Wrestling with Reality

Om Malik did a great interview with Vincent Laforet that wanders around through all sorts of fascinating valleys. From what is real to the future of photojournalism to shooting from the air, there’s a lot covered.

Is there such a thing as a real event? The only real events that I know are the birth of a child, the death of someone that you love, the breaking of news as you’re there. That’s the value of having a citizen capturing an event in front of them: It’s unfiltered.

But what is real? Is a press conference real, is a press photo op real? People are told to show up here at this time and shake hands and do this and step here. It’s all fake, yet it represents something. When people take selfies, that’s not real either. That’s not a real relationship, when someone takes a photograph of themselves, with a celebrity or their friends. It is the moment [in] itself [that] is much more valuable.