Photojournalists worldwide are grappling with unprecedented challenges that threaten the very foundation of their profession. The rise of amateur photography, oversaturated news feeds, deepfakes, and the ongoing press crisis are forcing these visual storytellers to reinvent themselves to preserve what once made them powerful: the weight of words and especially the impact of photographs.

The profession, once associated with the prestigious image of photoreporters and their memorable shots, now faces a complex set of challenges that force photojournalists to completely reimagine their role. The explosion of amateur photography, visual saturation, circulation of deepfakes, and the media industry crisis are all upheavals that weaken both the reason for being of photojournalists and public trust in the information they produce.

Samuel Bollendorff, a photographer and documentary filmmaker, explains how the scarcity of images has become a major issue in an era of oversaturation. "As an independent photographer, I've been confronted throughout my career with the question of image scarcity," he notes. "Even before amateurs, there were local photographers. When I started, they would send me to the field on the other side of the world or to a neighboring country to document events. With the digital revolution and wire agencies, we now have very good photographers who, everywhere in the world, are capable of immediately documenting events."

The rise of social media and news feeds overwhelmed by thousands of images has undermined the rarity of photojournalistic work. Productions by photojournalists find themselves drowned in a flow of amateur photographs, diluting the scope and visibility of their work. However, Bollendorff sees amateur images not as competition but as an additional source of testimony that should be viewed as a storytelling tool.

Héloïse Conésa, curator in charge of contemporary photography at the Prints and Photography Department of the National Library of France (BnF), explains how this abundance has led to the gradual dilution of iconic news images that shaped our collective memory. "There is indeed a dilution of the iconic image, which is also linked to the fact that the mythology of the photoreporter attached to it has declined," she explains. "The iconic image was linked to immediacy in transcription, and this immediacy was total. In contrast, when you're a photojournalist or documentary photographer, you're more involved in building a project that will unfold over a long time and that will solicit other distribution networks than the press or social media."

The emergence of generative artificial intelligence tools has further intensified a crisis of confidence in press photography. By allowing anyone to falsify images with a high degree of realism, these tools directly affect the power of images and their ability to impact the public. "Beyond the profusion of images generated by artificial intelligence, we're witnessing a real crisis of confidence in the image," indicates Conésa.

The historian points out that staging in photography and visual manipulation are part of photography's history. "The image of the Republican soldier falling in combat - an iconic image that Capa took during the Spanish Civil War in 1936 - is an image that we now know was probably staged. Nevertheless, it shaped our imagination and our visual memory and it conveyed a point of view, a precise commitment from the photographer," she adds.

Eric Baradat, deputy director of information in charge of photography at Agence France-Presse (AFP), calls for real awareness and better media education in the face of the proliferation of deepfakes. "We learned to doubt texts; we need to learn to doubt, criticize, and dissect images," he states. He also advocates for establishing labels that attest to the authenticity of photographs.

"We need standards that allow us to convey authentic information and label it as such," Baradat explains. "This would involve inscribing in the image metadata or even in the pixels the conditions under which it was created. If it's by artificial intelligence, that needs to be indicated in the data. If it's with a camera too." He adds that the value we place on the author should also be labeled and inscribed indelibly in the image.

Faced with the upheavals affecting their profession, photojournalists are forced to reinvent themselves by offering a different perspective on current events or working on different timescales. Bollendorff notes this evolution: "When I started at the end of the 20th century, my job was called photoreporter. Then we talked about photojournalism, and now we talk about documentary photography. This semantic shift tells how photographers have had to find their place each time and increasingly claim author status and a unique point of view to survive."

This year, the climate issues specialist presented "Paradise" at the Visa pour l'Image festival - an exhibition that gathered photos published by victims of environmental disasters on social media, which the photographer collected and contextualized. "It doesn't matter if it's not us, photographers, who create the images, as long as we're capable of bringing a whole service around the image that consists of verifying it, sourcing it, and finally, collecting written testimony, which we've always done as journalists," Bollendorff explains.

Gilles Courtinat, deputy editor-in-chief of the online media L'Oeil de l'info, proposes a return to proximity photojournalism to address both the need for renewal and the crisis of confidence affecting image reception. Some initiatives have been deployed in the United States, notably by the American NGO CatchLight, which consists of funding projects to enable American local press to rehire photographers.

"The photographers' salaries are paid by the publication and by the organization," the journalist explains. "The idea behind this project is that by going into contact with the readership of American regional and local newspapers, these photographers bring back important information: what people want to read in their media." He concludes: "There's something to consider in this aspect of photojournalism, which has the advantage of being closer to individuals and being able to create a virtuous circle for information."