Audio slideshows – photo essays for the digital era, Part 2

So we’ve looked at the illustrious history of photo-essays. What about their modern descendants?

'A Little Goes A Long Way', Christoper Anderson / Magnum In Motion

In terms of form – though certainly not content – photo-essays’ closest successors in the mainstream print world of today are probably the profiles in the likes of Hello, Paris Match and OK. Few other mass-market publications devote 10-12 pages of (almost) full page photos and text on a single story, with the possible exception of National Geographic and some fashion or lifestyle titles.

It’s rare these days for a large news organisation to commission a photographer on a long assignment and then print an entire series of shots. A sweeping statement but true nonetheless – a bit like saying newspapers circulation is on the wane, or people don’t watch as much telly as they did before the Web enveloped us.

So what does this all mean for audio slideshows here in the digital era?

If TV ultimately caused the demise of the photo-essay, I worry what hope audio-slideshows have against gaming, social networking, VOD and that boxset of Mad Men lurking by the sofa?

Maybe we’re so saturated by images that another visual medium – a linear medium at that – is too much for our eyes and minds to behold.

Perhaps audio-slideshows will go the way of the photo-essay, and become a niche medium for professionals and photography fans?

Or perhaps their destiny is to become the Hello and OK of the digital era; a platform for airbrushed celebs to pose free from the all seeing eye of the video camera, whilst gushing about their new book, movie, face etc etc..

Let’s hope not.

Judging by some of the fantastic slideshows we’ve been examining here on Visvox, the powerful and provocative photo-essays of old have a rightful heir today.

And to give you a sneak-preview of a future post, some of today’s photojournalists are relishing the chance to work with audio-slideshows and give their work a new impact, appeal and narrative form.

This piece by conflict photographer Antonin Kratochwil blurs the line between photojournalism and film-making, fact and fiction.

Former Daily Telegraph photojournalist Abbie Trayler-Smith has embraced the audio-slideshow in vibrant work looking at life in Banda Aceh, Indonesia five years after the the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami.

And at ‘Magnum in Motion’, the multimedia offshoot of  the legendary Magnum phot0-agency, people like Bruce Gilden are producing audio-slideshows that combine the finest photojournalism with richly evocative audio.

Whether they can successfully compete for eyeballs is a moot point…