Topic 2 Press photography versus art photography

Everyone can be a photographer because today, digital cameras and cell phones with camera are popular so that it has become something of a necessity. People are very familiar to capture the moment which can be something his/her birthday or graduating day. These are all vivid moments in our lives. Therefore, the photos bring back lots of good memories. I believe there are slightly differences between art photographs and press photographs. Differences are who use techniques or not. For example, press photography follows the standard guideline such as NPPA: code of ethics. The reason why they follow a certain rule is because they deliver issues or news to public so that that has to consist of truth, fact and credence. However, there are no standards and guidelines for art photography. I believe that art photography is a creative art. Someone who captures a moment as an art spends for a long time to get the exact moment and the exact time at the exact place. They then bring the picture to the bark room to produce a precise picture. As well, they can reproduce and manipulate it if the picture has a problem of quality of colors and lighting. Reproducing and manipulating makes a picture tangible, so even if viewers cannot touch, they can feel it. I found the definition of art photography is "the art photography refers to photographs that are created in accordance with the creative vision of the photographer as artist." However, the press photography just provides visual support for stories.

I would like to introduce one art photographer who is John Davies and one press photographer who is Anthony Suau. According to the John Cavies profile, John Davies is "one of today's most outstanding British photographers, he became famous through his research on the English industrial landscape, observed in vast and detailed views."

According to John Davies profile, "John Davies's work belongs to the world of contemporary documentary photography. Faithful to a refined, pure black and white, taken on as the absolute rule of a subtle, analytic style. He chooses the vastness of space inhabited by the powerful elements of nature and the contradictory ones of culture to operate in two directions. On the one hand, the evocation of emotional states through the photographic rendering of a space-light that is alive, almost metaphysical, and recalls the symbolisation of the forces of nature in Turner. On the other, a crystal-clear gaze that sounds the material aspects of the contemporary landscape which is tied to the development of the productive activities and concrete structuring of the world through the molding power of economy and property."


Anthony Suau is an American award-winning photographer. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for his photographs of the famine in Ethiopia, the World Press Photo of the Year in 1987 for a photo taken during a demonstration in South Korea, the Robert Capa Gold medal in 1995 for his photos from Chechnya, and a second World Press Photo of the Year in 2008 for a photograph taken in Cleveland, Ohio depicting an officer securing a home under foreclosure at gun-point.

He has been a contract photographer for Time since 1991 and has published several books, including 'Beyond the Fall', a 10-year photography project portraying the transition of the Eastern bloc starting from the fall of the Berlin wall, and 'Fear This', about the war of images and slogans being played out at home while America is at war in Iraq.

Cited
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Suau
http://www.johndavies.uk.com/abiog.htm