author, who must actively protect their work by process of registration. This system would prove unworkable for most authors due the time and cost involved in registering multiple works, and because it is open to widespread abuse. Amendments requiring further due diligence in search of the author of an orphaned work remain woolly, effectively creating a thieves' charter for anyone unscrupulous enough to strip an image of copyright information, knowing that if caught they would merely have to pay what they would have been charged in the first place.

Given the current amount of copyright abuse, we can assume things would get considerably worse. If there's one thing we've learnt from the current economic meltdown, it's that the market will test legislative boundaries to the limit, profiting from any grey areas resulting from unclearly defined regulation.

Click here to read BJP's coverage of the Senate Orphan Works Bill.

Also this week, BJP has a report about Robert Capa's famous Falling Soldier photograph. Was the picture faked? The International Center of Photography now has the answer!

VII Photo member James Nachtwey has, reportedly, worked for the past 18 months on a "shocking and underreported global crisis". And he is about to unveil it to the world in a "spectacular" fashion.

Today, his images will be projected on buildings across the world, on all seven continents (yes, even in Antartica...) In London, the photo reportage will be projected on the tower of the National Theatre of London from 19h30.

The winner of the 2007 TEDPrize says: "I’m working on a story that the world needs to know about. I wish for you to help me break it, in a way that provides spectacular proof
of the power of news photography in the digital age.”

In New York, the story will be shown on Times Square as well as at the Time Warner Center on Columbus Circle. Time magazine will publish the reportage in his week-end issue. Other locations include Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Sydney, Toronto, Port Elizabeth in South Africa, Rio de Janeiro, Istanbul, Seoul, Berlin, Amsterdam, Milan, Zurich, and at the Research Station of the British Antarctic Survey in Rothera.

You can get more details on the TEDPrize site.

Now, the question that's being asked is whether this "spectacular" launch is overdoing it? The photography industry has long complained about the lack of space in magazines and newspapers for photo reportages. Speaking to BJP, photographer Stanley Greene says that he sometimes struggles to win funding. 'I have to beg, borrow and steal to survive. My credit card is maxed out, the electricity has been cut off in my apartment in Paris.'

Now, should photographers take control of their stories and publish them on their own? It's not the first time such high-profile event has been organised. A few years back, MediaStorm turned Paul Fusco's photographs of Chernobyl into an online multimedia presentation. "18 million people saw it in the first week," says Getty photographer Brent Stirton. "How much money could you make if you charged each person $1 or even 20 cents? We're mishandling this thing. We need to get better at attaching value to our images".

Photo District News has rightly enough reported on the helpful imaging applications of the smart phone for the on-location photographer.

“For the photographer, and especially for the on-location shooter, the smart phone is the latest tool to help you not only stay connected when out of the office, but also to keep ahead of deadlines, to show off portfolios, and to help find shooting locations.”

The article praises the iPhone as the “most talked-about” devices, which “runs an increasingly large collection of third-party software, has built-in 3G and GPS capabilities, can work with WiFi and offers a truly ‘realistic’ internet experience.”

In fact, imaging companies are starting to notice the utility of Apple's phone. At last month's Photokina trade show, BJP was shown how the iPhone could be used with the Leaf camera system. Leaf developed an iPhone version of its image capture and processing workflow application, the Leaf Capture Remote.

A photographer using a Leaf AFi medium format camera can, instantly, send to his client's iPhone the photographs he is taking. The client can then edit the image on his iPhone if he wants and send live feedback to the photographer. Leaf told BJP that the application would be regularly updated with new editing tools, with the goal to have a full-fledge portable editing suite.

What's next? An iPhone version of Photoshop CS4? The idea is not that far-fetched. Adobe already has an online version of the photo editing software. Adapting it to the iPhone would not be that difficult.

The issue is Tuberculosis, which has been mutating because of inadequate treatment. TB is making a comeback, but under a new form: Extreme Drug Resistant Tuberculosis, and James Nachtwey has travelled around the world for the past 18 months to document its impact.

Visit xdrtb.org for more details.

A new mobile phone game is calling for photographers to take part in a story-telling project that will see their photographs displayed at the Burnley’s Mid Pennine Arts Gallery.

Every Sub-plotting player must text the words BITMAP SITE to 60300 to choose a theme and join the story. A photo from that story will then be sent to your mobile phone and you will be given two hours to respond with a photo of your own to move the idea forward.

