UK photographer Tim Hetherington’s image of an exhausted U.S. soldier in a moment of respite after intense fighting in Afghanistan has won the 2007 World Press Photo Contest, one of the most prestigious prizes in photojournalism.

Hetherington made the photo of the unnamed soldier last September while on assignment for Vanity Fair. The shot was taken at the so-called “Restrepo” bunker, named after a soldier from his platoon who was recently killed by insurgents. The soldier depicted in the photo is a member of the 2nd Battalion Airborne of the 503rd U.S. infantry division, a unit deployed in the Korengal Valley in the Eastern province of Afghanistan. According to the World Press Photo Website, the valley is infamous as the site of downing of a U.S. helicopter and has seen some of the most intense fighting in the country.

“This image represents the exhaustion of a man — and the exhaustion of a nation,” jury chairman Gary Knight, a photographer with the VII agency, said of Hetherington’s winning image. “We’re all connected to this. It’s a picture of a man at the end of a line.” Time magazine’s director of photography MaryAnne Golon, who also served on the jury, commented: “I use all my energy to have people notice bad things. There’s a human quality to this picture. It says that conflict is the basis of this man’s life.”

An international jury chose the photo from among a total of more than 80,000 that were entered from 5,019 photographers from 125 countries.

Hetherington’s photograph is part of a picture story that was also awarded 2nd Prize in General News Stories. Several Americans were among the 59 winning photographers representing 23 nationalities. Getty Images’ John Moore took first prize in the Spot News Singles category for his recent photos depicting the chaos that emerged in Pakistan immediately following the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Rawalpindi. An edit of Moore’s pictures from the blast scene also took first place in the Spot News Stories category.

Justin Maxon of Aurora Photos took first prize in the Daily Life Singles category for his shot of a homeless woman with HIV and her son bathing in the Red River near Hanoi, Vietnam; Ariana Lindquist took the top prize in the Arts & Entertainment singles category for her backstage shot of a girl dressed in an anime costume before a performance in Shanghai, China; and National Geographic shooter David Liittschwager won first prize in the Nature Stories category for his stunning images of magnified marine life found near the Hawaiian Islands.

For his winning image, Hetherington will receive a 10,000-euro monetary award as well as an EOS-1Ds Mark III DSLR donated by Canon. An awards ceremony will be held to honor the winners in Amsterdam in April, preceded by a program of lectures, discussions and photography screenings at the historic Oude Kerk.

For more information and to view the complete winners’ gallery, visit www.worldpressphoto.org.

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Rarely have the first drafts of history gotten it so terribly wrong, or at least so incomplete, as the book publishing world’s first take on the war in Iraq. The year was 2003, and the country was still smarting from the September 11 attacks. Book publishers, including those specializing in photo books, were falling all over themselves to release products that capitalized on the country’s rampant patriotism in time for the holiday season.

The books, such as Time’s 21 Days to Baghdad and Regan Books’ The War in Iraq: A Photo History, were rush jobs that were heavy on the bravado and skimpy on real photojournalism. Packed with photos of the initial invasion and key administration officials, the books’ shortsightedness is best summed up by their gullible inclusion of the orchestrated shot of President Bush after his landing on an aircraft carrier, standing in front of a banner declaring “Mission Accomplished.”

Fast-forward four years, and we’re only now starting to see a more nuanced, artful look at the conflict. This fall will see the release of at least three monographs that offer views of our military involvement in Iraq that are both penetrating and skeptical. With an American public that has largely turned against the war, or at least grown frustrated with its handling, this country may finally be a willing audience.

First up is Iraq: The Space Between (powerHouse, $35) by German-born photographer Christoph Bangert, who organized his book around the concept of distance: “It describes the gap between different peoples and cultures in Iraq. It attempts to show the space between two wars, the American invasion and the Iraqi civil war, the space between us and them, my experience and your experience.”

Some of Bangert’s photos hit you over the head with war’s brutality, such as one of an Iraqi left for dead in a pile of garbage. Others, such as the book’s cover of an abandoned playground, arrive more indirectly at the “war is hell” inevitability.

Magnum’s Thomas Dworzak, also a German, uses the popular sitcom M*A*S*H as a narrative device to highlight similarities between the current quagmire of Iraq and America’s mid-century misadventures in Korea and Vietnam. M*A*S*H: I*R*A*Q (Trolley, $35) juxtaposes subtitled screenshots from the ’70s CBS sitcom with images shot in Iraq between 2003 and 2006. The narrative trope could seem gimmicky in less-skilled hands, but under Dworzak’s deft touch, the M*A*S*H frame grabs become insightful captions for his photos.

