27/12/2011

Available for over a year

The best of the world's arts, film, music and literature brought to you every day. Meet the picture professionals - the men and women whose photographs tells us what's in the world. Or do they? We'll be exploring the dynamic but rather tricky threesome of documentary photographers, their subjects and the agencies, curators, and editors who decide where and how those pictures get shown. Shahidul Alam - who founded the Drik picture library and Bangladesh Photographic Institute - argues that too many images from what he calls the majority world are Western photographers taking tired cliches. He is trying to change the image of the country by promoting photographs taken by the Bangladeshis themselves. We hear from him, there's a curatorial row in Mali and Jodi Bieber tells us how she got that picture, the portrait of Bibi Aisha which won World Press Photo of 2011. Photo of Jodi Bieber with her portrait by Koen van Weel/AFP/Getty Images.