Fanny DORGE Alexandra LOUGOVOY Ilana ALBOU
Master 2 Communication Institutionnelle à l’Internationale
VII PHOTO AGENCY - SITE AUDIT
I -
Introduction
A - Topic
The website www.viiphoto.com
represents the VII Photo Agency, specializing in conflict photography. The
latter is a nine-member agency (black& white photography) founded in September 2001, two days
before the attack on the World Trade Center. The name VII is derived from the
number of founding photojournalists who formed this collectively-owned agency.
VII has been responsible for creating and relaying to the world many of the
images that define the turbulent opening years of the 21st century.
The photographers of VII have covered events that define the establishment of a
new world order. This agency is based in California, USA and in Paris, France.
Alexandra Boulat, Ron Haviv, Gay
Knight, Antonin Kratochvil, Christopher Morris, James Natchtwey and John
Stanmeyer were joined in 2002 by Lauren Greenfield, and in 2004 by Joachim
Ladefoged[1]. They are all very famous
photographers having worked for the magazine Time, they are probably among the best professionals of photo
journalism at the present time.
B – Topicality
The website shows the VII Photo Agency’s work on different conflicts –
environmental, social and political, both violent and non-violent – to produce
an unflinching record of the injustices created and experienced by people
caught up in the events that they describe. VII deals with many different 
subjects
like the conflict in the Paris suburbs, Hurricane Katrina, events in the Congo,
global poverty, the dawn of mass tourism in Asia, Muslims in Europe and some
lighter subjects like Georges Clooney or Girl Culture in the USA, etc.
What is very interesting about the work of VII is the political and
social position of the agency. The photos are not just well captured with
artistic taste, or they’re not just a neutral observation of the facts. What
unites VII’s work is “a sense that, in the act of communication at the very
least, all is not lost; the seeds of hope and resolution inform even the
darkest records of inhumanity; reparation is always possible; despair is never
absolute”.
C – Why did we choose this subject?
We find VII’s work very interesting because of the subjects tackled by the photographers and the way they deal with them. Their work is very sensitive work, we can read their message through their photos, the absurdity of conflicts and disasters around the world. The impact of the photos is often very strong, it’s like a kind of shock which denounces the reality behind the images and opens up everyone’s consciousness. VII doesn’t omit any part of the world, they really provide a global vision of world conflicts.
II – Complete inventory
The website is conceived as a photo album. The pages are not too long in
order to make it easier to flip through : you never scroll more than three or
four times to read a page. The main one is divided into two parts: on the right
you will find the latest stories, and on the left some special features and
projects, meaning topic targeted reports which have been performed 
some
time ago. Two persons will never face the same main page because the pictures
change constantly as well as their disposition.
The colour grey has obviously been chosen for its seriousness, its
neutrality. It is true that coloured pictures are better brought out in this
way. A touch of red here and there adds some vivacity to the website and the
titles.
In order to see the different pictures, you have to click either on
one of the photos or on the “more” link-button which can be found at the end of
each little caption. At this point, you can watch the photo report and read
some instructive information about the issue and the context. All the pictures
are displayed at the bottom in miniature in order to have a good overview of
the report and you can even choose to see them with a slideshow!
Ten tabs enable a pleasant navigation:
- Latest stories : at the moment, you can find reports on very varied subjects, like the suburbs in France, Muslims in Europe and George Clooney.
- Issues in the news: the war in Iraq, the Tsunami disaster…
- Features: social topics such as cheerleaders in America, strippers in Asia
- Corporate: all the contacts and addresses, in France, London and NY.
- Photographers: the biography of each of the nine members of the team and some of their most significant work in portfolios.
-
Seminars: you are taken onto another web page in order to register for one of
the seminars which the team organizes.
-
Books: the books published by the VII photographers are placed on display.
-
Exhibitions: you can order the totality of the photographs which refer to one
report in particular and organize your own 
exhibition.
-
Workshops: VII offers the opportunity to join them while they are working on
special missions: in Palestine, in Provence or in Indochina for example.
-
Archives: a very complete data bank with a research tool.
Well
structured, clear and restrained, 
the VII website is nonetheless more than just a photo album. It is
very lively and reveals a will to communicate with the public. Beyond the
reports which cover very different subjects, a team of dedicated multicultural
photographers want to communicate, share their experience and act globally, by
organizing workshops, exhibitions, setting up a newsletter etc… The photos are
very artistic, sometimes in black and white, most of the time in colour,
sometimes rough, sometimes arranged with a special effect such as the
mellowness of the colour.
