Søren Pagter: Photojournalism – why and how? (Interview in English)
Søren ist Leiter der Fotojournalismus-Ausbildung an der in Aarhus. In diesem Interview tauchen wir tief in die Welt des Fotojournalismus ein und gehen der Frage nach, welche Bedeutung er heute noch hat.
08.10.2023 51 min
Zusammenfassung & Show Notes
Søren ist Leiter der Fotojournalismus-Ausbildung an der Dänischen Schule für Medien und Journalismus (DMJX) in Aarhus.
In diesem Interview tauchen wir tief in die Welt des Fotojournalismus ein und gehen der Frage nach, welche Bedeutung er heute noch hat.
Mit Søren, einem anerkannten Experten auf seinem Gebiet, sprechen wir über die Veränderungen, die der Fotojournalismus im Laufe der Jahre durchlaufen hat, angefangen von den klassischen Printmedien bis hin zu den Herausforderungen, die sich aus gekürzten Budgets, der Dominanz der sozialen Medien und dem Einfluss der künstlichen Intelligenz ergeben.
Ein weiterer Aspekt des Gesprächs ist Sørens Buch "The Essential Image" sein. Darin beleuchtet er die entscheidende Frage: Wie und vor allem warum Fotojournalismus?
Ein Thema, das nicht nur für angehende Journalisten interessant ist, sondern für alle, die sich für die Macht der Bilder und ihre Rolle in der modernen Berichterstattung interessieren.
Dieses Interview wurde während der Medientage von Europas größtem Open-Air-Fotofestival "La Gacilly – Baden Photo" geführt.
In diesem Interview tauchen wir tief in die Welt des Fotojournalismus ein und gehen der Frage nach, welche Bedeutung er heute noch hat.
Mit Søren, einem anerkannten Experten auf seinem Gebiet, sprechen wir über die Veränderungen, die der Fotojournalismus im Laufe der Jahre durchlaufen hat, angefangen von den klassischen Printmedien bis hin zu den Herausforderungen, die sich aus gekürzten Budgets, der Dominanz der sozialen Medien und dem Einfluss der künstlichen Intelligenz ergeben.
Ein weiterer Aspekt des Gesprächs ist Sørens Buch "The Essential Image" sein. Darin beleuchtet er die entscheidende Frage: Wie und vor allem warum Fotojournalismus?
Ein Thema, das nicht nur für angehende Journalisten interessant ist, sondern für alle, die sich für die Macht der Bilder und ihre Rolle in der modernen Berichterstattung interessieren.
Dieses Interview wurde während der Medientage von Europas größtem Open-Air-Fotofestival "La Gacilly – Baden Photo" geführt.
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Transkript
I'm still mainly interested in photography that has something on its mind, something, a purpose. I'm not so fond of photography where it's only about
the image. For me it has to be about the content, it has to have something,
it has to want to change something or inform you or give you like a new vision on the world.
From the classic print media to the challenges that arise from short budgets,
the dominance of social media and the influence of artificial intelligence.
Another exciting aspect of the conversation is Søren's book, The Essential Image.
In it, he highlights the crucial question of how and, above all, why photojournalism is still relevant today.
A topic that is not only interesting for relevant journalists,
but for everyone who is interested in the power of images and their role in modern reporting.
This interview was held during the media days of Europe's largest open-air festival,
La Gassie Baden Photo.
Some interviews have already been published, which Thomas and I recorded during this event.
More will follow in the coming weeks.
If you want to learn more about the topic of visual storytelling,
you can also take a look at Abenteuer Reportagefotografie. That's the project I'm doing together with Thomas B. Jones.
Besides an interactive online component, there's also our book with pictures telling stories
how you use visual storytelling specifically in your photography and recently all content in a six and a half hour video course
of our Visual Storytelling Masterclass.
All information under www.abenteuer-reportagefotografie.de Many more interviews on the subject of photojournalism and reporting
you can of course also find on Gate7, so it's worth going deep into your podcast.
App to dive into the archive or on the website under www.gate7.de 7 spelled out, not as a number and on the website you can find the podcast,
episodes about genres like photojournalism or reportage photography.
So, and now to the conversation with Sören Pagter.
Viel Spaß!
