1. DECEMBER, 2013
Between a documentary and
Words
Photography
Inspiration
A FICTIONAL IMAGE
DEADLINE
EVERY
SECOND
By
KEN KOBRÉ &
JOHN HEWITT
How to recognise and perceive
the actual truth in the flood of
various images in the world
of the 21st century ?
www.artkontaktbmi.com

3. Briefing
The documentary
“Deadline Every
Second” takes you
behind the scenes with
photojournalists of the
Associated Press
Ken Kobré
the West Bank and Gaza to Israel).
You will be there as they capture
still images ranging from sports
and light features to danger and
grief. They cover demonstrations in
Greece and San Francisco, the earthquake in Haiti, a US Marine patrol in
Afghanistan, an assassination attempt
in Pakistan. They share strategies for
Deadline Every Second:
On Assignment With 12 Associated
Press Photojournalists, 56 min
Producer: KEN KOBRÉ
Co-producer: JOHN HEWITT
The AP sends 3,000 pictures every day. More than a million pictures
a years. Over a billion people a day
see Associated Press photographs on
the pages of their newspapers, magazines, and in the relentless roll of
Internet news coverage flashing on
computer screens.
The documentary “Deadline Every
Second” takes you behind the
scenes with photojournalists of the
Associated Press, the world’s largest news picture agency. You will be
on deadline with 12 top AP photographers in the U.S. (from California
wildfires to Wall Street), Europe
(from 10 Downing St. to the Tour de
France) and the Middle East (from
Photograph by Jeff Chiu—AP
approaching an assignment, whether it’s the arrival of a wax figure of
Obama for a museum, or a fiery clash
in the West Bank. Be there at the center of the action with front-line shooters who cover stories behind global
headlines that range from comic features to international tragedy.
“Deadline Every Second: On
Assignment with 12 Associated Press
Photojournalists” will change how
you look at news images, especially if
they bear the credit AP Photo.

4. Photograph by
Stane Jeršič—BAST

5. ESSAYS
nov. 20 / 2012
6 | Editorial
BRIEFING
BRIEFING
Images of the
World “Beyond
Us”
27 | Mateja Rek
Artkontakt
8 | Lightbox
Chris Carlson
ARTKONTAKT
11 | Miro Petek
37 | Creativity.
Photography.
Inspiration.
Photo –
Not Merely an
Addition to the
Text
What a Wonderful
World
Photograph by Barbara Jakše Jeršič—BAST
ANALY S I S
15
ON THE COVER:
Searching for a Just Photographic
and Cinematic Image
Andrej Šprah
Publisher:
ARTKONTAKT
artkontakttm@gmail.com
tel.: +386 (0)5 994 71 10
Photograph by
Jeff Chiu —AP
For me, the most important thing in a photo is the story through which I acquaint people with what is happening and offer the reader and viewer a
new side of understanding. But if you want to persuade people to care about what is in the photo, you have to make them look at the shot by way of
aesthetics and the right moment. You arouse their interest in what is happening. The people I want to reach with my photo are perhaps those that do
not read the newspaper and do not care about what goes on in the world. I want to make such people look at the photo and prevent them from not
responding to it. I want them to realize that their ignorance is not justifiable. I want a photo that arouses the interest of people at a bus stop or in the
street so that because of the drama in it they stop and buy a newspaper.— Ed Ou (photojournalist)