The quantity and the variety of the pictures
and information proposed is very important: the archive database almost
represents a website on its own. Working in a team of nine, the professionals
manage to provide reports focusing on economic, political, social and
historical issues.
III - Critical Analysis
A – Form
§
Positive points
The main page of the web site changes anytime you connect to it. It is
quite well organised. The grey background of the screen gives an idea of
seriousness which actually refers to the aim of the photo. VII is indeed
specialised in documenting conflicts and on politics and society issues. The
screen is divided into two parts. The right side is about latest stories, which
insists on the journalism work of VII, trying to remain very close to the news.
The latest stories are illustrated by seven files, with a big picture at the
centre of the screen. When you clock on each picture, you access the exhaustive
document. Each document is presented in the same way. A big picture is at the
centre or the top of the screen and at the bottom a line of about twenty photos
on the same issue, by the same photographer. Every file is commented by a text
which describes the main issues of the topic, and then, all the pictures are
explained by legends. It makes the site very interesting and welcoming. We can
return very fast and very easily to the main page and surf throughout the site.
A very interesting and innovative point of this site is the changing interface
of the site, with different pictures suggested which enables us to be aware of
all the issues addressed by the photographers.
Another positive point is the permanence of other links in a navigation
bar on the left side of the screen. There is also continuity in the
presentation of the documents, which makes the browsing easy and helps the
visitor to feel comfortable and to become familiar with the artistic atmosphere
of VII.
The great diversity of the topics represents an important point. Indeed,
even though the agency focuses on current issues, and conflicts, a high number
of the pictures are devoted to society and economics.
In addition, we may observe that the work of each photographer is
respected and very well enhanced.
§
Negative points
There are too many tags. This sometimes makes the browsing
uninteresting. Some links do not seem to be necessary. Moreover, we can find
the same documents through different links. The page is too long, so we can’t
get an overall general view of the pictures.
We also criticize posting next to each other some pictures which have no
link 
together.
The diversity of the pictures can also become a weakness in the interface.
Moreover, it’s quite difficult to find any information about the agency
itself. VII is not presented on the main page and it’s through the tag “positions
available” that we at least can learn more about the agency. VII is an American
and French agency of photojournalism. However, the site is only available in
English.
There
seems to be a bad dispersion of the pictures inside the tags. For example, the
document “Congo” can be seen both in the “Special Projects” link and in the
“features” part.
B – Contents
§
Positive
points
Thanks to a very serious interface, we understand that VII is an agency
of photo journalism. It was created in 2001 by 7 photographers that worked
first for the Times magazine. They retained from their previous
experience the taste for journalism and investigation. The photographers take
their pictures all over the world, following current events, at the heart of
the latest issues. Though they focus on conflict (violent and non violent), an
important percentage of their work is focussed on society issues. Every topic,
whether serious or not, is treated with the same professional importance. We
could say the photographers of VII adhere to a meld of art and journalism, in
the sense that they maintain a distance from their subject and are able to reveal a share of beauty through their
pictures. All the photos are of a very good quality.
When they decide to show some shocking pictures (like those about the Fall of Srebrenica) it is not in a
spirit of voyeurism, but to make people understand the very drama of the
violence. These pictures are a means of expression for the people they catch,
people that often don’t have the choice or the right 
to express themselves.
§
Negative
points
Once
more, we regret the great number of tags because only three give access to
pictures. The picture talk for themselves, which is quite a good quality in
photojournalism, so it’s hard to find any negative points in the contents of
the website, which represents a very interesting collection of work by
professional photographers.
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VII Photo Agency Photographers |
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Daughter of
French Photographer Pierre Boulat, who worked 25 years for LIFE magazine,
Alexandra Boulat was born in 1962. She was originally trained in graphic art
and art history, at the Beaux Arts in Paris. In 1989 she became a
photojournalist and was represented by Sipa Press for ten years until 2000.