Well, Søren, thank you very much for taking the time. I am very glad that we found a spot in this busy day to sit down.
Yeah, no worries. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me here.
Yeah, I was glad when I looked at the list of photographers, journalists present this
year here in Baden because last year we met and we didn't find the time to sit down and talk.
And so, and now we have the opportunity. You were so kind to give me a copy of your book last year, The Essential Image it's called.
You're a professor at the Danish School of Media and Journalism in Aarhus.
And yeah, well, fascinating topic that we can talk about, but before we dive into the
book and what it's about, why don't you present yourself briefly and how did you get into
photography in the first place. Yeah, but thank you for for having me here and
thank you for for making this interview and I'm really glad that we that we had
the possibility to to do this this year. But I'm a I'm an educated press
photographer from the the old days classical press photographer worked at a
newspaper local newspaper as a trainee became press photographer worked as such
for six, seven years, freelancing, working for regional newspapers in Denmark.
Really like very classical, traditional kind of photography that I did and worked on.
But ever since I started photography and also while I was working as a photographer,
I always worked on making my own stories, my own projects.
I've come from a more, maybe a more artistic background as well,
also in terms of photography, have more friends that are within the theatre,
artists, creative photography world.
So for me, photojournalism or press photography was just one line of work.
So I've always had like a broad view on photography.
And then at some point I applied for a job for teaching, because I wanted to do something else than the traditional press photography.
And I was lucky to get it.
And then I planned that I would give it like two or three years and then I would start photographing again.
And now I've been at the Danish School of Media and Journalism for 25 years.
So one year took another, a new project came up, a new idea.
New students, new exhibitions, new books.
And there was always, or there is actually still, always something new and interesting that I want to attend.
And so I'm not going back to be a regular press photographer anymore.
I see myself as a teacher, as a coach, as more than a photographer now.
Yeah. Maybe also a good choice. We're going to talk about that later on, about the state of photojournalism
and how difficult it is to make a living as a photojournalist these days.
But to be an educator and constantly being in touch with young photographers coming in
and sitting in your classes. And I imagine it'd be a very refreshing experience to be in touch
and to get into contact with the ideas that the young people bring in their vision and then
helping them to find the right tools to bring them or...
To take the right images, to tell the stories. Yeah, it is. And that's also why I stick to this job.
It's because it's... I normally say that it keeps me young.
But somehow that's also the feeling that it's... You meet young and dedicated photographers
who are engaged in their own stories, but also in the world.
And this is of course interesting when you can help them, guide them, direct them,
give them like... not only help them with their stories,
but also help them in getting the right contacts and refining their stories in better ways.
So it's a super nice job and it's also very, very inspiring.
And we are, at the school in Denmark, we are so lucky that we both have a huge amount of Danish students, of course,
but we also run two international programs.
So that also gives a good view on the world. And we have scholarships, so that means that it's not only people who can afford coming to Denmark,
but we can also give scholarships to students from Ghana, Sudan, Bangladesh, India, Egypt, Iran,
where we have a lot of students coming from these countries.
And this gives like another perspective on the world, both for myself, but especially for our Danish students.
Well, unfortunately, the golden days or years of photojournalism are over.
Budgets are being reduced more and more in media outlets.
Why are there still young people out there wanting to become a photojournalist when it's so difficult?
Yeah. First of all, I think that this idea that we have of the golden days
is also a little bit dangerous, because if we actually look at it historically,
the golden days was actually a really, really, really short period in photography,
because the golden days were basically maybe the 60s, 70s, a little bit of the 80s.
But before that, photographers were underpaid, working hard, creating their own agencies.
That's why Magnum was established, because photographers didn't get paid.
So when we talk about these golden years, we have a tendency to believe that this has been going on forever,
but actually it's 20, 30 years in the history of photography.
Apart from that, photographers have always been like somebody working independently,
on the side, as artists, with the same challenges as any other visual artist have in the world.
So we have to be careful that we are not believing that this print era was the golden age and
And that was forever.
But that said, of course, it is a challenging period to be a photojournalist
or a documentary photographer, because everybody can produce pictures, as we know,
and the media outlets are under pressure because of the commercials,
that they don't get the commercials and the money goes to Google or Facebook instead.
