The photojournalism of The Wider Image app – we don’t need to grow up without pictures

refugee boat

I’m sure that I’m never going to grow out of my love of images  – I still love pictures as much as I did as a young girl. Language too, hence the linguistic focus in both my undergraduate and Masters degrees. And I couldn’t choose between the power of words and the immediacy of images. So Readers like Feedly and Pulse, bookmarking sites such as Pinterest, all make me very happy in the way they combine text and image. I appreciate information much more when it’s enhanced by imagery.

Today I came across The Wider Image app –

The Wider Image app for iPad was conceived to reimagine the way news photography can engage through evolving platforms, to position imagery at the heart of multimedia and to realise the unique potential of photojournalism.

all stories

‘Reimagine’ is a great word, isn’t it? Reimagining news is adding a human, aesthetic perspective on news. When I was a teenager, a good friend gave me a copy of an annual digest of Life Magazine and encouraged me to cut it up and stick it all over my bedroom walls. It seemed like dessication but I did it. Those photos were powerful. I discovered photojournalism. You read the news article once but you can’t stop looking at the photos.

We should definitely be introducing our students to diverse ways of viewing information. Students uninterested in news, in factual reporting, in long articles, are much more likely to be hooked by a powerful image. An image leads to endless possibilities for discussion and writing.

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The Wider Image app transforms news and news stories by using Reuters’ photographs, and creates an interactive experience for the reader. Although you can see these new pictures on Reuters’ blog, Reuters Pictures, I would recommend that you get the free app if you have an iPad.

An interesting part of The Wider Image app’s interactivity is the map linking stories with location.

map

Further data is provided about the country of location.

infographic

I admit, I do go on about pictures. So many posts about imagery. And I still feel strongly that the education of our students is missing the richness of visual literacies. Ever doubted that images are just as important as text? Let me leave you with pictures from Shaun Tan’s The Arrival.

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