A French magazine could be shut down and a photographer sent to jail over the publication last year of photographs of Britain’s Prince William and his wife, Kate Middleton, sunbathing while on vacation in France. The magazine, called Closer, published topless images of Middleton that were allegedly shot by photographer Valerie Suau.

French authorities are investigating the publication of the photos, which may have been a violation of French law. If charged and convicted of violating the royal couple’s privacy, Suau faces up to one year in jail and a fine up to 45,000 euros (about $60,000). Closer could be shuttered for as long as five years.

Prosecutors are also investigating Suau’s employer, a French newspaper called La Provence, which published some of the sunbathing images, although none showed Middleton topless.

The royal couple had been sunbathing on private property when Suau allegedly photographed them. The publishers of Closer have said in their defense that the images were shot from a public road.

After the images appeared in France, authorities there ordered Closer not to publish any more of them. But the images appeared in other European publications.

The suppression of the images in France and ensuing investigations reflect that country’s strict privacy laws, which bar the publication of photographs of individuals without their permission–even if the photographs are shot in a public place.

The royal family has invoked the death of Prince William’s mother–Princess Diana–to stir outrage over the sunbathing photos. The photos, according to an official statement from the royal family, are “reminiscent of the worst excesses of the press and paparazzi during the life of Diana, Princess of Wales.”

Princess Diana  died in a car crash in Paris in 1997. Several paparazzi and news photographers on motorcycles were chasing the car she was riding in when it crashed. Although the driver of the car was later found to have been drunk, and manslaughter charges against the photographers were dropped after an investigation, many people still blame them for the princess’s death.

Three of the photographers were eventually found guilty of violating France’s privacy laws because they photographed Princess Diana and her companion, Dodi Al Fayed, inside the car after the accident. Those photographers were ordered to pay a symbolic fine of one euro each.

Last week at the Portland Art Museum as part of the 2013 Photolucida festivities, Alec Soth gave a lecture titled “From Here to There: Searching for Narrative in Photography.” The talk could have been titled “Searching for Narrative in Photography Lectures,” because Soth mostly allowed the audience to lead the way with questions, which he responded to with the aid of a number of prepared slideshows. The evening was free-form, entertaining and a bit wandering, which made sense given that Soth emphasized that wandering and taking pictures without a set goal in mind has produced some of his most important bodies of work. But more on that later.

Soth started on a down note, sharing a quote from Robert Frank—“There are too many images, too many cameras now. We’re all being watched. It gets sillier and sillier. As if all action is meaningful. Nothing is really all that special. It’s just life. If all moments are recorded, then nothing is beautiful and maybe photography isn’t an art any more. Maybe it never was.” He also showed a photograph of an installation by Erik Kessels: a pile of prints made from all of the images uploaded to Flickr in a 24-hour period.

Soth described the perspectives offered by the Frank quote and Kessels’ installation as “bleak.” But, he said, the “way out of this [bleak situation for photographers] is storytelling.” Read the rest of this entry »

Daniel Martinez Bazaldua, a photographer with the newspaper Vanguardia, was found dead yesterday in the northern Mexico City of Saltillo, the Associated Press reports. He had been missing since Tuesday, when he left the Vanguardia office in the afternoon.

The bodies of Martinez Bazaldua, age 22, and another man identified as Julian Zamora, 23, were found dismembered on a street. According to state prosecutors, the body parts were dumped along with a  hand-written message saying that the Zetas drug cartel was responsible for the killings. Saltillo is located in northern Coahuila, a state where Zetas is known to operate.

Coahuila state Attorney General Homero Ramos told reporters that investigators had indications both men “were participating in illegal activities.” Vanguardia, which hired Martinez a month ago to shoot for its society pages, rejected the attorney general’s claim, which was made before any criminal investigation into the murders.

In a statement issued yesterday, Carlos Lauría of Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said, “It is irresponsible for authorities to reach conclusions before conducting a full investigation.” CPJ called on Mexican authorities “to fully investigate this crime, examine all possible motives, and bring those responsible to justice.”

CPJ reports that according to a Vanguardia editor who asked to remain anonymous, “Photographers covering the society section in Mexico have been targeted by organized crime groups in the past for inadvertently capturing images of cartel members, according to CPJ research.”

In May, three news photographers who covered organized crime and drug violence in Veracruz were found dead and dismembered.
CPJ reports that more than 50 journalists have been killed or disappeared in the last six years

Related Article
Three News Photographers Murdered in Veracruz, Mexico

A federal appeals court has ruled that artist Richard Prince did not infringe photographer Patrick Cariou’s copyrights by reproducing several dozen of Cariou’s images without permission. The appeals court said 25 out of 30 works by Prince at the center of the dispute made fair use of Cariou’s photographs.

