Cristina de Middel used to work for a Spanish newspaper as a photojournalist until early 2011, when she had had enough. “I was disappointed with photojournalism. I’m very passionate about everything I do and when I don’t get the feedback that I expect, I’m disappointed,” she says. “I really believed, when I started being a photojournalist, that I would help change the world by taking these images. Then when I started working for a newspaper, I realised that truth is built by advertisers, political parties and corporations – at least that’s the case in Spain.
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That’s the case in the United States too.
This is the case everywhere. I worked on a UK national daily red top, I had to picture research some images for a water charity in Africa that the paper was supporting and the images were rejected because there were too many flies around the kids mouths. I was disgusted with what I was told so I left.
I guess I naively want(ed) to believe that this was primarily the case in the US, but that perhaps in other places around the globe photojournalism still had some integrity and wasn’t totally in bed with “the big three” (advertisers, political interests, and corporations). Alas, it seems it’s a sad state of affairs everywhere…
Its because everyone wants the style but not necessarily the content.
Hi Cristina. I am in the same position as you but I choose to stay in the medium fighting for our rights to tell something. This is not easy, is very painful. Nobody give you a shit except for the things asked by the marketing or politic agenda. I am losing my personal battle. But I don’t know how to fight out the system. I really want to get out the hell from here, in my case a newspaper from Argentine. But the main thing is that we are not alone. I feel very deep your words cause they are mine too. Here are one of my articles about this and other things
http://hernanzenteno.wordpress.com/2012/03/11/altered-states-photojournalism-integrity-and-the-modern-world/
All the best
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