French newspaper publishes issue with no photos

Let's not bash the French. If it wasn't for their financing and training of the American armies of the 1770/80s, all of you would have pictures of the Queen of England on your money. They bankrupted their own nation to help kickstart the idea that was the United States of America and they did it to get revenge against the British. I don't think it can get anymore brazen than that.

I like this immensely, no matter the 'real' motivation. By showing where a photo would be makes its point so much better than just filled with text & no pics.

BRAVO !! NICE !!

I think many poster here ignore the sad news in France.
A young photo journalist at Libération was shot in their entrance hall by a gunman. I believe the young man is seriously wounded. This is probably the real trigger for the newspaper to issue this paper with no photos in order to honour him and show respect for photogs work.

If you follow the news, you will also learn that the lone shooter was arrested and his DNA testing found positive.

What's next?

News papers will can all their writers too and send out the janitorial staff with mobile phones to snap pics, then come back and write the articles in between cleaning toilets?

It's pretty sad that this comment section has deteriorated into a political discussion.

It sounds as though some of you didn't even bother to read the article.

The newspaper was showing their support for photojournalists by printing a newspaper without any pictures in it, to show its readership that "something is missing" (i.e., the photos!)

If more and more newspapers start giving their reporters mobile phones, they will no longer have any use for photojournalists, which means one less career available for people that enjoy using their cameras...people like us.

Few noticed because few read papers.

Wow, this is a really nice move. :)

I can see, after reading some comments, that the stupid anti-french feeling induced by the neoconservatives hasn't died in ten years... Freedom fries, anyone?

Rumour has it they are going to take this one step further in the next issue: no text!

By tragic coincidence [?] on Nov. 18 a vicious lunatic enterred the Libération offices and shot a photographer's assistant seriously. Strangely, the criminal managed to get a ride to a subway station, where he melted into the passengers, and the hostage drove home rather than inform authorities. Onlookers ... well, maybe later we will learn of phone camera images that help lead to an arrest. Meanwhile, this is not the sort of thing that traditional staff photographers would be able to cover or solve, unless the perpetrator happens to be a luny estranged colleague.

Now I'm waiting for a newspaper issue with no text and no photos.Wait wait....I have one already.

Hi everyone,

Sorry to correct the article, but there is more to it than just a mere suppport to photographers, or anything in connection to the Chicago Sun-Times affair.

It is related to a photographer who got shot yesterday in the office of Liberation, and who is in balance between life & death.

I haven't seens all the commentary, but it seems one very important piece of information is missing from this story : yesterday a photographer got shot in Liberation offices. I think that it is this event who triggered this special issue of Liberation. They took the opportunity to show their gratitude to the whole profession.

For more info on the event (only in french, sorry) : http://www.lemonde.fr/actualite-medias/article/2013/11/18/un-homme-ouvre-le-feu-au-siege-de-liberation_3515511_3236.html#ens_id=3515677&xtor=RSS-3208

Brilliant idea this. Now, you can download pictures from the internet, print them and then glue them to the appropriate space. Perhaps the quality of the publication will increase and people can have their very own personalised version of the "truth".

Libération is a very bad newspaper, only interested in Paris, politically correct subjects, stating the obvious, etc.

Sometimes, you need to take away something to really appreciate it once it's not there

BRILLIANT.

These days the shots are fakes anyway. Nothing a little PS can't create.

Everything will be online. Newspaper will soon be history. Doesn't really matter if it has pictures or not.

Reportage photography and as well almost all gene of photography is a classic example of the bad coins pushing off the good coins on the market

Gets the point across pretty succinctly, especially in a media market where there are a lot of newsstand sales and subway customers. It's a very visible way of opening a conversation about this problem. I'm curioius as to how it would work in a media market where newsstand sales are a non-factor, where the customer base is older, and where people don't really talk to each other than much about the paper. You know, like the large portion of the US and the rest of the world that are not covered by big-city tabloids and newsstands.

Liberation, given its politics, is naturally going to present the issue in this "workers' solidarity with the photographers who inform us" kind of way. But other papers that are still investing in content including photography — the Orange County Register in California comes to mind — are demonstrating the commercial advantages of such an approach too. Namely, they're not getting hammered in the way that the obsessive cost-cutting papers are.

Maybe the market forces dictate this, but you can definitely tell that quality of the photos have suffered. What makes me laugh & roll my eyes, although maybe it's not the same thing, is when news outlets go all crazy "Britney posts a sizzlin bathing suit pic on her Instagram," and when you see the photo, it has awful quality, I mean it STINKS, and you're thinking "wow, a star posts an Instagram shot and with their high public profile & image they post that lame of a photo? Couldn't they afford a pro photographer to post a high quality image? Doesn't anyone in their crowd own a DSLR or a mirrorless at least?"