The decision reversed a lower court ruling that held Prince liable for infringement.

Click here for the full story.

Panasonic today announced its latest micro four-thirds camera body, the DMC-G6. It slots in between the GF6 and the GH3 in Panasonic’s lineup, a mid range body with some new features and a solid, if not class leading, feature set.

Panasonic G6

G6 feature highlights:

• 16MP Live MOS sensor
• ISO 160-12,800 (extendable up to 25,600) 7 frames per second continuous shooting, 5 fps with AF-tracking
• 3.0″, 1.04 million dot touchscreen LCD
• 1.44 million dot OLED electronic viewfinder with eye sensor
• AVCHD video in full 1080/60p  with  manual control
• 3.5mm external mic socket
• Wireless Connectivity via Wi-Fi / NFC

As with other Panasonic bodies, the G6 is styled very much like a small DSLR and looks to continue Panasonic’s typical solid handling with its generous grip and multiple “function” (Fn) buttons. The sensor is the same previously class leading one that was used in the GH2 though Panasonic claims that its new Venus Engine speeds processing time and improves noise reduction significantly in the G6. This allows a maximum native ISO sensitivity of 12,800 (25,600 extended) and an increase to 7 frames per second shooting rate. An external mic input and full manual control over video recording are always welcome features in any body. The G6 is Panasonic’s second body, along with the GF6, to offer NFC (Near Field Communication)/WiFi connectivity. This allows users to connect the camera with a properly enabled device simply by touching them together. This means no more entering wifi details on a tiny screen or searching for bluetooth pairings. However, while becoming more common on Android devices, the feature may be of limited use to many photographers as Apple has yet to embrace NFC for its iOS devices.

Full specifications available via the DMC-G6 press release and Panasonic’s website. Pricing and availability have yet to be announced.

©Fabio Bucciarelli

Fabio Bucciarelli, who has covered the civil war in Syria for Agence France-Presse, has won the Robert Capa Gold Medal Award, the Overseas Press Club (OPC) has announced. Bucciarelli won the award for a portfolio of images titled “Battle to Death,” showing Free Syrian Army soldiers battling intensely against government forces in the streets of Aleppo.

In announcing the award, OPC said, “The images from this portfolio put you ‘in the moment’ and have a palatable sense of urgency. There is a consistency to the images that helps the viewer identify with the subjects and the perils they are encountering.”

The award, given annually by the OPC, recognizes photographers who have shown exceptional enterprise and courage while covering world news events.

In other OPC award categories, freelance photographer Samuel James won the Olivier Rebbot Award for  best photographic reporting from abroad in magazines and books. James won for “The Water of My Land,” a story about oil production and its consequence in the Niger Delta. The story was published in Harper’s magazine.

Bernat Armangue of The Associated Press won the OPC’s John Faber Award for feature photography. Armangue won for his portfolio of images about the conflict in Gaza.

Oded Balilty, also of The Associated Press, also won a feature photography award for his story about an ultra-orthodox wedding near Tel Aviv.

An awards ceremony will be held tonight in New York City. A complete list of award recipients is available on the OPC Web site.

RJ Sangosti of The Denver Post and David Weatherwax of The Herald in Jasper, Indiana were named Photojournalists of the Year in the Best of Photojournalism (BOP) competition, the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) has announced.

There are two winners because NPPA recognizes a winner for both larger and smaller markets. Sangosti won in the larger market division. Runners up were Damon Winter and Tyler Hicks, both of The New York Times.

Weatherwax won the Photojournalist of the Year title for the smaller market division for the second year in a row. (The Herald has a circulation of 11,300). Runners up this year were Tom Kelly IV (Daily Local News, Westchester, PA) and Gerry Melendez (The State, Columbia, South Carolina).

Patrick Smith, a freelancer for Getty Images, won the Sports Photojournalist of the Year title. Runners-up were Quinn Rooney (Getty Images) and Bill Frakes (Sports Illustrated).

Aaron Huey, shooting for National Geographic Magazine, is the winner of Cliff Edom’s “New America Award” for his photographic essay, “In The Shadow Of Wounded Knee.”

In the competition’s editing division, Mark Edelson of The Palm Beach Post won Newspaper Picture Editor of the Year, and Jamie Wellford of Newsweek was named Magazine Picture Editor of the Year.

