David Guttenfelder
Photo by David Guttenfelder
One of my favorite new photographers is David Guttenfelder (NatGeo). I admire Guttenfelder’s work for its historical significance. Some of Guttenfelder’s most prominent work is taken in North Korea, his vision brings NatGeo readers along his journey to Pyongyang. The hermit country is nothing more than a mystery to Americans, but he brings us right there to the rice fields and car-less streets. He seemingly side-steps the façade put up by North Korean leaders, a dangerous but incredibly monumental story that the world needs to hear. One of my favorite images by him shows fifteen or so children and a woman pushing hand carts filled with grain. These hand carts look incredibly heavy and have clearly been designed to be pulled by hand, not horse or cattle. You wouldn’t see anything like this in the United States, much less any first world country.
I would love to be in his shoes, revealing something through my photography that the world needs to see. I think everyone wants to feel like their work is significant. Describing Guttenfelder’s work as politically and historically significant is only selling him short. There are few places left in the world that are so restrictive on cameras and what you can photograph, but I hope this new age of photography helps progress the field of real photojournalism.
Works Cited
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/p/photojournalism
https://news.vice.com/article/in-photos-north-korea-through-the-lens-of-david-guttenfelder-1
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/expeditions/experts/david-guttenfelder/
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