David Campbell schrijft:

In this lecture I will address the political representation of news photography, showing how pictures help construct people and places in particular ways. These issues are important to understanding the media in general, and especially important when developing an education program based on contemporary photography.

The World Press Photo Foundation (WPPF) is best known for running the annual World Press Photo Contest, now in its 63rd edition, as well as the annual Digital Storytelling Contest, and a global exhibition program that takes the winners to more than 120 cities in 50 countries. While WPPF has undertaken education programs for professional photographers since 1990, it has never had a public education program - until now. VTS Netherlands and WPPF partnered to develop a VTS-based educational program for schools using selected images from the World Press Photo archive supported by additional materials for context.

Images for a VTS discussion are chosen with care, paying attention to the audience. Can the audience find themselves in the image? Is there an easy access point for them, enough ambiguity? Recently the American VTS community added the term “visual politics” to the thinking about image selection. It makes clear that by choosing a certain image, you are presenting a certain worldview. Visual representations help establish a certain perspective on a situation, a society, on being human and are never purely neutral. What messages about the world, life, being human, does a selected image contain? Does it reinforce stereotypes? Or does the image make space for alternative perspectives?

Diversity is on WPPF’s core values, and in this lecture I will also discuss how the foundation addresses these issues of inclusion and representation through its various educational programs, jury selection, and initiatives like the promotion of ‘solutions visual journalism’. 

https://www.worldpressphoto.org/