SALLY YOUNG AND FAY ANDERSON
SINCE NED KELLY’S dramatic capture in 1880, the technological changes in photography have been so dramatic that none of the photographers who arrived to photograph Joe Byrne’s body could have fathomed the equipment used today. But they would understand something of the industrial situation, and the precariousness of trying to make a living out of selling photographs. Technologically, photography then and photography now are a world apart, but industrially things have reverted. If the police were surrounding Kelly and his gang at the Glenrowan Inn in 2016—instead of 1880—a mixture of freelance and amateur photographers would be there taking photographs, just as they were in 1880. Many of the amateurs today would be bystanders armed with mobile phones. They would be able to take photographs of the live action, instead of just capturing the smouldering ruins of the inn and the aftermath of the siege. They could sell their pictures to a newspaper without having to be permanently employed by that newspaper.
Newspapers—and newspaper websites—would report the Kelly gang capture in 2016 by drawing in photographs from a wide range of sources, including from freelancers, amateurs and photo agencies, as well as stills from television coverage, and images of the participants plucked from social media. Given the magnitude of the story, newspaper staff photographers would still be sent there as quickly as possible, but in 2016, those staff photographers would not be the exclusive source of pictures, and there would be fewer of them to send than at any time in the past sixty years.
There was an era, in between 1880 and 2016, when successful newspapers made vast profits and employed large teams of staff photographers. Those photographers provided a unique and valued product, resulting from technical skill and artistry borne of lengthy training and experience. There were not many people who could do what they did, and press photographers generally enjoyed significant job security. As Clive Hyde says, ‘Nobody ever left the Herald and Weekly Times, unless you were carried out.’ This meant, as Jay Town notes, that there were usually ‘way more old photographers than … old journalists’. Barry Baker explains that journalists tend to be more mobile and move between papers, television and radio, but if a newspaper photographer got a job, they ‘pretty well stayed there for life’.1
It appears, though, that the days of large and expanding photographic departments at newspapers are gone. Whereas newspapers were on the rise in 1880, and faced no competition from any other mass media, newspapers today are one medium among many and face an uncertain future following years of economic decline.2 The year 2014 was a nightmare year for press photography in Australia and seemed to be a landmark moment of decline. In its third cost-cutting announcement in two years, Fairfax Media announced it would be shedding 75 per cent of its photographers. Thirty photographers were lost across Fairfax’s metropolitan papers as it moved to outsource much of its photography to picture agency Getty Images.3 This left only twelve staff photographers spread between Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra.4 To put that into perspective, in 1971, just one of Fairfax’s newspapers, the SMH, had thirty-two graded photographers and six cadets.5 Even in 1955, the SMH had fourteen photographers and four cadets.6 But after the 2014 staff losses, there were only five photographers remaining in Sydney servicing a range of Fairfax outlets.7
Fairfax had been internationally renowned for its well-resourced and award-winning photographic teams. The Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance (MEAA) labelled Fairfax’s photographic cuts ‘an assault on the quality journalism that has been the hallmark of the group for more than a century’.8 Fairfax had already shed 1900 staff in 2012. It was also revealed in 2014 that News Corporation had also, but far more quietly, shed more than a thousand jobs in 2012, as hundreds of its journalists, photographers and editors were laid off.9 It was speculated that forty-five of News Corporation’s 270 photographic staff had been cut in 2012.10 News Corporation has a long history of popular newspapers underpinned by bold use of photographs and tabloids renowned for sports photography in particular. Further cuts at News Corporation were expected in 2016.11
A sense of this industrial turmoil, and the vulnerability of photographers, permeates the interviews for this book. Several photographers have already faced redundancies, forced retirement or have moved on from newspapers to work for agencies or as freelancers. One asked, when we turned off the tape-recorder, whether we had heard anything more about job cuts at their own organisation. Several lamented the enormous loss of talent within the industry. And some spoke of waiting anxiously for the ‘tap on the shoulder’ to come. One says frankly, ‘I am extremely worried about my future as a photographer … Where do I go from here? There is nowhere for me to go and get another job … I can go out and be a freelance photographer but nowadays … there’s so many and the competition is so high that, where do I get work? [Losing my job] is actually one of my biggest fears … [and it] is eventually going to happen.’
