Jörg Colberg on Conscientious about the state of photojournalism:

Let’s instead talk about just the photography. I think it’s not too daring to say that after more than fifty years of grainy b/w photojournalism (with its sometimes blurry, sometimes crooked shots) the visual tool has become blunt. This is what seems to be behind commentaries such as “it does feel like we’ve seen the same pictures over and over again”. It’s not the topic, it’s the way the topic is presented. The photographic language of this style of photojournalism simply doesn’t have the same impact any longer it had fifty, forty, thirty years ago.

I think this problem contributes to a fair extent to what I perceive as a bit of an identity crisis of photojournalism. …

I think it’s quite important to realize that even with the best of intentions a viewer might not react very strongly to classic photojournalism any longer. It’s not about jadedness or callousness or cynicism, it’s about being used to something. It’s about the reactions that something triggers – reactions which in part might be outside of the control of the viewer. It’s any ugly way to say this but I think many people simply realize that when they see the classic b/w photojournalism covering some topic they feel like they have to react in a certain way simply because that’s how you react to this kind of stuff. And I don’t think this reaction is limited to photography connoisseurs (actually on the contrary). For photojournalism to work, it has to get away from this.

The industry is full of challenges these days, but it’s not just about the declining stock business and the oversupply of photographers and images: our demand has shifted, our values have changed, we’ve splintered into smaller and smaller niches of interest and we have a different range of goals for our images. Our tastes have changed, for better or worse. As photographers, can we adapt? Will we? Should we?