Image Brokers

How does a photograph become a news image? An ethnography of the labor behind international news images Image Brokers ruptures the self-evidence of the journalistic photograph by revealing the many factors determining how news audiences are shown people, events, and the world. News images, Zeynep Gürsel argues, function as formative fictions – fictional insofar as these images are constructed and culturally mediated, and formative because their public presence and circulation have real consequences in the world. 

Set against the backdrop of the War on Terror and based on fieldwork conducted at photojournalism’s centers of power, Image Brokers offers an intimate look at an industry in crisis. At the turn of the 21st century, image brokers—the people who manage the distribution and restriction of news images—found the core technologies of their craft, the status of images, and their own professional standing all changing rapidly with the digitalization of the infrastructures of representation. From corporate sales meetings to wire service desks, newsrooms to photography workshops and festivals, Image Brokers investigates how news images are produced and how worldviews are reproduced in the process.

How does a photograph become a news image? An ethnography of the labor behind international news images Image Brokers ruptures the self-evidence of the journalistic photograph by revealing the many factors determining how news audiences are shown people, events, and the world. News images, Zeynep Gürsel argues, function as formative fictions – fictional insofar as these images are constructed and culturally mediated, and formative because their public presence and circulation have real consequences in the world. 

Set against the backdrop of the War on Terror and based on fieldwork conducted at photojournalism’s centers of power, Image Brokers offers an intimate look at an industry in crisis. At the turn of the 21st century, image brokers—the people who manage the distribution and restriction of news images—found the core technologies of their craft, the status of images, and their own professional standing all changing rapidly with the digitalization of the infrastructures of representation. From corporate sales meetings to wire service desks, newsrooms to photography workshops and festivals, Image Brokers investigates how news images are produced and how worldviews are reproduced in the process.

Introduction: Formative Fictions and the Work of News Images

PART ONE. IMAGE-MAKING

1 What Precedes the Digital News Image?
2 Global Views Inc.: Visualizing Politics, from Shock and Awe to the Fall of Saddam Hussein
3 Agence France-Presse: What Is the Dominant?
4 Newsworld: Everyday Practices of Editing the World

PART TWO. WORLDMAKING
5 Barnstorm: An American Rite of Passage
6 Visa Pour l’Image: Personal Visions and Amateur Documents
7 World Press Photo: Developing World Photography
Conclusion: Waiting for the Dust to Settle

Acknowledgments
Contents
Appendix A: Cast of Characters
Appendix B: Timeline of the “War on Terror”
Notes
Bibliography
Index