6. Editorial
Searching for The Mirror
How to subtly word the
documentary, relentless
photographic and filmic
images shown in the exceptional documentary on
Associated Press photojournalists? How to recognise
and perceive the actual
truth in the flood of various
images in the world of the
21st century where, through
the prism of competitvness
and the spontaneous development of new ways of
communication, dynamical
technologies unstoppably
transform our perception of
the world? The answer also
lies in our subjective responsibility towards rendering
the truth, our personal
commitment to an in-depth
understanding of time and
space. If we outline the arc
from the introductory text
“Photo – Not Merely an
Addition to the Text” by
a former journalist and a
Member of the Slovenian
Parliament Miro Petek,
the current acting General
Director of the Directorate
for Media at the Ministry
of Education, Science,
Culture and Sports of
the Republic of Slovenia,
to the essay “Searching
for a Just Photographic
and Cinematic Image” by
Andrej Šprah, Head of the
Research and Publishing
Department of the
Slovenian Cinematheque,
we could say that objectivity in media reality is
a myth, an ideal worthy
of special attention. It
doubtlessly requires the
individual moral commitment and a high degree
of ethics of everyone who
produces, uses and reflects
images in small media
environments as well as
the broadest international
media space.
Barbara Jakše Jeršič
ARTKONTAKT
Photograph by Stane Jeršič—BAST

7. Briefing
Collecting photographs means
collecting the world.
“If there is a crisis in world photojournalism today, it is a crisis of
editing and publishing, not of photography.” JOHN G. MORRIS
Guenther Cartwright, recounts how
the question “Is photojournalism
dead?” or the slogan “Photojournalism
is dead!” has found its way into newspaper headlines in practically every
decade.
3.000
Pictures AP sends
every day
12
Top AP photographers
in the U.S.
8
Countries
1
Photograph by Stane Jeršič—BAST
Documentary
Deadline Every
Second

8. Briefing
Lightbox

9. Photograph by Chris Carlson—AP

10. Photograph by
Julie Jacobson—AP

11. Briefing
The film necessarily opens many general
questions regarding the
journalistic profession
and its ethics.
Miro Petek
I was a journalist for a quarter of a century. Let me correct myself, I still am a
journalist because a journalist always
remains a journalist even when their
professional path leads them somewhere else. And I myself feel that way.
Journalism is always with me even when
I am on the other side. This distance,
the experience from the other side, can
be very useful, since it offers a different
view of journalists and journalism.
I watched Deadline Every Second
with great interest. Several times. It is
an excellent film by excellent creators,
which has to reach the expert and general public. The film pays homage to
photojournalists and photojournalism.
It shows the fascination of photojournalism and the journalistic profession
in general. It indicates how much adrenalin this profession releases. It is true
that not everybody feels this journalistic adrenalin equally; most do not even
have it and remain at the level of journalistic clerks. To be the first, to be edgy,
to be exclusive, to be watched, to be
read, to be cited, to take the best photo, to write a good, resounding text, to
investigate a story and overthrow the
government, uncover large-scale corruption, to intervene in the background, to
make a report from a war zone be read,
to be aired on the most important television stations, to receive awards. That
Photograph by Stane Jeršič—BAST
is the adrenalin of full-blooded journalism, may the journalists admit it or
not. To uncover what others are trying to hide, to take your camera where
most do not dare to go. The best or the
most resounding journalistic and photojournalistic stories today come precisely from hot spots and dangerous areas.
The World Press Photo award usually
goes to a photojournalist who managed
to capture a tragedy, violence, human or
natural disaster, cruelty of war, human
drama or death.