And this is also a problem in Denmark.
But I think that many young people have this urge to express themselves,
and I remember that also from myself, and I luckily still have that feeling
that we want to tell people about our view on the world,
we want to tell people about what we see and what we know,
And young people do that as well.
Some do it in photography, others do it in theater or in paintings or in other skills.
And I think that's something that is very healthy for a society.
It's very healthy that we have people who are not always taking the kind of the straight way
to a skilled job somewhere, but also have a desire to share their view on the world.
And that's also why I love all kinds of other arts, because I think that's what it gives me as well.
And I think that what we do at our school is that we are very open towards our students that this is how it is,
that when they apply for our school, it's because they need to have this desire,
they need to have this dedication for becoming a photographer.
And they know that not everybody will get a staff photographer job.
And some will do one or two of their own projects, and then they will make a living on something else.
Some will get a communication job, and then very few will might get a job at a media outlet.
But they know that and they still have this desire to try it out.
I sometimes, when we discuss this, I sometimes compare our education
and photography education with like being a designer or being an architect or something like that.
If you study design, you're not going to make haute couture.
Maybe you wish that you would be making haute couture.
But you might up in making t-shirts for somebody, but you still study to know what it is.
And the same with architects. Architects also wish to make like big fancy houses,
but some of them end up making like typical housing for ordinary people.
So we have to sometimes think that it's also about gaining that knowledge
And then maybe you use that knowledge in a more ordinary job as well.
But that's OK. It's not necessarily a problem. Yeah, it's great how you put that into perspective.
First, yeah, that the golden days were not, well, maybe golden for a short period
of time and then also that there's so many ways you can go with your
talent and with your knowledge as a photographer. Staying on that topic I mean there's so many ways and different channels at your disposal how you can,
communicate what you have to say I mean photography is just one of them there's
film there's you can write whatever theater other painting so many different
arts in your case why was it photography that you chose to be your medium and
Why do you think it is such a fascinating medium still to this day?
Well, we are here at Europe's biggest open-air photo festival celebrating this still image.
That's a good question. I think in the beginning I was fascinated by...
I was fascinated by the miracle of photography. The miracle that you could actually put light in through a camera
and then you could create your own image.
But that technical miracle was what I was fascinated by. Not so much what I could use it for,
but for me it was this technical miracle.
And I actually think, which is quite funny, that many of our young students,
they are still fascinated by this technical miracle, even in this digital age.
Many of them come from schools where they have worked, like with old-fashioned,
traditional, analog image-making.
And this has actually... This miracle is why they still make pictures,
even though that they make digital images.
So, I think that was one of the reasons for myself.
The other thing was that I've always been very politically engaged,
both in my school years and my young years in high school. And I think that for me, I found out that photography was one of the ways
that I could...
That I could use my political engagement and my political interest in society
to communicate my points of view.
So I'm from the time where I loved reading newspapers, I loved reading about people discovering the world
or meeting other ways of living and this curiosity that you have on other ways of living.
So I think that was what kind of those two things merged.
So the mystery and the technical thing of photography and then the political interest in society
and how it works, those two things could actually fit together.
And I think that's why I chose that path. And I think for me, it's still the...
It is still what I look for in photography. Because basically, even though that I like
a lot of different kinds of photography, I'm still mainly interested in photography
that has something on its mind, something, a purpose.
I'm not so fond of photography where it's only about the image.
For me, it has to be about the content, it has to have something,
it has to want to change something or inform you or give you like a new vision on the world.
And that's why I think documentary photography is still what I look for.
It doesn't mean that it has to be traditional repertoires, but it has to have this idea with that.
I gain something emotionally or intellectually on new subjects.
So that's what I'm looking for still.
And that comes from the very beginning of my own photography.
Yeah, and can be seen here at the exhibition at the Baden Photo Festival.
It is like it sheds light on every year on a different region in the world, different
topics and you wander through the exhibitions, look at the pictures and it's just like a
trip that you take into regions of the world that you otherwise wouldn't have discovered
and topics you wouldn't have heard of.
Yesterday we went through the exhibition here in the town and then on the garden route some
Yeah, heard the words of the photographers talking about their work.
