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Monday, January 26, 2009

Photographing History

I came across an interesting blog post from New York Times contributer Errol Morris in which he interviews picture editors from 3 news agencies about covering the White House.
The traveling pool of press photographers that follows presidents includes representatives from three wire services — AP (The Associated Press), AFP (Agence France-Presse) and Thomson Reuters. During the last week of the Bush administration, I asked the head photo editors of these news services — Vincent Amalvy (AFP), Santiago Lyon (AP) and Jim Bourg (Reuters) — to pick the photographs of the president that they believe captured the character of the man and of his administration. There are overlapping pictures — of the president with a bullhorn at Ground Zero, of the president looking out the window of Air Force One over New Orleans, of the president receiving the news on the morning of 9/11. It is interesting that these pictures are different. They may be of the same scene, but they have different content. They speak in a different way.
All three editors have very interesting things to say about the photos they chose. It's a long blog post but well worth the read.

My absolute favorite is a picture from AFP showing Bush and Obama walking along a side walk at the White House, while in the background Mr. Obama's shadow is giving a mischievous little wave like it has a mind of it's own, or it's a actually a little gremlin who is stepping out of hiding just for a moment.

Check it out.

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