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Stranger than fiction:

Isnt all photography a sort of unreality? All photography is a fiction, be it posing a person, or setting up a shot, or adhering to ideology and moments. Photography should be a way to tell stories and convey a message, and should not be so obsessed with the "real", (what is the real anyway?) Documentary photography started out as "a way to tell stories with photographs"- there is no mention of reality. We need new tools to address and understand photography, instead of keeping it in a frame.

When we look at my generation of photojournalists, many of them have started asking their subjects to pose for images they would include in their documentary projects. That’s reshaping reality – it’s close to being fictional. If you assume it, it’s not dishonest.”

Instagram, the new economics of photo journalism. 
 I have always been a bit skeptical of instagram, as I feel like it is a sort of "fake" photography; take a photo, hike up the contrast and add a few filters which make the light yellow and weather the image, and anything looks "nostalgic" and filmic. Of course. But I feel like this is "cheating" and boring. Especially as most of the 80 million users just take self takes and pictures of their food or cats.
Actually, there seems to be a lot stuff going on on Instgram, which I wasn't aware of. As the article shows, a lot of photo journalists have taken to the website, and use it to update followers on their travels, photos, and news whats going on. (ooooo instagram photos of starving children, hashtag hashtag hastag) These photographers all seem to say similar things; Instagram lets them connect to their fans better, lets them immediately update their photos, and to share ideas and photos quicker and cross-platform. Many mention things which I'm sure they made up (cross platform geo tagging? seriously dudes.) and say that they have more connection to their public, which they can converse with, and who can follow and know what they are doing; as well as potential employers. It is also easy to make a narrative- the tagging allows for connection to bigger projects and ideas, and a narrative construction of projects.
As one said, "photography is now about creating a relationship with an audience. And instagram is a limitless space to post countless interesting works for free, with an engaged audience reach of millions."
I want to highlight the audience engagement bit, which links to a "public screen", and i feel has truth and mysteries. In truth, yes, if one photo gets lots of likes and retweets and whatever, you will decide to keep redoing this sort of idea- in this way, photography is evolving to become a discourse based on audience interest. In other ways, this is a smoke screen. Audience are interested in what everyone else is interested in; what society tells us to be interested in, what the "opinion leaders" are interested in (and them selves) so this flowery sort of idealized democracy which the internet is meant to be, is actually a controlled thing, and Instagram is popular now because of a whole series of culture happenings which tell us edited old looking photos are cool.

- some disagree with instagram, one telling us that it "devalues" photography (what does that mean? devalues! As if everyone having access to it devalues it) and that there is no money in it. and photographers are not credited for their work. This is true, and is part of the idea of photography having to evolve from a set position to a new idea- and it is still changing, so if it is a good or bad thing is hard to decide.

John Berger 

- Argues there are two types of photograph; the private and the public. The public photo is one which is used in newspapers and online, one that is "torn from its context/reality" and has become "arbitrary". The public photo is a "strangers view on things." A private photo is one which is "inside the home", a photo which might have a narrative to you, and is "living", because it is "within your home community."
- Argues that photos are now an agent of capitalism and the "immediate gratification of reality", an agent of surveillance, and spectacle for the masses. Photographs are taken to remember something, and this takes over from memory. Photos are now about commodification, and control, they are used to mean something, as an argument.
-Suggests we must stop trying to "use" photos in this way, and suggests to stop photos being a dead reflection of history, a "public" ideal with no meaning, what we need to do is "look at public photos, take upon ourselves to learn from them/use them to build history, so they become living in a living context"- taking the dead into our own lives. Makes a "family of man- public photos become private" Do this by not having a photo as an argument, but as a narrative, with many connections and links, like a memory.

-> To me, this seems a naive and pessimistic idea. How does he mean us to interalize ALL photographs? To do this with some photos i understand, but the sheer number, and sheer pain of alot of photos, mean that this is an impossible idea. He also seems to not think that public photos also have narrative to us, if we are living through it, and to what we might have read. This may not be a LIVING account of it, but there will almost always be some context, to which we will make links.