Photographers
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Why We Do It: Photographers and Photo Editors on the Passion That Drives Their Work
By Oliver LaurentPublished: June 30th, 2017 12:15 PM EDT
The people who make up today’s thriving photographic community are our eyes to the world. Whether established artists and journalists or passionate emerging voices, they inform us, they inspire us, they amaze us, they put our world in the broader context of history.
For this post, my last as editor of TIME LightBox, I asked some of my colleagues to answer these essential questions: Why do they do it? Why is photography important to them and, by extension, to all of us?
Kathy Ryan, Director of Photography, the New York Times
Photographs are the universal language of our era. Everyone has hundreds, maybe thousands in their pocket. Weightless, they turn the scale when the argument is: What happened here? Images don’t age or warp. A great photographer’s strings never go out of tune.
It is for this reason that we need photographers. They are the ones who sort all the chaos of the world into images that bring clarity to the free-for-all of life. They are the witnesses and artists who can distill the mayhem and beauty that surrounds us. They call our attention to the things we miss in our everyday lives, and they call our attention to events and people at a great distance from our own patch of the universe. When they direct our eyes and hearts with precision and honesty, we know what we know differently and better. Photographers teach us to look again, look harder. Look through their eyes.
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Sarah Leen, Director of Photography, National Geographic
I have spent my entire professional life creating, editing, critiquing, or teaching photography and working with photographers. It has been the way that I have experienced much of the world. In a deeply personal way, I feel an image is a poem about time, about “staying the moment.” Photography can defeat time. Images can keep the memory of a loved one alive, hold a moment in history for future generations, be a witness to tragedy or joy. They can also change behavior, stimulate understanding, and create a sense of urgency that will move people to action. Photography is the universal language that speaks to the heart.
Photographers are the dedicated, passionate, and sometimes half-crazy individuals who are willing to give their lives, too often quite literally, to show us what needs to be seen, what needs to be known. I can think of no greater honor nor privilege than to have lived a life surrounded by images and the amazing individuals who create them and share them with us.
MaryAnne Golon, Director of Photography, Washington Post
to a professional photography group where the audience smiled, laughed, and fell quiet in all the right places — without a word in Mandarin or English. After the last frame, we all just beamed at each other. It was so thrilling.
I believe in light. Photography is light. That light is often shined into the darkest of places by the world’s bravest and most talented photojournalists. I have been
Why is photography important? Photography speaks. When I discovered and later understood photographic visual language, I saw that this language could inform, educate, and move audiences worldwide without the need for a shared spoken language. A successful photo story, when well-authored and edited, is universally understood. I once presented a photo story in China in silence most honored to support and publish work by many of them. I intend to continue nurturing, encouraging, supporting, cajoling, helping, counseling, appreciating, celebrating, and paying for professional photojournalism for as long as I am able. I believe in its power.
Laura Morton, Photographer
I first became interested in photojournalism primarily out of an interest in history. One day, while studying the Industrial Revolution, I found myself very saddened by a photograph of a child in a factory. I remember realizing in that moment that both the child and photographer were likely no longer alive, and I became fascinated by how the photograph could make me so upset for the hard life of someone who lived so many decades before me. In a way both became almost immortal through the photograph and there was something very compelling about that.
I believe it’s incredibly important for photographers to document everyday life and even sometimes the seemingly mundane, not just for a better understanding of our times, but for individuals in the future to be able to reflect on who they are and how they got there. A photograph is particularly powerful because it is accessible to most of humanity. There is no language barrier in photography. I pick stories and pursue the projects I do with the goal of documenting not only important issues of our time, but ones that will also be relevant or perhaps even more vital for our understanding of humanity in the future.
Jeffrey Furticella, the New
A favorite childhood memory is of my father driving us to a hobby store, purchasing a few packs of trading cards and me excitedly ripping them open to see what was inside. The bulk of what I’d find were mainstream releases, but what kept me tearing apart those cellophane wrappers week after week was the hope of unearthing something unique, something beautiful, something rare.
That same rush is what propels my belief in picture editing. In a time when our global awareness is under siege by an increasingly insular perspective, the responsibility of empowering photographers whose mission is to not just capture but to investigate, to enlighten, to excite, is one of the great privileges of our time.
Sports Photo
Today there are more photographers producing more photographs and populating more platforms than have existed at any other point in our history. With that ubiquity has come an evolution in our audiences, which are more sophisticated and demanding than ever. What a thrilling time then to be tasked with looking through the mainstream releases in the hope of unearthing something unique, something beautiful, something rare.
Editor, York Times
Typography: Georgia
Logo: Created by Deysha L. Colón Inglés
References: Laurent, O. (2017, June 30). Why we do it: Photographers on the passion that drives them. Time. Retrieved October 3, 2022, from https://time.com/4839246/photographers-passion/ National Wildlife® Magazine. National Wildlife Federation. (n.d.). Retrieved October 1, 2022, from http://nwf.org/nw