Photos will be printed and exhibited across the Mid Pennine Gallery and Burnley Youth Theatre. They will also be published online on the project website.

Participants will be able to meet their 'photo neighbours' at the Mid Pennine Gallery on 17 October. For more details, visit www.subplotting.com

Frontline in London is a media club located near Paddington Station that organises evening screenings and discussions on diverse international issues. Every month, the Frontline Club has a 'In the Picture' talk where a photographer will comment on his or her work to club members, as well as non-members (who have to pay a fee to enter).

Starting next week, the British Journal of Photography will start streaming live these photography events. The first one, on Friday 17 October will see Irme Schaber talk about the life and work of Gerda Taro.

Schaber is a writer and lecturer on the history of exile photography, photojournalism and print-media. She is also Taro’s biographer and curator of the current exhibition at the Barbican. Next week, she will present and talk about a wide selection of Taro’s work.

Taro worked alongside Robert Capa, who was her photographic as well as romantic partner and the two collaborated closely. Her photographs were widely reproduced in the French press and incorporated the dynamic camera angles of New Vision photography as well as a physical and emotional closeness to her subject. While covering the crucial battle of Brunete in July 1937, Taro was struck by a tank and killed.

On 17 October at 7.30pm (London time), readers of 1854 will be able to watch a live stream of the talk. We will also host the video of the talk after the event is over. This partnership between Frontline Club and the British Journal of Photography will continue with all 'In the Picture' events.

For more details, visit Frontline.

BJP's deputy editor Diane Smyth writes this week:

'It is a fashionable fallacy that the video era has rendered the still news photograph obsolete,' wrote Harold Evans in 1997, in a new introduction to his 1978 classic Pictures on a Page. More than a decade later, with the advent of the Red camera and a new generation of HD video-enabled DSLRs, that fallacy endures.

Certainly, it's easier than ever before to capture and edit moving images, and the internet allows it to be distributed more widely, and cheaply, than ever before. For some photographers - The Guardian's Sean Smith, for example - this has created new means and opportunities to get their stories across, and they are to be commended for their open-mindedness. Afterall, there's no point in sticking blindly to one format if another approach could be more effective.

But I believe stills will endure, just as they did with the arrival of video because, as Evans also pointed out, they have a singular and lasting effect on viewers. 'Anyone who can replay moving images in his mind has a very rare faculty,' he wrote. 'The moving image may make an emotional impact, but its impact and shape cannot easily be recalled.'

An effective photograph distils a moment, decisive or not, allowing viewers to step back from the melee and process a scene. And that will become more important as our news culture speeds up into the audiovisual equivalent of fast food. We need to hold onto anything that can help us think and contemplate more deeply - instead of just more quickly.

Read Julian Jackson's report on how photo agencies are tackling the convergence of still and motion images.

Also this week, BJP gives you all the latest news on lighting. Elinchrom has launched a new lighting pack, so did Broncolor with its Scoro range. Michael Roscoe also puts Profoto's latest generator through its paces to find out whether it's a true studio workhorse, and Julian Lass looks at Canon's latest addition to its Speedlight flashgun range, the 430EX II.

A new photojournalism website has been launched - The 37th Frame.

'The 37th Frame is dedicated to bringing readers the best of the photojournalism on the internet.' The site creators search web sites of newspapers, magazines and the best independent photojournalists around the world and post links to the work.

Visit www.the37thframe.org.

“If I see another photo of a starving baby in Africa, I will die, ” says Simon Norfolk. “I want to know why there is still a starving baby in Africa.”

Best known for his stunning large format images exploring the socio-economic effects of militarism, Norfolk has been acclaimed as the leading British photographer of his generation. From supercomputers and hi-tech missile launchers, to refugee camps and the battle-scarred landscapes of Iraq and Afghanistan, his longterm series, Et in Arcadia ego, takes an oblique look at conflict, far removed from classic war photography.

He’s also one of the most intelligent and provocative speakers in photography. Vision ’08, BJP's annual event for aspiring pro photographers, provides a unique opportunity to meet him, where he will be talking about the ethos behind his work, the ideas behind his latest series, Full Spectrum Dominance, and how he’s built a career shooting challenging subjects that are sold in some of the world’s leading fine art photo galleries.

For more details about Vision '08, visit the event's dedicated website.

