In short, photographs carry an implicit documentary value and evidentiary function that lens culture everywhere certifies. Which is why what the VII Foundation, the Associated Press, and World Press Photo have achieved in their collective efforts on the making of “Napalm Girl” matters, deeply, regardless of their flaws. […]
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Michals embraced the theatrical frame and the directorial mode; for him the viewfinder is a proscenium, models are dramatis personae. Another benchmark of his work is its exploration of the forbidden. A third is his insistence on stretching the boundaries of what a photograph is allowed to be. A fourth is the profoundly sacral essence of his seemingly profane and deeply disturbing vision. […] This is a variously evasive and duplicitous account of a slipshod experiment on Timothy Floyd’s part, laughably inept in comparison with the strictly controlled tests conducted by Tristan da Cunha, whose protocols and documentation Floyd’s effort doesn’t come close to matching. […] We should hold neither Mark Osterman nor Robert Shanebrook responsible for Floyd’s sly, deceptive elisions and misdirections in this inept effort to validate the “darkroom disaster” myth and rebut our dismantling thereof. Surely they had no say in the matter. […] Because it concentrates on first-person testimony while paying scant attention to this important physical evidence, I find The Stringer persuasive and even compelling, as I wrote earlier, but not conclusive. In my opinion, it fails to make an effective evidentiary case to support the charges it levels. […] |
 SPJ Research Award 2014 |