World Press Photo: Is Google Street View photojournalism?

No

"Is Google Street View photojournalism?"

No

Any other silly questions?

Congratulation!

Congratulation to a courageous decision and a creative photographer!

No

It is some form of art, but is definitely neither photography nor journalism.

It's been done for years

I was in France in the mid-eighties, and again in the early nineties; and already by this time the biggest regional newspaper group was sacking staffers and not taking on anyone new: and they did not use freelances much either, and this was the reason.

The one staffer they still kept on supplied the papers with photographs daily using exactly the same method of photographing a TV monitor screen while film of events in the news was being broadcast. He would take stills in exactly the same way, so the idea that it is somehow interesting or novel was already out of date, and had been done twenty years ago.

But of course it is photojournalism in its purist sense, and reminds me of the Dr with the camera obscura in his upper room who would keep an eye on goings on in the village in his spare time: so of course the idea is as old as I am. And I was doing this years ago, in fact- taking stills from security camera footage for the police. There is nothing virtual about it

We now have a slight,( polite cough), problem, since, in the same way this method can equally be used to fill papers with up to date images of, say, Egypt, and we are thus similarly all redundant.

From Today Photography is dead.

I'm shocked.

How this can win any award baffles me beyond belief.

No

Photojournalism implies there is journalism involved.
And the classic components of a photo are where you stand and when you press the shutter. The moment "you" photograph was already captured--and where you place your camera doesn't matter to Google's creep van that actually films this.
It isn't photojournalism because it doesn't have any journalistic basis, and the photographer has no creative control over the situation he (google really) is photographing.

I'm going to start taking pictures of Halo, or Ben Stiller movies, or pornography and start entering it in competitions.

Manipulation, not journalism

It's not journalism; it's manipulation. Yes, it pushes the envelope, but prize-winning photography? Not in my view.

.

in this instance, he's an editor, not a photographer. and his desperate attempts to make the photographs his own and not googles' are a tad pathetic.

i appreciate what he's done though but he can barely call himself a photographer.

More art than journalism

Photojournalism, not exactly in the sense of "reportage" of a scene, but photographic art or contemporary work, certainly is. One needs only think of some of Richard Prince or Thomas Ruff's photography.

Annoying and very bad for the World Press Photo

Where is going the World Press Photo with this kind of arrogant actitud? Photojournalism? Where? shoot pictures with a tripod to the screen?? What de f*** hell are thinking this people? I don't believe anymore in this competition for professionals photojournalists thinking that this prize could be on the hands of a real and honest pro and colleague.

And what about copyright

Adn where does copyright come into affect with this, ok he has mentioned that he has captured images from google, but if google had used his images in a similar way would he be as pleased?

why all the fuss?

There have been several exasperated comments, which to me seem singularly ill-judged .
First if you think you choose your viewpoint and apparatus, yes, you do.
And yes, if you are using a responsive enough machine, you are making images you choose to make, an' good on yer matey,
BUT, we have all been doing this for 150 years already, and as most of us have noticed, there appear to be visual limits to what one person can do with undoctored straight pictures, like the ones I still take, and have done for now some 20 years or so.

There ia also the idea that a photojournalist has some kind of integrity, and is recording and transmitting some form of "truth".

Well, noone on this planet could possibly even begin to question my integrity which is rather more extreme even than Sander's or Eugene Smith's

BUT even I have noticed that however pure a fly-on-the-wall non-interference approach you have; and however unimpeded by deadlines and the look of the paper and your editors taste and requirements you are,

you do, and we all do affect the situation in which we photograph at street level.

These pictures ARE the creation of the photographer, no doubt about it, because Google did not make them, and they are snapped from out of the flow of events in just the same way we do at street level:

But the great and groovy thing is, that there is NO influence on the event recorded.

The photographer, or camera crew, or a group of them, are not a part of the situation.

In the street, however unobtrusive you are, you affect the situation by your very presence because people respond to you being there.

There gestures and body language become subtly altered to display themselves for the camera, however unposed they may appear to be, and so what you are doing changes what you are recording, tough but true.

I like these pictures. I like seeing something unaffected, as it is in its own terms, and feel that the howls of anguish relate rather to the egos of posers and the threat to jobs, than the quality of the work itself, which is whatit is, in the end, all about.

Found Photography

I find this very interesting, but I'm not sure I would call it photojournalism. The images certainly capture some interesting moments, but there is a certain level of disconnection.

I'd consider this a newer form of found photography. Very clever, but not quite journalism.

Not quite

I did this as soon as I discovered street view, mainly to entertain myself and to gain inspiration when I couldn't get out and shoot.
You can move freely around most of the world in google street view, but unlike the world the image on your computer screen does not change. It is merely a photograph that has already been taken. And taking a photograph of a photograph, does not make it your own.

It is an interesting idea though never the less.

!

This is clearly not photojournalism. Not by any definition that I know anyway.