Picture © Simon Norfolk.

Guatemalan femicide. Image © Walter Astrada.
Argentinian photographer Walter Astrada has won the Single Image category of the BJP’s International Photography Award.

Astrada’s image, which depicts a Guatemalan victim of femicide and which won first prize in the singles category of the World Press Photo Contemporary Issues award in 2007, was unanimously picked out by the judging panel –photographer Simon Norfolk, Magnum London archive director Nick Galvin and Foto8 editor and University of Westminster photography tutor Max Houghton. Astrada wins a Canon 5D and the chance to exhibit a Spectrum Photographic print of the image at the Association of Photographers’ Gallery, East London from 25-29 November.

Astrada went to Guatemala after deciding to shoot a project on violence against women and discovering that the South American country has the second highest rate of women’s murders (femicide) in the world. In 2006 alone the Public Prosecutor’s Office reported over 3000 reported incidences of domestic violence and nearly 600 female murders. In 2007 the Human Right’s Prosecutor’s Office started to record women’s deaths in the country, and it found more than 3000 women were murdered in that yea alone.

In an interview with World Press Photo he commented on the winning image: 'Most of the bodies I take pictures of was the same. Not in the case of Maira. She was not only shot but it was 16 shots. It’s a lot.’
He added: ‘I think it’s very hard to put this picture in a magazine. Pictures of a woman being killed or raped along with, I don’t know, perfume pictures [ads]. It’s very difficult to put these things together.’ This interview can be viewed online here.
After winning the World Press Photo, Astrada returned to Guatemala to shoot more images in the same project. Earlier this year, he travelled to Kenya to shoot post-election violence in the troubled country, and he is currently working in the Congo.
Last year the BJP International Photography Award was won by Mexican photographer Carla Verea, who submitted a series of portraits of gun-wielding Guatemalan bodyguards. In 2006 Charlie Crane picked up the prize for the Welcome to Pyongyang project, which was subsequently published as a book by Chris Boot. In 2005 German photographer Frank Herfort won the prize with a series of images of Russians at rest in public places.
To sign up for email updates on the 2009 contest, mail photographyaward@bjphoto.co.uk.

Image © Beso Uznadze.

Beso Uznadze has won this year's BJP International Photography Award portrait category for his portraits of Georgians at home and in London.

The judges – gallerist Zelda Cheatle, Magnum Photos member Chris Steele-Perkins and publisher Dewi Lewis – selected the images from several hundred entries. Uznadze, a Georgian photographer who moved to London eight years ago, wins a Canon 5D digital SLR and will see his images printed by Spectrum Photographic and exhibited at the Association of Photographers' Gallery in November from 25-29 November.
'I wanted to document the everyday life of Georgians,' Uznadze told BJP. 'What is this little state? Is it a modern democracy or a struggling ex-Soviet state? What the lives, hopes and ambitions of its people? Why do they look to the West, and what do they expect from it? I'm going through these changes as well and I feel like I'm looking through the past having left the country eight years ago.'
Uznadze's project started in 2007, but took on another dimension when the war with Russia broke out in August. 'When the war started all you saw were images of tanks and destruction in the media,' he says. 'My images are of real Georgians living their lives.' Uznadze believes his work will also change in future because of the conflict. 'My project might become more dramatic. I think [you will be able to see the impact of the war on my subjects' faces]. My mom got a lot older after only one week. People were literally dying of heart attacks because of the war.'
Uznadze hopes to see his work published in a book in the near future. However, he says that this project might never be completed. 'It could be a life project.'

To sign up for email updates on the 2009 contest, mail photographyaward@bjphoto.co.uk

‘Photographers will move into CGI [computer-generated imagery], they’ll have no choice,’ says leading car photographer Carl Lyttle in an interview in this week’s BJP (15 October 2008). ‘Any photographer who makes his living from product photography who doesn’t move in this direction will be dead within two years. It’s as simple as that. Your traditional studio photographer is about to die.’
They’re bold words but Lyttle is putting his money where his mouth is – along with fellow photographer Douglas Fisher and business and marketing mind Eoin O’Connor, he’s founded Moofe, a new kind of picture library devoted to providing photography to CGI designers.
And Lyttle doesn’t stop there. Just as digital capture has taken over from film, he says, CGI will take over from photography – whatever the format. ‘It’s exactly the same process,’ he explains. ‘At first no body wanted to know about digital capture, then gradually it built up until it reached the point where everyone had to know about it. We see the acceptance of CGI in exactly the same way. The tipping point isn’t far away. It will come in the next year, particularly now that we’re entering a recession.’
Is Lyttle right? We’d love to hear your comments…

A Harvard physicist has produced a new material, called black silicon, that could radically impact the photography industry, the New York Times reports today.

