Is professional documentary photography dead?

[Miguel M.]

I'm the editor of an online magazine of photography, focusing on documentary photography and photojournalism, F8Magazine. You can download it for free on their website: http://www.f8mag.com

One of my personal motivations for editing the magazine is my interest in documentary photography. Because of widespread access to digital photography, many amateur photographers have access to high quality photographic material, and many of them can take photos of higher quality. Every day the market is more saturated with photographers who make reportage.

In the era of digital photography, citizen journalism, YouTube, Flickr and thousands of websites, the figure of a hired documentary photographer feels like a lonely dinosaur in danger of extinction.

I believe that the editors or curators will be professional artists of tomorrow. What do you think about the future of documentary photography? Is there still a place for professionals? can we discover new values in documentary photography through amateur photographers?

What do you think? Would like to share your thoughts on the matter?

[Alex1994]

Where are the big news magazines going to get their photos from? Not to mention all the other high quality publications (think National Geographic etc). Sure there are loads of amateurs on the scene but if anything that ought to make the good professionals stand out even more.

[flintheart]

Hey Miguel.. Fist of all I want to appreciate you, the issue which you raised is somehow getting into the dark in recent years. The rapid increase in the technology made the documentary photography lesser known to the young generations. But I still think that, it will find its way, as there are still audience for the same, folks still connects with this.