There is a struggle going on in documentary photography between proponents of journalistic ethics and practices and those who believe that new visual and storytelling strategies are needed to communicate effectively in the modern world. The controversies surrounding this year’s World Press Photo awards have amplified this debate.

As the World Press awards are presented this week in Amsterdam, we have asked several photographers, curators and editors for their thoughts on the debate.

After reading these essays, we invite you to add your thoughts in the comments section. We will add selected comments of fewer than 250 words to this text to further the conversation.

Azu Nwagbogu. Jury chair member, 2015 World Press Photo contest, director of the African Artists’ Foundation and the Lagos Photo Festival.

The most significant change in photojournalism since the birth of smartphones in the digital era is that it is no longer the news that’s important but the story. It is as subtle a change as it is monumental. Everyone has access to the news, that is, the event that happened, but it is the story, its nuances, layers, intrigues and key drivers that need better understanding. In the past we relied on images from the front line to inform us that there was indeed a situation in distant reaches of the world, but today the citizen or tourist is able to share images that inform us of those events. What role then has the photojournalist to play in relaying the news, better yet, in sharing the story? This is not an otiose question but rather a serious one that goes to the very root of the ethics of photojournalism, its training and practice.

“The background, captions, the narrative and the facts become more necessary.” — Azu Nwagbogu

The basis of photojournalism is like a three-legged stool: first photograph, then caption and publish. It is stabilized on the same principle that necessitates the use by photographers of a tripod: No matter how uneven the floor is, the camera stays balanced. Each of the three legs can lengthen or contract to create this stability. The changes in the way images are published in the digital age have severely skewed this balance. News media outlets are closing while other doors are opening. Social media, crowdfunding and book publishing have opened other opportunities for photojournalists. It is no longer standard to transmit images to faraway headquarters for someone else to write and fact-check.

Instead, the photographer has greater autonomy, but with it, bigger moral responsibility. She needs to get closer to the story and craft the story. The background, captions, the narrative and the facts become more necessary.

World Press Photo is the traditional bellwether of this profession.

Photojournalists feel the pressure to create iconic images. As evidenced in recent years’ winning World Press Photo awards, a painterly quality with Renaissance and Baroque notes is the dominating definition of iconography. Such standards can lead to temptations, as seen in the controversies that habitually follow the awards.

World Press Photo also relies on the principle of the three-legged stool in accepting entries for the competition. You must have been published within the calendar year, have an image and have captions.

But changes in publishing options are greatly influencing the type of entries received by the institution. Now we are presented with a new challenge and one that requires urgent attention as seen with the recent controversy surrounding the winning image by the Italian photographer Giovanni Troilo, who was stripped of its contemporary issue first prize following controversy surrounding captions and staging. Staging is very much integral to most visual narration — it is new, frightening territory for traditional news media.

Once upon a time you needed bravado to get the winning image. Today, you need a strong moral compass and a knowledge of the history of traditional Western paintings.

Maggie Steber. Photographer.

What kind of stories do we want to tell?

We can show reality. Or we can, in projects which might be more personal, photograph fictional or staged stories.

But we cannot mix them. The beauty of journalism is that it is real. Real is pretty incredible. But it has rules. Personal projects that are more interpretive and express intimate ideas are valuable to us because there are no rules. It is our own secret garden. But we can’t fictionalize reality. That’s the bottom line.

The big challenge in my opinion is that issues never change. There is always war, hunger, racism, poverty, pollution and corruption. Photographers are charged with making images that don’t look like the same photographs we have seen time and time again. We have to continually think about how we can make compelling images, if we want our stories to change things or at least make a viewer stop and think. That shouldn’t rule out photographic style or a point of view, and we have many fine examples of people who are photographing major issues in very personal, stylistic ways.

In fact, this is what photo editors look for, someone who is telling the same issue-driven stories but in a different way. Susan Sontag wrote of how seeing images of great tragedy and conflict repeatedly could “anesthetize the vision and deaden the conscience.” Photographs cease to achieve their aim. That’s where a more offbeat way of thinking and photographing is really urgent in today’s overabundance of photographs, and photographers.

I’m excited by the more contemporary photographic approaches to covering issues. But they must be truthful images. When photographers lie in their captions and misrepresent reality, they set all of us back. They create a mistrust of all of us and our photographs.