Newspapers’ increasing reliance on agency photographs, which can be obtained at less cost, is not only reducing the number of photographers but is also, according to some photographers, affecting the quality and nature of press photography. They point out that Getty’s business is to take photographs customers will pay for, and argue that agencies are more concerned about the market price of photographs than the art of still photography. One comments that ‘Fairfax have basically left the field, photographically, in my opinion. They … [had] a photographic department whose sole role in life was to produce great pictures for the readers … [Getty are] a commercial photo agency and their role is to make money … [not to ask] “How do I get the best pictures?”’ The photographer maintains that this change in focus is evident in the photographs Getty supplies, and audiences notice.
Another photographer observes that Getty and Corbis are taking over the photo agencies, and as the former expand, they sell the photographs more cheaply. ‘Corbis and Getty really run the show [now] and then you’ve got the wire agencies … It’s just been a major shift in the way photographers work.’ At the Age, Fairfax’s arrangement with Getty means that in 2016 there were about five Getty photographers directly linked to the Age, some of whom were ex-Age photographers. They were given jobs through the picture editor of the Age, although Getty also have their own picture editor, who sits at the same desk as the Age picture editor. This contract is presumably less expensive than paying staff photographers and casuals, as ‘It’s pretty well known that Getty photographers get paid a lot less.’ The Getty photographers do all of the jobs that are ‘ready to go’, while the Age photographers do more of the hard news. The Getty photographers do not have a direct link to journalists, which one photographer identifies as a problem because ‘The relationship you have with the journalist is so vital.’ Another repercussion is that the collective and institutional memory of Australian photography will vanish because, like the staff photographers before the late 1980s, the Getty photographers are often not even by-lined.
News Corporation also uses agency pictures, and the remaining staff photographers at both organisations talk about how they check in the morning to see if their pictures, or their colleagues’, have made it into the paper rather than a lot of wire photos or Getty images, and how this has become an important measure of their success. But it is a competition that is becoming increasingly difficult. Getty have ‘taken a lot of the sporting work away’ from even the News Corporation newspapers. Photographers are keenly aware of the factors underlying the use of agencies and that newspapers are no longer, as in the mid twentieth century, ‘big and strong, and making squillions of dollars’. One former photographer describes how one of the things he used to do before he retired was prepare the budgets, and ‘every year, it was less and less’ for photography. Another says, ‘I understand why … It’s all cost-saving, efficiencies’ but questions what it all means for the future of both news and press photography. One issue resulting from the cost-cutting efficiencies of centralisation is that a lot of the buying and disseminating of pictures is now ‘done through Sydney’, so newspapers outside of those capitals are tending lose their regional distinctiveness, their ‘stamp’.
Aside from agencies, threats to staff press photography are coming from other sources as well. One photographer comments that, ‘You very rarely go on a job [now] where a journalist isn’t taking a photo … They’re being trained to take photos, do video, on [their] iPhone, quick, quick, quick … And then, maybe, [the newspaper will] replace it with one of ours. So, I’m concerned.’ This is also something of a reversion to past practices. In his book Parliament and the Press, CJ Lloyd describes how Bert Cook (1877–1968), a political journalist with the Melbourne Herald at the turn of the twentieth century and for decades later, ‘carried a small camera in his vest pocket so he could photograph Cabinet ministers at their desks’.12 Lloyd argues that ‘Journalists often took political snapshots in the days before literary and photographic work were more sharply delineated.’ Industrial battles were waged over this issue in the twentieth century to demarcate the jobs of journalists and photographers. But the lines have blurred again now that journalists routinely carry a camera in their pocket in the form of a mobile phone.
Verity Chambers notes the underestimation of photographers who are still working for newspapers—not only of their worth as photographers but as journalists. She observes that newspapers seem to be giving journalists training in taking pictures, but not offering the same opportunities to photographers who might want to write. Developing the ability to combine images with other types of content seems to be one way that photographers are upskilling in an era that demands increasingly different skills and more content from them. But this is happening unevenly. Not every photographer wants to write content. Some do but may be stymied by the lack of training. Others are already writing content to go with their images and to explain what goes on behind the lens.
Given the pressures staff photographers face today, their retired colleagues who still observe their old workplaces are sympathetic. Hyde says of photographers working now that ‘they’re just so strung out by what the paper wants out of them for absolutely bugger all reward’. He laments how little recognition current photographers receive despite their extraordinary hard work, recalling how, at the Herald, ‘if you did something really good’, a photographer might receive a short note from the editor or ‘twenty bucks bonus or whatever’.