I think it's a complete and utter farce that this 'artist' has even been noted by a judging panel on what used to be the premier prize for photojournalists. Are they trying to make themselves a lauging stock? If so they're doing a pretty good job.

Photojournalists are people like Don McCullin and Philip Jones Griffiths who take risks to get great photojournalism and to be honest it's a total insult to them and all the other hard working photographers working in this field that this has even happened.

Wolf writes: "I use a tripod and mount the camera, photographing a virtual reality that I see on the screen. It's a real file that I have, I'm not taking a screenshot. I move the camera forward and backward in order to make an exact crop, and that's what makes it my picture. It doesn't belong to Google, because I'm Google, because I'm interpreting Google; I'm appropriating Google. If you look at the history of art, there's a long history of appropriation."

Two words: artistic b*llocks.

Photographing a virtual reality that I see on the screen? I think your head is so far up your bottom that I'm surprised that you can actually even use the viewfinder!

I think you'll find that the image does belong to Google, (or at least it does in my understanding of copyright). Just because you set up a tripod and photograpp your computer monitor does not make you smart, edgy or clever, just very, very lazy, (and/or possibly agoraphobic).

Next time go in for the Turner prize which is targeted at artists who have their heads up their bottoms or try leaving the house to actually capture life as it happens and produce stunning photography, which is what this prize should have been given for.

:´(

Cry bitches

on Michael Wolf's success

Firstly, I am trying to understand why is there such a discussion on whether Google Street View is photojournalism or not? Well, obviously the BJP wanted to spark a debate and succeeded!

Second, Michael Wolf received an Honorable Mention in Contemporary Issues in this year's World Press Photo Awards. This is quite different to an award IMO.

Moreover, before you start being hostile against any fellow photographer-artist, it would be nice to have some information about his previous history and work. Michael Wolf did not come out of the blue in the art scene. Maybe his website would be a good starting point for the non-believers plus his award winning projects in previous WPP competitions.

As far as manipulation is concerned, just to remind all photographers that manipulation is inherent to the medium since its advent, not a new 'invention'...

At the end of the day Google Street View is a new reality, whether we like it or not. Michael Wolf, among others (see also Doug Rickard and Jon Rafman) by using google street view open up a discussion on where exactly photography stands today and where is heading. The days of the 'decisive moments' belong to the past and to a rhetoric almost archaic today. This is not to say that I do not appreciate the 'decisive moment', but this is not also the absolute definition of 'photography'.

Furthermore, I strongly believe that photography evolves and has been evolving in line with technological, social, economic, philosophical, aesthetic, to name but a few, shifts and transitions. And Michael Wolf's projects based on Google Street View references all of those.

Finally, I want to sum up with Dirk Kaesler's comment above where he states 'Congratulations to a courageous decision and a creative photographer!'

plagiarism and the photojournalist

We do not create anything when we use a camera to record something.
Further, if you use a still camera on continuous at high speed, only the first frame is chosen by you- if the shutter lag is short enough.

So a situation has existed for many years in which the camera itself could claim copyright of an image precisely because the photographer had already abnegated control to it by using contininuous.

In addition, we do neither dress or pose our subjects. We do not create their surroundings, or the graphics and advertising hoardings in trhe background either, though we "choose" all of these elements, and our view of other copyrighted designs like buildings, when we take pictures.

Our images therefore are an hommage to life as we see it; but not as we have "created" it, and so noone claiming to be a photographer is original in any sense at all,

And I have taken several good shots with my eyes closed!

So being Googleyed is just as plagiaristic and unoriginal.

This is great because photographic magazines have no further grounds for refusing to publish street shots which include all or any of the above, as such images no longer provide publishers lawyers with valid grounds to refuse to publish our "art", either in print, or online, even if these images are derived from Google or the real western world, inhabited, as it is by teams of shylocks; hoards of them, oh yes.

I had an experience with regard to copyright taking pictures of an arcade entrance several years ago.

The view had been opened up by the demolition of the buildings opposite, and this view was visible over an across the pile of rubble labourers were clearing away from the site.

After a pause of a few minutes, a "suit" appraoched me to ask what I was doing, and when I told him, he instructed me to leave immediately (although I was standing on the pavement!) because , as he said, his company not only owned the land, but the air above it, such that I had no right to take pictures through their airspace.

Well, the air belongs to noone, and the light that is transmitted through that air, and through air and space by satellite belongs to noone either.

Where, gentlemen, does this leave the copyright claims of the photographer?

We do not have copyright over the light itself that we use, let alone patents for the machinery and software we must employ to create "our" images.

Our copyright is of the creation and the act of creation itself-if we are truly responsible for the choice of the moment and the viewpoint from which the picture was taken.

Such that Google is merely another perfectly valid device for image-making, and we alone must decide the moment of exposure, and the point of view there, as everywhere else.

Ultimately copyright resides with the Creator.....like what made delight ......