What were maybe the one or two serious and body of works that stand out for you
this year's exhibition that we could talk about a little bit more in depth?
But I think there's a lot of really interesting exhibitions and actually I have one of my students will be coming today
and he asked me yesterday, can you send me a list of what should I see?
So I was actually making a list yesterday night for him.
But I think there's a lot of it that is really, really interesting.
And now I just have to take the list here because I'm really bad at remembering names.
Yeah. Especially after only one day at the festival. But I remember that the first one that I really looked at was the Russian photographer,
And now I can't remember her name.
She portrayed immigrants in France and Alisa, Alisa Matinova, her project is called Nowhere Near.
Normally, I find some of these portrait projects a little bit challenging because you can make some nice portraits, but you basically,
you portray somebody, but then you have to read, why are you looking at this person?
Where in the repertoires or in the documentary field, you can see it within the picture.
But I think she actually made some really strong emotional portraits.
She was using the colors and the symbols in a very clever way.
And I felt moved by looking at these immigrants and her juxtaposition of her portraits and the colorful symbolic images was really quite strong.
So that was, when we walked yesterday, that was one of the first exhibitions that I kind of really looked at
and where I thought this was interesting for me.
I also have to mention Hashim Chakri because he's my own student.
So, and the project that he's exhibiting, or half of what he's exhibiting is his final project from our school.
So, of course, I have to mention that as well. But he's a very, very talented young photographer.
And he's working in Iran as some of the others as well, which is not very easy and it's very difficult
to shed light on these...
Problems and he's not photographing like some of the women here,
photographing the conditions for women, he's photographing the conditions in the society
like drought, new housing projects and stuff like that.
And I think he has an intelligent eye, a vision that is different.
He uses this pale colors and pale photography.
That kind of, it feels as if, it feels sandy. It feels as if you're in the desert
when you look at the pictures.
And I really like that. And then he has some really nice moments
where he photographed the people in their environment,
sometimes a little bit.
Fantasy is not the right word, but sometimes some moments that feels a little bit
out of this world, but then we know that it's reality.
We know that this is how the people live and how they have to cope with the life.
So I think that that project was also, is one of the ones that I really find very interesting.
But I think there's a lot of them that are really, really nice.
I was also quite amazed by the Austrian photographer, Kopitsch, I think his name was.
Which I never heard about. And that's one of the things that I love about going to festivals,
that you see something about somebody, an Austrian photographer,
that I would never have heard about if I hadn't gone to Austria.
And his pictures from the 30s, I think it was, was really amazing and very modern.
The first time when I saw them, my wife and I arrived, and then they are just almost near the hotel.
So we saw them and we were like, are they old?
Or are they new? And somebody have made them to look like old.
And that was really intriguing, I think, that he's even almost 80, 90 years ago,
he made pictures that are actually modern.
So that was also one of the exhibitions that I was quite intrigued by.
Yeah, the examples you mentioned, what they all have in common is their unique vision
of the photographer behind the lens.
So it's, I think, one of the important points if you wanna become a successful photographer
that you have that kind of unique vision.
I mean, we can all take up a camera, take up our phone, take a picture of something,
but if there's no vision behind or no idea behind the image why you take an image of something and how you put things together.
I think there's something missing.
Well, going from there, what do you think also at the school in your teachings?
What is it that you try to communicate to your students,
what they have to learn in order to really get to develop their own vision?
Yeah, that's also a good question. And also one thing that is, I think, somehow almost impossible to somehow answer,
because it's like, how do you train creativity?
How do you train a photographic vision?
And I think that.
One of the things that we do is that, I think we do it a little bit opposite
than many other schools, because many other schools,
to my knowledge at least, they train how a picture should look like.
So that means that they train like, now you have to shoot something and it has to be in the golden section, and now you have to shoot
with a little depth of field and now you have to have to shoot with a long shutter
speed because it's sport and so so often as many photography schools have this
idea that that it's that it's a technical training that you are that you're taught like now you have to do this and this and this then you'll
become a good photographer and basically we go the other way around we did we we
we ask our students, so what is the story that you would like to tell?
What is the purpose? Why are you going to tell this story?
And then we ask them, so how can you do that?
So basically the technical training, the training about how the camera function
and what you can do with shutter speed, all this kind of just comes on the way.