12. Briefing
The media world is also global and
the film necessarily opens many general questions regarding the journalistic
profession and its ethics, as well as the
question regarding our place in this, the
place of Slovenia and Slovenian journalism. In the Slovenian press, photojournalists do not carry enough weight and
do not get enough attention, although
we do have a few excellent photojournalists. Editors do not consider photos
‘PHOTO – NOT MERELY AN
ADDITION TO THE TEXT
.’
―MIRO PETEK
as elements that are equal to, sometimes
even more important than the text. All
too often, photos serve merely as an addition to the text, as its illustration,
editors equip it with their “linguistic
message”. It has become standard practice in Slovenia, for photojournalists’
shots to be concentrated on a few pages,
just to get the taste of them, while the
role of a photographer is all too often assumed by the journalists themselves. It
is a known fact that you cannot write
and take photos at the same time. But
above all, you cannot simultaneously
do both very well, which is why the dichotomy between a photographer and
a journalist is necessary. It is quite awkward when a journalist first interviews
someone and then grabs a camera, usually of low quality, and starts taking
photos. It is unpleasant for the journalist, but even more so for the interviewee
who gets the feeling that their not worthy of a professional photo. In Slovenian
media space, savings are made on photojournalists and consequently good photos, which is why photos are the inferior
part of the Slovenian press. When media owners and editors take a look at
the reasons for the drastic decrease in
print media circulation in recent years,
they will have to examine their own responsibility and not only point to the
new media and difficult economic conditions. They will have to ask themselves whether they have used the entire
range of media creativity and attraction that a good photo offers. If nine
photo editors at The New York Times
go through fifteen thousand photos a
day and, in the end, select around a hundred of them, then it is evident what
significance mainstream media ascribe
to newspaper photos and also to those
that create them. Thus, with their approach to newspaper photos, big world
newspapers and magazines are saying
that photojournalism is not dead. Such
media have their own audiences, which
are more demanding, more educated, which do not accept instant media
production and offer and want something more than internet pollution and

13. Photograph by Lefteris Pitarakis—AP
over-communication.
Just like objectivity is a myth in
journalism, an ideal that can never be
reached, so, too, we cannot speak of
objectivity in a newspaper photo, although it does freeze the moment in
time. Leafing through Slovenian newspapers, we can immediately notice that
some almost disdain or despise the reportage form of a newspaper photo and
use it primarily for interpretation or
evaluation. This is part of the context
of today’s media landscape in Slovenia,
where the borders between journalistic
genres have disappeared or, rather, journalistic genres are ignored, reports are
commented and interpreted and even
an ordinary piece of news is becoming a
commentary.
MIRO PETEK, who graduated in journalism from the Faculty of Social Sciences in
Ljubljana, worked as a journalist for the daily
Večer and contributed to many other Slovenian
newspapers for more than two decades. He
received the main two Slovenian journalistic awards for his investigative journalism
(Consortium Veritatis and Jurčič Award) and
the Croatian journalistic award Goose Feather.
He was acquainted with Western journalism during an educational course at the The
Guardian in London. Because of his journalistic uncovering of the sidetracks of Slovenian
transition, there was an attempt on his life in
2001. The contractor and attackers remained
unpunished. He served as a member of the
National Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia
for two terms. Currently, he is the acting
General Director of the Directorate for Media
at the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture
and Sports. He is the author of three books:
Upanje v Dolini smrti (2008), V Sovinem gnezdu (2010) and Hvala za besedo (2011).

14. Photograph by Khalil Hamra—AP

15. A N A LYSIS
Visual Storytelling
The main tendency of
the film – showing the reality of photojournalistic
work process.
Andrej Šprah
Deadline Every Second (USA, 2011, hereinafter Deadline) is a documentary conceived and co-signed by cinematographer
and producer Ken Kobré and co-produc-
Photograph by Barbara Jakše Jeršič—BAST
er and editor John Hewitt, which at the
heart of its thematic commitment foregrounds the question of contemporary
photojournalism. Specifically: in its fundamental conceptions, the film confronts
us with the work process in which photojournalists create images that convey the
truth of events in the world every day, every hour, practically every second. The photojournalists that the film follows on their
assignments are the renowned names of
the leading Associated Press (hereinafter
AP) photographers: Oded Balilty, Chris
Carlson, Jeff Chiu, Richard Drew, Khalil
Hamra, Julie Jacobsen, Mark Lennihan,
Bebeto Matthews, Lefteris Pitarakis,
Laurent Rebours, Marcio Jose Sanchez and
Tara Todras-Whitehill. The fields of interest they work in range from “covering” the
everyday of political figures, sports spectacles, religious ceremonies and the structures of monetary institutions to the hot
spots of humanitarian disasters, armed conflicts, political demonstrations and terrorist attacks. At the same time, the film gives
us an insight into the workings and editorial
decision-making of the agency that the portrayed photojournalists work for.
The two filmmakers have in-depth
knowledge of the topics and (mass)media activities that the film explores and
problematises. Ken Kobré has, among other things, made the documentaries Inside
Sports Illustrated (2006) and Shooting
Stars: Assignment Cannes Film Festival
(2002), while John Hewitt is a documentary filmmaker, who signed Smokestack
Lightnin’: The Life of Howlin’ Wolf (2005)
and worked as a director, co-producer, scriptwriter and editor on Landmines