Dr. Eric Mazur discovered black silicon when he instructed one of his graduate students to shine an exceptionally powerful laser light — briefly matching the energy produced by the sun falling on the surface of the entire earth — on a silicon wafer. On a hunch, the researcher also applied sulfur hexafluoride, a gas used by the semiconductor industry to make etchings for circuits.

'The silicon wafer looked black to the naked eye. But when Dr. Mazur and his researchers examined the material with an electron microscope, they discovered that the surface was covered with a forest of ultra-tiny spikes,' NYT writes. 'Black silicon has since been found to have extreme sensitivity to light. It is now on the verge of commercialization, most likely first in night vision systems'.

“We have seen a 100 to 500 times increase in sensitivity to light compared to conventional silicon detectors,” said James Carey, a co-founder of SiOnyx who worked on the original experiments as a Harvard graduate student.

Can you imagine a camera's sensor 500 times more sensible to light than actual models. Will Nikon, Canon and the like take on the idea? Especially, since black silicon can be cheaply produced using current semiconductor manufacturing plants.

Read the entire article on the New York Times' website.

Soho Archives: This small exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery depicts the explosion of the bohemian and youth culture of Soho in the 1950s and 1960s, BJP reporter Pauline Lockwood writes.

Three sets of photographs represent Soho throughout the two decades. All explicitly or implicitly reflect the phenomenon of sexual liberation.
Jean Straker’s pictures do so most overtly and daringly, considering the 1950s social norms. They are all studio based with limited props, and have a very strong emphasis on female nudity. The pictures are accompanied with a few press reviews of the time, which display shock headlines such as ‘A married man: “Tonight for the first time I’ve seen a woman without any clothes.”

The messy and overflowing scenes of The Daily Herald Newspaper pictures depict Soho’s crazy nightlife. The crammed nightclubs and exuberant youth make today’s Soho feel sombre…

In the final set of pictures, David Hurn explores the world of Soho strippers on stage and behind the scenes. He strikes a contrast between the two aspects of a stripper’s life. The backstage is more welcoming as the girls share gossip and laugh together. Comparatively, the stage lacks warmth and character and underlines the strictly business nature it may have for the girls.

Soho Archives, 1950s &1960s, will be the last exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery’s current location. It will be moving into a larger building on Ramillies Street in December.

Soho Archives
Runs until 16 November
Website: www.photonet.org.uk/index.php

The long-awaited exhibition This Is War! Robert Capa at Work, plus Gerda Taro and The Subject of War is opening in London at the Barbican Art Gallery.

Robert Capa - Death of a Loyalist militiaman, Cerro Muriano, Córdoba front, Spain, September 5, 1936 © Cornell Capa/Magnum - International Center of Photography

The exhibition is the first to show never-before-seen prints from negatives recovered in the Mexican Suitcases. But, contrary to previous reports, the exhibition does not feature any new images taken by Robert Capa. The exhibition covers most of Capa's work from the Spanish War to the Second World War.

Capa's girlfriend, Gerda Taro, is also the subject of her own exhibition. 'We wanted o look at her as a photographer in her own right,' said curator Cynthia Young at the opening. The exhibition features two new prints obtained from the Mexican Suitcases.

The first print is that of Gustavo Duran on a motorcycle in Navacerrada Pass, Spain. The photo was taken in late May or early June 1937 and was published in Capa and Taro's 1938 book Death in the Making. However, no print existed of the image, which explains why it was not included in the 2007 exhibition in New York.

The second print is of a Dead Soldier on Segovia front also taken around early June 1937. The image appeared in Life magazine's two-page memorial tribute to Taro on 16 August 1937. While, the negative, recovered in the Mexican Suitcases, has a marking indicating that it was selected by the photographer for printing, no vintage print existed in the ICP collection.

