News of the century
POSTED IN Day to day 7.10.2008
I think I saw pre-washed, exotic and mixed salad in plastic bags for the first time in Icelandic grocery shops 5 years ago. Fresh tuna at low-class restaurants 4 years ago, and today we have the prime minister interupting normal radio programs, to explain something about the Icelandic currency.
School has started, and me and Helga have not been shooting alot since the end of august. I’m doing my second semester in Modern Studies at the Uni of Akureyri. Helga is running her music school, teachin all possible instruments to all possible kids.
I’m fed up with the media. When I think about working at newspapers, simply gives me the creeps. The overload of shallow questions, the cheap way of making the article for no reason at all. Takin dumb photographs of skin-coloured socks, jewelery, statues, cd covers, purses, people who have no other purpose to go published than to sell something. And all this done under pressure. The art of making crap!
Pardon my language, but I truly think that the Icelandic media should do better, try and be remotly interesting, even to make stories that raises interest in human issues.
I’m working on an assignment these days for a “nordic masterclass in photojournalism”, which I am a participant in. I spent 3 days in September in Fredrikstad, Norway, with 15 nordic photographers, and three great instructors. Sören Pagter, a photographer and the head of the photographic department of the journalism school in Århus. Fred Ritchin, one of the top brains in Photography available, he was the picture editor for Sunday Times Magazine. And the third one is Kent Klich, amazing documentary photographer that has done work all around the world.
I’m working on my assignment these days (in fact I have to get my lazy ass going), and I will go back to Fredrikstad in November. The plan then is to edit picture for couple of days, and at the end we will have this book published. The other 15 photographers are quite a pack, very creative, and all of them have gotten amazing images done in the past years.
[...] Digital photography by volundur [...]
hmm. Why, in particular, do you think the Icelandic media is likely to set itself higher standards than the rest of the global gutter press ?
People have no attention span any more. We want everything, we want it now, and we don’t want to pay for it. Thank God For The Internet…
This financial crises has been a long time coming. Maybe it will make it impossible for idiots to buy and fuel huge SUVs they don’t need – like the morons driving Hummers around here in banana belt Lugano – and save the world.
Well, you never know