Finally there’s Ashley Gilbertson’s Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: A Photographer’s Chronicle of the Iraq War, released this fall by the University of Chicago Press ($35). Gilbertson is perhaps best known for his work during the pivotal fighting in Fallujah in November 2004. His photo of a marine gleefully sliding down the marble handrail in Saddam’s Tikrit palace made it into several of the early books on Iraq.

In Whiskey Tango Foxtrot we see that Gilbertson has much more to say — visually and verbally. Along with his images, the book includes harrowing first-person accounts and lengthy personal reflection on the unintended consequences of war. Refreshingly, Gilbertson doesn’t shy away from his own culpability; in fact he explores it, and the book is all the better for this honesty.

With any luck, the more personal, artistic, unvarnished approach to Iraq represented in these books will push more conflict coverage in that direction. And if we’re really lucky, maybe publishers will realize that the earlier they print this kind of work, the more likely it is to influence public opinion rather than just reiterating it.

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Byer won the Feature Photography Pulitzer for “A Mother’s Journey,” which the Pulitzer board called an “intimate portrayal of a single mother and her young son as he loses his battle with cancer.”

Balilty took the prize for Breaking News Photography for his “powerful photograph of a lone Jewish woman defying Israeli forces as they remove illegal settlers in the West Bank.”

Balilty’s win is a break from recent tradition; the past five Breaking News Photography Pulitzers have been awarded to institutions or groups for a body of work rather than a single image by a single photographer. The last time a single image won the award was in 2001, when the AP’s Alan Diaz took the prize for his shot of armed U.S. federal agents seizing the Cuban boy Elián Gonzalez from his relatives’ Miami home.

Loomis, together with Kenneth R. Weiss and Usha Lee McFarling, shared in the Pulitzer for Explanatory Reporting for the five-part series “Altered Oceans,” described as a “richly portrayed reports on the world’s distressed oceans, telling the story in print and online, and stirring reaction among readers and officials.”

This is the 91st year since the Pulitzer Prizes were first awarded, and just the second year the competition has accepted online entries in all the categories.

In addition to the winners, nominated finalists in the Feature Photography category include Washington Times photographer Mary F. Calvert “for her haunting depiction of sub-Sahara African women afflicted with fistula after childbirth,” and The Palm Beach Post’s Gary Coronado “for his vivid images of Central Americans who, desperate to enter America illegally, risk their lives leaping on Mexican freight trains rumbling northward.”

Nominated finalists in the Breaking News category include The Associated Press Staff “for its breathtaking images of brutal warfare between Israel and Hezbollah,” and The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Michael Bryant “for his poignant photographs of the devastating injury to Barbaro, the famed racehorse.”

The full list of winners can be found at www.pulitzer.org.

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The awards were presented Thursday evening at a ceremony held at the HBO Theatre in New York City.

Similar in many respects, both Pellegrin and Kuwayama shoot moody, black-and-white images that explore the people, land, and culture of Islam. Pellegrin, a member of the Magnum agency, showed a massive body of work beginning with a pre-Sept. 11 essay on Muslim immigrants in Marseille and stretching through assignments in Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Darfur, Iraq and Afghanistan, Israel and Palestine. Some of his most emotionally searing work depicted Lebanese civilians killed in this past summer’s fighting with Israel.

In his proposal, Pellegrin writes: “Islam remains the fastest growing of any major religion and is engaged not only in a debate with the West, but in one with itself. This dialogue is sometimes as fluid as it is volatile and is one that houses numerous opinions and infinite solutions under an increasingly large and complex set of circumstances.”

Kuwayama’s project differs slightly in that it shows more a sense of place and is concerned primarily with the Hindu Kush, a region he has been photographing for the past five years, traveling across Afghanistan and into Tajikistan, Pakistan and Kashmir. The work is conceived as “a family portrait of a people who are caught in recurring disaster and war,” and aims “to reveal the fallout of disintegrating colonial territories.”

This years winning proposals were selected from 149 entries representing 33 countries. Finalists include Christophe Agou, Christopher Anderson, Marcus Bleasdale, Heidi Bradner, Alvaro Leiva, Jon Lowenstein, Alex Majoli, Zeng Nia, Anderson Schneider and Stacia Sprague-Brande.

Sue Brisk, Editorial Director of Magnum Photos, headed a jury consisting of Anthony Bannon, eirector of the George Eastman House and Chab Touré, professor of aesthetics, Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers, University of Bamako, Mali, and director of photographic galleries in West Africa.

An additional grant, the $5,000 Howard Chapnick Grant, went to Daylight founder Michael Itkoff to help with future publications of the documentary photography magazine.

