1. The emergence of smartphones has not changed the way I work, but it has changed the world of photojournalism. I believe that photojournalism is losing meaning over time. When we see a truly journalistic photo that tells you what’s happening, it’s has not been taken by a photographer, it is a normal person who has seen a situation and made a photo or video.
2. I have not used the phone in my work, but I have a photojournalist friend who has done it and even he was committed precisely to do the work with the smartphone. I have not done that, because if the Director of the City of Rome charges you a portrait and you introduce yourself with a smartphone is not professional. It’s like if you see a lawyer in tracksuit. It is an odd feeling.
3. My work has gone better since the advent of social networks. It has improved to positive, because thanks to Facebook or Twitter editors have known me since I posted a job that I did for another magazine or a prize that I won. Also, you get to a large mass of people. Before, a photographer was unknown, no one knew the name of the photographer. Social networks are a trampoline.
4. With regard to the problems of copyright in the images, maybe somebody have certainly caught my photographs for any website or online platform, but I do not care about it. If I passed I would not worry much because it is something which does not change my life. Also, when somebody catch my photos on other websites for me is an advertising.
5. Placing a picture on social networks has a positive and a negative side. The negative is that when a picture has been in many social networks, people have seen it and it is a difficult to sell it. This has happened to me several times. But it has also happened to me otherwise. When various social networks or websites have posted a work of mine it has come to the eyes of an editor, he has liked and I bought it for a magazine.
6. The photojournalist is everything in the ecosystem of the current photojournalism. It’s like a movie director. He physically does nothing, but chooses the person who designs the dresses … On a practical level, I make the images I choose, after a photoeditor helps me editing these photos, but I am constantly with that person, who I have previously chosen because he knows me and knows also what I like. I am present in the whole process.
7. In the coming years the photographer who goes to a site showing a situation or social problem is going to end. They will be the people themselves living in that place who show what is happening with their mobile.
8. The media should offer quality, in the sense that they have to invest and take risks and this is not at all what they do today. I can tell many magazines, including paper journals (no one here in Italy called Internationale) which make journalism as it was done long ago, with perfect images, exciting products from the best writers in the world… When people see a well made and “nice” thing, buy it. On the one hand, people do not risk and secondly, I think journalism is at a particular moment, a moment of crisis because we have the Internet and some things are changing. We do not know where it will stop and we are all waiting for the moment.
9. In the press there is a finantial crisis because the magazines are not sold as before. New generations don´t buy magazines. But there are also opportunism. If they do not have to pay a professional, better for them.
10. If you want to tell the story of a tribe in the Amazon, it is clear that you can not go with a smartphone, but for photography newspaper or news, the smartphone seems like a good idea and photojournalists who are dedicated to do this type of photography will have to think about changing, because that’s the trend.
ÁLVARO DEPRIT