In 2001, she co-founded the VII photo agency. Her news and features stories
are published in many international magazines, above all National Geographic
Magazine, Time and Paris-Match. She has received many International Awards
for the quality of her work. Boulat
covers news, conflicts and social issues as well as making extensive
reportages on countries and people. Among her many varied assignments, she
has reported on the wars in former Yugoslavia from 1991 until 1999, including
Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo; the Palestinian and Israeli conflict; the fall of
the Taliban; the Iraqi people living under the embargo in the 1990s; and the
invasion of Baghdad by the coalition in 2003. She also photographed Yasser
Arafat's family life and Yves Saint Laurent's last show in 2001. Other large assignments
include country stories on Indonesia and Albania, and a people story on the
Berbers of Morocco. |
|
Lauren
Greenfield grew up in Venice, California and graduated from Harvard
University in 1987. Her photographs have been published widely in the New
York Times Magazine, the New Yorker, Harper's Bazaar, Time, Life, National
Geographic, Elle, American Photo, French Photo, Stern, the London Sunday
Times Magazine, and other periodicals. In 1993, Greenfield received the first
photographic documentary grant sponsored by National Geographic -- for a
project about Los Angeles youth. The resulting work, Fast Forward: Growing Up
in the Shadow of Hollywood, became a best-selling photography book (Knopf,
1997) and received the Community Awareness Award from the National Press
Photographers' "Pictures of the Year" competition. Excerpts from
the book appeared in over 50 major national and international publications
and on Good Morning America, CNN, NPR, and the McNeill Lehrer Report. Fast
Forward was exhibited extensively in museums, galleries, and photography
festivals, including the International Center of Photography (1997), the
Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona (1998), the Nassauischer
Kunstverein Museum in Germany, the Moscow Biennial (2000), Visa Pour L'Image
in Perpignan, France, and the Naarden Fotofestival in Holland. Fast Forward
was optioned by Columbia Pictures and by Fox Searchlight for development as a
feature film. Her most
recent book, Girl Culture, published in December 2002, has already sold out
and is being reprinted by Chronicle Books. Large-scale exhibitions of the
same work will be on tour at museums and major festivals throughout the
United States and Europe through 2005. To date, more than 50,000 viewers have
already seen the work at the Visa Pour L'Image festival in France, the
Cleveland Museum of Art, the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, the
Snite Museum in Indiana, and the Pace/MacGill, Stephen Cohen, and Robert Koch
galleries in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, respectively. Greenfield
has been the recipient of several major awards and grants, including the 1997
ICP Infinity Award for Young Photographer, the Nikon Sabbatical Grant, and
the 1999 Hasselblad Grant. In 2001, she became one of Canon's "Explorers
of Light", a select group of world-renowned photographers. Greenfield
was one of 12 acclaimed photographers commissioned for
"Indivisible," a national documentary project sponsored by Pew
Charitable Trusts. American
Photo recently named Greenfield one of the 25 most influential photographers
working today. Her work is in many collections including the Los Angeles
County Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the International
Center of Photography; the Center for Creative Photography; the Harvard
University Archive; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the St. Louis Museum of
Art; the Springfield Museum of Art; the Brauer Museum of Art; the University
of Kentucky Art Museum; the Jewish Museum of New York; the Davenport Museum of
Art, Iowa; the Cleveland Museum of Art; the Snite Museum of Art; the Readers
Digest Collection; the Hallmark Collection; and the French Ministry of
Culture. |
|
Award-winning
photojournalist Ron Haviv has produced some of the most important images of
conflict and other humanitarian crises that have made headlines from around
the world since the end of the Cold War. A co-founder
of VII, his work is published by top magazines worldwide, including: Vanity
Fair, Time, Newsweek, The New York Times Magazine, Fortune, Stern, and Paris
Match. He has also published two critically acclaimed collections of his
photography - Blood and Honey: A Balkan War Journal, and Afghanistan: On the
Road to Kabul - and has contributed his wide-ranging body of work to several
other books. With a
special focus on exposing human rights violations, he has covered conflict
and humanitarian crises in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, Russia and
the Balkans. Most recently, he has documented the aftermath of the terror attacks
of September 11, 2001 in New York and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and
Iraq. His
often-searing photographs have earned Haviv some of the highest accolades in
photography, including awards from World Press Photo, Picture of the Year,
and the Overseas Press Club, as well as the Leica Medal of Excellence. He
