Monday, January 7, 2008

Ruled Out

Good thing is that for each photo award that is discontinued at least two new ones are launched. One of the big fish among those new contests are the Sony World Photography Awards. Before you look forward to the award evening in Cannes which will be "a black tie event for the crème de la crème of the photo and press industry" (if that is something to be looked forward to) you should read the entry rules. They say that contestants have to guarantee that "each person depicted in the entry has granted permission to be portrayed as shown". This applies to entries in all categories, not only nude or fashion but also photojournalism/documentary. I wonder how many of the iconic images of photojournalism would qualify under those rules. I guess that a lot of pictures taken by members of Sony's "World Photographic Academy" (among them Martin Parr and Elliott Erwitt) would not. Just another sign that photojournalism/documentary photography/street photography are more and more becoming legally precarious occupations (well, not for the big fish maybe. But will there be any emerging big fish in the future when each decisive moment is destroyed by fiddling with model release forms?)

No comments: