February 26, 2007

From Julia Kumari Drapkin, a graduate of Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism, and a dynamo photographer and correspondent for the St. Petersburg [Florida] Times...

“I have thought often about your book. Just recently, I was speaking on a photojournalism panel and several veteran photographers echoed the familiar angst about the expanding media landscape -- 'Everyone with a camera these days believes they are a photojournalist! How will people know what to believe?'

"With the proliferation of images by professionals and amateurs, using Kodachrome and cameraphone alike, many photographers complain that the authority of photography as a medium is being undermined by dilution. What they fail to appreciate is that the lone lens, while able to communicate a powerful perspective, is incapable of capturing objective truth. Just as an object is defined in 360 degrees, so too must a historical event be understood as a collection of perspectives.

“On Sept. 11th, 2001 thousands of images were captured--from those experiencing it inside the towers, to those on the streets below, from nearby boroughs, and even from space. The relativism of such diverse images created a complex, even paradoxical, honesty that no individual photographer could capture alone.


“By presenting the diverse images of hundreds of photographers capturing the same event, Watching the World Change illustrates an evolution in seeing in 
the information age: a 360-degree perspective that is a landmark for authoritative truth in photography. Professionals and amateurs together have taken the power of the image to its ultimate level, a new objectivity capable of transcending the relativism of the individual photograph and limitations of the individual experience.

"So, after many instances when your book came up in mind or in conversation, I wanted to finally put these thoughts to electronic paper. Indeed, your book has been
insightful to me and I hope you find these comments useful."

Cheers,
Julia Kumari Drapkin