That said, I wonder if we aren’t having too much of a knee-jerk reaction in the photographic competitions. Where is the line of demarcation? The water is really muddied right now, and we have dishonest photographers to thank for it. You cannot distort the truth if you are photographing reality.

Phil Toledano. Photographer.

I think photojournalism is dead.

The language that developed over the last 50 or 60 years has become irrelevant. Because we’ve seen it all before, instead of emphasizing, it reduces. The idea and intent is still very much alive, but it’s not enough to show up and hope that extraordinary things happen in front of your lens. Why? Because now the whole world is a camera with an Internet connection.

The power of the single image has diminished. What’s more powerful are Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. The constant, relentless tsunami of images showing up in your virtual living room. That’s more personal, and more potent, than a solitary photograph on the front page of a newspaper.

“The power of the single image has diminished.” — Phil Toledano

We need new words to talk about what’s happening in the world, and those new words are ideas. When photojournalists resist the gravitational pull of the old vernacular, as Tim Heatherington did with “sleeping soldiers,” Richard Mosse did with “infra” and Donald Weber did with his images of Molotov cocktails from Ukraine, we wake up. We pay attention. And things begin to matter again.

Santiago Lyon. Vice president and director of photography, The Associated Press.

Journalism is the telling of real stories in an accurate and truthful way for presentation to readers and viewers through the media.

Words, photos or video, the definition holds.

There is, of course, much room for interpretation and creativity. The choices of words, or images, or lenses, or angles; but in the end there is a reasonable expectation that events have been portrayed in a truthful and accurate manner, according to the journalist’s code of ethics and values.

Inherent in the value of any journalism is its trustworthiness. We all check the sources of our information and make corresponding judgments of who or what to believe.

“Who told you that?” or “Where’d you see that?” are common questions when we’re presented with information in any form.

Reputation, then, supports this trust.

I know what I would think if a reporter manufactured a quote because he thought it reasonable that the subject of a story would say something similar, even if he hadn’t. If caught, reporters doing such a thing would lose their credibility and most likely their jobs.

“Inherent in the value of any journalism is its trustworthiness.” — Santiago Lyon

When it comes to photojournalism, I must be sure the photographer was truthful, that he or she didn’t set the whole thing up by asking people to create or recreate scenes.

I must be sure the image wasn’t substantially altered later, electronically, in a way that changed the scene by entirely, or partly, removing an inconvenient element of the photo. There is zero tolerance for that.

Neither should the photographer significantly darken (or lighten) portions of the image in a way that portrays the scene very differently from how he saw it, an area slightly more subjective perhaps and one open to the good judgment of the photographer, editor or contest jury.

The news and sports photographer should not interfere with, nor attempt to recreate or direct their subjects. Of course, their very presence will often affect the scene initially, but the most skillful practitioners build trust with their subjects and are eventually ignored, allowing them to document accurately.

Portraiture is mostly, by its very nature, a construct, usually involving posing and the use of lighting to accentuate certain features of the subject or the environment. We should clearly call it portraiture and know what was done to achieve the image on scene, in camera or in postproduction.

The world of photojournalism has been troubled lately by questions surrounding the definition of these basic tenets and how work should be created, categorized, presented or awarded prizes.

There are those, myself included, for whom the basic journalistic values outlined here are paramount while others are frustrated by the perceived restraints of convention and cliché and seek broader storytelling latitude.

The two notions need not be mutually exclusive. I am all for creativity and artistic provocation; I merely seek clear definitions of the work produced so that we don’t damage that ever important trust — so crucial to our credibility and survival as journalists.

Arianna Rinaldo. Director, OjodePez magazine, artistic director of Cortona on the Move.

Contemporary documentary photography shines light on a lot of the weak points inherent to the medium; to photography as a practice in general, which is always an interpretation, and to photojournalism in its stance for authenticity and veracity.

To this inherent controversy, we must add the loss of faith in the image due to the modern digital representation of the world. So how do we represent reality? How do we communicate, in the most “objective” way possible, our vision of the world?

Photography, in journalism and documentary, records the moment, but what are the rules that apply to make that captured moment accurately real in the produced image? I believe that what matters most are the photographer’s intentions, and his or her honesty.

