World Press Photo heeft na de zojuist afgesloten jurering de discussie over digitale manipulatie aangezwengeld. Het blijkt dat ruim 20 procent van de foto’s die doordrongen tot de laatste ronde volgens de organisatie dermate digitaal was opgepoetst dat ze uit de wedstrijd zijn gehaald.
In het Engelse persbericht van World Press Photo gaat de nieuwe directeur dieper op de kwestie in:
Integrity of the entries
In this year’s contest, all participants were required to provide files as recorded by the camera for all images that proceed to the final stages of the contest. World Press Photo managing director Lars Boering says of the findings:
“Our contest rules clearly state that the content of the image should not be altered. This year’s jury was very disappointed to discover how careless some photographers had been in post-processing their files for the contest. When this meant a material addition or subtraction in the content of the image, it lead to the images being rejected from the contest.
“We believe there were no attempts to deceive or to mislead, but our independent experts found anomalies in a large number of files and presented their findings to the jury. According to the contest rules, only retouching of files that conforms to currently accepted standards in the industry is allowed, and the jury is the ultimate arbiter of these standards.
“It seems some photographers can’t resist the temptation to aesthetically enhance their images during post-processing either by removing small details to ‘clean up’ an image, or sometimes by excessive toning that constitutes a material change to the image. Both types of retouching clearly compromise the integrity of the image. Consequently, the jury rejected 20 percent of those entries that had reached the penultimate round of the contest and were therefore not considered for prizes.
“Last year World Press Photo published a report on the consensus regarding current industry standards, as they are applied internationally. There is clearly an urgent need to take this matter further. Over the coming months, we will be engaging in further dialogue with the international photojournalistic community to explore what we can learn from all this, and how we can create a deeper understanding of issues involved in the application of post-processing standards in professional photojournalism. Together we should find common ground about these standards and find out how they are changing. We will take the lead on this as it is a great concern to World Press Photo. We want to keep the standards high.”