Following tradition, each year the Smith Fund invites past grant-winners to present their latest work. This year Donna Ferrato, winner of the 1985 W. Eugene Smith Grant, showed a rough cut of a documentary on victims of domestic violence, an issue that the photographer has pursued for over two decades.

This is the last year that Nikon will be the main sponsor of the Smith Fund, ending a relationship of more than 20 years. Smith Fund President Helen Marcus thanked Nikon for its longtime support and said that the board of trustees is confident it will be able to find additional resources.

For a list of past Smith Fund winners and information on how to apply for the 2007 grants, visit www.smithfund.org.

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Staffers in the photo department of Watch!, a CBS promotional magazine distributed through American Airlines, digitally airbrushed Couric to make her appear thinner, shaving inches off her waist, arms and legs.

The former “Today” show host was unaware of the digitally reworked photo until its publication.

CBS News President Sean McManus told the Associated Press that he was “obviously surprised and disappointed when I heard about it” earlier this week.

Gil Schwartz, executive vice president of communications for CBS Corp., admitted to the AP that someone in the CBS photo department “got a little zealous,” but added that no one would lose their job over the incident.

“I talked to my photo department, we had a discussion about it,” Schwartz said. “I think photo understands this is not something we’d do in the future.”

The practice of digitally altering photos is widespread in the magazine business, but several high profile cases have caused embarrassment for editorial staffs in recent years and fed the public’s growing distrust of the media. The editor of Newsweek apologized in 2005 for a cover illustration that used Martha Stewart’s head on a model’s body, a move he called “just dumb and badly executed.” Back in 2003, the editor of British GQ admitted that a cover photo of actress Kate Winslet had been digitally altered to make her appear thinner. “Practically every photo you see in a magazine will have been digitally altered in this way,” editor Dylan Jones asserted at the time.

The latest CBS photo faux pas does not seem to rise to the level of last month’s controversy over a Reuters stringer who digitally altered at least two photos from the war in Lebanon. The news of the manipulation touched off a storm of controversy and resulted in the photographer’s dismissal and the removal of all of his images from the company’s archives.

So far the strategy at CBS seems to be to laugh it off.

“I’ve asked that 3 inches in height be added to my official CBS photo,” McManus quipped to the New York Daily News, which broke the story.

“I liked the first picture better because there’s more of me to love,” the 49-year-old Couric told the paper.

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When its ad inventory is not sold, a series of images rotates through the site with artist bios and links to their personal Web pages.

“Gawker Artists,” as it’s called, currently features the work of a dozen creatives, ranging from professional photographers to graphic artists to toy designers. Artists are encouraged to submit their work, which is being curated by ANIMAL magazine.

Adam Stennett‘s ominous painting of a mouse treading water is currently in heavy rotation on the sites. But several photographers are featured in the ad network as well, including Trey Ratcliff, whose photos explore the emerging art form of HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography, Eliot Shepard (previously mentioned here), who shoots quirky portraits of strangers, Mikael Vojinovic, who explores fashion with an erotic eye and a European aesthetic and Symon Chow, who shoots retro-inspired commercial work.

Artists can submit work to artists@gawker.com for consideration.

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The move comes just three years after Schneider was stripped of three North Carolina Press Photographers Association awards, reprimanded by the paper and suspended for three days without pay for essentially doing the same thing.
In a phone interview Friday afternoon, Observer editor Rick Thames explained that Schneider violated the paper’s policy against altering color in photos, a policy put in place specifically in response to Schneider’s earlier infractions.
“We have an established policy on this issue and it really comes down to the fact that journalism cannot be about original art forms, unless it’s labeled as such,” Thames said. “Journalism is about capturing art in real life. Sometimes our tools fail us. Sometimes your camera fails to accommodate the circumstances you see, or your notes aren’t legible or your tape recorder fails. When that happens we don’t have the option of trying to recreate what happened. As a journalist you go back out the door and try to recapture that again, and most journalists understand that.”

Thames first broke the news in Friday’s paper.

The photo that cost Schneider his job depicts a firefighter on a ladder, “silhouetted by the light of the early morning sun.” Ironically, another Schneider photo of firefighters was among the pictures called into question in 2003 for what is commonly known as “toning,” the act of darkening background elements so that foreground elements “pop” off the page.

“In the original photo, the sky in the photo was brownish-gray,” Thames wrote for Friday’s paper. “Enhanced with photo-editing software, the sky became a deep red and the sun took on a more distinct halo.
“The Observer’s photo policy states: ‘No colors will be altered from the original scene photographed.'”

According to Thames’ editor’s note, “Schneider said he did not intend to mislead readers, only to restore the actual color of the sky. He said the color was lost when he underexposed the photo to offset the glare of the sun.”

