There was a time when a single image could shake the world. When Philip Jones Griffiths’ photographs of Vietnam landed in American living rooms, the reality of war became impossible to ignore. Journalism – written or visual – was a weapon, a wake-up call, an undeniable truth. But those days are gone. Today, we live in an era where we are bombarded with more information than we can possibly process. News arrives in fragments, decontextualized, scattered across endless feeds. There are too many headlines, too many unverifiable sources, too many pictures. And rather than making us more informed, this avalanche of content has rendered us numb. Truth and journalism, truth and photography – once inseparable – seem to have gone through a messy divorce, and nobody even remembers who filed the papers.
Of course, journalism has always been in survival mode. Every technological advance has been a threat: radio was supposed to kill print, TV was supposed to kill radio, the internet was supposed to kill everything. And photojournalism followed the same pattern – color threatened black and white, digital threatened film, social media threatened professionals. Each time, the crisis seemed fatal. Each time, the industry somehow adapted, reinvented itself, and moved on. But now, as AI-generated images flood our screens and credibility dissolves into a sea of synthetic visuals, the threat feels different. It’s not just about the medium changing – it’s about the very idea of documentary truth becoming irrelevant. If we can no longer distinguish between what was witnessed and what was fabricated, does it even matter? Are we heading towards a future where the role of photojournalism – and journalism itself – is just an old-fashioned detail, a nostalgic footnote in the history of storytelling?
When I was working as a photojournalist, back in what now feels like the last days of sanity, we weren’t worried about artificial intelligence, pixels, or the ethics of machine learning. Our concern was simpler but just as urgent: the audience had stopped caring. Not because they were indifferent or selfish, but because they felt powerless. The world had become too complex, the crises too overwhelming. Climate change, terrorism, natural disasters – news presented them all as immediate emergencies but offered no real clues on how to react, how to engage, how to have an impact. Journalism delivered problems without solutions, facts without context, like a press conference where no questions are allowed. And so, rather than inspiring action, the news cycle fueled resignation. Instead of engagement, we got polarization.
I left photojournalism trying to answer a simple question: how do we bring people back? How do we make them care again? Over the last 15 years, I’ve come to a few conclusions. First, maybe journalism needs to change its approach. What if, instead of just presenting the facts as cold, unquestionable truths, it encouraged curiosity? What if, instead of dictating the narrative, it asked more questions? What if it invited the audience to think, to doubt, to form their own opinions instead of forcing them into ideological trenches?
Second, we need to rethink how we tell stories. If history repeats itself – and it does – then the way we narrate it has to evolve. The same crises return, the same wars erupt, the same injustices persist, and yet we insist on presenting them with the same visual language, the same formulas, the same clichés. How can we expect people to pay attention when the story always looks the same? If we want to regain relevance, we have to find new ways of making the old stories resonate. But it's not just the images – the way we describe them, the words we use, have also changed. Captions that once seemed neutral now reveal biases, assumptions, and even an outdated understanding of the world. Just as some photos would no longer pass the test of contemporary sensitivities, their original captions also need to be read in context. The way we tell a story, both visually and verbally, is as important as the story itself.
And this is where institutions like World Press Photo must also reflect. For decades, the awards have helped define not only what makes a powerful image, but what stories are considered worth telling — and how they should look. In doing so, they have shaped visual culture as much as they have celebrated it. The repetition of certain themes, aesthetics, and emotional cues over time has created a kind of visual grammar that feels familiar, even expected — but familiarity can breed distance. When the same formulas are rewarded again and again, nuance is often sacrificed for immediacy, and audiences risk disengaging not because they don’t care, but because the imagery no longer surprises, challenges, or invites reflection. If we want photojournalism to remain relevant, it’s not just the photographers who must adapt — the institutions that amplify their work must evolve, too.
This exhibition, What Have We Done? marks the 70th anniversary of World Press Photo. To reflect on this milestone, they invited me to look back at the images in their archive, at the images that shaped our idea of the world, and to question not just the past but also the future. In seven decades, the three words that define this organization have transformed completely: "World,""Press," and "Photo" don’t mean the same in 1955 as they do today. This exhibition acknowledges that shift while asking where we go from here.
Cristina de Middel
