POYi Reaction: Picture Story

The Pictures of the Year International is hosted at the University of Missouri and the most prestigious photojournalism competition in the world. I had the honor of working in the competition and also watched several of the categories. I was astounded at the amazing photography and broad topics shown in each category. For my Picture Story class, we were asked to write a reaction to a picture story category. I chose the Issue Reporting Picture Story by a Freelance/Agency category.

There were around 380 entries in this category and were defined as: A story or essay that explores an important social, economic, or political issue; twelve photographs maximum per story according to the POYi web site. While going through the entries, the skill of the photography was evident. However, more often than not, I did not understand what the stories were about. In the first round, there are no captions or text to explain the stories, so the pictures relied heavily on visual story-telling. I could not tell whether the story was about a person, place or idea. I also rarely saw the standard formula of scene setter, portrait, mid-range, transition, environmental portrait, closer, etc.

However, a few definitely stood out. The babies from nuclear mutations in Kazakhstan touched me as well as a simple story about two elderly people taking care of each other. However, the story that I understood and really just GOT was “Love Me.” The story ended up winning the category. I would describe it as more of a photo essay on the globalization of beauty and the high standards that come with society’s standards. I don’t know whether this story moved me because I am female and face the battle of being thin and attractive or because it was just that good. But by the third picture, I understood every concept of the story- and the global impact it had. The winner photographed 17 countries in 5 continents with subjects ranging from beauty queens to Iranian women to musclemen.

I was also impressed with the judges’ ability to sift through the graphic images to find good stories. I think one of the faults with our profession is the confusion between graphic and dramatic issues and good photojournalism. Is it good because the victim is deformed? Or because the photographer portrayed them well? The dramatic stories still need to be told with skill, but a lighter story can be just as good with excellent photography. That being said, I thought the dramatic stories that were selected for awards reiterated the point. The poverty in Moldova and drug struggles in Tijuana illustrated the struggles without going overboard on graphics to make up for poor photography.

Anyway, I’ll get off my soap box. Because I worked the voting box, I found certain images to be automatic ‘outs’ for the judges. Many of these images were pictures of pictures, unfocused images and very wide-open space images. When I am shooting my 30-day project, I will remember these auto-outs and hopefully not include them in my story. Watching this judging was extremely inspiring.