I can imagine it’s no easy task making politicians look good in a suit and tie while everyone else is in a shiny uniform.
Rodney Braithwaite worked as a photographer at The News for nearly four years, delivering memorable images of our local heroes, our triumphs and our tragedies until 2022 when he returned to his home state of Tasmania to continue snapping the great, the good and the ordinary.
His award, and his skills, reminded me of the continuing power of a single well-executed crisp image to capture a moment in time and tell a story, in the face of so much visual flotsam that drifts daily across our digital lives.
A million fuzzy amateur snaps or reels of talking heads and car crashes can’t compete with a single focused and composed image taken by a photographer on the spot with a real camera.
Before the invention of the camera motor-drive enabling multiple shots to be taken with one click, the photographer had to rely on pressing the button at the ‘decisive moment’ to capture a single image.
Even when multiple images were created from a single shot, the photographer still had to choose the one that best represented ‘the moment’.
A well-crafted still photo can have a transformative effect, not just on a few viewers, but on the times in which it was taken.
Dorothea Lange’s 1936 black and white photo of a poverty-stricken mother and her children from the United States’ Great Depression, Nick Ut’s 1972 photo of a naked burning girl running down the road during a napalm attack in the Vietnam War and Jeff Widener’s photo of a single man standing in front a row of tanks from China’s Tiananmen Square demonstrations in 1989 are just three examples of great pictures taken at the ‘decisive moment’ that went on to change the way people saw the bigger picture — mostly in a good way, but not always.
The most recent example I can think of is Evan Vucci’s photo of Donald Trump raising his fist in defiance just after the assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania rally in July 2024.
It is a remarkable photo, not just for its composition showing Trump’s blood-streaked face and raised fist in front of the stars and stripes and a pure blue sky, but the fact that it was taken under extreme duress makes it doubly incredible.
As soon as Vucci heard the pops of gunfire, he ran to the front of the stage and crouched down in front of Trump, not knowing whether the threat was over and waited for the drama to unfold before capturing ‘the moment’.
His image has been rightly celebrated as an iconic photo of the ages, which tells a bigger story than the one contained within the frame.
The image of bloody defiance, fiery resolve and American patriotism may well have helped win Trump the 2024 presidential election.
The irony, of course, is that Pulitzer Prize-winning Evan Vucci is the chief photographer for the Associated Press, which Trump has banned from covering official White House events because of the media organisation’s refusal to use the name Gulf of America in its reports.
So no more potentially glorious presidential ‘moments’ for Mr Trump from the camera of Mr Vucci.
There may also be no Pulitzer Prizes for local newspaper photographers such as Rod Braithwaite or Shepparton’s renowned Ray Sizer, but their skills are no less noteworthy in transforming ordinary people’s lives into human stories that live beyond the frame.
23°C