Schneider’s firing is likely to touch off another debate in newspaper circles about how much digital editing — the equivalent of dodging and burning in traditional darkroom printing — is acceptable for photojournalistic images.

—
Discuss this article in our forums.
From 2003
“I know I probably went too far on some of my burns” (Poynter.org)
Schneider’s Actions Defended (zonezero.com)

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It is the first time The New York Times has contracted with an outside company to handle picture resale, and it comes two years after the Times instituted new contracts giving it joint copyright on photos taken by freelancers.

Redux, a three-year-old agency based in New York, has its own photographers and syndicates photos from several international partners, including Laif in Germany and Contrasto in Italy. This is the agency’s first newspaper partner.

The deal was confirmed Thursday by Redux founder and principal Marcel Saba.

“We have signed a licensing agreement to syndicate the content of The New York Times domestically,” he said. “They’ve never done this with anybody before.”

When asked why the Times chose the boutique Redux over bigger competitors like Getty Images, Saba said his company offers the expertise and knowledge to market images to magazine and book publishers.

“You’d have to ask them why they chose us but I think they were looking for a high-end agency that could deal with integrity and put their images in the right places and get them some extra sales,” Saba said.

Representatives of The New York Times could not be reached in time for comment.

The resale market for newspaper photography is not huge, but occasional exclusives can net sales in the five-figure range. The Times has quietly been handling photo requests in-house through its nytimesagency.com website.

Saba said that would continue for a couple of weeks during a period of transition, but he said that all phone calls and e-mails requesting photos would eventually be re-routed to the Redux office.

The Times has several award-winning photographers on staff, and swept the Pulitzer Prizes for photography in 2002 for its coverage of the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the war in Afghanistan.

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The award-winning PBS documentary series American Masters this week turns its lens on perhaps the most photographed woman of all time, Marilyn Monroe.

In “Marilyn Monroe: Still Life,” which airs Wednesday, July 19 at 9:00 EST (check local listings), photography plays a major role in telling the story of one of America’s first superstars.

Through interviews with photographers such as Eve Arnold, Arnold Newman, Elliott Erwitt, George Zimbel and Phil Stern, and especially through the photos themselves, “Still Life” explores the ups and downs of Monroe’s tragic life, from the first nudes in 1949 to the classic air grate photo from The Seven Year Itch through the final shots taken just before her death by George Barris in 1962.

“The vast archive of Marilyn Monroe photographs cemented her in the public conscience like no one before or since,” Susan Lacy, creator and executive producer of American Masters, said in a release. “We are telling her story through the iconography of the 20th century. Her relationship with the lens was, perhaps, her greatest and most successful love affair.”

As Some Like It Hot director Billy Wilder put it best: “The first day a photographer took a picture of her, she was a genius.”

* View Photo Gallery

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Fox hopes to control the coverage of its news conferences by excluding press photographers and distributing handout photos by photographers it has hired, a move AP says interferes with its ability to fully report the event and sets a bad precedent.

“Fox wants to make sure the images from their publicity event are flattering to the network by controlling the content and distribution of the pictures,” David Ake, the AP’s deputy director of photography, explained in an AP news story detailing the controversy. “The problem for the AP is that, just as we wouldn’t let Fox write our stories, we can’t have them shooting our pictures.”

The Television Critics Association press tour takes place twice a year in Los Angeles, and offers television networks a chance to promote upcoming shows in front of the working press.

According to the AP’s story, Ake has been in discussions with Fox to resolve the dispute, but so far has made no progress.

Speaking to the Hollywood trade magazine Variety, Fox spokesman Joe Earley labeled it unfortunate that the news cooperative has “reacted in such an aggressive and detrimental manner.”

The dispute is just the latest in a string of attempts by corporations and institutions to control the images news agencies distribute. In January, NBC asked news services to pay a $1,200 fee for handout photographs taken by the network inside the ballroom during the Golden Globe Awards. AP, Agence-France Press, Getty Images, and Reuters refused on the grounds that the handout policy was too restrictive. The NBC handout policy, for example, meant that the photos cannot be sold, resold or stored in archives.

The White House News Photographers Association (WHNPA) has been a vocal critic of handout photos, in particular those distributed by the White House.

On its website, the WHNPA explains its policy regarding handout photos: “The WHNPA believes that dealing with handout photos at the time handout restrictions are imposed is the best way to stop the trend of preventing independent press coverage of an event. In doing so, we can prevent organizers or governments from imposing additional restrictions down the line. Ensuring our ability of the independent press to cover events of public interest should be our main priority.”

Jay DeFoore can be reached at editor@popphoto.com.

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