Anymore, the more your photos suck, the more people like them. If you try to get a high quality image, you're a "snob." Thank goodness McFurry didn't think that way & photograph the "Afghan girl" with a Kodak Instamatic or Polaroid. No one called him a "snob" for using a Nikon FM2 & prime lens & capturing that incredible eye detail.

In a photo news the catching of the moment from the right angle is more important than composition and bokeh. If there are 10,000 people at a major event with a phone camera and one photo journalists, then chances are one of the 10,000 people just gets the better shot. The crowd is everywhere, the photo journalists is only in one spot.

And that is for a planned event. For an unscheduled event, the difference is even more stark. Someone with a phone camera is there and takes the shot, the photo journalist is not there.

It seems for run of the mill photo coverage the method of collecting best shots of phones is not only lower cost, but results in images with better coverage. An unbeatable combination.

Photo journalism needs to change to offer value in a different area. Only offering better value will ensure survival. Complaining that 10 years ago there was less competition will not help. Who adopts to the change will continue his business.

well this benefit the ads. people will look at the pictures of those.

Trained photographers take better pictures than people happen to be there with an iPhone but without proper photographic skill

Dedicated photographers need to make a living from selling their pictures

If newspaper issues could be sold at a higher price to people interested in paying more for higher image quality, then there would be the money to pay for the staff photographers.

So it seems in the last decades image quality was higher than public needed. Now that there is an option to lower image quality and lower cost, the public is choosing this lower cost option.

Times are a changing. Always have, always will be.

Couldn't tell when last I purchased a magazine or newspaper. But I still buy printed novels.

Way to go, Libération! Especially the accompanying clarification.
In this day and age where just about any dip with enough money can buy a business s/he doesn't understand, and then decide upon the fate of workers who made it successful and interesting, this approach should become an more widespread answer.

Pertinent subject. What passes for 'news' has degenerated into a mindless pablum. Certainly, budgets have been tweaked from on high, and those folks assume an audience lacking the will to make noise on the issue. Video news has certainly become a 'reality t.v. show'. It follows that like managers on daily papers & mags will allow a descent into 'snaps' vs. well thought images.

More, that our history will be forgotten, for a while. Some event(s) will no doubt cause the importance of good writing and imagery to resurge.

Until then, just keep hammering away, and fight the urge to lower your standards.

The reality is that with the proliferation of cell phone cameras, there is always someone on the scene to take a picture... whether it is a natural disaster or an accident, or even a war. As long as there are people present, there will be pictures available.

Since I started as a pro photographer I often said that if magazines don't want to pay a reasonable amount for photography they should just publish without photos and see how that works. Also, it's always annoyed me that photographers get an inferior credit to writers, and especially those mags that bury the photo credit in the gutter. I don't diminish writers at all, and believe photos and words together are best.

I applaud this publication for taking a stance on the importance of photography. I am disappointed and sickened by the 20 somethings and 30 somethings today who are only capable of acknowledging low quality "selfies" shot with their toy camera phones as actual "photography". What a sad,sad art-less generation of techno addicts.

Newspapers are lame. The only reason anyone buys one is to line their bird cage. Photojournalism is dead..journalism is dead (thanks to Commissar Obama)...this is really a big yawn of a story.

If you are going to publish a paper with out pictures, you should write enough words to give your customers some editorial content where the pictures would have been.

This protest was incredibly lame.

Say a hotel was interested protesting the low wages they paid their staff so they decided to not provide all the services they charged their customers for, as a result they would not stock their rooms with clean towels.

This newspaper did not reduce it's price while selling less content.

My photo editor once said to us photo cadets: "....while words can bring joy, sadness, to making a Government or bringing it down, a photo has more impact, as it is the camera that carries more weight than the pen..."

Journos always knew that a photo will always accompany their story as it was the photo that caught the eye first, not the words.

Humans have always been drawn to an image than words. As far back as the cave people, humans have scratched or drawn, things to what they witnessed. This was the beginning of photojournalism.

While words can not 'paint' the sheer beauty of a mountainous valley of colours nor the gasping delights of the Milky Way, the camera can.

Books, magazines, newspapers publishers would go bankrupt over night if they took out photos. It is the camera - be that movie or still, it is that device that carries on the tradition of being able to describe what it saw. While journos are a dime a dozen, there can never be enough photographers.

I think what Liberation has done was a really bold move and one which got people talking, at least. A paper or magazine without pictures is like a desert without an oasis. How many times do you read an article and what sticks in your mind is the picture which accompanies it?

Photo journalists are being sacked not to make a better product but to make a cheaper one. How sad is this world going to be if art is always going to be sacrificed on the altar of money?

Bravo Liberation! and whilst we're at it let's not forget the contribution made to our civilisation by photo journalists.We owe a great deal to the many photo journalists who risk their lives on a daily basis and who have lost their lives to ensure that we have an awareness of what is truly happening in the world.

It is all so easy to just accept 'nice images' - or 'half-decent' photos but what is so wrong with wanting great images and fantastic photos? Great imagery should go hand in hand with a free press.