But so if a student tells me that I want to photograph this.
And it has to be shot with a mobile phone because of this and this reason,
I would never say, but this you can't do because you have to have a zoom lens
and you have to be able to change and you have to be able to change the aperture and stuff like that.
But if it works for the story, then it makes sense.
And I think that's one of the things that we benefit from is that we all the time put the story, the idea,
the why you want to tell the story,
what it is that is the, what is the story really about?
Not that this is an interesting story about a fisherman, but what is it really about?
What is it that this fisherman can represent? And how can you show that into your images?
This is what we always ask the students. And when we have done that, then we talk about photography.
So I think for us, it's a matter of turning it around.
And then of course, you can't make photography without knowing about photography.
So we have a huge list of inspiration and we discuss the different...
Ways of addressing the story, but we also look at a lot of different other ways of story making.
You mentioned yourself that artists, filmmaking, stuff like that,
and we share with the students other ways of storytelling.
It could also be novels or writers. How do they create a scene?
How do they describe a person?
If you read something and the writer describes a person with words,
can you actually take those words and put them into an image
so that you get that vision in your head when you see the image?
And I think maybe, for instance, with Elisa, that this is maybe why her portraits were so interesting,
because it was almost like reading a novel where she described the person and his or her thoughts.
So I think that a lot of inspiration is quite important for photography,
so that we are not limiting ourselves to look at photography as only photography.
Yeah, yeah, to broaden your view and take in from all sorts of art
and develop your toolkit as a storyteller.
It's very, very important.
Soren, you wrote a book, The Essential Image, and in the byline it says,
photojournalism, why and how.
We've touched on the why and the how already a little bit in our conversation.
But what was it that made you write this book? And how can you look at this book?
Is it like you're...
Like, the essence of your teachings over the years, or how did that book come about?
But basically, the book is somehow the essence of how we teach and how we look at documentary photography,
which we tend to call it at our school, more than photojournalism.
But so this is basically how we teach it.
And then, I think it was in 2001 maybe, 2002 or something like that,
so it's a lot of many years ago,
when I've been teaching for some years at the school, we found out that we needed some material.
So in the beginning I got a year's leave to make a website where we could kind of... I made some interviews with photographers,
we wrote about some of the stuff that is also in the book.
So in the beginning, we created this website in Danish that could be used by our students, but also photographers in Denmark.
We made some reader surveys and stuff like that. So I did that over a period of a year where I had leave and didn't teach.
And this worked very well for many years. But websites, as websites are, they become like...
They look old-fashioned all of a sudden, and the picture examples are not so nice,
and it has to be updated, and yeah.
And that didn't really happen.
So at some point, we decided that we needed a textbook for the school,
like a real textbook, because we were using an English textbook, which was okay.
But also asking the Danish students to read an English textbook in their study was one thing.
The other thing was also that some of the examples were maybe a little bit too American
and not in the line of our philosophy of story making. So we wanted our own book.
So I simply took some of the things from the webpage and put them into a Word document and
and then I started writing and then it took too long time
because writing takes way too long time for me.
But eventually it came out and of course I was writing in Danish
and we are so lucky that we have a possibility
of a translator at the school.
So we also could publish it in English for our international students
but also for a bigger market than the Danish one,
that is quite limited.
So that's how it came about. And even now I can see that now it's...
What is it? It's five years ago now, the book came out. And I can see now that it actually needs an update.
But that's how it is. And I don't know if I get the time
or the possibility of making that update.
But my inspiration was some of the books on photography that I had read myself, that I found were.
Easy to read, not about the technique, but about the content, and about the philosophy
of photography, that was my intention.
One of my favorite books is On Being a Photographer by David Hearn.
And that was really like the one that I was like, okay, it has to have that size
and it has to have that same feeling that you can actually read it.
Even on being a photographer, I think it's, I don't know how old it is,
it's 20, 30 years or something like that. It's really old.
But you can still read it and you can still get knowledge from it.
And that's what I tried to do. That was my goal.
So I didn't have to update it all the time. You did a great job.
I enjoyed reading your book. David Hearn's book, also a huge recommendation.
