News

December 2011

Rebecca McClelland, the Photography Director at UK political magazine the New Statesman is to join Editor’s Choice 3 to judge readers’ pictures in January 2012. The category will be ‘Lightness’.

Editor’s Choice, now in its third edition, links CPN readers to the world's best photo editors, and each month allows Canon users to upload their images to be judged and commented on. Editor's Choice 3 features a different conceptual/technical category each month, and includes a brief and advice from a leading professional photographer.

From 4 January 2012 CPN readers will be able to upload their ‘Lightness’ category pictures to Rebecca McClelland. You can already read more about McClelland and The Brief for ‘Lightness’, and the Professional Advice from award-winning photographer and writer Peter Dench. We've also gathered together all the best CPN technical articles related to ‘Lightness’ (see box below).

McClelland follows the current Guest Editor Paul Römer, managing editor of the Dutch edition of National Geographic Traveler magazine, who is judging readers’ images this month in the category of ‘Perspective’. Readers still have until 3 January 2012 to upload pictures to Römer. Readers also have the chance to vote for their favourite image each month, and a large selection of the photos submitted are displayed on the Current Entries page for the whole world to see.

Rebecca McClelland is New Statesman magazine’s first Photography Director tasked with overseeing the visual content of the newly redesigned title. She has worked on editorials in London for the past 12 years, starting her career as a photography editor at the Sunday Times Magazine where she was responsible for special projects like the End of Year news round up and the Greatest Images of Our Time.

She went on to edit the picture desks at the Evening Standard magazine, Wallpaper* Magazine and Art World magazine, and has held the position of Deputy Director of The Ian Parry Scholarship, an award for student and emerging photojournalists and documentary photographers. McClelland is also Associate Lecturer in Photography at the University for the Creative Arts (UCA) Farnham, UK, specialising in professional practice, and regularly participates on international photography panels, awards and festivals.

Commenting on ‘Lightness’ as a category, she said: “I have interpreted this brief, about lightness in photography, in three ways: first, in the literal sense, the physical aspect of the image, its two-dimensional or digital presence, of colour and opaqueness; secondly, lightness as humour or irony; and thirdly, lightness of approach – the delicateness with which photographers approach difficult subjects, the lightness with which they convey powerful messages.

“By this, I certainly don’t mean lightness of subject matter. I’m not hoping for pictures of people’s pets or babies. Instead, I’d like to see clever, layered, complex images. For me, a successful image can convey its meaning in subtle ways, not obvious at first viewing.

“I’ve been looking at images of the hunger crisis in north-western Kenya by Noor’s Francesco Zizola, which I published in the New Statesman magazine. Zizola combines tonal lightness with clever composition, using the willowy silhouettes of bare trees to extenuate the fragile figures within the landscape. Then there’s the photographer Paul Graham, who uses the physical of lightness in ‘American Nights’, a series of photographs that addresses race in modern-day America. Graham introduces opacity to some of the images to symbolise or suggest ‘white blindness’.

“By contrast, absurdity or satire can also be a key ingredient of powerful imagery, especially in politics. Look at the way VII photographer Chris Morris approached a subject like Libya in the spring of 2011, or his take on modern American politics.

“But, of course, I’m not expecting everyone to submit pictures from conflict zones or the White House. I see so many of these type of images in my role as Photography Director at the New Statesman, so I'll be looking for originality of approach and technique to make them stand out from the crowd, whatever the subject matter.”