L’affaire Pellegrin : le nouveau photojournalisme, son éthique et sa déontologie dictée par le marché (vitesse et spectacle [façon Guy Debord]).

© Paolo Pellegrin ("Shane Keller")

En avril 2012, des photographes de Magnum, descendent sur Rochester NY, « Kodakland », pour un épisode de « Postcards from America », projet conçu par Alec Soth et Jim Golberg. Ils ont quelques jours, avec le soutien des institutions photographiques locales pour faire des clichés pour cette opération blitz. Le projet reflète le désarroi du photojournalisme face à l’évolution de la presse illustrée, et la tentative de diversification de photographes de Magnum. Les plus anciens ont versé dans le marché de l’art ; les plus jeunes les ont suivi, flirtant aussi avec la mode et la publicité, essaient de se ré-inventer frisant parfois le suicide, et la superficialité « fun ».

Un nouveau chapitre a été alors entamé par Paolo Pellegrin : la soumission de certaines photographies prises en avril 2012 à Rochester au prix World Press Photo a franchi les limites de l’éthique et de la déontologie professionnelles. En avril 2012, Pellegrin prend la photo de Shane Keller primée par le WPP 2013. La légende qui l’accompagne la décrit comme le portrait d’un ancien tireur d’élite des marines américains, dans son garage situé dans le « Crescent », un quartier réputé de haute criminalité de Rochester. Un court texte accompagne cette légende présentant le quartier, un texte qui s’avèrera avoir été honteusement pillé dans un article de Michèle York publié en 2003 dans le New York Times, un copié-collé évident sans citation des sources – première erreur professionnelle. Il s’avère rapidement que de larges libertés ont été prises avec les faits. Shane Keller, est en fait, au moment de la prise de vue, un étudiant en photo-journalisme, escorte de Pellegrin à Rochester. Keller est effectivement un ex-marine qui s’est reconvertit au photo-journalisme dont il connait les règles, d’où son étonnement qu’il exprime dès la publication des résultats du World Press. En réalité, il n’habite pas le « Crescent » mais une une banlieue calme et bourgeoise de Rochester (Brighton). La photographie a été prise dans son garage. 

On attend toujours les excuses de Paolo Pellegrin, sa conduite en la matière est simplement inadmissible, d’autant plus pour un photographe membre de Magnum. Elle est aussi peu compréhensible car pourquoi susciter de telles polémiques quand on est un excellent photographe avec une réputation jusque-là bien assise ? 

Il a en fait publié une réponse sur un site américain où il ne fait que s’empêtrer dans de fausses excuses comme un gamin pris la main dans le pot de confiture ! Certains vieux de la vieille de chez Magnum ne doivent pas être vraiment heureux de l’épisode ! Nous n'avons pas affaire à une nouvelle éthique ou déontologie mais à des pratiques vieilles comme le photo-journalisme qui ont été et doivent être dénoncées, combattues et sanctionnées pour... la survie d'un vrai photojournalisme base d'une documentation éthique de l'histoire. Il est bon de rappeler que cette même éthique s'applique aussi au journalisme de plume, à la critique, même sur internet, et qu'il est important de se référer aux sources premières, de les citer, avant de relater des faits, d'autant plus si ces faits doivent servir une analyse de fond, et des propos critiques, moraux ou philosophiques. 

Voir l'analyse détaillée rédigé par Lorett Steinberg, la professeure de Shane Keller au Rochester Institute of Technologie : https://www.readingthepictures.org/2013/02/when-reality-isnt-dramatic-enough-misrepresention-in-a-world-press-and-picture-of-the-year-winning-photo/

Réponse de Paolo Pellegrin publié sur le site de National Press Photographers of America [ https://nppa.org/node/36604 ]:

"I'm sorry that Michael Shaw, Loret Steinberg and Shane Keller don't like my pictures from Rochester. It's not uncommon for people living in a community to disagree with an outsider's take. We all know that. They find my work 'heavy handed.' I found many of the things I witnessed in Rochester shocking. Part of a documentary photographer's job is sometimes revealing things that local elites would rather not have discussed quite so openly. In my experience, it was particularly true in Rochester that certain portions of the population were disinclined to have an open conversation about race, poverty and crime. 

