Future directions of professional photographers: Case study of changing hats between journalism and humanitarian photography

Abstract

This article examines the professional values of self-employed photographers and other communication professionals who have worked for both journalism and humanitarian non-governmental organisations (NGOs). These professionals face the current changes in media work environment and expand their reach to different fields to find new work opportunities. The study focuses on the photographers’ motivations and professional values in addition to NGO-journalism relations. The findings show that there are many pushing factors in the journalistic field along with the pulling factors in the NGO work that motivate photographers to choose advocacy work. When the photographers change from photojournalism to NGO photography, they must adhere to new professional values and ethics that mix with their existing values. Occasionally, these values may contradict with photojournalistic working methods and sometimes also with the production of marketing and fundraising images at the NGOs, which causes ethical dilemmas for the photographers. Finally, this study shows that the photographers with photojournalism background help NGOs to gain news media publicity, yet they are rarely able to change the news agenda.