SajtóFotó 2010 - Hungarian Press Photo Awards 2010

Sajtófotó, the annual Hungarian Press Photo Awards have always been criticized for being open to all but always won by the same insiders. It was welcomed news to hear that foreign photographers (Jan Sibik, Sam Steward, Filip Horvath from AP and Thomas Szlukovenyi from Reuters were invited this year so that the competition doesn't turn into the usual game called "I give an award to your protegé, you'll give one to mine". It was also hoped that the final selection will be more in line with the newest trends in photojournalism, especially with Sibik on the board.
The winners will be announced later today but here are a few thoughts about the third round (that's the pool from which the finalists were picked) in the portrait category, one in which I was very interested. The jury's discussions could be followed online.
I was amazed to see these to nearly similar images appear. When I saw this first I said wooow that's a good one. According to the caption, it shows a boy in front of his ruined home after his village was flooded in May. But like always, if something seems to be too good to be true then it usually is. Because here's the same boy again:

The jury quickly checked if the two shots were submitted by the same photographer (they weren't) and picked the second image. As I see it, it would have been more appropriate to reject both because one cannot shake off the feeling of the whole scene being staged and the boy coached. At least we spectators couldn't.

Then, there was the question of how much creativity is allowed in a portrait. This is a portrait of Béla Albertini, a renown photographer and university professor of photo aesthetics, photo journalism and photographic composition. As I see it, the photograph tries to convey the complexity of his character. It also makes reference to the art of photographic composition and maybe to analogue photography as well, since Albertini was a successful sociographic photographer himself in the old days. The jury didn't really know what to do with this until the Hungarian moderator asked the guest jurors (especially Stewart who is a photo editor at NPPA) if they would chose it for publication, to which they replied with a clear "no" on the grounds that it isn't a photo-journalistic portrait and was obviously post-edited. A good argument. However, in the years before we saw many heavily edited (but excellent) photographs among the winners of the portrait category, like this:

(Péter András Németh: Blind aikido master)

...or this:

(Árpád Kurucz: Thrillusionist, "Életbűvész")
So what's the way to take? I'm not saying that this picture should have been the winner but have some doubts about the jury's argumentation - are press photographers not allowed to think out of the box when it comes to conveying a subject's character and profession? After all, the guest jurors were involved to add a more forward-looking spirit in terms of photographic creativity to this competition.
Same here: the portrait of an actress. What do actresses do? They play different characters. To me, this photograph shows just that.

One of the jurors added with a laugh, "I like the woman but not the picture". Hell of an argument...

Stop press: here are the winners of the portrait category."Can't be wiped off", by Viktor Veres
There were many technically better ones than Veres' winning photograph but it's definitely an image in which expressivity, emotions and impact overrule any technical issues. One of course need to know the context: it was taken after the red mud catastrophy in October when a spill of toxic waste devastated two villages, killing several people and turning the countryside into a minor version of Chernobyl. Too bad that for anyone who doesn't know the context this could be a woman who just had tomatoes thrown at her face. Anyway, for us in Hungary this image has the potential to become a photographic icon. Well deserved.
Just as a footnote: this image had no title and no caption whatsoever in the competition, they where added at a later stage - when it was, on paper at least, not allowed. It's also interesting that it barely made it into the third round, scoring only 3 of 7 possible points (even my own photograph which was later rejected got 5 at that stage). But as said: well deserved, imo.

Hope, by Akos Stiller
This in an image that simply had to win: the Dalai Lama giving an interview to journalists in the House of Parliament. Big news for Hungary, but the news for the rest of the world is that even His Holiness has hair in his nose. At least photo critics will have a good reference when they argue that photographing faces from below and leaving reflections in eyeglasses are not necessarily flaws in a photograph. (Or maybe not?)

Fate, by M. Istvan Kerekes
"Two years old Klári lives in Transsylvania, sharing a mud house with three sisters and her parents. They almost lost everything in the floods two years ago." At least that's in short what the caption says. Very heart-wrenching and all and maybe I'm stupid but I'd expect from a finalist of a press photography competition to tell the story with the image, not only the caption. (By the way, Stiller and Kerekes have been among the finalists in 2008 and 2009 too. It's a small country, you know... and it's of course merely a coincidence that the overall winner ("grand prize for best achievement"):...