"Shane doesn't like the caption of the portrait I made of him. (He does acknowledge, however, that this picture was a portrait, and I've never indicated otherwise.) Here is the caption for that picture: 'Rochester, NY, USA. A former US Marine corps sniper with his weapon.' Shane agrees that he is a former Marine and that he is standing with his weapon in Rochester. My firm recollection is that Shane described himself that day as a sniper. He may have misspoken; I may have misunderstood; or he may have used the word 'sniper' in a manner that was not meant to imply formal status as a Marine Corps Sniper (he spoke for a long time about sniping). In any event, if Shane was not actually a Sniper in the Marine Corps the caption should be changed to read 'Rochester, NY, USA. A former US Marine Corps member with his weapon.'

"Shane also points out that I took his portrait. This is true, and his account of how we were introduced by Brett, who was assisting me, is also substantially accurate. I had been spending the majority of my time riding along with the Rochester police in the Crescent and otherwise interacting with the community there. I approached the work through a combination of reportage, portraiture, and even landscapes. I also realized that to tell more fully the story of gun violence in Rochester, as exemplified by what I was seeing in the Crescent, I wanted to make some portraits of gun aficionados. Like any journalist, I worked with my assistant to locate such people, and Shane was one of the people we located. I think his portrait, and even his reaction to it, add an interesting dimension to the story. Shane thinks he and his guns have nothing to do with the violence in the Crescent; I disagree. (For what it's worth, there is no firm agreement in Rochester as to what constitutes the 'Crescent;' it sometimes seems to be a conceptual designation as much as a geographical one. I actually didn't know where precisely Brett had driven me to meet Shane, which is one of the reasons I captioned the picture simply, 'Rochester.')

"I have no idea why Shaw et al. appear to think there is something wrong with making a portrait, or that making a portrait is not 'authentic.' As photojournalists, we make portraits all the time. Are my portraits from Gaza any less 'authentic' because they're portraits? Of course not. It's ridiculous. 

"There is one element of the Bag News Notes story that is worthy of discussion in the face of a changing photojournalistic landscape, however: The relationship between my captions, such as, 'Rochester, NY, USA. A former US Marine corps sniper with his weapon,' and the background text about the story that accompanies them. Traditionally, when photographers like me produced work freelance, our agencies - in my case, Magnum - would distribute the photographs to publications with a background or 'distro' text and a series of captions. The captions were meant for publication; the distro text was for editors, who, if they took the work, would assign a writer to produce a text that would accompany the captioned pictures.

"In Rochester, I produced the work directly as part of a collaborative, freelance project with a number of my colleagues, and the work ended up winning awards without ever having been mediated by the English-language press. (Some of the work did appear in Zeit in Germany, although Shane's picture did not.) Thus, my photo captions are accompanied on the World Press Photo and POYi sites by the kind of background text that ordinarily would not be published. (Zeit, for instance, didn't publish it.) This distinction between captions and background information is, in my mind, quite important. 

"My picture captions are my authored work, based on my individual work in the field, and I stand fully behind them. (If a small correction sometimes needs to be made -- like clarifying that Shane was a Marine but not a sniper in the Marine Corps -- so be it.) 

"The background text, which traditionally would be for internal uses, and not for the public, is something I gathered from various sources in Rochester and from the internet, including the New York Times. Factual background sentences like, 'The Crescent is home to 27 percent of the city's residents and 80 percent of the city's homicides' are frequently repeated in the neighborhoods I was working in; I believe I first encountered the statement in connection with the House of Mercy and the amazing Sister Grace, with whom I spent a considerable amount of time. (The sentence is on House of Mercy's facebook page, for instance.) I confirmed my background information in various interviews with the Rochester police, the House of Mercy, and many others - but that doesn't change the fact that it was intended as background information, i.e., the starting point for someone else's authored work. I'm a photographer, and I produced a body of photographic work.     

"Looking at the presentation on the World Press Photo and POYi sites, I do regret the formulation, 'where these pictures were taken' in the background text in relation to Shane's picture. Shane's picture is not captioned the Crescent, and I wouldn't have captioned it the Crescent, because I wasn't sure it was taken there (as stated above: I wasn't sure exactly where in Rochester Brett had driven me to meet Shane). I captioned the picture 'Rochester, NY, USA.' But the juxtaposition with the background text is confusing and should be fixed. The story is about the Crescent, and I continue to believe that Shane's picture tells an important part of the story about Rochester, guns, and gun violence (whether Shane agrees or not), but I don't want there to be any confusion. For purposes of clarity, I don't have any problem with the picture itself, how it was made, or its inclusion in my story. 

"One final thought: Neither Shaw, Steinberg nor Keller ever attempted to contact me. They do not quote Brett, anyone in the Crescent, the police officers I spent so much time with, etc. It seems somewhat strange to me that while mounting a purported journalistic high horse they themselves did not follow the basic tenets of fair and professional journalism."