The ICP has also found additional shots of the Dead Soldier, as well as the one of two republican soldiers carrying another one on a stretcher (below). In both cases, Young says, Taro moved around her subject to take it under different angles. For example, the ICP found six variations of the Dead Soldier image among the Mexican negatives.

Gerda Taro - Two Republican soldiers with a soldier on a stretcher, Navacerrada Pass, Segovia front, Spain - Late May–early June 1937 © International Center of Photography

However, Capa and Taro are not the only photographers to see their work shown at the Barbican's war exhibition. Geert van Kesteren's work on the Iraq war published in two books Why Mister Why? and Baghdad Calling is also featured, along side films and images by An My-Le, Omer Fast and Paul Chan.

The exhibition runs until 25 January. For more information, visit barbican.org.uk/artgallery. For more details about the Capa and Taro retrospective, read BJP's full report.

Leigh Bowery, Vandam Street studio, New York, 1993 © Annie Leibovitz/Contact Press Images/nbpictures.com, courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery

Life is pretty hectic for Annie Liebovitz right now. BJP met her in Rome on Tuesday night for the launch of Lavazza’s latest ad and calendar campaign (a report from which follows in our 22 October issue), and yesterday her show at the National Portrait Gallery opened (she wasn’t there) in London – plus there’s another next week at Phillips de Pury, and a new book from Jonathan Cape.

She’s also just left her longtime dealer, Edwynn Houk in New York – not for another gallery, but for an auction house (you guessed it, Phillips de Pury).

Auction houses are playing an increasingly prominent role in artists’ careers, which not everyone is happy about because they are party to inside information that normal gallery dealers aren’t. Even when collectors don’t win what they’re bidding on at a sale, the auction house knows what they’re interested in, and what they are prepared to pay – and now that they are opening up their own galleries and also representing artists, they’re in prime position to offer collectors an alternative.

Many think the art world has become way too overheated, and that public institutions are too much in the pocket of commercial galleries and private collectors.

There’s an excellent article explaining the background to all this (but focusing largely on the ‘brain drain’ of curators from public galleries to the commercial art realm) written by Laura Cumming in The Observer.

After you’ve read that, check out The Art Newspaper’s report on the first night of Frieze Art Fair, which only serves to emphasise Cumming’s closing comments:

‘Museum art should be tested by time and not the market; if you want to see what hyper-liquidity has done to contemporary art just go to an auction. Knitted sea urchins, discarded leather jackets, front covers of the New York Times spattered with the artist's semen; these days, there is no art too sorry to be sold at auction. And anyone who thinks they are poorly served by the Tate, which shows extraordinary discrimination by comparison, need only go to the Frieze art fair this week and see what they can find to inspire the mind in that great acreage of product. As Robert Shapazian said after leaving the commercial sector behind, “We have around us excess of all kinds, yet an intimation of essential impoverishment”.'

Le Book’s networking event, Connections, has started in London today at the Royal Horticultural Halls in Pimlico, Pauline Lockwood and Deborah Sterescu were there to report.

The event gathers more than 1000 photographers, agents, art directors, fashion and photo editors, along with key executives in the fashion and music industries. Guests include representatives from Vogue, Vanity Fair, and the National Portrait Gallery, among others.

'The event is a face-to-face version of the book. It is a business affair where key creatives in the industries get to meet in person. We get approximately 2000 visitors over two days,' LeBook’s London office director, Fabien Duverneuil, tells BJP.

'Photographers don’t expect to come out of this event with a job. The key is to talk to people, network, and hope that people take away some of your print materials and most importantly, your web address. That way, people can see the work of the photographers we sign,' says Niall Horton Stephens of the Horton-Stephens agency based in London.

Connections has already been to Paris and New York this year, and is in its third year since its launch in November 2005.

In addition to organising the event, Le Book publishes a nine volume contacts book that covers photography, illustration, production, and art direction. The first book was published 27 years ago in Paris.

Visit www.lebook.com.

With 17 days left before the US presidential elections, Magnum Photos has launched its Insight America project.

The project, which is expected to be the first chapter in a long-running initiative, sees Magnum photographers explore questions such as 'what is the American dream today?' and 'Are some of us really all blue and some all red? Or are we mostly shades of purple?'

'Using the Web to update their observations daily, InSight America is a collage of personal investigations and reflections that attempts to capture the things preoccupying Americans during the weeks leading to Election Day,' Magnum says.

