Exhibition: 14 April – 1 May 2010

Private View: Tues 13 April, 6–9pm

Photography is dead, long live photography. For as long as I have been a picture editor I have heard photojournalists debate that old chestnut, is photojournalism dead? This question is not new and was asked in the late 1950s with the closure of Picture Post. Yet as Martin Harrison discusses in his book Young Meteors, as this and other publications closed, so new ones opened.

The introduction of colour printing for the national newspaper supplements witnessed a new generation of titles that over the coming decades supported the work of photographers. The reputation of such titans of the genre, Don McCullin, David Bailey, Phillip Jones-Griffiths to mention but a few, were all made after Picture Post printed its last photo-essay. It was at this time that John Bulmer established himself as a prolific photographer, working for the Sunday Times and Town. Unlike many of his colleagues, John embraced the new technology of colour film and his work provides a wonderful legacy of Britain in colour in the sixties.

In the new digital era we are again asking whether photojournalism is dead. Screen grabs from tv, fuzzy phone camera images from the citizen journalist take the front page slot. Laws prohibiting the taking of pictures of police on the street, terrorism legislation and the fear of paedophilia all inhibit photographers from their daily pursuit of making pictures, and yet we live in a world that is more full of images than ever, and photography is even celebrated as an art form. So as one world passes we enter a new one, where creative minds find solutions, overcoming the hurdles and subverting objections.

Bridget Coaker, Curator

A Hereford Photography Festival touring exhibition.