16. ANA LY S IS
of the Heart: Cambodia’s Struggle for
Reconciliation (1999). In addition to their
“practical” activities, we have to point out
also the theoretical, journalistic and educational aspect of their work: both are professors at San Francisco State University,
where Kobré teaches photojournalism and
Hewitt documentary production, while
their bibliographies include a series of influential texts. If we highlight only the
most prominent works, then we cannot
overpass Kobré’s Photojournalism: The
Professionals’ Approach (Focal Press,
2008, which is already the sixth edition
of this book) and his recently published
Videojournalism: Multimedia Storytelling
(2012), or Hewitt’s Documentary
Filmmaking: A Contemporary Field
Guide (Oxford University Press, 2009 –
co-authored with documentarian Gustav
Vazquez).
With its informative depth, the main
tendency of the film – showing the reality of photojournalistic work process
and following the “path” of a press photo from its creation to publication – opens
a series of exciting questions faced by two
‘JOHN CORNER IS
CONVINCED THAT
DOCUMENTARY
VISIONS ARE MOVING
DECISIVELY TOWARDS
LIGHTER TOPICS.’
“endangered” forms of contemporary visual and audiovisual production: photojournalism and documentary film. We have
used quotation marks for the expression
“endangered” because we believe there to
be a paradox in the prophecies (or even realisations) that again and again predict (or
detect) the exhaustion, crisis or obsoleteness if not the end or death of the present

17. forms of image creation, due to technological, social, cultural, economic or political reasons. But the opposite perspective based
on the findings of authors who argue that
every (audio)visual creation is “incomplete” and “unfinished” – from André Bazin
and Roland Barthes on the side of theoreticians, to Santiago Álvarez and Abbas
Kiarostami on the side of the filmmakers
Photograph by Diaz Elian—AP
(if we focus only on cinema) – proves the
inadequacy of such “realisations”. The beliefs of the opponents of the finality theses
can thus be encapsulated in the presupposition that every new technological breakthrough generates a situation in which the
visual approach begins to question itself in
accordance with the new operating conditions, consequently revitalising and thereby

18. ANA LY S IS
Photograph by Tara Todras-Whitehill—AP
practically “reinventing” itself. Such processes, of course, do not take place in a social
vacuum, but always leave a deep mark in
the sociocultural and also politico-economic
relations or even influence changes.
In the present context, every crucial,
“major event” exploited by the media has
spurred heated discussions on the decline,
exhaustion or less privileged position of
photojournalism in comparison to the new
technologies and media. Thus, for example, Guenther Cartwright, recounts how
the question “Is photojournalism dead?” or
the slogan “Photojournalism is dead!” has
found its way into newspaper headlines
in practically every decade; that is, every
time a new form of information technology boomed: television, cable programmes,
world wide web, etc. But not even the most
direct “live” visual reporting ever definitively endangered photographic images, although it definitely forced the print and
(later) online media systems to rethink and
consolidate themselves. At the level of cinematic documentariness, perhaps the most
pressing is the intervention of John Corner,
who with his theorem of post-documentary culture declared the end of the established conception of documentariness at the
turn of the millennium. Corner is convinced
that documentary visions are moving decisively towards lighter topics of “popular
factual entertainment”, whereby the emphasis on their “classical” norms – according
to which they are supposed to function as a
”project of democratic civil rights“, as “journalistic investigation and interpretation“,
as “radical research and exposition of alternative perspectives” – has fatefully shifted
towards adapting to the demands of “entertainment”. This is supposed to have a crucial
influence on the degradation of the status
of a specific “documentary authority”, the
relativisation of the role of “social actors”
and the “epistemological and emotional participation” of the audience. The final consequence of such changes is supposed to lead
to the exhaustion of the current or traditional documentary paradigm, which is basically supposed to represent something
that belongs to the “project of political and
cultural modernism”. It is needless to say