This month-long, web-based project has been designed to confront a critical moment in US history, using photographs, audio, video, diaries, blogs, podcasts and statistics, Magnum says.

Insight America is led by Mark Lubell, Magnum Photos' New York bureau chief, and edited by Fred Ritchin, a professor at New York University and the director of PixelPress (www.pixelpress.org). It sees photographers such as Paolo Pellegrin, David Alan Harvey, Alec Soth and Thomas Dworzak travel around the US or Iraq and report on the state of the country.

Magnum's Insight America blog can be found here. And check back later on 1854 for a full interview with the blog's creators.

Our friends over at PDN have found an interesting photo angle to Colin Powell's recent endorsement of Barak Obama, finding he was in part moved by an image he saw by British photographer Platon – of a mother grieving for her son, killed (presumably) in Iraq or Afghanistan.

"...as the picture focused in, you could see the writing on the headstone. And it gave his awards, Purple Heart, Bronze Star, showed that he died in Iraq, gave his date of birth, date of death. He was 20 years old. And then at the very top of the headstone, it didn't have a Christian Cross. It didn't have a Star of David. It had a crescent and a star of the Islamic faith. And his name was Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan. And he was an American."

Powell was talking to Meet the Press.

Kiefer Sutherland the star of the popular 24 will show off his hidden skill as a photographer in a special exhibition celebrating the launch of the series’ seventh season, the LA Times reports.

While filming the season's two-hour opening episode - 24: Redemption - in South Africa, Sutherland, director Jon Cassar and producer Michael Klick captured behind-the-scenes images of the film shoot. The 48 photographs include pictures of local wildlife and population in the surrounding areas of Cape Town.

The exhibition will be on display from 10 November at the Paley Center for Media in Berverley Hills, Los Angeles. To read the full story, check the LA Times' blog.

First Brad Pitt, now Kiefer. Who's next?

As part of LeBook’s Connections networking event, a full house of photographers, agents, and art directors gathered at a lecture titled “Images Making History” last Friday. Deborah Sterescu reports.

The speakers, British designer and art director Neville Brody of Research Studios, Italian creative director Giorgio de Mitri of Sartoria Communications, British creative director Terry Jones of i-D Magazine, and Dutch creative director Erik Kessels of Kessels-Kramer, spoke on the state of today's market.

“We [photographers] have to try and understand how to represent reality nowadays,” says de Mitri. Photography is supposed to inspire people, and this is something that people have forgotten. People forget what natural means. We have to bring photography back to where it belongs – that is reality'.

Authenticity, going back to your roots, and having no fear were the three essentials mentioned for any good photographer. To make a powerful statement, the simple things in life need to be appreciated, says Brody.

“We’ve gotten into rigid guidelines of what we should do. We have a sensation we want to communicate and we work from there. It’s backwards. It’s not coming from an exploratory place, but from a controlled one. We have to make trouble and make thought,” he says.

At last week's Photography event at the Frontline Club, Irme Schaber talked about the life and work of Gerda Taro. If you missed the event, here is your chance to watch the entire debate.

Schaber is a writer and lecturer on the history of exile photography, photojournalism and print-media. She is also Taro’s biographer and curator of the current exhibition at the Barbican. Next week, she will present and talk about a wide selection of Taro’s work.

Taro worked alongside Robert Capa, who was her photographic as well as romantic partner and the two collaborated closely. Her photographs were widely reproduced in the French press and incorporated the dynamic camera angles of New Vision photography as well as a physical and emotional closeness to her subject. While covering the crucial battle of Brunete in July 1937, Taro was struck by a tank and killed.

Regularly, the Frontline Club hosts photography talks. BJP and 1854 will be streaming live videos of these talks as they happen.

The number of embedded reporters in Iraq has hit an all-time low, CNSNews.com has found.

'There were just 39 embedded reporters covering Iraq in September 2008 compared to 219 in September 2007, a decline of 82 percent,' the organisation says. 'The drop in the number of reporters appears to coincide with the success of the U.S. strategy in the country.'

Has the Iraq story fallen off the radar of news organisations? Christoph Bangert, who spent more than nine months in Iraq freelancing for The New York Times and working on his latest book Iraq: The Space Between, told BJP in a previous interview that a lot of things still happen in Iraq, but 'there are too few photographers there to capture it. There are no freelancers, because they cannot afford the security. Only the New York Times, Time or photo agencies send in photographers. Newspapers all want great pictures, but they don't want to spend the money to send somebody there to supply them.'

