Interview with Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin

By Nahuel Contreras

04/12/13

What led you to gain an interest in Documentary Photography?

Some of our projects have partly been an interrogation of the eco-system of photojournalism; it’s economy, its vocabulary, its limitations and its strengths. In the 16 odd years we’ve been working together we’ve seen the photojournalistic world change remarkably. Beginning with the way images are gathered (AP now have more people scouring social media then they have operative cameramen and women on the ground), to the way they are controlled (the embedding process was an ingenious and very stealthy way of controlling how both the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were imaged) to their dissemination (editors are now more then ever accountable to art buyers at advertising agencies - a picture of a dead body doesn’t help get you a Hermes ad). We’ve also seen a subconscious shift where the poor image, a low-resolution image commands more authority to truth than a sharp one, the assumption being that the photographer has compromised speed of transfer to quality. These are some of the issues we try to examine. 

Are there specific areas one should focus on if wanting to pursue a career in Documentary Photography?

No