...works for the same online news portal like the jury member who stepped in at the last moment to replace a Slovakian juror who fell sick. Did I tell Hungary is a small country? Or maybe I'm being just... too Hungarian, genetically prone to see cronyism around every corner. In any case, this year didn't bing big surprizes: we have seen the same names win before, and before, and before that too.)

I can't understand why the competition is still not divided into professional and amateur categories: the few dozen "big shots" could still pat each other on the back in the pro category and let us lesser mortals compete outside their hallowed circles.

The bottomline is: if I was an aspiring young press photographer looking at the finalists for inspiration and new ways of photojournalism to explore, at least in the portrait category, I'd have a very hard time finding it. But the most painful thing about this awards is that if you a pro and win yet another time, it doesn't really matter; if you're an amateur and win, it doesn't help you either. The whole thing just doesn't look as good on a photographer's CV as it should, and probably not because Hungarian photographers lack talent or skills. Pity.

Link to the result page: http://www.sajto-foto.hu/2010/dijazottak

Opening old perspectives

Soon we will all photograph in 3D and merge videos with still shots and images will be no longer saved to memory cards but directly transferred to Facebook from the camera. Or so they say. then, returning to the very basics of visual arts can be quite inspirational in our quest for better photographs.

The world is satiated with good portraits and photographers are always on the look-out for new PS filters and add-ons and post-editing methods that would make a difference between their images and the rest. But let's forget editing for once and go back to basics.
Let's take the good old perspective as a creative tool. We tend to overlook it in our photographs as something basic and self-explaining. But deepening the perspective can increase the value of an already good photograph tremendously, and one doesn't even need CS5 for it.

What made this come to my mind is a photo by Zoran Toldi.

A dilapidated door as background, bare feet on the threadbare cobblestones. All details match the portrait of a street urchin, and although the photographer shows just a small part of it it isn't too difficult to imagine the wider environment. A good shot just as it is.

Truth is, I have altered the above image slightly. Here's the original:

As I see it, the photo would be good enough without that open window. However, by that little detail the photograph looks more airy and three-dimensional, since the perspective doesn't end at the door and let's the eye wander beyond it. If I compare the two I feel as if my eyes would bounce back from the close background in the first version. It looks so much better with the background opened up - the simple effect of using a deeper perspective.

To make the best use of this detail, a strong crop comes to mind. Looking at it from closer, the arches in the background start communicating with the curves on the door and on the subject's clothes:

Thinking it through, the final result could be a close-up portrait with a strong emotional content and many little geometric details delicately connected to each other: the arches with the curves on the cap, the carving on the door with the fingers, the circles in the iron grate with the round number (5) on the sweater, the brightness of the far background to the bright collar. But what really makes the music here is the deep perspective. One only needs a good eye to see this altogether, even subconsciously, and press the shutter.

Trespass, rape and kidnap at f=2,8

The first hills appeared on the horizon as we aproached Kalka, the gateway of the Himalayas.

Kalka is a typically chaotic and dirty town, renown for being the starting point of the toy train to Simla. Having our own roads, we were just passing through...

...until I saw something interesting in a roadside shop. A small girl was tending to her grandfather and I immediately felt drawn into this scene of intimate tenderness amidst all the filth, noise and chaos.

Skirting a cow I approached the shop and leant over a table loaded with underwear and socks for sale, all dirty from street filth and exhaust fumes, wishing my 24-70 were just a little longer.

While I was vacillating whether just peeking inside into their intimacy and keep them undisturbed or say "hello" for politeness' sake, the girl realized I was there and turned around. Oups - she was not a little girl as I thought but a midget.

It was her truly innocent charm that cast a spell on me, though, topped with the happy contentment on the old tailor's face. To me, that was pure love although I could only guess what their relation was. Photography-wise it was a tricky situation. I wanted to frame them with their environment, to include the old Singer and the word "TAILOR" to the right, but that would have made them less dominate the picture. Focusing closer, the corner of the tablet protruded into the frame. A flaw I had to live with I guess... any arrangement or instruction would have caused the tender moment to disappear.

The good news was that the neighboring shopkeepers seemed to genuinely respect and take care of them. One of them, a Sikh, literally ordered me to show them the pics on the LCD and when I told him "I'll give them a much better gift" he asked, "what? MONEY???" with an expression on his face that promised nothing good. However, it was my Fuji Instax I reached for and the polaroid did its magic once again, making them perfectly happy. In return I got a kiss as a good-bye present.