Some photographers continue to go back. Russian Yuri Kozyrev is back in Iraq for the US elections. 'Iraq is still at the top of news,' he told BJP. 'It's still the main story.'

But is it? The economy, and to a lesser extent, the war in Afghanistan seem to have taken over the news agenda. Does that mean that the Iraq war is over? It appears unlikely, especially since the current Iraqi government seems reticent to approve a security deal with the US. And, the upcoming Iraqi elections might even bring back sectarian sentiments that have been at the centre of the violence in the years preceding the US surge. Surely, if the security takes a turn for the worse, reporters and photographers will flock back to Iraq.

The New York Times reports today that Samsung has withdrawn its $5.9 billion takeover bid for the flash memory card maker SanDisk, 'citing poor earnings potential at the American company and the current financial crisis.'

While the news might not come as a surprise - in September, SanDisk had rejected the unsolicited $26-a-share offer as too low - NYT points to the fact that SanDisk’s stock has fallen sharply this year, with the company reporting a second consecutive quarterly loss.

However, the real news in the story is that SanDisk's falling results could be the sign of the global downturn affecting the photography industry. The NYT writes that 'with consumer demand for devices that use flash drives expected to decline further as global growth slows, the outlook looks grim.'

And, the downturn is going to affect everyone, even UK wedding photographers, although they might feel the pinch only next year according to Nik Stewert, the national marketing manager of Aaduki Multimedia who spoke to BJP this week.

'In the social sphere, a lot of events are planned a long time in advance,' Stewert says. 'Wedding photographers already have bookings for the next months. I think this financial crisis will start to bite in August or September next year in the wedding market. And they will be affected for a while until people start booking again.'

Are photographers ready for it?

After iStockphoto in 2006, Getty Images has done it again, going after one of its competitors in the stock image business - this time it's Jupiterimages to fall.

Getty Images announced today that it would acquire Jupiterimages of Jupitermedia for $96 million. Similarly to the iStockphoto deal, which cost $50m to Getty, the stock giant expects to retain the Jupiterimages brand and website.

'The digital content market is expanding, and the customers of both Getty Images and Jupiterimages will benefit from the combination of these businesses,' says Jonathan Klein, co-founder and CEO of Getty Images. 'Through this acquisition, we will be able to offer more content, better technology, more customer service and additional local content,' he says.

Read the full story here. In our next issue, BJP will feature an extended analysis of the deal and what impact it could have on the stock image business in general.

Last night wealthy art collectors Fatima and Eskandar Maleki opened up their frankly jaw-dropping Mayfair home to celebrate the Prix Pictet, the photographic award in sustainability (the winner of which will be announced next week in Paris).
Chair of the Prix Pictet judging panel and head of photographs at Sotheby's Francis Hodgson gave a speech, declaring his immense satisfaction with the award. 'Photography prizes have tended to be very specialist, known only to people within the photographic community,' he said. 'This is a prize for photography that is really taken seriously, just as prizes for art and cinema are.'
Photography, he added, has long played second fiddle to other art-forms, but the balance is now, at last, being redressed. It was something perhaps borne out in the Maleki's own house - of the many amazing works of art on display, very few were photographic, but the couple has nevertheless got behind the Prix Pictet - a sign, perhaps, of changing times.
The Malekis did have a few photographs in their collection though - snapshots, depicting their family and friends at various social events and lovingly presented in ornate picture frames. Perhaps it's easy to be snobby about such images, but I found it very touching that a couple who number original artworks by Damien Hirst and Jean-Michel Basquiat among their collection can also find space for this kind of imagery. In next week's BJP, Paul Lowe refers to the 'memorialising power of the still image', and that's a unique power, really. Photography's now considered art - brilliant. But if and when it is art, in my book, it's not just art. It's art and more, something above and beyond.

On 07 November, BJP will be holding it annual event, Vision '08, with Simon Norfolk, Simon Roberts and Jacob Aue Sobol. But these three photographers will not be the only ones talking about their latest project during the one-day event. Steve Bloom will also present his latest book: Living Africa.