“This is a sign of the times, the need to find different ways of representation.” — Arianna Rinaldo

Contemporary practices in documentary photography drive inspiration and tools from new media and new technology as well as from the numerous practices of storytelling and narration of the world cinema, theater, literature. This is a sign of the times, the need to find different ways of representation. Old ways are not enough, are not trustworthy anymore.

What are the new rules?

I do not like to talk about rules when talking about mankind’s ability to express and communicate. Yes, there is grammar, but languages adapt to the evolution of society and the need to express oneself. And so does photography.

Going back to what matters: intention. Why are you producing this work, what do you want to communicate, relate, narrate, document, show? We now have a great abundance of long-term projects that dig deeply into the heart of the matter, and find the most effective way, to represent it.

For the news of the day, one image might suffice. For other issues the narration might need a pose, more time, more interaction with the subjects and, why not, better lighting. Does that make it less real? Or more real?

Honesty is the other important point. Always.

The photographer’s purpose should be declared, and his or her methods, if differing from the “traditionally accepted,” might need an explanation. But not out of fear but more simply because we need to know and also accept certain new ways of representation. Even if they are quite explicit, we need to train our eye, our brain to different ways of seeing in order to apply our judgment to what we are shown as viewers.

Soon we might not need those explanations anymore, because the “new ways” will become more common and therefore accepted and understood for what they are: an interpretive representation of reality.

As all photography is.

Back to point zero.

W. Eugene Smith. Photojournalist.

In a 1956 interview of W. Eugene Smith during an American Society of Media Photographers event, Philippe Halsmann asked about his practice of sometimes staging photographs. Here is an excerpt of their interview:

Q.

I remember your picture of a Spanish woman throwing water into the street. Was this staged?

A.

I would not have hesitated to ask her to throw the water. (I don’t object to staging if and only if I feel that it is an intensification of something that is absolutely authentic to the place.)

Q.

Cartier-Bresson never asks for this…. Why do you break this basic rule of candid photography?

A.

I didn’t write the rules — why should I follow them? Since I put a great deal of time and research to know what I am about? I ask and arrange if I feel it is legitimate. The honesty lies in my — the photographer’s — ability to understand.

From Your Comments:

James Williams. Commenter.

“…now the whole world is a camera with an Internet connection”? Sorry, that notion of all-seeing objectivity is a fiction. Every image we see on the Internet has been selected and filtered for some purpose: to get us to click a link, be impressed by a friend’s vacation, believe in a political party’s ideology, etc. Photojournalists also filter what we see — but we’re entitled to expect them to do that in an explicit way that lets us examine their intentions. A “staged” image in which the photographer’s intentions are clear may be more truthful than a “candid” image chosen to fit an agenda.

Valerio Berdini. Commenter.

It is not only photographers that have to drive and know this revolution, it is also the photo editors, the photo awards and the photo agencies. As photographers, we can ride the change but we need a racetrack built by the ones who need and want to support us. At the moment it is still a dirty track. The controversial outcome of WPP and Sony WPO awards (one disqualifying the other awarding a piece submitted to both) highlights this confusion. Rules are changing, we need either clearer rules or to know if there are still rules.

Rhoades. Commenter.

Without photography, I don’t believe I would know nearly as much as I do about the modern world. I am 17 years old, yet I understand the plight of the Kurds in Iraq at the hands of ISIS, and I empathize with children traveling atop trains thanks to Don Barletti. Even though many post Arab Spring photojournalists are amateurs with smartphones, amazing images are captured, and stories relayed from parts of the world an American teen wouldn’t be able to identify a few years ago. While some argue that the smartphone is the death of photojournalism, I know from my own, and my peers’ experience that our smartphones inspire us to have more range in our photography and go beyond our phones to explore more creative or hands-on forms of photography.

James K. Colton. Commenter.

The basic moral compass of any professional journalist will always point in the direction of truth. Once you wander from there you will lose all credibility. Photojournalism is not dead. The power of the single image has not diminished. The “truth” is that we are being bombarded with volume. Now, more than ever, we need better filters to establish what is fact or fiction from all the visual noise that is being proliferated on the internet…starting with photographers to editors to publications. The late Howard Chapnik said it best on the cover of his book: “Truth Needs No Ally.”

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