regularly lectures at universities and seminars, and numerous museums and
galleries have featured his work, including the United Nations, The Louvre,
and The Council on Foreign Relations. Haviv has
been the central character in three films. National Geographic Explorer's
"Freelance in a World of Risk" explores the hazards inherent in
combat photography. The Serbian-made documentary "Vivisect"
explores Serbian reaction to the Blood and Honey exhibit. "Eyes of the
World," which has been featured in film festivals worldwide, examines
Haviv as a witness to war. In addition, Haviv has spoken about his work on
The Charlie Rose Show, Good Morning America, ABC World News Tonight, CNN,
MSNBC and The Best Damn Sports Show Ever. |
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Born in
England in 1964, Gary Knight began working as a photographer in the late
1980s in south East Asia and Indochina, where he embarked on a portrayal of
the internecine warfare in a region coming to terms with the end of the cold
war. In January 1993, he moved to the former Yugoslavia where he became
involved in documenting war crimes and crimes against humanity, which remain
the core theme of his work to this day. Knight's work has been widely
published by magazines all over the world, and he has contributed work to
several books. He occasionally lectures and is the author of several essays
on journalism and photography. He is a founding member of VII, created in
September 2001, and is the agency's first president and chairman of the
board. He is a contract photographer for Newsweek magazine and a trustee of
the Indochina Media Memorial Foundation. Knight is currently working on a
book about Kashmir with writer Muzamil Jaleel. Knight lives
in France with his wife and children. |
|
As
photojournalists go, Antonin Kratochvil has sunk his teeth into his fair
share of upheaval and human catastrophes while going about his documentation
of the time in which he lives. As people go, Kratochvil's own refugee life
has been much in a way the same as what he has rendered on film. Kratochvil's
unique style of photography is the product of personal experience and
intimate conditioning, not privileged voyeurism. Over the
years his fluid and unconventional work has been sought by numerous
publications stretching across widely differing interests. From shooting
Mongolia's street children for the magazine published by the Museum of
Natural History to a portrait session with David Bowie for Detour, from
covering the war in Iraq for Fortune Magazine to shooting Deborah Harry for a
national advertising campaign for the American Civil Liberties Union,
Kratochvil's ability to see through and into his subjects and show immutable
truth has made his pictures not facsimiles but uncensored visions. And yet,
what set his kind apart from the many is his consistency and struggle to
carry on. For Kratochvil this fact comes in the form of his numerous awards,
grants and honorable mentions dating back to 1975. The latest of these are
his two first place prizes at the 2002 World Press Photo Awards in the
categories of general news and nature and the environment. The next is the
2004 grant from Aperture publishing for Kratochvil's study on the difficult
relationship between American civil liberties and the newly formed Department
of Homeland Security since the World Trade Center bombings. In addition,
Kratochvil's fifth book, Vanishing, was published in early 2005 and marks
another significant milestone for the craft to which he belongs. Vanishing
represents a collection of natural and human phenomena that on the verge of
extinction. What makes this book so innovative is the 20 years it has taken
to produce, making it not only historical from the onset, but a labor of love
and a commitment to one man's conscience. |
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In 1987, at
the age of 16, Joachim's dream of becoming a soccer player was shattered when
he was nearly crippled by rheumatism. A year later, he got his first camera,
with the hope that photography could bring him closer to the activities that
his illness kept him from. Soon he
joined a small regional newspaper in Denmark shooting up to six assignments a
day. In 1995, he moved on to become a staff photographer at the national
newspaper, Politiken. Through the
years, Visa D'Or, World Press Photo, Life Magazine few of the organizations
that have awarded Joachim for his work. He was the first of many Danes to win
gold in a photo-story category at World credited with being one of the
driving forces behind the new wave of Danish photojournalism. He has appeared
as a guest lecturer at photography schools in Denmark, Europe and the United
States. His pictures
have been published in MARE, GEO, Le Monde, Spiegel Time, US News & World
Report, Liberation, French National Geographic New York Times Magazine. Joachim
lives in Denmark, with his wife and their two boys. |
|
Christopher
Morris belongs to what is surely one of the most exclusive clubs in all of
photojournalism: he is a "war" photographer. And though he balks
slightly at being regarded as just a war photographer, the 42-year-old Time
magazine contract photographer is, by his own estimate, one of "fewer
than 20" photographers that roam the globe for the sole purpose of
