Photography in the age of tablets

Two editors went to Arles in France not only to watch pictures at the famous photography festival, but also to talk with the world’s best photographers about their pictures.

Les Rencontres (“Encounters”) is one of the most important photo festivals in the world. It’s organized in Arles in the south of France for 41 years. This year’s edition is made of 60 exhibitions that provide – as the Financial Times’ critic noted — interest for almost every photographic allegiance.

Kinga Kenig and Piotr Wojcik, two photo editors of Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza, went to Arles and shot eight very interesting video interviews with the ehxbitions’ curators and photographers.

Time magazine and iPad

Kira Pollack, photo editors of Time, talks about her experiences with photo essays on the iPad app for the magazine.

“You [have to] look [at iPad] as a new, unique product rather than >>this is our content going on the iPad<<. That’s not going to work. I think it’s really how to make it dynamic, how to make it exciting and really different than the web and different than the print,” says Kira.

Watch an interview (it’s in English with Polish subtitles):

Portraits of consumption

Martin Parr, a documentary photographer famous for his critical look at modern society, shared some secrets of his latest project: “The world is consuming despite the recession… I am going to China this summer to photograph people and beaches there — I have never done that — [and to photograph] the aspirations of people having the fridges, the cars.”

All the faces of Mick Jagger

Francois Hebel, curator of an exhibition of portraits of the Rolling Stones star, explains what’s really difficult in taking pictures of Jagger, a rare celebrity that has such a long relationship with the best photographers in the world.

You can watch all interviews on Gazeta Wyborcza’s photo site called Duzy Kadr (Big Frame).

How were these fotocasts made?

We talk with Kinga Kenig, a photo editor of Gazeta Wyborcza, and a devoted photography blogger.

forum4editors: Kinga, tell me about your visit to Arles. Why did you do these fotocasts?

Kinga Kenig: I’ve been doing interviews with photographers for a few months. I was getting very good feedback not only from people interested in photography. It turns out that people prefer to watch a photographer talking rather than read an interview.

Did you plan to shoot these interviews from start?

Yes, Piotr and I went to Arles with an intention to do short video interviews with photographers and curators during the opening fortnight in July. We spent there 5 days. It was the first time that we were doing such an assignment so we also wanted to check if it would be possible to do interviews, edit them, translate them and publish quickly afterwards. Unfortunately, this turned out to be too ambitious. I think we could have made it if we’d been a team of three.

So what exactly were you doing to achieve this?

During the first 2 days we tried to see all the exhibitions and decide who would be most interesting to interview. There are 60 exhibitions that are spread all around the town. Then we tried to arrange interviews. We also attended symposiums and book signings and night screenings. Altogether, we managed to do nine interviews.

Which interview was the most interesting, intriguing to you?

I really loved the interview with Christian Caujolle who curated the exhibition of a photography collection of Marin Karmitz, a French movie producer. It was one of the best exhibitions of the festival. It was beautifully presented in a church. It was very cinematic and mysterious. We wanted to keep this aesthetics in our video.

Tell me all the bloody details how these fotocasts are really made?

When we were working in Arles, Piotr was responsible for filming and photographing and I was arranging interviews and asking questions. We used two cameras: a camcorder and a camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II. Most of the video footage that was used comes from Canon. It turned out to be much more beautiful than the one from the camcorder, which I consider too flat.
After we came back I was responsible for editing. It took me around a week to have all videos put together, but I was editing them after work and in my free time, between my regular duties.
We also had to do subtitles and it took a few days. I worked on Final Cut Pro. It is the most popular professional film editing software.

Readers of Gazeta Wyborcza find such photo casts much more often than before. What has changed?

Multimedia work has been present on Gazeta’s website for quite some time, but it is only recently that we’ve had multimedia stories produced by picture editors cooperating with photographers.
Last year Piotr Wójcik, director of photography in Gazeta introduced big changes in picture department. It affected the work of picture editors. He shifted our duties from picture editing, which is now done mostly by editors themselves, to multimedia. We started learning how to use Final Cut Pro and very quickly produced our first multimedia projects. Altogether Gazeta’s website publishes around three such multimedia stories every month.

Which one is your favourite?

The one about the Central Railway Station in Warsaw.

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