I do not think so

BJP'S article in the December 2010 issue on Doug Rickard's A New American Picture presented an interesting idea, however i do not think this approach will or should become a mainstay approach to photojournalism. Harry Gruyaert's tv shots from the 1970's are similar to this new brand of office chair photojournalsim but Gruyaert's work obviously moved on from this. i am not really in the position to know the in's and out's of real world photojournalism and i do find he approach of Rickard's and Wolf's approach interesting to look at, but i really dont think it is photojournalism. I wonder what Eugene Smith would think to it?

Bravo

Bravo to this brave photojournalist for pushing the envelope and boundaries of what photography is and can be.

It's forward thinking creativity and innovation like this that raises the bar for us all.

Those complaining loudest are probably the ones that are just bitter after having spent all that money on all that Nikon gear.

Change is the photographer's friend.

Stay home

Photojournalist still believe to catch reality, they do not realize the got just a fart of reality.
Photojournalist should stay home and take pictures of the screen and read same books..
Benjamin, Barthes, Baudrillard..

Stay home and make practice at the screen!

Photojournalist still believe to catch reality, they do not realize the got just a fart of reality.
Photojournalist should stay home and take pictures of the screen and read same books..
Benjamin, Barthes, Baudrillard..

art, maybe. PJ, no.

"...I move the camera forward and backward in order to make an exact crop, and that's what makes it my picture. It doesn't belong to Google, because I'm interpreting Google; I'm appropriating Google."

I assume, then, that if I go to Mr. Wolf's website and photograph his images (with my camera on a tripod, of course) that he won't have any problems with that?

The work raises interesting questions but I don't see how it can be considered journalism. Good journalism requires more context I think. These are disembodied images and don't communicate anything about the subjects or scenes in the photos. As journalism it's worse than lazy.

who cares

At least as a photographer he is doing something,,, rather than F**** All Good luck Mr Wolf.

Creative - I'll bear none of it

I can't help but agree with those on here that are incredulous at the fact that Wolf has received an honorable mention, as to me this is plagiarism in its most direct and laziest form.

Without wishing to be derogatory to others opinion's I need to take issue with some comments made in this discussion.

To quote excerpts - from a Post

why all the fuss?
by: Peter Harrap on 13 Feb 2011 at 17:34

"you do, and we all do affect the situation
in which we photograph at street level."

'SNIP'

"These pictures ARE the creation of the photographer, no doubt about it, because Google did not make them, and they are snapped from out of the flow of events in just the same way we do at street level: there is NO influence on the event recorded." - unquote (not by Wolf anyway).

Quote - "The photographer, or camera crew, or a group of them, are not a part of the situation.

In the street, however unobtrusive you are, you affect the situation by your very presence because people respond to you being there." - Unquote.

So let me see....... the Vehicles Google uses to record these images are unobtrusive and do not affect the situation?

See the link below and tell me what you think?

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01212/googlestreetview_1212782c.jpg

In fact in researching (and I use the term 'research' in as looser form as I do 'creative' in this comment) I have discovered web pages dedicated to where the Google Camera's are now - so get out there and get into the street view yourself, photographing yourself being photographed by it, then do a 'Wolf' and sit at home and do it all again, that might have some validity, and at least shows some effort.

As a fried once said 'I'll bear my bum in Boots window' to anything that he believed was rubbish and untrue, so off I go ;-)

I must admit that I find a deal of interest and use in Google's Street view, and it can offer the photographer a way to get an approximation of the general 'after' view for 'Before and After' shots.

But as far as this aspect of Wolf's work being considered creative, it is beyond belief that it should be credited as anything more than an visual amusement, and an attempt to bring what his eyes have gleaned secondhand to the attention of others.

I think the secondhand element to all this betrays the fact that it is in no way possible to consider this work as Photo Journalism.

Videojournalism

So if I set up a tripod with a camcorder on it and adjust the settings the way I want. does this mean I can copy videos and sell them and not worry about that pesky FBI WARNING in the beginning of each video?

how about if I go on his website and take pics of his pics and then sell them or enter them in contests??

McPhoto

Fast food photography, ready made and delivered to your door.

Dono't make me laugh

Of course not. Would someone imagine giving a Rory Peck award to a CCTV recording? C'mon...

Being Pedantic is an Unfortunate Event

For the ones who claim Mr Genius Wolf is out of place at the World Press, I would like to remind that the WPP has a section dedicated entirely to science and nature and some of the stories that win in that section are anything but photojournalism.
SO don't be pedantic, pretending you you are the real Mccoy, because you've just been narrow-minded.
The world we live in changes constantly, the way we perceive reality changes constantly too, and the boundaries between journalism, fiction, documentary and so on, are more and more blurred. Mr Wolf has perfectly captured the essence of it.
Finally, if I may say, BJP has probably make the biggest mistake in asking the question as Google Street View, like the reality we witness in flash and blood, represents a source, from which we photojournalist could frame our "photojournalism".

Mr Wolf, has proven again to be intelligent, original and successful!