19. Photograph by Khalil Hamra—AP
that practical experience again and again
disproves such prophesies, superiorly illustrated in the context of photography by the
doyen of photojournalism, John G. Morris,
in his 1998 autobiography Get the Picture:
“If there is a crisis in world photojournalism
today, it is a crisis of editing and publishing,
not of photography.”
Kobré and Hewitt do not problematise the mentioned questions directly; it is
the selection of creative approaches itself
that points to them in the “background”.
The inaugural moment of the film, which
‘IT’S THROUGH THEIR
PICTURES THAT READERS
AND VIEWERS CAN SEE –
AND TRULY UNDERSTAND
– WHAT’S HAPPENING IN
THE WORLD AROUND US.’
―KEN KOBRÉ
premiered at Corcoran Gallery of Art
(Washington, DC) and is also available
online, already foregrounds the equally
Photograph by Richard Drew—AP
pressing “existential” question of a documentary as a cinema or television format, as
internet content or artistic “artefact”, whose
autochthonous “exhibition” venue lies in
galleries and museums of modern art. This
exceedingly important dilemma of visual
art forms and their uses is particularly relevant today – in a situation tossed by the
constant bursts of “technological storms”,
which in the audiovisual field can scarcely be adequately followed. It is precisely
the last decade that has been witness to intense processes in which the area of showing and consuming moving images has been
shifting from the established media environment to the practically unlimited virtual reality of the World Wide Web, on the
one hand, and the “consecrated” spaces dedicated to “contemporary art”, on the other.
Consequently, this leads to new reflections
on the fundamental principles of moving
images, where the cinematic aspect is only one form of the continuation of film by
“other means” and where the possibility of
being in the “film world” without actually
having to go to the “cinema” is of essential

20. AN A LY S IS
importance. Not only new technologies and
digitalisation, but also the “artefactisation”
of film, which, by entering the area of art
galleries and museums, has finally received
the status of an art object/event, bespeak
the far-reaching nature of the mentioned
beliefs that film will yet have to be invented. It is precisely this scope of self-reflection
and reinvention that Deadline belongs to
with its thematic, formal and methodologi-
‘FOR ME, THE MOST
IMPORTANT THING IN
A PHOTO IS THE STORY
THROUGH WHICH I
ACQUAINT PEOPLE WITH
WHAT IS HAPPENING AND
OFFER THE READER AND
VIEWER A NEW SIDE OF
UNDERSTANDING.’
―ED OU
cal emphases.
We want to point out three tendencies that Deadline advocates: the tendency
to cinematically capture the decisive moment of the transformation of profilmic
events into a photographic image ; the tendency to convey a story that affirms the actuality and the moment of the creation of
a photo already taken; the tendency to argue the construction of meaning of the
featured photo. As the additional, fourth
aspect, let us point out the question of the
“feedback” that the image that has already
been “exploited” by the media establishes
in the process of its making. For a better understanding, we will first analyse the film’s
structure: at the basic level, it is composed
of five episodes (ranging from “news”, “humanitarian disasters”, “sports spectacles”,
“pilgrimage rituals” to “struggles and conflicts”), in addition to the prologue and epilogue. Within the episodes, we encounter

21. Photograph by Tara Todras-Whitehill—AP
eighteen “assignments” of twelve photojournalists in eight countries of the world.
Their assignments are either contemporaneous, so that the filmmaker’s camera is at
the scene of the photographing, or past and
we watch a sort of a “photoreportage” in
which the photographers explain the story
of how the images that have already played
their role in the media were made. In rare
“interjections”, we see the interventions of
AP editors, who explain some of the main
points of their photographers’ work. If on
the basis of the above outline we “dissect”
the film according to its individual chapters,
i.e., episodes, which cover particular photojournalistic assignments, then our structural scheme would look sort of like this:
The first tendency – the one of capturing the moment and the specificity of a photo being taken – marks the