The glaring paradox is that while newspaper staff photography is languishing, photography is thriving. According to Mary Meeker’s annual Internet Trends Report, people uploaded an average of 1.8 billion digital images every day in 2014. That was 657 billion photos per year.13 ‘Citizen photographers’ are ensuring photography flourishes but are also another source of pictures for newspapers today, and their content, taken from mobile devices, can flood in after live news events. Lukas Coch spoke for many when he said that he understands the importance of the images supplied by citizens using iPhones at news events, ‘If there’s no one else there, and someone has witnessed it’. Town says he doesn’t feel threatened by citizen journalism because ‘it’s a skill thing’, but ‘it really pisses me off when … you’ll show someone a picture and they’ll go, “Gee, you must have a good camera” and … I always say, that’s exactly the same as if I went to a dinner party and they’d cooked this beautiful meal and I turned around and said, “Gee that’s fantastic, you must have a great oven.”’ One of the recurring questions raised by photographers is whether newspaper management and news audiences recognise the skill required to produce good news photographs or whether they are already becoming used to poor-quality images.
Putting aside concerns about staff numbers, industrial practices and how images are sourced, some retired photographers believe the decline in press photography is reflected in the content of pictures used in newspapers today. Bruce Howard observes that photographs now often show people looking at the camera and smiling, something that would not have been considered a good picture in his day. He wonders whether this reflects the influence of social media, including ‘selfies’ and Instagram, where everyone is always happy, and looking at the camera.14 Photographers who learned their trade in the 1950s and 1960s were trained to set up photographs to tell a powerful story in a way that did not look staged, which was part of the artistry of press photography, something that required ingenuity and skill. The loss of this skill, they argue, has led to increasingly bland photographs. But this might also be because photographers are less likely to take risks visually today, and are more likely to stick to ‘what works’ because of time pressures and ‘fear’. One photographer says that when photographers shift from taking risks to just surviving, it’s noticeable. He argues that while that shift is ‘understandable’, it means that the ‘build-up of turning the page and seeing great image after image’ does not occur so much now.
With the decline in staff photographers, newspapers not only use more stock photos, agency images, stills from TV, and social media images, they also use photographs supplied by the subjects of news. In January 2016, for example, the Age’s website published a story about women dressing as witches to protest Immigration Minister Peter Dutton’s text message calling News Corporation journalist Samantha Maiden a ‘mad fucking witch’ (which he accidentally sent to Maiden herself). The online story was accompanied by four poor-quality photographs of women dressed in witches’ hats and black cloaks. All four photographs had been sent in by the protesters, and three were by-lined with the name of a protester who had been quoted at length in the story. This was not a major protest—the largest group pictured showed six women protesting.15 If a newspaper had to assess the value of that event in terms of whether it was newsworthy enough to send a reporter and photographer, it is unlikely to have received news coverage. But in this case, it did because the subjects supplied their own images and the newspaper accepted them and made a prominent story out of them online.
Rick Stevens offers a withering assessment of some citizen photography: ‘We’re too quick to grab anything we can straight away because competition is so fierce that it’s not about the quality, it’s about being the first to have it. And that can be dangerous … You know, the ethics, how the picture was taken.’ One photographer who is deeply concerned about the demise of staff press photographers predicts that ‘the public will notice a huge quality deficit once … they get rid of the professional photographers. Not simply just the image quality, but the content. Our photographers make a photo stand out rather than just someone pointing and shooting. Yeah, there’s quite a skill in it, and hopefully the management realise that, but who knows?’
The impact of digital is obviously identified as a key factor in what has happened to press photography. Jason South sums it up when he says that digital photography is the greatest thing that’s happened to press photography but also the worst—because fewer photographers are needed and many talented people have left the industry, and because newspapers can run a newsroom on a third of the staff they needed back in the film days. Talent, wisdom and careers have been lost. Many working photographers explain that they no longer go into the office but send their photos in from their iPads or laptops, and then go straight to the next job. One concedes it makes him more productive but also something of a ‘photo robot’. The old collegiality of the darkroom has gone. It’s now just ‘you and your car, and your laptop or iPad, using wi-fi’. Although photographers are away from the office much more, older photographers observe that they don’t have the autonomy that was possible in the pre–mobile phone years, when photographers could ‘vanish’ and had more time and freedom to pursue story ideas.
