Eyebrows were raised in the photojournalism community yesterday when World Press Photo  – an industry stalwart – announced the creation of a new contest that would “not have rules limiting how images are produced.” The contest would allow staged and manipulated images – dubbed “creative documentary photography” – in support of contemporary storytelling.

One the one hand, this is outrageous. It’s more than a matter of semantics to reappropriate the meaning of “journalism” and “documentary.” Lives have literally been lost in the pursuit of the ideals espoused by these words.

But let’s take a step back and acknowledge that the contest is still unnamed and that “creative documentary photography” is, perhaps, a working title for an unfinished product.

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