22. Photograph by Stane Jeršič—BAST
‘THERE IS THIS MOTTO
THAT SAYS THAT AS
AN INDEPENDENT
JOURNALIST YOU
SHOULDN’T ACT,
YOU SHOULDN’T GET
INVOLVED, YOU ARE A
FLY ON THE WALL.’
―LEFTERIS PITARAKIS
prologue (Tara Todras-Whitehill reporting on the Palestinian demonstrations in
Ramallah) and the majority of “assignments” in the film: Pitarakis’s waiting for
the British Prime Minister to leave his residency; Drew’s coverage of the happening at
the New York Stock Exchange; Sanchez’s
search for the most adamant opponents
of the ban on same-sex marriages in front
of the San Francisco court; Pitarakis’s

23. A N A LYSIS
coverage of the demonstrations outside
the Iranian embassy in London; Carlson’s
breaking through to the heart of the fires
in California; Rebour’s racing with cyclists
at the Tour de France; Julie Jacobsen’s
search for the most dramatic moments of
an NBA game; Chiu’s coverage of President
Obama’s wax doll on its way to the San
Francisco Wax Museum; Lennihan’s fascination over the field of solar cells on the
roof of the Rockefeller Center; Matthews’s
portrayal of an interviewee on a TV show;
Hamra’s re-experience of the carefree moments of youngsters on a beach in blocked
Gaza; Todras-Whitehill’s attempts at a real perspective of capturing the Catholic
Easter pilgrimage in Jerusalem and its continuation in the “Holy Fire” ceremony of
Ethiopian Christians; Balilty’s prediction
of the reaction of Israeli police in its conflict
with Palestinian demonstrators; and Tara
Todras-Whitehill’s participation in the funeral of a killed Palestinian civilian.
The second tendency – the of explaining the conception of the photos, without the presence of the film camera – can
be seen in Drew’s description of how the
photos of “people falling into the abyss of
death” from the burning WCT tower and
the collapse of the “twins” on 9/11 were
made; in Pitarakis’s memory of a Kurd protester’s self-immolation and his explanation
of how he photographed a suicide attack
on Benazir Buto (and was himself wounded
in the process); in Jacobson’s description of
photographing the catastrophic aftermath
of the earthquake in Haiti; in (her) account
of patrolling with marines in Afghanistan;
in Balilty’s analysis of how he took the photo of a protestor on the West Bank flying
into the wall of a shielded police cordon; in
Hamra’s description of the shocking consequences of an unexpected bombing of
Gaza; and in Pitarakis’s intervention in the
epilogue about the photographers breaking
the “principle of non-interference” (which
we focus on in more detail below).
The third tendency – the one of the
determination of meaning – is present in
practically all “explanations”. In them, the
reporters not only disclose the circumstances of the event or relate the “stories” of individual shots – after all, it is the photo itself
that best tells its own story – but often provide (either indirectly or quite openly) also their fundamental individual stance to
their work and the world. In these emphases, two completely opposite viewpoints become crystallized: the attitude of as great
an indifference as possible and the attitude
of direct emotional involvement. The first
is encapsulated in Balilty’s explanation: “I
would never put my personal feelings into
the picture. I put it all aside and concentrate
only on the images and on the light to tell
the story and to put as much information as
I can put in the image – that’s how I work.”
Or Drew’s remark that, while recording the
events of 9/11, he simply switched to “autopilot”. On the other hand, Julie Jacobsen