Digital also means that some photographers feel they are now spending too much time in hotel rooms editing pictures and filing for websites, when they should be out doing stories and talking to people. Lorrie Graham recalls how she ‘used to go out on a job, a couple of rolls of film, come back, either process them, proof them, print them, send ’em out with an invoice. Now … I have to come back, download them, metadata them, process … It’s a very long process. And then send ’em out … No way [does it liberate you]. It’s an absolute myth.’ Graham also challenges the view that digital is cheaper, saying that her digital ‘camera body is ten grand and that has to be updated every eighteen months … The software is incredibly expensive and that has to be upgraded every year. And we shoot raw, which means we have to process. And the process of editing raw images takes an incredible amount of time, and all of that time has to be paid [for].’
There are contradictory views about what digital means for the display of photographers’ work. John Ibbs argues that because of online, editors now look at what they’re producing as a whole and ‘their use of images is a lot better. It means the photographers’ work is displayed a lot better than it was twenty or thirty years ago.’16 Several photographers also note the use of photo galleries, and how vibrant their images appear on iPads as opposed to in printed newspapers. But others argue that just because the technology allows for photos to be displayed well, that doesn’t always happen. One photographer notes how disappointing it can be ‘to get nice pictures’ which are then ‘butchered’ and ‘cropped online’. Kate Geraghty says the multimedia platform is a vehicle that she has thoroughly embraced over the past ten years because she has ‘complete control of the story being told’. When Geraghty is producing multimedia content with a trusted journalist, they are able to edit and provide audio and visuals unencumbered.
The technological shifts in press photography are perhaps best appreciated by those who have observed the changes over two generations in the industry. Town recalls how his father, press photographer Neil, ‘was shooting glass plate’, then it went to 5 × 4", then 35mm, and then digital, and digital has developed so rapidly that ‘a camera you buy now is worth nothing in two years because it’s useless’. With every new technological development, there have been those who see disadvantages as well as advantages. Photographers who had to take a photo in only one or two shots on a Graflex despaired of how roll film led photographers to be ‘profligate’.17 Dennis Lingane remembers that if they came back with too many photographs of the same subject, it was called ‘diarrhoea’ and they were ridiculed for wasting the film and being insecure about the shoot.18 Pre–digital era photographers today express similar concerns about the sheer quantity of images that are now produced and wonder whether digital press photographers are losing their ability to capture that one great photograph. Photographers who are accustomed to digital laud its many advantages but also recognise some of the more concerning impacts it has had upon their work and their industry.
The internet has allowed photographers to share their images independently of their employers and to display their work outside of the company. It has also allowed them to experiment and deviate from conventional tropes. Some speak about how it has liberated them artistically; they can show different things, including pictures that might not have a high commercial value and so are less likely to appear in newspapers. Stephen Dupont draws attention to the contradictions of new technology and the way it has given photographers direct access ‘to the whole world if you want’. Meanwhile, though, ‘the whole world’s industry of magazines and newspapers [is] crumbling. So, there [are] less and less places to have your work published as well … There [are] more photographers than there’s ever been … I don’t know how they’re surviving and I think a lot of them aren’t.’ David Dare Parker agrees that ‘The digital revolution affords us more opportunity to take control of how we want our work to be seen,’ but ‘the trick is to find ways of financing our work and [to] pay our bills.’
Another significant change that has affected photographers’ work relates to access, but also to audience understanding of news. While images seem plentiful, especially online, their subject matter is increasingly limited as access has become more restricted. In all of the topic areas we have examined in this book, photographic access has been curtailed, controlled or completely forbidden. Photographers do not have independent access to war zones in the way they once did. There is greater reliance on embedding with the military and on using images supplied by the Australian Defence Force. Photographers do not have the access to crime scenes that they once had when they had strong informal relationships with police, and when police would even ask them to take photographs that were then used as evidence. Parliaments, politics and elections are tightly stage-managed, and access is controlled. Photographers have been prevented from taking images of asylum seekers in detention centres and at offshore processing locations. In lieu of access to the ‘star’, photoshopped images of celebrities are provided by their publicists or circulated through their social media sites and then picked up by newspapers. Photographers can no longer take photographs of children at school or on the beach with the freedom they used to. And they cannot take pictures at sporting events without being aware of which logo is on a ball or which shoes a model is wearing in case it contravenes some commercial sponsorship arrangement.