On we drew towards Manali, or better to Kasauli where we hoped to arrive before nightfall. We stopped occasionally for tee & cigarettes at a dhaba, a roadside shack selling basic food and chai, which was good opportunity to get more acquainted to my new 24-70/2,8L. I received this magnificent lens only a few daysbefore departure and soon realized how much better it was than the 24-105/4L I used last year. My piece of last year was obviously flawed since I could never get it to focus accurately but the new lens performed extremely well. I missed image stabilization though because my hands aren't as steady as they used to be and it's very easy to get a photo blurred at 2,8, especially with such a heavy lens. Popping up ISO to 400-800 and faster shutter speed helped to eliminate this risk, and shooting RAWs made it possible to reduce the noise to a decent level afterwards. Another trick was to raise my left arm to my chest and lay the camera on it instead of holding it by my hands.

On the road, I tried to do more of my favorite juxtaposition: wide-angle shots of people with their mountainous land in the background.

But it was shortly before Manali where I found treasure. Another small dhaba, run by two girls. The dirty, smoke-stained wall was a perfect background for portraits in itself, and the younger girl with her big eyes, resembling dark diamonds, was just the perfect model for a close-up portrait.
My little model liked to pose but her older sister disapproved and despite trying to display my best maners, the situation got tense. We quickly finished our chai and left. Two lonely girls alone in a roadside dhaba - can't entirely blame them for being a little paranoid. I asked Soni why she was scared. He said, locals think I will sell their pictures for lots of money (I wish that was true!) or worse, show the pictures to bad people who then will come and kidnap the girls. What could I say? At this point I was already believing what Susan Sontag said about photography being a form of rape and violence, and kept pondering over this until we arrived in a foggy, rainy Manali.

Cutting through indifference

First an update of the site building project: things are going well, if we wanted to xxx.co could be launched in two months, However, there's no need to hurry and right now me and Mr X are gathering more ideas and trying to find the balance between a fully screened site and an on-line gallery that gives members more freedom to present their works. One thing I never liked about 1x was that one couldn't show what he wanted, instead 1x showed what they found most popular. A huge difference.

Anyway, right now I want to record some thoughts I wanted to clear for a long time. It's about documentary and portrait photography. More accurately, two things: how to photograph people in misery without exploiting them and becoming demagogue, and how to make such a photo work.

As a starter, here's one I took of charming little Sapuna in Nakho, Northern India.

It's a decent photo IMO but something is missing. She looks stern beyond her years and her chaffed skin also tells a tale about life in a Himalayan village so remote even God needs a geo-tag to find it. But no self-respecting photographer (and on my better days I claim to be one) wants to produce pictures which gain impact only from the misery of their subjects. Nobody wants to get those "OMG, what a poor-poor child" reactions. No need for condescending and a fake feeling of superiority.

The other issue is that viewers are smart. More often than not they refuse being manipulated by a photograph appealing to their social conscience and compassion. Too many images of this kind; maybe we are not cynics after all just saturated.
Compassion is the keyword - getting connected with the subject. How to achieve this? What technique or detail could get past sobriety, the very understandable self-defence of "oh no, I'm bored of photos of poor and sick people" and so on?

Looking at a photo by my friend Zoltan Huszti, whose cheerful character doesn't prevent him from an occasional dive into the deepest bowels of Bulgarian society, I got a step closer to the solution. Let's have a look at this:

We see the village fool, a retarded woman and if we look closely we can even see the lice crawling on her arms. The reaction could be: "uhm yes, life is difficult, poor woman and all." A photograph that aims very directly at our tear sacs and we don't like such direct messages.

I edited this and cloned out a little detail. Here's the original:

For me, it's that rose that makes the big difference. A little embroidery to to make her rags just a little fancy. The aim to display something beautiful like we all do. Some got Zegna ties or Prada shoes - she got that rose. In my eyes this is the detail that connects me with her: call it vanity but for me this is the eternal human longing for being beautiful. And when there is such a detail that connects, any condescending attitude gives way to compassion.

Too bad there's not always such a detail, but honest people photography has never been easy.

It reminded me to a photograph I took a decade ago.

Look at that funny duck with the sombrero. Maybe now I better understand why I framed it this way; now I would include more of that duck. Anyway, that was in 1999 and hope to see her again soon. Just like Sapuna and my favorite "model", Priyanka. I'm a cold-hearted bastard but somehow she got through to my soul.


This time next week I'll be in India again, trying to use all the good things I've learned from the pictures of Zoltan, Andre and many, many other friends.