16 December 2011

Rankin on Life

"It's about the pictures."
John Shearer - LIFE photographer

Just watching the programme which was on recently, presented by Rankin - America in Pictures: The story of Life magazine where he is interviewing former Life photographers. Extraordinary, and very interesting.

Two things:

One - is he going to talk about the future of photojournalism and the fact that photojournalists are being made redundant because of the ubiquitous iPhone and the rise of the citizen journalists? Read this article.

Two - is this programme just a way of advertising his new magazine? The new D&AD competition is a brief he has set. It is an interesting brief and one I am looking forward to creating something for it - but one has to consider whether it is a master stroke to raise the profile of the mag. Good luck to him he clearly has a savvy marketing and PR team.

Oh he didn't mention the future of photojournalism. But it was a film filled with truly great photographers who are braver (and some my say) more talented than Rankin.

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