The waning importance of war photographers

Award-winning French photographer Patrick Chauvel, who works primarily in crisis zones, laments in an interview with Milan Rokos about the changing relationship between newspaper editors and representatives of his genre. "Newspapers today are less ambitious and no longer need great photographs. It's become much easier for them to get photos nowadays. Editorial departments receive huge numbers of images from photographers on the scene. So editors wonder whether it is financially responsible to send their own photographer to Palestine when they receive photos in other ways." Chauvel adds that increasingly, photos are manipulated. "There was the case of the Lebanese photographer who added columns of smoke to images of bombed Beirut. That was a man who was worried about his country and acted on his emotion. But only our trustworthiness will save our profession... If we start playing games like that, our profession is dead."

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