Photojournalism has, to a large extent and for a variety of reasons, failed. Its successful resurrection, like those of allied media under assault by accelerating political, cultural and technological changes, will be as a much more complex meta-medium. It will no longer be enough to "point and shoot:" a better phrase might be to "immerse and author."
Photojournalism, in its new form, would be a much more profound strategy for witnessing the changing world in meaningful ways. But to return to its earlier reportorial function it must extend itself: in media one cannot return to an earlier function without either amplifying or diminishing it.

This evolved medium may not be called photojournalism. However, this is not the fundamental issue: it is considerably more important to focus on what the world will be called and who will be involved in making the call.
I have chosen to “list” the major problems and solutions as I see

Photo by Gilles Peress

them, and then to provide a case study of a meta-photojournalistic project that I was involved in producing. This essay, in the spirit of the World Wide Web to which it refers, is meant to be read as a non-linear web of divergent and overlapping problems and solutions. Each idea, in the context of the Web, could link to other ideas, various media and numerous examples, including the case history described at the end of this piece. It is in this spirit of new strategies that this essay was written, and it is in this spirit, invoking what Roland Barthes called “the active reader,” that it can be read.

NEXT