Press photography has been transformed by the economic factors affecting newspapers but also by shifts in how newspapers are received and how they are viewed by public audiences. Craig Borrow says that ‘in the old days … we had a certain respect … If you knocked on someone’s door … or spoke to someone in the street and you said you were from the newspaper, … they’d go, “Oh great.”’ Now, though, he doesn’t sense that respect: ‘by a lot of people, you’re considered scum’.
Concerns about press photography being in decline are not new; nor are they confined to Australia. Ever since Life magazine ceased weekly publication in 1972, the news industry has predicted the demise of photojournalism. Greater concern for newspaper photography emerged in the late 1990s in the United States, with funding models in free fall and the rise of alternative sources of information (and images).19 In 2013, the American Society of News Editors’ yearly census found that photographers suffered significantly more job losses than did journalists.20 More recently, a Poynter investigation in 2014 traced the lives of some of the thirty-eight photographers, the entire photographic staff of the Chicago Sun-Times, who were sacked and replaced by freelancers and journalists armed with iPhones.21
In Australia, 2014 was a watershed year, but redundancies and dismissal have always been part of the Australian newspaper landscape. In 1962, Neville Waller worked with about thirty staff photographers on the Telegraph. ‘In 1963, they had a big purge and sacked around eighteen to twenty photographers,’ Waller remembers. ‘It used to be almost a regular occurrence every three years, where they’d do a big cull. It was a last on, first off sort of thing.’ The newspaper companies would cherry pick their best and brightest, and the other young photographers summarily lost their jobs. Several of the older photographers had been dismissed several times before returning to the industry.
The interviewees reveal the frequency of redundancies before digital. In the late 1980s, every afternoon newspaper closed. Those who could not adapt to new technology were also dispensable. Susan Windmiller recalls that ‘the older photographers were often very good at what they did; they had a lot of guts. When they’re no longer seen as useful, they’re pushed out the door. Once digital came in, it was really hard for a lot of the older photographers.’22 Mike Bowers says you could ‘smell a redundancy coming because the people who were doing the numbers would come around and watch your diary for how many jobs you’d done’. In Australia, where media ownership is highly concentrated, the situation for photographers is particularly calamitous due to the lack of institutional choice. ‘I mean, all of us could walk in there at any stage and be made redundant,’ one staff photographer admits. ‘I’m just very lucky that for some reason, I’ve survived. It’s becoming harder and harder to survive.’
The loss of talent and wisdom is profoundly mourned. The photographers who have left the profession miss the creativity, adventure and possibilities of their work; they enjoy the connection with people, and the travelling circus. Those who have recently accepted voluntary redundancies express sadness—and this is the word most used. Some are simply ‘glad they are not there’. For Angela Wylie, interviewed several months before her departure from the Age, the transition is ‘exciting and bittersweet’. Some of the earlier photographers, who were sacked in the gruelling purges of the 1980s, still seemed disappointed. Others are vacillating as to whether they should take a redundancy, unsure if they want to keep working for the organisation and discouraged by the devaluation of their craft. Those who remain in the emptier newsrooms retain their passion and enthusiasm for a much-changed vocation, as well as an abiding belief in the importance of professional news photography. It is, says Andrew Meares, ‘a privilege’.
The roll call of Australian freelance photojournalists—who have either left staff positions to work independently or always worked independently—includes Dupont, Tim Page, Adam Ferguson, Jack Picone, Trent Parke, Dare Parker, Ashley Gilbertson, Narelle Autio, Andrew Quilty and Daniel Berehulak (who won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography), among many others. Their compelling work is used by press organisations when editors are prepared to invest in high-quality and powerful pictures. This expanding, dynamic group employ a business model that gives them freedom from the constraints of the newsroom, but their autonomy comes at a cost—economic uncertainty and a lack of institutional or insurance support when working in dangerous regions.
Not unexpectedly, there are contradictory views about the future of press photography. Some photographers distinguish between the photographs and how they’ve been produced. The photograph is more widely used in news reporting today than ever before. The future of the photograph seems assured. ‘Photography is a very powerful instrument. In some ways, more powerful than the moving image because it’s the photographs that are usually embedded into someone’s mind,’ Dupont observes. ‘The subtlety and the power of a single, captured photograph, which stares at you and doesn’t move, I think has the greatest power to instil memory into people. And that’s why they talk about the iconic photographs of our time … they’re what we remember.’