It's brilliant. and yeah you brought that into your own book as well. It's a great reference and
I'm glad that you made the English translation because yeah in Danish
would have been difficult. We wouldn't have that big an audience now. Yes, well.
You mentioned that now you think it might be time for an update. What What would be the points that you'd like to update in this book?
But a lot of things. I think I have a chapter where I write about the genres of photojournalism, which I think
is still very valid, especially within the media.
But I think that right now I think I would update that chapter a little bit with talk
about the genres outside the media outlets because here I'm focusing a little bit like what are the genres if you look at journalism or photo,
journalism in the media, but for me documentary photography is...
Many other places, and you can also see it here at the festival that the genres are also merged.
So it's like, it's okay to do some staging, it's okay to do some interactive photography together with other people,
which we also do at the school, and I also write a little bit about it.
But I think that I would add more on this broader perspective on how documentary photography can be,
interpret it in different ways.
So I think that would be maybe one of the things that I would do.
I think I would also touch on AI, of course, because in these years, that's part of it.
And for me, AI is not documentary photography and it's not photography, basically.
But it's something that you have to somehow touch on in the book.
But there's always like topics that's coming up. I would also maybe also write a little bit more about the ethics.
I actually think that the last chapter that I have about ethics is one of the most important ones
and also the one that I'm really happy with.
But I think ethics is something that is all the time changing, especially in times where you can share,
and you can tag and you can do whatever with images.
You can send out your images and somebody's using them for an AI image somewhere else and stuff like that.
So there are some ethical considerations that photographers have to deal with.
We also heard that yesterday with...
With one of the Afghan-Iranian photographers that she couldn't put her pictures online
because to protect the women that she was photographing.
So that's another thing that this has, even in this short period,
this has kind of maybe not changed, but it has developed, grown, this challenge.
So there are always like new things that I would read or write about.
Maybe I would also have a full chapter only on portrait photography, like adding that too.
Because right now there's a chapter or it's very much about the repertoires
and the documentary field, but portraits are also an important part of storytelling
and in becoming an even more important part of many media outlets and their way of telling stories.
So I think that a chapter about that could also be interesting.
Lot of ideas.
Yeah, but at some point you have to put a stop to your project, publish the book,
and then of course, things change, things evolve.
And nowadays, you mentioned AI. It's, yeah, it's, we have to see where it goes, no?
And what kind of implication it's going to have on photojournalism,
how it's going to change photojournalism,
and what are your thoughts on this particular topic which has been discussed at length now over the past month?
But I think I'm actually... I've just... Before I went on holiday,
I just handed in a chapter for another book that we are doing at the school,
a chapter about the legal considerations of within photography,
or within all kinds of journalism, but I'm writing about photography.
And one of the things that I write about here in that chapter is that I use an example from Amnesty,
where they created some AI images from a demonstration in Columbia, I think it was, or Mexico,
can't remember right now.
And instead of documenting, they created AI images, and that was Amnesty doing that.
And this I use as an example of a path that we should not take,
because if we, as documentarists, start using like...
AI to create images, we are not documenting. We are basically painters, which is okay.
It's okay to be a painter, but a painter is making something from imagination
and is making something from within.
But we are working out in the field. We have to make our stories based on the reality.
And AI is maybe based on reality because you can grab all these real images,
but it's always, it will always be fiction.
And that's also why I'm in this book and constantly say that the business that we are in,
the photography that I represent is non-fiction photography and AI is not non-fiction, AI is fiction.
So as long as it's non-fiction, I don't have a problem.
And I think sometimes non-fiction can be a stage picture because it's still like based on real people,
a real place, real experiences, real things.
But AI is not. So that's one of the things that I think why AI can be interesting in maybe other fields,
but not in documentary, not in my opinion.
And then I think that what I'm also writing about in this new chapter is the statement of the photographer,
which I think is something that is becoming more and more important,
is that we might not, or maybe we haven't for many years, We are not trusting the image,
but we are trusting the photographer.
We are trusting the person who is delivering this to us or the company who is doing that
or the publisher who is doing that.
So I think that's another thing that many of these media outlets,
photographers, bookmakers, whoever it is, their statement of principles,
will actually be what is important in the future.
Because this is where you can tell people, this is how we work, this is what we do,
and then somebody else can do something else.
