When photography beats video

FrischkornPlayer.jpg
I'm sure by now you've seen the NY Times "multimedia" piece of video-game players. When I watched the piece my first thought was that I had seen still photography of video-game players where each image delivered vastly more than seeing the players "in action". I want to highlight (again) Shauna Frischkorn's work. I'm sure lots of people will now disagree and flood my inbox, but I think despite of what many people want to believe, photography, when done well, can have a quality that moving images don't have.

Maybe this is because in that video there is basically nothing left to the imagination (you got the sound of the game in the background, and not being able to see the game itself actually doesn't matter all that much; as an aside, this is also the reason why Hollywood remakes of foreign movies are typically so bad: Everything that might be "missing" in the original movie is spelled out) - in contrast, the viewer has to fill the photos with meaning her/himself. Of course, this requires more of an involvement with the image, but - crucially - this is what makes all the difference. The photo you could hang on your wall and happily live with it, but who would want to see the video every day?

This is also why I think that that fancy new camera that has lots of people drooling poses a real danger for newspapers, because they might be tempted to replace still images with movies, thus falling into the trap that I have just outlined. I think multimedia is the future of newspapers, but I think the kind of multimedia shouldn't just be videos shot with some fancy camera. After all, if you want moving images you'll watch TV. If newspapers want to be able to compete with TV, they'll have to offer something TV can't offer. A wonderful example of the kind of multimedia I'm thinking of was offered by a Magnum photographer a little while back: A Scarecrow.

Links

1000 words blog
2point8
5b4
ian aleksander adams
american suburb x
timothy archibald
artkrush
asia photography blog
juliana beasley
jen bekman
dawoud bey
bildwerk3
bint photo books
bldblog
bloggy
boston photography focus
bps research digest blog
david bram
buffet
the cartoonist
cigarettes and purity (mel trittin)
c-monster.net
colbert nation
consumptive.org
nina corvallo
coudal partners
mrs. deane
digressions
amy elkins
expiration notice
exposure
exposure compensation
the exposure project
flak photo
elizabeth fleming
fotofeinkost
fraction magazine
from this moment
fugitive vision
gazpachot
gmtPlus9
shane godfrey
ground glass (cara phillips)
group show
the guardian - art section
hebig.org
heading east
andrew hetherington
horses think (ofer wolberger)
hippolyte bayard
i heart photograph
japan exposures
japan photo
journal of a photographer
hee jin kang
kottke.org
liz kuball
la pura vida blog
vincent laforet
shane lavalette
lens culture
lens culture blog
love oliver
magnum blog
melanie mcwhorter
modern art obsession
heather morton's art buyer blog
muse-ings
obvious
notes on politics, theory and photography
colin pantall
pdnedu
photo book guide
photography collection
photography lot
placeboKatz
susana raab
40 watts (shawn records)
richard renaldi
seesaw magazine
shooting wide open
sign and sight
the sonic blog
alec soth (archives)
state of the art
amy stein
zoe strauss
subjectify
swen's weblog
that's a negative
thingsmagazine.net
too much chocolate
mark tucker
brian ulrich
uncommons
verve photo
vvork
wan.der.lust.ag.ra.phy
wassenaar
greg wasserstrom
we can shoot, too
we can't paint
shen wei
white wall collective
edward winkleman
women in photography
wood s lot
year in pictures (james danziger)
zoum zoum

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by Joerg Colberg published on November 28, 2008 10:40 AM.

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