The way that still photographs have traditionally been obtained, though—by photographers working for newspapers—is under threat. For many photographers, the uncoupling of photographs from that production process signals the decline of press photography because so much is being lost along with that industrial shift, including the team work, training, mentoring, skill-sharing and creativity that came with job security, knowledge and experience.
‘I’m hopeful that it will survive. I fear it won’t in the form that we know it,’ Bowers says. ‘The days of having a huge department where you could get critical mass and ideas and generate unique content are over and dead. It’s gone. We held onto it here in Australia for a lot longer than we did overseas. But it’s dead and gone … It’s been a slow burn, but I think [2014] was a very bad year … for Australian newspapers.’ Penny Stephens observes that, ‘Australia is one of the few countries that still has staff photographers, so we’re kind of lucky that we still have staff jobs.’ But she understands that it’s ‘not going to go on forever’: ‘It wouldn’t surprise me if they went the same way as the papers are going overseas and just hiring freelancers when they need somebody.’ Another photographer observes that in London they ‘put out a word that they need a shot of something … and a whole stack of people turn up and whoever gets the shot that gets published gets paid … Frightening.’
One photographer predicts that ‘there’ll be a little bit of room’ for photographers at Australian newspapers. But another refers to rumours of further cuts to photographic staff at newspapers in 2016, and to the use of freelancers by new players such as Huffington Post and the Daily Mail in Australia, ominously declaring that ‘the days of staff photographers [are] pretty much over’. Peter Bull is the grandson of the Age’s first full-time photographer, Hugh Bull, and part of the Bull dynasty, which spans three generations and five family members who have worked as press photographers across eight decades. But Bull notes that none of them are on staff at newspapers anymore: the ‘dynasty is finished’, he says. And he wonders, given that ‘there’s not one newspaper in the world that has made the internet pay’, whether we are witnessing ‘the last generation of press photographers’.
An important distinction is sometimes made among photographers about how they view their work. One says he considers himself to be a photographer working at a newspaper rather than a photojournalist. Others ponder what photojournalism is in Australia, whether it is something distinct from newspaper photography, and what its future might be. Referring to an ongoing debate about whether photojournalism is dead, Dupont says, ‘I think it’s far from dead … photojournalism is alive and well, and you see it everywhere regardless of magazines and papers, you know, folding and that. You see it online; you see it in social media … In fact, you probably see it in a lot more places than you ever have … It comes and goes, but it’s there. You can never say it’s dead and I think that when you have photographers who love it—and there are a lot of photographers out there who are good and who love it—[they] may not get their pictures published as much … but they’re still doing it and … they’re still providing imagery which becomes … a piece of history. So I think it’s alive and well and I think there’s this deep dedication and passion for this kind of photography. So … I can’t imagine it ever stopping. There’ll just be more changes to come; as technology changes, photography will change.’ Graham agrees that ‘the medium is so powerful it’s not going to go away. And eventually people will realise that iPhone pictures probably aren’t going to do it. That you really do need some … pull-back, a bit of consideration and some … professional eyes on it.’
But another photographer distinguishes between the situation overseas, where ‘there is a deep respect for photojournalism’, and Australia, where ‘[t]he general public think that you’re a paparazzi’: ‘I think people like to say, … in the media industry, that they respect photojournalism, but you know, I’ve never seen a photographer based in a bureau where we have correspondents. I mean, where’s the commitment to that?’ While several photographers speak about the position of staff photographers being worse in many newspapers overseas, several also believe there is a stronger tradition of photojournalism in the United Kingdom and United States.
Graham observes, ‘There are a lot of American newspapers who actually do a lot of fantastic work, and they still have huge photographic teams doing fantastic work. They understand the worth of … that work. That it’s more than just the immediate; that it’s actually recording our history, which is incredibly important visually.’ She reflects that ‘Our newspapers here, for some reason—I have no idea why—don’t seem to have the same [conviction] … I don’t know [why] … It’s beyond me and it’s a little heartbreaking really [because] … we had a huge talent pool in this country. We actually … produce very good photographers.’ This book has been an attempt to bring some of those photographers, their stories and their work out from behind the lens, and to reflect on the past, present and future of their profession.