Time magazine showcases Top 10 photos of 2012

I agree with you Phips243. It is every time story.

Why am I not surprised, there is - as every year - a picture related to the Middle East conflict among the "top ones" - and it's never depicting the Israeli side of the story...

why not jam a camera up someone's face at a funeral in America? Because the photographer's are just thrill seekers to see who can get the most dangerous shot. Cant beat ARABS killing each other.

I read some of the members comments that photography is about emotion. In my view, photography is an art form and as such it is measured by the meaning it conveys not the emotional response it surely evokes.

In our times, sensationalism is omnipresent and crowned in visual media. Photography is -tragically- often an instrument of marketing at various levels of sophistication, from the distorted body images of fashion and gossip magazines to opinion-shaping prestigious news publications. The message is traded off for stark and mere impression; the harder is hits the senses the better it serves the purpose. Such purpose is not related to art but to guided emotional response towards achieving the publisher's goals.

I don't imply that TIME is one such publisher; not necessarily, that is. But more or less we are all entrenched and drenched in a sensationalist culture. Let's hope we will get over it before it consumes us.

Regards

Very interesting that this one didn't make it - http://ukcamerageek.com/blog/general/shocking-image-shows-tank-shell-hitting-rebel-outpost-in-syria/

Art is emotion. Even in one picture can be a story of life and dead. To be able to tell a story in one picture must be art and emotion.
Great pictures. DP thanks for the link.

the best photos are about war...for me they are the worst.

how can time be anti Semitic as the Zionists control the media?

Time is strange magazine, sounds like anti-Semitic as well.

Is it 2013 already? And here I thought we had a couple more weeks left in 2012. I guess any photos shot from December 13 to 31 are deemed unworthy. We might as well put our cameras away until January 1...TIME has spoken.

Mainstream media is dedicated to generating fear and stress for the purpose of control and emotional manipulation. The only facts you can trust in a copy of Time Magazine are the date and price. Look to beauty, not because the horror is not present, but that focusing on what makes you feel inspired and hopeful generate chemicals and frequencies in our bodies that are forces of healing and growth, instead of disease and destruction. In my field of epigenetics, this is known as the biology of perception.

These are mostly emotion pics. Aren't we more concerned here with photographic merit rather than journalistic taste?

Unlike many others I think there are some wonderful provocative images here. I do agree though that the themes are a little narrow. I'm a Brit and we had some pretty spectacular positive stuff going on here this year - anyone remember the Olympic Games or the Jubilee?

I like Martin Schoeller - Des Moines, Iowa - Spring 2012 image a lot.
Agreed that real art is positive and peaceful.

Most of these choices are pretty lame. Any snapshooter could take a picture of someone crying or a sick person, or a posed gymnast. Nothing special there.

Great Pictures, Nice altetnative to fluffy bunny, instagram world of happiness, Every now and then we need to pull Our heads out of the sand for a reality check

I have to agree with (almost) everyone else. There is more to life than the misery that is shown in these pictures.

I could have taken that picture! If only I'd thought of it. If only I'd been there. If only I'd anticipated the subject would be there and do that at that moment. If only I'd planned ahead to be at the front of the crowd. If only I'd been willing to risk my life traveling though shelling and war and checkpoints controlled by 17-year-olds with AK-47s. If only I'd brought a fast prime lens. If only I'd schlepped a heavy bag of equipment halfway around the world for weeks and weeks away from home and family. Yeah, I could have taken that picture.

But I didn't.

Top TEN? It is easy to sell an umbrella on a rainy day. A marginally trained monkey could have SNAPPED most of those shots.

Some seriously dull photos there. Sad, but dull.

And that's why I cancelled my subscription to Time! Of course the world needs to be informed, but if misery and death are priorities of good photography, then I'd rather read Marvel comics...!

Let's pretend. That there was no Magnum, that Robert Cappa didn't die from a land mine, that Eugene Smith didn't get the Cr*p knocked out of him for exposing Minamata disease, that all of Walker Evans and Dorthea Lange's photography is meaningless. Or Alex Majoli's coverage of various not so pleasant wars and situations. I'm not defending the framing, the tonality, etc. of these Time magazine photos, but how do you dismiss a whole genre of photography just because it rocks the boat? Let's sugar coat the world, so it doesn't upset anyone, and we can all run on the treadmill of consumer complacency. If you don't like it, or if it disturbs...don't look.

