‘Photojournalism is dead’, according to Don McCullin in the ‘This much I know’ feature in the Observer for 17th September 2023. He goes on, ‘We’ve become obsessed with glamour and gloss: footballers, narcissism and gossip. Nobody wants the pictures I used to take.’ Few would disagree and dismiss this as the grumbles of an aged curmudgeon (he’s 87). Still, I thought I would test his assertion by looking at yesterday’s Observer.
I took the four sections (newspaper, The New Review, Observer Sport and Observer Magazine) and analysed the photographs used editorially. The total count came to just over 220 (what to include was not always as clear as I had expected), so it’s reasonable to conclude that there is ample scope for the use of photography, even if that use does not achieve, or even aspire to, the high standards of layout and impact that Harold Evan advocated in Pictures on a Page.
The distribution across eight categories was: ‘celebrities’ 30%; news 16%; performance (drama, music, film etc.) 12%; sport 11%; food/lifestyle/travel 11%; ‘art’ photography 4%; architecture/place 4%; and photojournalism/social documentary 4%. While the news photographs made up the second highest category they did not amount to what could reasonably be called reportage/photojournalism/social documentary.
The scoring for photojournalism/social documentary (grouped for convenience while recognising that they are not always the same thing) included just eight pictures by Jane Evelyn Atwood, Grace Robertson, Yara Nardi, Roberto Salamone, Siranush Sargsyan and other uncredited photographers. Even including these is stretching a point – while they embody something of a photojournalistic ethic, they are not presented as photo stories documenting an issue in depth. So, judging from the Observer, photojournalism should indeed by now have received the last rites.