Judges for the BOP still photo competition were photographers Amy Sancetta of the Associated Press and Jack Gruber of USA Today; and Boyzell Hosey, the director of photography and multimedia for the St. Petersburg Times. More details about the still photo competition are posted on the NPPA site at this link.

Judges for the BOP photo editing awards were picture editor Molly Roberts of Smithsonian magazine, photographer Matt Moyer, and Bert Fox, photography director of The Charlotte Observer. More information about the photo editing awards are posted on the NPPA site at this link.

Related:
Paolo Pellegrin Named POYi Freelance Photographer of the Year
Paul Hansen Wins POYi Newspaper Photographer of the Year

Reclusive photographer William Eggleston has deigned to take a few written questions from photographers, curators, and fans, and the questions, along with his responses, were published yesterday in British newspaper The Independent.

Among those who posed questions were Martin Parr, Nina Berman, Alec Soth, Jason Evans, Tate Modern photo curator Simon Baker, and Brett Rogers, director of The Photographers’ Gallery in London.

Eggleston’s terse, deadpan responses reveal so little beyond his disinterest in the exchange that readers might be left wondering: Why did he bother? One possibility is that he needs to come out periodically and remind everyone that he doesn’t talk about his work, so stay the heck away. That said, if Eggleston has to put up with the type of bizarre, irrelevant questions that he was asked (e.g., What building would you like to blow up?), he might be forgiven for hiding.

Since the 1990s, Magnum photographer Thomas Dworzak has explored the volatile republics of the Northern Caucasus. It’s a region that’s now in the news because alleged Boston bombing suspects Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had ties there, but  Chechnya, Dagestan, Georgia and other republics of the Caucasus have long been a source of curiosity and geopolitical ambitions, especially in Russia.

In his 2010 book, Kavkas, Dworzak, who is now based in Georgia, wrote: “Having discovered the importance of the ‘Caucasus Experience’ in 19th century romantic Russian literature, I finally put together a book with all the images from my years spent in the Caucasus.” Kavkas includes images Dworzak took while covering the conflicts in Chechnya and Abkhazia and their aftermath, as well as scenes from Dagestan, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Ossetia.

In the book’s introduction, Dworzak called Kavkas “a toast to the Caucasus.” Magnum in Motion made a multimedia slide show of some of the images from the book. They appear on screen as in the book, interspersed with text from writers including Tolstoy, Lermontov and Pushkin.

While many of Dworzak’s images are poetic and allusive, and compliment the writers’ rhapsodic prose, at other times they make a sharp contrast, showing the violence and hardship the region has seen in recent years.

Related article:
Boston Bombings Focus Attention on Caucasus, And Photo Projects on the Region

Notable Photo Books 2010 (review of Kavkas, published by Schilt)
(For PDN subscribers only.)

© Davide Monteleone/VII. From Red Thistle (published by Dewi Lewis)

As investigations into the alleged Boston Marathon bombers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev focus on their connection to Chechnya and to the region of Dagestan, where Tamerlan spent time in January 2012, we’re once again looking at photographic studies of the North Caucusus. This volatile and troubled region may be little known to many Americans, but it’s been the subject of in-depth examination by photographers including Stanley Greene, Thomas Dworzak and Davide Monteleone. They have explored not only the violence in the region, but its culture, rituals and legacy of ethnic and political tensions.

Talking about his 2012 book Red Thistle, which explores life in the Northern Caucusus, David Monteleone told PDN in  2012 that he wanted to learn more about the people in the region than he could learn from media reports about terrorist attacks and human rights abuses. The book is a collection of images he took over several years in the republics around Chechnya, including Dagestan, Abkhazia (the Georgian Republic), Ingushetia, Karachay–Cherkessia, Kabardino-Balkaria, North Ossetia and the disputed territory of South Ossetia.

“For every work that I do, I want to show the daily life of people,” Monteleone told PDN. “Then of course I try to get a little bit deeper and try to find my own vision, but it’s my curiosity first of all.”

People he met in the region who were hospitable and welcoming, he says, but “the authorities were not.” Many of his images were shot indoors, conveying the constraints he experienced. “You have this wild, big [landscape], and at the same time the people are sort of afraid of moving, they cannot reach some places. A lot of areas are closed because of antiterrorist operations, you cannot go to the mountains because it’s forbidden because of military operations … [The people] are restricted in a way, in the mind and physically.”

You can read Monteleone’s full interview in “Disputed Territories: Exploring Life in the Northern Caucuses” on PDNOnline.

* Photo, above: A woman in the Dagestan village of Gimri during the sacrifice of a bull. © Davide Monteleone/VII
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