Brittany Hutchinson

   Being a photographic artist, Brittany views photo reportage as a genre that is situated between journalism and visual art.  It has in common with journalism its direct relation to actuality. Reportage refers to cultural and social reality and current social issues.  At the same time, photo reportage has in common with visual art, because it interprets events and subjects by contextualizing elements such as historical background, causality, presenting viewers of art with a visual material for a more enlightened personal interpretation of a specific social issue. 

   The imperatives of journalism, their standardized patterns, their competitiveness, their permanent quest for the latest sensation, and their view of visual information as a commodity, impose tight limitations on the journalist's radius of action. Journalism often has to isolate facts and events, sensationalizing and glamorizing them through personification.  Likewise, much of today’s photojournalism oversimplifies complex situations and their backgrounds, favoring a trivial and partial understanding.  Furthermore, it is compelled to use a language appropriate for the busy and undiscerning reader. As a result, it can hardly avoid providing stereotyped interpretations of reality.
  Visual art, on the other hand, is born of imagination, invention, and fantasy.  Visual art embraces images, metaphors and allegories, and is nourished by the poetic and descriptive impact of visual means, photographic in the case of this project.  Art uses images.  Visual art can use cuts and montages.  Visual art draws energy to the social issues through condensation. Visual art touches dimensions of actuality which journalism avoids—such as psychology, visions and introspection, emotion and imaginary reality - and is sensitive to the effects of geography and economy on human modes, behaviors, and traditions – like it is the case of income inequality in America today.  That’s why A Tale of Two Cities blends the imperatives of journalistic adventure with the power of expressive means offered by visual art.  Such blending allows the artist to accumulate a multitude of artistic experiences while working on in-depth depicting of one social issue and then making it possible to explore other issues through the same medium.