Beyond the Frame 42/
Documentary photography awards winners. 2024 picture collections. Creative v Journalistic photography. And I’m going back to School.
2025 Zeke Awards
I was fascinated to see the winners of the 2025 ZEKE Awards for Documentary Photography.
ZEKE is a print and online magazine featuring documentary photography from around the world; climate change, war, migration, refugees, and “other issues of global concern”.
“SDN awards one photographer the ZEKE Award for Documentary Photography to recognise their success in documentary photography and visual storytelling with an emphasis on themes that affect the global community.”
Beyond the Lake — Carlos Folgoso Sueiro
This year’s winner is Carlos Folgoso Sueiro with his photo essay, Beyond the Lake.
Carlos’s sombre photographs are other-worldy. As if he had stumbled through a portal into a world inhabited by characters from Grimm’s Fairy-tales or Greek mythology. Is bearded Nacho (above) really a thinly disguised Pan, god of shepherds and flocks?
Is the forest-coloured Guillermina a benevolent forest witch who will cast runes upon the floor to predict your future? Perhaps Tony is a fallen king, once powerful but now exiled to the remotest reaches of Galicia?
It turns out that the truth is not so far removed from fiction. You can read the actual captions on Carlos’s award-winning SDN gallery.
The ethereal nature of Carlos’s photographs is intensified when we learn how he was influenced by Galician mythology, where “witches conduct rituals and mysterious creatures are said to inhabit the shadows… a threshold between the world of the living and the realm of the unknown.”
Carlos introduces Beyond the Lake by explaining how a physical trauma altered the way he approached photography:
“In 2020 I suffered a back injury that severely limited my life. Since then I have changed my perspective as a photographer. I started Beyond The Lake, a project in which I investigate my homeland, Galicia, from a metaphorical point of view.”
“These stories stem from Galicia, where reality blends legend. Change driven by climate challenges, depopulation, land abandonment, emigration, and alcoholism threatens the fragile identity of Galicia’s communities. This project sheds light on their struggle to adapt and survive.”
Carlos’s mythical framing stretches the definition of “Documentary photography”, which I think is a good thing. His photo essay leaves me wanting to learn more about Galicia and its strange myths and legends.
Healing Wounds: Reconciliation in Post-Genocide Rwanda
Other notable entries exhibit a more journalistic style. Jan Banning’s essay, Healing Wounds: Reconciliation in Post-Genocide Rwanda includes a series of posed portraits, which would be incomplete without the context provided by the accompanying captions.
I Grant You Refuge — Gaza Strip, Palestine
Six photographers contributed images to this essay, which features several disturbing images (viewer discretion advised). It is, perhaps, closest to the traditional definition of documentary photography.
ZEKE Awards
You can view more of the winning entries on the SDN ZEKE Awards website.
Journalistic v Creative
Looking through the ZEKE winners has got me thinking about how documentary photography is defined. It’s a question that’s been on my mind for some time.
My own commercial photography is typically made on assignment for news organisations, NGOs, travel companies and the stock agencies who supply them. The overarching criteria is that images must be unaltered, authentic and depict events without being misleading. There’s little if any room for interpretation.
I like that discipline. I enjoy the challenge of showing the world exactly as it appears to me at a particular day and time. With experience, one learns to maximise the camera’s capabilities in order to draw attention to the important elements in a scene. Knowing how to balance shutter speeds and apertures to control depth-of-field and the appearance of movement is where technical skill becomes apparent.
There are other skills required by a commercial photographer, of course: the ability to work creatively with clients, time-management, marketing, project-management, digital processing, accounting… But when the business essentials are put aside, the photographic act boils down to knowing how to control a tiny hole in the side of a black box. Deciding how wide the aperture should be and for how many fractions of a second it should be open for is pretty much it. Oh, and knowing where to stand is helpful too.
Whilst I’ve been travelling the world, doing my best to show the people and places I have encountered in an authentic way, I’ve always been conscious of another, less journalistic, more interpretive style. Carlos’s pictures of Galicia are a good example. Many of the photographers working for Magnum also exhibit a more interpretive approach to storytelling.
Cristina De Middel is a good example.