documenting violent social eruptions and armed conflicts. In his
career Morris has documented over 18 foreign conflicts. He provided up-close
coverage of brutal drug-related violence in Medellin, Colombia; guerrilla
fighting in Afghanistan; and the United States invasion of Panama; and has
made numerous trips to Russia and the former Soviet Union to photograph the
vicious battles of revolution and resistance in Chechnya. Morris also
provided extensive coverage of the Persian Gulf War, from the first
deployment of United States troops until the final, climatic liberation of
Kuwait. And most recently, Morris created some of the most human images to
emerge from the devastatingly inhuman civil wars in the former Yugoslavia. For his
work, Morris has been given a multitude of honors, including: the Robert Capa
Gold Medal Award from the Overseas Press Club for his work in Yugoslavia; the
Olivier Rebbot Award, also from the Overseas Press Club; the Magazine
Photographer of the Year Award from the University of Missouri School of Journalism;
the Infinity Photojournalist Award from the International Center of
Photography; and numerous World Press Photo Awards over the years. |
|
James
Nachtwey grew up in Massachusetts and graduated from Dartmouth College, where
he studied Art History and Political Science (1966-70). Images from the
Vietnam War and the American Civil Rights movement had a powerful effect on
him and were instrumental in his decision to become a photographer. He has
worked aboard ships in the Merchant Marine and, while teaching himself
photography, he was an apprentice news film editor and a truck driver. In 1976 he
started work as a newspaper photographer in New Mexico, and in 1980, he moved
to New York to begin a career as a freelance magazine photographer. His first
foreign assignment was to cover civil strife in Northern Ireland in 1981
during the IRA hunger strike. Since then, Nachtwey has devoted himself to
documenting wars, conflicts and critical social issues. He has worked on
extensive photographic essays in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Lebanon,
the West Bank and Gaza, Israel, Indonesia, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka,
Afghanistan, the Philippines, South Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Rwanda, South
Africa, Russia, Bosnia, Chechnya, Kosovo, Romania, Brazil, Iraq, and the
United States. Nachtwey has
been a contract photographer with Time Magazine since 1984. In 2001, he was
one of the founding members of VII. Previously, he had been associated with
Black Star (1980-85) and was a member of Magnum (1986-2001). He has had solo
exhibitions at the International Center of Photography in New York, the
Bibliotheque Nationale de France in Paris, the Palazzo Esposizione in Rome,
the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, Culturgest in Lisbon, El
Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, Fahey/Klein Gallery in Los Angeles, the
Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, the Canon Gallery and the Nieuwe Kerk
in Amsterdam, the Carolinum in Prague, and the Hasselblad Center in Sweden,
among others. He has
received numerous honours such as the Commonwealth Award, Martin Luther King
Award, Dr. Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award, Henry Luce Award, Robert Capa
Gold Medal (five times), the World Press Photo Award (twice), Magazine
Photographer of the Year (eight times), the International Center of
Photography Infinity Award (three times), the Leica Award (twice), the
Bayeaux Award for War Correspondents (twice), the Alfred Eisenstaedt Award,
the Canon Photo essayist Award, the Leipzig Award for Freedom of the Press,
the Daniel Pearl Award, The Dan David Prize, and the W. Eugene Smith Memorial
Grant in Humanistic Photography. He is a fellow of the Royal Photographic
Society and has an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from the Massachusetts
College of Arts. |
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John
Stanmeyer, born in Illinois in 1964, is a co-founding member of VII and a
contract photographer with Time Magazine since 1998. For nearly a
decade he has been focusing on Asian social issues and the rapid changes
taking place throughout the entire region. Prior to moving to Hong Kong in
1996, Stanmeyer documented the crisis in South Sudan, Eastern European social
change after the fall of Communism, as well as numerous trips to Haiti to
record the endless social injustices happening to the island nation. After
starting photography as a fashion photographer in Italy in the early 1980s
and working for such noted magazines as Harper's Bazaar and Andy Warhol's
magazine Interview, he completely left the fashion industry and turned his
camera towards social commentary. For the past
six years he has been working on a book about AIDS throughout Asia, as well
as continuing his photographic documentation for another book on the radical
changes in Indonesia since 1997. Stanmeyer
has been the recipient of numerous honors including the Robert Capa, Magazine
Photographer of the Year, as well as numerous World Press and Picture of the
Year awards. John
Stanmeyer lives in Indonesia with his wife, a writer, and their two sons. |