For the third year in a row, Double Exposure’s Investigative Film Festival and Symposium asked us to develop the look and feel of this year’s festival theme: Decay. Our teams wanted to visually represent the decay and erosion that the journalistic landscape has experienced in recent years. With the rise of “fake news” and “alternative facts,” it’s becoming harder and harder to distinguish between fact and fiction. Working with the DX team, we were able to dig into the culture of investigative film and reporting to interpret their thoughts on this year’s theme. From our collaboration, we developed the marquee image that will represent this year’s festival, now in its fifth year.

As always, it was a pleasure to work with the DX team, who are at the forefront of their industry. We take great pride in the ability to visually communicate the themes and issues that are so important, not just to us, but to our clients too. All, hopefully, to help aid in the greater good.

Inspiration

One of the first things that came to mind in our initial discussions of decay was the film Decasia. The 2002 film, by Bill Morrison, is a collage of found film in various states of decay. Set to an original score, Decasia is a truly original piece of art that puts the viewer in the middle of the physical and literal decay of pieces of our culture.

We also wanted to add a sense of urgency to the idea of decay. To halt the erosion of our media landscape, we need to sound the alarm, so we paired simple black and white images that showed elements of desperation and alarm. Check out a few of the examples below, featuring work by Eliot Erwit, Trent Parke, Moise Saman, and more.

Interpretation

The sense of alarm, tension, and urgency is interpreted through stark black and white images, which in some ways add an element of beauty to the look and feel of the theme. We liked the idea of conveying decay through collage, showing worlds colliding. Since the collage imagery is in black and white, we added a touch of bright, alarming orange as this year’s festival color.

We feel confident that we captured the current state of democracy—decay—which should alarm us all and that we should all urgently work to reverse.

We hope you support this year’s festival and pay close attention to the great work being done by the good people at 100 Reporters and Double Exposure to promote and protect investigative film and journalism.