Social production of a visual mass media product
(the case of news photography in major wire services)
Introduction
The object of the proposed paper – the news photography– is the point of intersection of
two cultural phenomena of modern society: the mass media and the visual. Both have long been
in the center of attention of relevant sociological subfields and are also in the focus of
interdisciplinary practices such as media studies and visual studies. The following arguments are
to emphasize the social significance of news photographs in contemporary world.
The interest in mass media was perhaps most neatly formulated by N. Luhmann:
“Whatever we know about society, or indeed about the world in which we live, we know through
the mass media”.1 Since the emergence of journalism the mass media has been filling the
archives and played a significant role in the construction of collective memory. News images
have a noticed potential as historical evidence and as historical markers (Brennen, Hardt 1999).
In a word, mass media not only represent but construct modern cultures.
Furthermore, the world since the two inventions of modernity – journalism and
photography – is getting more and more visual. The assertion of proliferation of images in
everyday life is a common place among social scientists: the “pictorial turn” has been recognized
for the last 30 years (Mitchell, 1994).
Despite its manifested impact neither photojournalism as a mass media practice, nor news
photography as a produced visual artifact have not yet undergone a serious sociological microlevel analysis. In a recent (2010) article analyzing the controversial subject of war photography
M. Griffin argues that the only way to understand “the diet of images” is to view them “as the
results of a continuing practice of cultural production”2. Thus, the necessity to understand the
production process of new images is starting to be recognized.
The research on the production of news photographs focuses on the images put on the
feeds of the major international news agencies (wire services). There are several reasons for this
choice.
First, the great impact of the major news agencies’ photographs: they distribute more
photographs than any other player in the field. This production is global by definition since both
employees and clients of wire services come from all over the world. As Gursel notices, “Wire
1
2
Luhmann N. The reality of the mass media. – Moscow: Praksis, 2005, (in Russian) p. 8
Griffin M., Media images of war// Media, War & Conflict, 2010, 3(1) 7–41, p.36
services are particularly well positioned to provide coverage of phenomena experienced
worldwide”3.
Second, the news photography produced by the wire services (big international
organizations) are highly standardized and controlled, thus allow treating a paradox of
globalization “one set of rules determines the photographs all over the world” and test its limits.
Third, wire services influence the standards of other news photographs through recruiting
photographers and teaching them their styles as well as through different programs of education
they provide for developing countries. (For example, Agence France-Press claims to have trained
1200 journalists since 2007 both on writing and on photojournalism).
Forth, the very history of the evolution of the role of news agencies’ photographs reflects
the socioeconomic processes that changed the field of photojournalism. The evolving place of
wire photography presents a lens through which the struggles in the field can be seen.
The short review4 of the field presented below will demonstrate this thesis.
The empirical research and its first results
The research question is based on two assumptions taken after the exploration of the field.
First: the news photography though might be seen as a collective product of editor and
photographer leaves nevertheless a lot of concrete choices to a photographer. In the process of
making these choices the logic of aesthetics and creativity has a sufficient weight.
Second: to ensure the quality, the speed and the coherence in its all style of giving
information news agency requires the compliance with what is called “the agency format” (or
standard).
The main research question was formulated as the following:
If a news photograph is the creation of an author how does it happen that the news agencies
get it standardized?
The hypothesis to test was: that there is a link (not direct and polyvalent) between the
production of a professional product (news agency report photo) on one hand and the conditions
of production and the author on the other.
The main hypothesis was that the organization of profession of a photojournalist, in
particular news agency photographer results the product (the photograph) and the reproduction
of the knowledge about how the product should look like.
Research showed how exactly this influence was organized:
3
Gursel Z.D. The Politics of Wire Service Photography: Infrastructures of representation in a digital newsroom//
American Ethnologist, 2012, 39 (1), p.86
4
The history of photojournalism has never been written from the wire services’ point of view. This review was done
with the help of the interviews with experts, blogs and the articles of the internet site
http://www.photographer.ru/cult/practice/400.html
1)
The news agency controls the maintenance of format in the photo department
office, using different kinds of filters.
2)
Due to the poor situation on labor market for photojournalists and the news
agency’s unique possibilities to get the accreditation, the agency can impose very
strict requirements on photographers:
a) The news agency controls professional practices of the employed photographer
b) The news agency partly controls professional identity of their employees
Apart from examination and systematization of theoretical resources required for the
sociological analysis of production of visual media product and the reconstruction of
professional field, the empirical research with 17 interviews and 20 days of observation took
place.
First, the analysis of social history of wire photography and of its expansion in the occupational
field of photojournalism was completed. Then, the reconstruction of the social structure of
photojournalism in Russia is planned on June 2013. For this purpose the photographers and
editors who worked in TASS and APN and who witnessed the arrival of AFP, AP and Reuters
were practically the only sources. Chief photographers (the heads of the photo departments of
Moscow bureaus of new agencies) were the best informants since they occupy their posts since
the beginning of work of international news agencies in post-soviet territory. The interviews with
the main agents of the newsimage production process were also taken (photojournalists and
editors who work or worked in wire services). This also included the use of the methods of
visual sociology: to show informants news photographs and to ask them to comment on them.
This is the reflexive mode of visual sociology that “that implies to seek data in the expression of
the subject” (Harper, 1988). In order to avoid at least partly the post-rationalization I asked to
comment not only on published photographs but also on rejected and those made by nonprofessionals.
An ethnographic study of work of a news agency photo department (which supposes series
of observations) is planned. To understand the organizational context of production of
photographs two sessions of participant observation in the photo department of Agency France
Press Moscow were accomplished in summer 2013.
By concluding this fieldwork an understanding of the mechanisms that allows to media
institute to control and standardize the photographs that are in fact “creations of authors” was
partly gained. These results are important not only for the sociology of journalism but will also
serve as deep insight into singularity-collectiveness philosophic dilemma. The investigation in
the process of creation of a photojournalistic product will give a new light on how in a particular
sphere the Word negotiates with the Visual.