24. AN A LY S IS
talks about emotional involvement, stressing that a photojournalist’s personal emotional reaction is always channelled into
the photos. Sanchez and Hamra’s testimonies also bespeak this; when describing the
event of taking a photo, they cannot (or will
not?) hide the tears in their eyes, which despite seeing the innumerable chilling scenes
of life are still capable of crying.The last tendency – the one of reflecting the feedback
between the photographed traumatic event
Photograph by Stane Jeršič—BAST
and the reaction the photo has already
evoked in public – can be seen especially in
the photo of the mortally wounded Lance
Corporal Joshua Bernard in Afghanistan;
in Balilty’s image of the protestor in front
of a police human shield (which won the
Pulitzer Award); and in Pitarakis’s epilogue
sequence on reporters interfering in the
happening. The first image provoked an extraordinary response in the US, since even
the Secretary of Defense at the time, Robert
Gates, argued for its removal from the public eye. But the editorial decision for its publication insisted that the photo showed the
moment of a soldier’s death in “a very public war; the young man was fighting on behalf of the government” which is why it is
of the utmost importance that “our viewers
and audience see what was happening and
see the very real cause of the war, and this
young marine’s ultimate sacrifice”.Rancièr’s
reflection, whose fundamental tendency
aims at the pressing issue of the possibility
or the right to show unbearable, intolerable,
unimaginable or unacceptable images (especially images of atrocities that people are
capable of inflicting upon each other), thus
– also in the present constellation – radicalises some of the essential problems that
Kobré and Hewitt confront us with. At the
core of the problematic, there thus remains
unresolved (and perhaps irresolvable) the
highlighted ambiguity that journalists encounter in the filed practically every day.
‘IN DIRECT CINEMA, IF YOU
LIKE, THE FILMED EVENT
DOES NOT PRE-EXIST THE
FILM OR THE SHOOT BUT
,
IS PRODUCED BY THEM. ’
―JEAN-LOUIS COMOLLI
Their actions are always conditioned by
their individual commitment, which is, in
turn, subject to the fundamental integrity of their perception of the world. Despite

25. Photograph by Tara Todras-Whitehill—AP
a certain “subjection” to the media system,
their work does not serve as a mere addition
to the written news, it is not an illustration,
a link in the narrative chain, but is always a
sovereign, autonomous story of an individual experience. This is why it is of the utmost
importance for the photographer to assume
the right stand, in order to capture the binding Benjaminian “spark of contingency“ of
the here and now with which reality has
seared the nature of the image, enabling
it to enter the cycle of history. This is also
what, in the exchange of images, views and
thoughts, can/does lead to a reaction – individual responsibility of each person that
creates, uses, accepts and reflects them: responsibility in the world and to the world.
ANDREJ ŠPRAH, PhD (Media Studies),
is a film theoretician, writer and author of
numerous essays and discussion in which he
explores the phenomena of contemporary
documentarism and socially engaged cinema.
His monographs include the study “Utrujen
od podobe svojega pogleda” in Pogib in počas
(1997), reference monograph Dokumentarni
film in oblast (1998), a collection of essays on post-independence Slovenian films
Osvobajanje pogleda (2004), a book on contemporary documentary film Prizorišče
odpora (2010) and the discussion Vračanje realnosti (2011), which examines the questions
of new realism in world cinema. His contributions are published mostly in KINO!, Ekran,
Kinotečnik and Časopis za kritiko znanosti.