Photos of misery always seem to get high praise... Any dimwit with a camera phone could have gotten those. Nothing special about any of them. Just some a'hole who gets paid to capture someone else' personal tragedies. Gross.
Time should have waited. I'm sure there are many pictures of the parents of children massacred in the Conn shooting available for Time magazines consideration. "Moved them the most" What a joke. Shouldn't even have a category like that.

Not impressed.

Pictures of dead, murdered people start or prolong wars more often than stopping them. Same for mass shootings: more pictures and videos, more imitators.

Dear Time,

Don't be so quick with your top ten; there's still a bit over two weeks left in 2012, and I still have a few hundred photos to shoot this year!

DPReview should have put 'Top 10 Photos' in the title in quotes - its only some people at Time Magazine who think these are the best.

Time isn't what it use to be...

I prefer landscapes.

<whispers> "I see dead people"

"Ghosts?"

"Nah, I'm reading Time!"

It's called "freedom of speech". Would you like to change that? Hope not...

Keep in mind that some photos in war areas are stagged photos, a photo shoot per say. And DPR's news item of faked photos just this week is another knife in the heart of these types of photos. Good "real" moments now are hard to come by in photos.

Human disgrace sells.

Time is obviously judging the content not the execution. Without a back story none of these are particularly good photographs. We are presented with a camera-phone snapshot of a boy crying. Why? Did his soccer team lose? He dropped his ice cream? Oh his father was killed. How? Was it a lawnmower accident? Oh he was killed by a Syrian army sniper. Ok now I get it. Yes that's a "Photograph of the Year"!

Time is in the business of selling human tragedy. This is what they reward. The technical execution of the photograph is secondary.

Time faithfully continues the old media tradition that nothing livens up the page like a dead body. Read the quote from Kira Pollack at the top.

People have access to other sources of information. Media moguls see that their empires are crumbling, and all they can come up with is more suffering and violence. Pandering to the lowest common denominator. I got rid of my TV years ago because that's pretty much all that networks feed you with, combined with imbecilic soap operas. They can't understand that populace may want more intelligent content, now easily available on the Internet. It scares them because I don't think most of them can understand that content themselves. That's why they're disappearing.

Majority of photos are indeed very strong and emotionally charged. But there’s a problem and it isn’t in an overwhelming number of images depicting tragedies and human suffering. This choice is natural and has nothing to do with “liberal” slant as was mentioned in one of earlier threads. What’s disturbing and indeed reflects bias is double standard in choosing victims based on whose tears and corpses are currently more politically en vogue. Take Syria for example. Are deaths and suffering only on one side? Assad is a damn butcher and tyrant but ragtag bands of guys on the other side are also far from being angels, bear a lot of innocent blood on their hands and aren’t known for valuing human life any higher. Little kid having to bury his father isn’t less deserving of chronicling his tragedy because his dad was on a wrong side of a line between good and evil that Time PC gurus have drawn from the safe distance. Same, even worse, goes for Gaza.

The older I get the more I think the human race was a mistake. We are just cruel as Hell to each other.

Why do people constantly talk about ''emotion'' in relation to photography? The problem with a pre-occupation with a desire to ''deliver emotional impact'' is that things get a bit cheesy. Because pro photographers will always be only pre-occupied with making more money and fame and winning more prizes than to deliver emotional impact free of charge. So we end up getting lame photographs of emotional impact being delivered to someone else. Art reduced to curiosity and voyeurism. The wounded citizen or Warren Buffett, take your pick.

Francois Mori says it all with " .... sometimes we don't take photos, we receive them."

Their criteria was "the pictures that moved us most in 2012". A photographic chick flick. Morally obvious, sentimental and lame.

OK, so what would the anti-Time critics pick a the 10 best news photos of the year? Very likely, the images would be other views of disaster, mayhem, rescues, or mourning. When your neighbor is berieved, do you pick a shot of a touchdown pass as "the most memoriable image of 2012"? Or should that image be a sonogram of an expected Royal heir? Images of flags, steeples, and mother? A dwarves' cottage and Bambi by a silver stream?

Good things happened in 2012, surely, but do they allow for imaginative photographic depiction? Will any rank as "important events" after 10 years?

Heavens, think of the temerity if Time ventured to pick a "Camera of the Year"? Oh, the carnage that would ensue!

The execs picking these photo's are clearly attracted to a certain genre of photography. That being said, this may be Times pride and joy, but I've seen far more engaging photography from DPReview members over the year.