Review: The Places We Live by Jonas Bendiksen
At the beginning of the 21st Century, photojournalism finds itself in a somewhat uncomfortable position. On the one had, it has become an established and widely accepted form of journalism. On the other hand, its main language - grainy, crooked, and/or partially blurry images, often still black and white - has lost most of its impact because of the fact that it has become so ubiquitous. Of course, I am somewhat exaggerating, but while some of the most egregious facts of life on this planet have not changed at all over the past thirty, forty, fifty years (take, for example, widespread poverty and starvation, combined with political corruption, in large parts of Africa), we, as the viewers of photojournalism, simply are not quite as affected any longer, simply because we are so familiar with the imagery. Just the other day, I read a comment where someone talked about the work of an American photojournalist who had covered the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the complaint being that the photographer had failed to deliver "something new". Just covering the wars, it seems, is not good enough. Just showing what war does - what our war does - is not good enough, we have to see something new. This is because I do not envy photojournalists, especially since I know, from having talked to some of them, that they often are very engaged and very interested in making the world look at the injustice and/or violence they are trying to cover.
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