This is a pop-up collage displaying the effects of red-tagging on photojournalists. Red-tagging is when a journalist has been branded as a member or an associate of an enemy party of the government, leading to blacklisting and harassment of the journalist in the hopes of stifling their work. This topic is of interest to me because red-tagging is a problem in the Philippines, my mom’s country, where photojournalists will be branded as terrorists or communists so the government has a public excuse to kill them. It is also particularly insidious for photojournalists due to economic circumstances, since the job market is still recovering from the pandemic and Filipino photojournalists must contend with lacking compensation for their work.
Specifically, my collage is depicting a photojournalist who is being hunted after being red-tagged, as shown by the red paper I used to depict a laser sight, because being killed by the government is one of the many dangers photojournalists have to face when they're red-tagged. It does integrate some drawing, such as with the camera, but it is less of a stand-up illustration than a stand-up collage, which does have its own benefits, as I was able to play with some different textured and patterned papers. It was also my first time doing paper engineering, which involves the skill of crafting the paper mechanisms that make the elements of my project be able to stand up and fold over without crumpling, which I learned thanks to this video teaching how to make a basic pop-up book page. Below, I took an image from above that actually shows the paper mechanisms that I used from the video that enable my collage to act as a pop-up project.
In the early days of photojournalism, cameras were the epitome of novel but riddled with inconvenience. They could capture a likeness in a relatively short amount of time compared to an artist, but they required extensive preparation as well as sensitive and cumbersome equipment to accomplish that goal. According to the video by the Getty Museum titled "The Wet Collodion Process" , "From 1851, until about 1880, the wet collodion process became the dominant method for making photographs throughout Europe and North America". It was also the majority of what made photography in this time so unwieldy. Collodion was the main chemical used in order to make the image, but it had a time limit before it dried up and became unusable. This is especially relevant to photojournalists, as their profession means they won't always be in reach of an area with a dark room, which necessitated carting a portable version along with them. But, of course, innovation is inevitable. Wha...
Why is it Important to Know Photojournalism's History? What are the merits of understanding the history of photojournalism and why it is used? Photojournalism is a medium through which to understand history and current events. It has helped bring issues to the forefront that people might not typically run across or have much reason to think about in their daily life. As a result, studying the history of photojournalism as well as what subjects photojournalists of the past chose to focus on in their time period helps to hone in on what issues they thought were most important at the time. The importance of this is highlighted in Marcus Garvey's quote, "A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots", which lends itself to photojournalism because it seeks to expose people to their history, origin, and culture, especially when they might be ignorant of certain aspects of it. What is an example of an instance photoj...
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