“De Middel investigates photography’s ambiguous relationship to truth. Blending documentary and conceptual photographic practices, she plays with reconstructions and archetypes to build a more layered understanding of the subjects she approaches.”
Trent Parke is another Magnum photographer whose work falls into what I would describe as a more interpretive field of photography.
I’m not 100% convinced that “interpretive” is the best word to define photographs that are not strictly journalistic. I’m open to suggestions and the comments are open.
“He is known for his poetic, often darkly humorous photography which offers an emotional and psychological portrait of his home country of Australia.”
I may be wrong but I suspect that more self-taught photographers, like myself, fall into the journalistic approach to photography, whilst the interpretive/creative photographers tend to have spent time experimenting, perhaps at Art School. That’s certainly true of my colleagues. Those who studied an arts or photography degree, for example, are much more likely to be influencing their work with their own interpretations, working in a conceptual fashion.
Back to school
At the age of 16, my headmaster told me not to return to school and I was expelled from college at 17. My academic pursuits were somewhat curtailed at that point. As a result, I am self-taught in almost every regard and whilst I am more than content with the way things have worked out, I do occasionally wonder how a more structured education might have shaped my path. For example, I was today years old when I learned what “autodidact” means. 🙄
I wonder how studying art or pursuing a photography degree might have influenced my work. I think those study years can afford students the opportunity to experiment without any commercial considerations. There’s room to fail, which is a luxury that’s not available when you’re delivering work for a client. Maybe it’s these years when students gain confidence in their creative interpretations? I’d like to know for sure.
So I am going back to school — well, university, in fact — to study for an Arts degree. It’ll be part-time because I still have to keep Mrs. G in the manner to which she would like to become accustomed (timely reminder: this newsletter is wholly supported by readers’ subscriptions!).
I have no idea what to expect, even less idea how I will find the time and discipline to write essays and complete assignments, and there’s a fair chance I might, once again, be invited to leave. It really depends whether the rules about attempted arson have changed since 1987. I’ll let you know.
Here’s the last known photograph of me in studious attire. I’ll take another photo when my course begins to see if the 40+ intervening years have altered my appearance.
2024 Picture Collections
And finally, two collections of photographs from 2024.
New York Times
The New York Times Year in Pictures is a powerful and diverse collection of photographs. The usual subjects all appear; Ukraine, Gaza, Trump, Biden, celebrities, natural disasters, conflict, hope, and despair. But my favourite photograph, by Ruth Fremson, shows something refreshingly different.
Magnum Photographers’ Selection
Magnum photographers have selected their favourite pictures from last year. Many of those familiar news subjects are included but the perspective is much more… err… interpretive? I really need a better word.
I found it harder to select a favourite from the Magnum collection because the pictures are all so very different. Apples and oranges. But I chose this picture by Gueorgui Pinkhassov of tea time at the Europe Hotel in St. Petersburg. The lighting is eye-catching and the cakes look tasty.
I shall continue to ponder the definitions of “journalistic” v “creative”. It’s a neat classification but is it accurate? Is there an overlap? Can one move seamlessly from one to the other? Does each require different skills, demand a different approach?
Answers in due course. Probably.
My university course begins next week so I’m off to buy a satchel, some HB pencils, a protractor, and a compass. Wish me luck?
Until next time, I hope you are blessed with lovely light and tasty cakes.
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I share your preoccupation with the journalistic vs creative continuum. I came to photography via Geoff Winningham, my teacher at university, but since it was an introductory course, most of what I got was technical, including, thankfully, a solid grounding in the relationship between ASA/ISO, aperture, and shutter speed. I think people coming to photography now that the machine does most of the "thinking" have a different challenge than we did.
I'm not convinced that "interpretive" is the "right" apposite to "journalistic" photography. My inclination is to contrast "direct", shoot 'em straight ahead as clearly as you can do it, with "elliptical", which is to embrace murk, indistinct focus, violating the rules of composition photos. Both of them still leave the viewer with the responsibility for forming a conclusion, or reaction, to what they are seeing. Such as the 2nd photograph in the Valparaiso book I mentioned to you in an email...
Another wonderful blog. You were right to provide the warning on the Palestinian pix. They make me want to pick up a gun, not a camera...
Hi Gavin, That's wonderful. Enjoy the wild student parties. Which university is it? Best, Jonathan