Sterre Sprengers

Writing about image editing

After publishing The Bonsai Project on De Correspondent with an article on the legal rights of trees, lots of upset comments by readers were given about that combination of text and imagery. Most heard critique was that the images were showing the opposite. But why should images in a journalistic context always literally show what is described in the text?

So I decided to write an article on why this is my approach in image editing. The images doesn’t necessary reflect the text, but bring in a different angle on the same subject. An article on my view of innovate image editing in journalism.

Read the English article here.

Auction at the festival of De Correspondent

We’ve sold seven out of eight art works that were made by different image makers for productions of De Correspondent. We auctioned it at the Festival der Vooruitgang celebrating the two years anniversary of our journalistic platform.

[Photo: Fabian Fraikin / De Correspondent]

Portfolio Day at De Correspondent

After being an image editor for over eight years now I know that image makers often have really good ideas for interesting journalistic stories. And after almost two years De Correspondent has grown as an suitable platform to present these projects.

So what I want to do from now on is to organise a portfolio day every couple of weeks to invite image makers from all sorts and backgrounds to share their ideas in the hope it can be the start of new collaborations.

Deadline for applying for this first Portfolio Day is August 5, 2015. Stay tuned here for the upcoming days.

My favourites at Rencontres d’Arles 2015

After visiting the opening week of Rencontres d’Arles 2015 I’ve made a selection of my top five favourite exhibitions at the photo festival.
Check the list here (and if you’re a member of De Correspondent, please leave your favourites in the comments).

New articles in my project on horrific imagery

I’ve been writing essays on horrific images in media, to get insight in how imagery can fulfil a (new) role in making journalistic productions. I’m investigation the issue from different perspectives.

The journalistic/editors perspective:
“War porn and why we must look at these pictures”

The historical perspective:
“Horrific imagery can: a) stop war, b) prevent war, c) cause war” 

The makers intentions perspective:
“IS makes horrific images, but not only because they are gory”

My vision on editing images

For a year now I can may call myself the image editor-in-chief of the Dutch journalistic platform De Correspondent. So it’s time to tell about what I want, what I’ve been doing, what I’ve been trying and what I would like to do more next year.

New project on horrific imagery

On De Correspondent I’ve started a new project to investigate the need of horrific pictures in media. As an image editor for journalistic media for over seven years now, I’ve had some experience with the difficulties – like “need” versus “ethics” – of (not) publishing these kind of images. But I would like to extent my research with contributions of others to get more perspectives on this theme.

You can read my introduction on this project here [only in Dutch].

Guided Tours: The Enclave by Richard Mosse

After writing a recommendation for De Correspondent on the exhibition The Enclave of Richard Mosse I gave several guided tours through this exhibition in Foam (the photo museum in Amsterdam).

[Photo: Bas Losekoot]

James Bond like you’ve never seen him before

My review on the new photobook of Taryn Simon ‘Birds of the West Indies’.

The White House photographic archive analysed

For the past half year I’ve been investigating the archive of the White House photographer Pete Souza. The result is a series of ten collections I’ve composed and analysed from the whole archive. The project is published on De Correspondent [only in Dutch].

Find here more information on the whole project.

[Photo’s: Pete Souza/the White House]