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# French Newspaper Runs Blank Frames to Highlight Plight of Photojournalists
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/french-newspaper-runs-blank-frames-to-highlight-plight-of-photojournalists/
- Published: 2013-11-15T20:10:27.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:34:18.000Z
- Description: To highlight journalism's visual plight, yesterday's edition of the leftist French newspaper Libération ran with blank placeholders instead of images.
- Author: Mostafa Heddaya
- Tags: News, Charlie Hebdo, Photography, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 06:59 (2012, 2013, part 2)

![Photo 15-11-2013 00 07 20](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2013/11/photo-15-11-2013-00-07-20.jpg)

The current issue of Libération, a leftist French daily, has blank spaces in place of photographs (all photographs used with permission of the British Photography Journal)

It’s “Friday,” the fifth and final day of the seven-day set of 24-hour days (“week”) during which humans located in much of the Western hemisphere are expected to engage in productive labor. But if you’re a photojournalist, this expectation is increasingly untenable! It’s no secret that journalism is a [fool’s](http://www.propublica.org/article/northwesterns-journalism-program-offers-students-internships-but-no-pay?ref=hyperallergic.com) errand these days, and of the news media’s endangered classes, none have been harder hit than photojournalists. The *Chicago Sun-Times* [made headlines](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/01/business/media/chicago-sun-times-lays-off-all-its-full-time-photographers.html?ref=hyperallergic.com) in May for laying off its entire staff of photojournalists, but the situation is the same globally, where the proliferation of digital images (among other industry cataclysms) has made employing actual photographers economically precarious.

To highlight journalism’s visual plight, yesterday’s edition of the leftist French newspaper [*Libération*](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lib%C3%A9ration?ref=hyperallergic.com) ran with blank placeholders instead of images. In a lyrical editorial accompanying the issue, Brigitte Ollier [explained](http://www.liberation.fr/culture/2013/11/13/liberation-plonge-dans-le-noir%5F946713?ref=hyperallergic.com) the decision:

> “A visual shock. For the first time in its history, *Libération* appears without photographs. In their place, a series of empty frames that create a rather uncomfortable silent space: it’s blatant, there is a lack of information, as if we had become a silent paper. Without the sound, without this little interior music that accompanies the gaze.” (translation by the author)

The issue, which was timed to coincide with the opening of the annual fair [Paris Photo](http://www.parisphoto.com/?ref=hyperallergic.com), does not represent the first foray into symbolic gestures by a French publication in recent years. The proudly “*irresponsable*” (irresponsible) weekly *Charlie* *Hebdo,* best known for [periodically trolling](http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/09/the-charlie-hebdo-affair-laughing-at-blasphemy.html?ref=hyperallergic.com) France’s poor and marginalized Muslim minority with “blasphemous” cartoons, once commented on censorship and provocation by [publishing a blank cover](http://www.connexionfrance.com/Charlie-Hebdo-responsible-irresponsible-14114-view-article.html?ref=hyperallergic.com) labeled “*Journal Responsable*” (responsible journal).

![Photo 15-11-2013 00 07 57](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2013/11/photo-15-11-2013-00-07-57.jpg)

![Photo 15-11-2013 00 08 25](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2013/11/photo-15-11-2013-00-08-25.jpg)

![Photo 15-11-2013 00 09 33](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2013/11/photo-15-11-2013-00-09-33.jpg)

![Photo 15-11-2013 00 10 16](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2013/11/photo-15-11-2013-00-10-16.jpg)