He will be discussing the photographic challenges he encountered during the fourteen years it took to create his new book Living Africa (published by Thames & Hudson), a visual homage to the continent of his birth. He travelled deep into remote Ethiopia in search of the vanishing tribes of the Omo Valley, descended 3km down a gold mine where he photographed migrant workers in near total darkness, and in the Sahara witnessed men of the Wodaabe tribe adorn themselves and dance in an all-male beauty contest. Alongside the images of human resilience are pictures of wildlife; showing moments of birth, death, and the Great Migration.

Born in South Africa, Bloom now lives in the UK, where he divides his time between working on photography books and marketing his images through his own photo library.

After the talk he will be available to answer questions and sign his book.

For more details about Vision '08, visit www.bjp-online.com/vision

Photographer Kenneth Jarecke recently posted something quite interesting on his blog. He argues that online content is starved for quality, specifically referencing Vanity Fair’s list of the top 25 news photographs as a ‘terrible excuse for content’.

But according to Jarecke, the Vanity Fair website is not alone in its misguided efforts. ‘A dozen different big-time magazines’ are at fault as well.

Jarecke’s view is that online advertising is simply about the number of views and clicks, which to him explains Vanity Fair’s top 25 list.

‘Right now, publishers (and the editors that work for them) are attempting to create online content that moves pages through your browser. That’s how the money is counted. It isn’t measured by the quality of the content, just the dispose-ability,’ writes Jarecke.

He blames Vanity Fair for its poor choice of photographs, which are documents of monumental events throughout history. ‘Most of the images look like they were chosen by word people. That’s not how photography works. Sometimes you can discuss something without actually showing what a word person would define as the key moment.’

In other words, instead of a direct shot of Martin Luther King delivering his “I Have a Dream” speech, Jarecke would prefer an image of the circumstances leading up to that moment in history, which can have more significant meaning.

He believes that the explanation of Vanity Fair’s choices lies in the fact that online content needs to be ‘cheap and readily available’, as editors do not have the time or money to conduct a thorough search or pay too much for an image.

‘At some point advertisers will demand that they are charged by how long someone keeps their eyes on your page, not by how many times their ad flashes by. Until that time, I don’t see the quality improving,' comments Jarecke.

Posted by Deborah Sterescu

This week's issue of the British Journal of Photography is edited by photographer Simon Norfolk. For the issue, he looks at the work of 98-year old Milton Rogovin, Hilary Malindine and David Maisel.

Norfolk was also one of this year's judge to our International Photography Award. And the picture below was taken a few minutes after Walter Estrada was selected in the single category.

Now it's time for another contest. Whoever comes up with the best caption for the photo will receive an amazing photography book and will see its caption published in BJP's next issue.

E-mail your caption to bjp.news@bjphoto.co.uk.

And to read Norfolk's special issue, visit bjp-online.com tomorrow.

In the space of a few hours, several big news items have broken in the world of photography.

First and foremost, BJP was able to reveal this year's shortlist for the prestigious Deutsche Börse Prize. The shortlist for the 2009 edition of the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize is split equally between young and established artists, with two men and two women making up the four names whose work will go on show at The Photographers’ Gallery next year before the £30,000 winner is announced on 05 March.

Paul Graham and Tod Papageorge are the most recognisable names to make the list, though Taryn Simon and Emily Jacir – both still in their thirties – have become two of the most talked about young photo-based artists this past 12 months. Read BJP's full coverage here.

Late last night, Digital Railroad went offline for good. While, the demise of the hosting site was expected, no one thought it would happen without proper notice. Now photographers find themselves with no way to salvage their tagged images. They will also have to find a new hosting site for their photos. Photoshelter might be an option. For more on this, read our article here. And check out next week's issue of BJP for a full report on the consequences of DRR's demise.

And finally, in the UK, the Home Office has admitted that restrictions on photography in public places have been, in some cases, inappropriate. The news (full report here) comes as the National Policing Improvement Agency has confirmed to BJP that it will issue new guidelines to police officers on stop-and-search powers and photography in public places. Read the story here.

BJP will continue to cover these events with exclusive interviews. Check back soon. Also, in a very unimaginative move (Photo District News has been doing it for months now), you can also get our latest news through Twitter. Click here to subscribe.

Our Twitter feed can also be found right here on 1854.eu (right column).

Check out this video of Magnum Photographer Bruce Gilden hunting for characters on the Streets of New York City. The video is produced by WNYC radio, which had a street photography project a few months back.