But if you look at us and you look at our stories, This is how they are made.
And this we have done at our school for within this past year.
We have and we're still working on them, but we have some statement of principles
that we have put on our web page and that we expect our students to work within.
Because we think that it's important that people know the label of what it is that they're looking at.
And I think that becomes more and more important.
Yeah, yeah, right. To be transparent about it, no? Yeah, definitely, yeah.
This example that you mentioned with Amnesty International, I don't know,
did they make believe that they were photos, or did they say that they were AI-generated images?
That's also why I use the example, because they posted them on their Instagram.
They have taken them down now, after all the debate.
But they posted the pictures on Instagram, and then they wrote down in the corner of the image
that the image was produced based on AI or something like that.
I can't remember the phrase.
But when you see that on your phone, on Instagram, and it is less than a millimeter, it's half a millimeter,
it's not even half a millimeter, nobody can read that text.
But they were like, yeah, but we wrote that it was not for real.
Yes, but nobody will read it.
So I think statement of principles is not only about that you write it in the corner of your picture,
it's also about that you make it visible for the viewer, understandable.
Because I would claim that half of the, or more than half of the people who saw that post
would never read that and they would never think,
that it was an AI picture.
Maybe they would think that it looked a little bit unreal or a little bit wild or weird in the colors,
but a lot of photography does that.
So I think it's also about how you present your statement, present your statement, how you talk about it, instead of just writing it
very small down in the corner.
Yeah, exactly. When it's such an important information these days, and that's the whole
thing with AI. I think, yeah, maybe as an illustration tool, it might have,
it's going to have importance and it's, yeah, right to be there. It's another.
Tool in the toolbox of storytellers if we use it as illustrations, but then it has to be made very,
very clear how the image was generated because as you mentioned photography is
something that happens like the photographer is in front of a scene
presses a shutter button and that's photography. What you do on your computer is it's not photography. No then you're creating
because then you make digital art or whatever so why should that be
photography. Nobody would call it painting, right? So, would an artist that
if you create a painting with AI, would you call that a painting?
No, you would not, because it's not painting. You have not been standing in
front of a canvas with a pencil or with anything and created your painting. So, we have to be careful just that because it looks like a photography,
it doesn't mean that it is photography.
So I think that's something that we have to be aware of. And I think that it's very important that we call it images,
which it's images, but it's not photography.
Yeah, exactly. It's really important to be precise in your wording.
Yeah, and that's, I think, coming back to my book, was also that one of the things that I also wanted to,
with this book was also to kind of...
Help people, our students, but also other photographers, to use the right words for photography.
Because I think the vocabulary for photography, especially, at least in Denmark,
sometimes can be a little bit limited. It's sometimes difficult to kind of understand
what it is that we're talking about when we talk about photography.
Because it's just like, yeah, it's a nice image, it has a good composition, yeah, but what is it?
Where does it come from?
So one of the things that I hope the book helps people to do but also that we do at the school is that
we give the students a vocabulary to speak about photography,
to tell us why is it that this works and this doesn't.
For this particular story.
Yeah, yeah, very, very important topics. And yeah, I can only recommend your book
for everyone who wants to dive a little deeper into that subject.
And well, thank you very much, sir. And it's been, yeah, great talking to you
about these topics and these important topics
about what makes photography so unique and why I think it's gonna have its place
in the future as well, the still image.
I'm certain it will have its place in the future, because we need documentary photography
in order to write history.
So basically, if everything is made artificial or in the computer or as commercial or something like that,
we forget to look at the world that is just right outside our windows.
And I think that's the most interesting part of our lives. That is the life, the real life just outside our windows.
And that's why I think that documentary photography, documentary film, documentary writing will basically never die
because we are interested in each other.
We are interested in other ways of living other people's lives and experiences.
And that's the only way we can get that.
Yeah, yeah, things are constantly evolving and just as your book, yeah, in your eyes
needs an update or yeah, there's room for an update.
I think I'm looking forward also to our conversations to have an update or maybe a second part, maybe next year.
I think there's still going to be topics to talk about and I'm looking forward to that.
You for today and see you at some other time. Thank you and thank you for having me here.
Thanks a lot and see you next time! Yours.