PERPIGNAN, France — In December, the French photographer Marie Dorigny arrived in Lesbos, Greece, to document the refugee crisis there. Many of the migrants, fleeing war-torn countries and landing by boat, were women and children whose needs posed special challenges to the European Union, the United Nations and various nongovernmental organizations struggling to cope.
Amid the hundreds of photographers covering the humanitarian crisis, Ms. Dorigny focused exclusively on female migrants from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. She photographed women as they landed, through processing by the European Union and then as they journeyed to Germany, a country where many of them were to be settled — at least temporarily.
Her images, on display here this week at the Visa Pour l’Image photo festival, are particularly intimate, perhaps as a result of rare access to official refugee camps and transit centers where few other photographers are allowed. Doors were opened to her because the European Parliament funded the assignment.
Because of the economic and technological disruption in the media industry, paid photojournalism assignments have become fewer and briefer. Photojournalists have turned to governments, nongovernmental organizations and other nontraditional sources to fund expensive coverage of international stories they care about. This has ignited debates in the photography community about editorial independence and journalistic ethics.
“There are no more magazines that will send us on humanitarian social stories,” said Ms. Dorigny, who has worked as a photojournalist since 1989. “They don’t care anymore and they don’t want to put money on these stories. The NGOs are willing to use photo reporters, and it’s an opportunity for us to keep working on the stories we care about.”
In addition to Ms Dorigny’s photo essay, Visa Pour l’Image is displaying at least one other exhibit funded by a nongovernmental organization: Doctors Without Borders, also known as Médecins Sans Frontières, paid for Dominic Nahr’s striking photos from South Sudan.
Only a handful of magazines or newspapers worldwide still send photographers for international and long-term assignments, said Jean-François Leroy, director of the festival. He acknowledged that, at times, the relationships between photographers and NGOs could lead to work that is “more advertising or advocacy than journalism, ” but he said he showed work only from photographers with long journalistic track records.
“I’m only exhibiting photographers that I know well and can trust,” Mr. Leroy said. “I know that when Dominic Nahr is working for M.S.F. or Marie is working for the European Union Parliament they are journalists first, not commercial photographers.”
The European Parliament was a sponsor of the festival last year but is not this year, Mr. Leroy added. However, he did suggest several names of experienced female photojournalists to the European Parliament’s public relations department for the migrant project. Ms. Dorigny was chosen by the department in consultation with an outside advertising agency.
“We do many programs and events around human rights and we thought that photojournalism is an effective way to communicate those issues,” said Tanja Rudolf, a public relations officer for the European Parliament. “We want to support photojournalists not just because it’s a good way to illustrate what we do but also because journalism and a free press is part of the values of the European Parliament and a cornerstone of democracy.
“Given that photojournalism is a profession in trouble, we thought it would be nice to connect to it,” she said.
While the subject matter was assigned, Ms. Dorigny said she had complete editorial control of the project. She decided what photographs to take, which photos would be chosen and how they were captioned. Ms. Dorigny said that whenever she works for a nongovernmental organization, she uses a “very tight” contract to protect her copyright and assure that she is the only one deciding how she works in the field.
“If they don’t agree, I won’t work for them,” she said. “I don’t want to work by their rules.”
Photographers also face ethical dilemmas while working on editorial assignments, Ms. Dorigny said, when editors control which photos are used and the context in which they are placed.
“I don’t feel like I’m a less honest photojournalist because I work in partnership with NGOs or the U.N.,” she said. “With magazines, I often have people telling me what I should photograph and what I should not photograph.”
On many occasions, Ms. Dorigny said, major international magazines have agreed to assign her to stories that she suggested only if she is able to get additional funding either through government tourist offices or press offices or even private travel companies. It is not clear to her that newspapers and magazines, particularly in Europe, are pristine ethically. Many have clear political viewpoints and are owned by industrialists who openly seek to protect their outside businesses, she added.
“We photographers have to fight to preserve our ethical standards no matter who we are working for,” she said. “It’s on our shoulders.”
Sean Elliot, the chairman of the ethics committee of the United States-based National Press Photographers Association, is sympathetic to photographers who think they must look outside media organizations to fund important stories. But “public relations photos” he said, whether paid for by nongovernmental organizations, corporations or the White House, “cannot be presented as independent journalism.”
“There is a line between what is journalism and what is public relations or advocacy,” he said. “Ethically we have to acknowledge it, say who funds us and who’s in charge of making the decisions.
“I believe that the struggle for independent journalism as a source for accurate, fair coverage of the world’s events is important.”
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