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Pictures of the Day: Mali and Elsewhere

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Photos from Mali, Israel, India and more.

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The Raging Debate Over Objectivity and Transparency

The objectivity argument I wrote about this month continues to simmer. In the interests of making this blog a continuing conversation about journalism issues, large and small, I’m posting a few of the most substantial pieces on this subject that I’ve seen in recent weeks.

Tom Kent, the standards editor for The Associated Press, wrote a strong defense of objectivity for the Ethical Journalism Network.

He wrote:

That everyone understands objectivity differently makes it a dangerously fuzzy concept, easy road kill in the rush to new journalistic techniques. We dismiss it at our peril.

At heart, objective journalism sets out to establish the facts about a situation, report fairly the range of opinion around it nd take a first cut at what arguments are the most reasonable. To keep the presentation rigorous, journalists should have professional reporting and editing skills (be they staff or independent journalists, paid or unpaid). To show their commitment to balance, journalists should keep their personal opinions to themselves.

Jeff Greenfield, a longtime television reporter and analyst, now a commentator for Yahoo News, explained that in the interests of objectivity, he did not vote for many years.

Jay Rosen, a New York University professor, wrote a blog post in direct response to my column. He sees a new and better system emerging: “Accuracy and verification, fairness and intellectual honesty - traditional virtues for sure - join up with transparency, ‘show your work,! ’ the re-voicing of individual journalists, fact-checking …”

And the journalist Matthew Ingram, writing for PaidContent.org, wrote that it’s too late anyway to keep reporters “impartial” in the traditional sense - the horse has left the barn â€" and he notes, “In the long run, it’s worth asking what we can gain by allowing reporters to be human beings while they do their jobs, instead of only asking what we lose by doing so …”

And in a sense, I followed up on the column myself when I questioned the unusual first-person voice in a front-page story by the reporter Scott Shane about the former Central Intelligence Agency official John Kiriakou. It wasn’t in keeping with traditional ideas about objectivity, but its transparenc with the reader about the reporter’s role fended off potential problems.

One of my favorite responses came from Damien Cave, The Times’s correspondent in Mexico, on Twitter, who brought up a crucial element that I had not addressed head-on: fairness.

In a swiftly changing journalism world, it’s a debate that’s worth continuing to explore. And I doubt that this is the last we’ll hear of it.



Looking Back, With Nostalgia and Pain

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At first glance, there’s nothing extraordinary about Yang Seung-woo’s photograph of two boys leaping playfully across mounds of earth (slide 7). In many ways, it does not fit in well with the rest of the images that make up his project “The Best Days.”

But Mr. Yang sees a lot in that moment, in those carefree steps.

“It represents life and death,” he said.

The setting is a Korean cemetery. The boys are playing around the grave of Mr. Yang’s close friend, a high school buddy who hanged himself after a short, but hard life in Korea’s gang world and in prison. It was a world â€" and fate â€" that almost claimed Mr. Yang, too.

Mr. Yang â€" who was born in 1966 in Kwangju, Korea â€" took the picture in 2004, when he’d already been living in Japan for seven years. He shot it on one of many return visits to his homeland, recalling the life he once lived.

Two years earlier, while considering his friend’s short life during the funeral, he had been saddened by what he was sure would be an even shorter legacy: within a few months, most people would forget the young man.

Mr. Yang could not. The two had met during their first year of h! igh school. Together, Mr. Yang said, they were “not good boys.” Mr. Yang moved from school to school. In their second or third year of high school, his friend went to prison after being convicted of murder. By the time he was released, younger men had become powerful figures in the Korean Kangpae, the criminal underworld. His friend became a flunky. Ashamed and embarrassed, he ultimately took his own life.

Mr. Yang felt as if he had to do something, both to salve his sadness and memorialize his friend. And so the next year, he started photographing. He was studying photography at Tokyo Polytechnic University and had decided that if he didn’t make a big change in his life, he wouldn’t be able to escape the world that he was luring him ever deeper. He was tired of the fear that he’d be stabbed just walking down the wrong street.

DESRIPTIONYang Seung-woo A woman traveling to Tokyo by train to sell clothing.

Korea had become too small. That’s why he had moved to Japan in 1997 to learn the language, and later, photography. At the time, Mr. Yang was not a full a member of the Kangpae. He and his friends were on the edges of the criminal life, toying with the possibility of entering that world, though free - they thought - of its consequences. But he did begin to worry about living a life that wouldn’t be so much about youthful mischief as it was about crime.

“It’s not exciting; it’s not fun,” he said through a translator in Japanese. “You’re not doing it with your friends.”

He remained close with those friends, though â€" in particular, with four who agreed to be photographed. He wanted to create a record of their lifestyle, looking back at his youthful days through a somewhat rose-colored lens (in black-and-white).

Other photog! raphers h! ave documented the lives of gangsters â€" like Jocelyn Bain Hogg, whose projects documented the British underworld. Mr. Yang’s access was different. These are his close friends. All four were open to being photographed â€" perhaps persuaded, he joked, because he was once the strongest of the group.

But Mr. Yang, too, was open. Despite the nature of some images â€" sex, gambling, alcohol â€" there was nothing he didn’t want to show. He sought to present an honest visual document, to portray the lifestyle as he’d known it. At the same time, he was working through his own feelings, photographing life as he saw it.

Mark Pearson, the owner of Zen Foto Gallery, where “The Best Days” was exhibited in November, said the series is central to Mr. Yang’s work.

Yet it wasn’t the first of his projects that Mr. Pearson showed at Zn Foto, which is in the Roppongi district of Tokyo. Earlier, Mr. Yang’s “less extreme” photos of Gonta, a homeless man he documented closely, were exhibited.

“Back in Korea,” Mr. Pearson said of that work, “it’s extremely powerful.”

In Tokyo, where Mr. Yang has now lived for 16 years, he has been documenting night life in the Shinjuku district - and in particular, Kabukichō, a red-light district that has parallels with his old haunts in Korea.

DESCRIPTIONYang Seung-woo Back in Japan.

While “The Best Days” was largely finished in 2006, Mr. Yang is still working on the project, and others that focus on the idea of memory. But despite the nostalgic tone of! his work! , he does not want to return to Korea, preferring instead to travel elsewhere. Living in Japan on an artist’s visa, he finances his photography by picking up odd jobs.

His life, he said, is “not so easy.”

Yang Seung-woo’s work appeared on the blog Invisible Photographer Asia in December, shortly after the release of his book, “The Best Days,” which was published by Zen Foto Books. More images appear on IPA and on his Web site. Follow @kerrimac, @ZenFotoGallery and @nytimesphoto on Twitter.



Pictures of the Day: Syria and Elsewhere

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Photos from Syria, Mali, South Africa and more.

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