In some ways we all walk the long road of life alone. We have friends, companions, children and parents but ultimately our greatest challenges and triumphs are faced alone. Photography, especially photojournalism, is another lonely road. We rarely see the impact of our work or even met those whose lives, if any, our images have touched. I’ve thought recently that being a photojournalist in this day and age is not unlike being a monk in the middle ages: poor pay and a life devoted to making our internal faith somehow externally visible.
The lonely road ahead. Hungary 2009
I’ve often said the role of a photographer is much like that of a bridge. As artists our job is to span the river of misunderstanding so our viewers might more easily cross it. But being a bridge is tough, thankless work. In no other art form is failure so much an integral part of the process. Of course all artists fail, that is what we learn from. But for each 100 images we capture perhaps two or three meet our own expectations. Perhaps that is why it is so difficult, at least for me, to edit photos. When you are confronted with a sea of failure it is often very difficult to focus on the few successes which will ultimately be called your “work.”
But this is the road we travel along day after day as photojournalists. We fail, then fail some more and continue failing until we have an image strong enough to be a bridge, sturdy enough to cross the rivers of doubt and mistrust that flow between our viewers and our subjects. It is difficult to hew such strong stone to build this bridge but we must…
For we have no other choice…