26. Photograph by Lefteris Pitarakis—AP

27. Briefing
Understanding Reality
Together with the words
that describe them, these
images form the basis for
understanding reality.
Mateja Rek
Images of the world “beyond us”, a world
that is not part of our immediate perception,
have become an integral part of our lives.
They are selected for and served to us by the
mass media.
They are provided every day and accessible practically incessantly, with their topicality, urgency and newness being of crucial
importance. The photos and footage offered
to the viewer or reader as part of a journalistic story in describing a certain event importantly condition the perception of this event,
its informative value and interpretation, be
it a sports or a cultural event in one’s environment or a conflict in a maelstrom of war
somewhere at the other end of the world.
Together with the words that describe them,
these images form the basis for understanding reality, the world around us, and in the
long term function as the organising principle of our collective memory. We can even
say that we live in a “mediated” society since
many of our ideas, knowledge and, probably most importantly, values do not proceed
merely from our everyday, direct experiences.
Our understanding of the world is to a significant extent shaped by contemporary media that offer a “packaged” version of events
and topics, which we consume as part of our
everyday. We can consume them at home, in
the comfort of our living-room sofa or in a
safe and warm office in front of a high-tech
computer screen. But rarely do we think
about the path that the photos and the footage make from the actual event (be it battles
in the turbulent and dangerous Afghanistan,
conflicts in Palestine or a basketball game in
New York) to our or the viewer’s reflection
Photograph by Barbara Jakše Jeršič—BAST
or knowledge on this event. Deadline Every
Second foregrounds precisely the creators of
such images – photographers and journalists – who with their presence at the scene
of these events in their unique way represent the “eyes” of the media audience. Their
choice of the person, event, gesture, expression, emotion, etc., that they devote attention
to (and thereby leave out the others) in the
given circumstances importantly determines
what the viewer or reader of a mass medium finds out and how this event and thereby
the reality of the current time is interpreted.
Photographers and journalists thus play an

28. Briefing
important and responsible role in the contemporary world and with their work create the weltanshaung of millions of people all
over the world.
With globalisation, their reach has become even wider and, at least potentially,
they can have an influence on the formation
of global awareness and perhaps even collective memory, although, despite globalisation, local social circumstances and cultures
still play an exceptionally important role in
‘THE JOURNALISTS
CHOOSE, SELECT
,
FORM AND PASS ON
INFORMATION AND
OPINIONS ON CURRENT
EVENTS/PHENOMENA VIA
MASS MEDIA.’
―MATEJA REK
interpreting reality. Despite the fascinating
nature of the journalistic profession and the
fact that the stories about the reporters in the
field can have much media appeal, the journalists themselves are rarely at the centre of
media reports.
The general public most often knows their
work, the results, the stories of “others for
others”, which they disseminate, while they
find out very little about them and the work
that led to these stories. This is why the production and popularisation of films such as
Deadline Every Second is an important contribution to raising the public’s “literacy”
about media reality and represents a sort of
homage to the creators of media images.
At the same time, it reminds us of the
meaning of responsibility and ethics in journalistic work, which remain significant
challenges of journalism regardless of the circumstances, which can range from the logic
of capital and the pressures of political elites
to the dimension of time, as Deadline Every
Second nicely illustrates. What is important
is the presence, to be at the right place at the
right time, not prematurely and not too late.

29. Photograph by Barbara Jakše Jeršič—BAST
It is important to immediately and quickly disseminate and “serve” the acquired images and information to the reader. But we
must be aware that, with their presence, the
journalists can also determine the importance of a certain event since their absence
can mean that without the media coverage
the event will remain unknown and therefore
insignificant.
The journalists choose, select, form and
pass on information and opinions on current
events/phenomena via mass media. But we
must not forget that no medium is capable of
conveying the truth about reality.
It is always an interpretation of reality,
which depends on the editors’ concept of the
mass medium, their instructions, the journalist’s perception and skill, all of it being part
of the broader social context, whose zeitgeist
gives the undertone and ascribes meaning
to events about which the journalists tell us
their stories either with words or images.

30. Photograph by Stane Jeršič—BAST

31. IF YOU
DON’T
KNOW
WHAT’S
GOING ON,
YOU MIGHT
AS WELL
NOT BE
THERE
― SANTIAGO LYON—AP

32. IMAGES
“ BEYOND
US ”
― MATEJA REK
Photograph by Barbara Jakše Jeršič—BAST

34. Photograph by Oded Balilty—AP

37. Project is supported by:
REPUBLIC OF S LOVENIA
MINISTRY OF CULTURE

38. Project is supported by:
REPUBLIC OF S LOVENIA
MINISTRY OF CULTURE