Burtynsky, H-Two-Oh

Recently, The Economist, ran this two part video interview with Edward Burtynsky on his newly published project Water.

Thoughts on Apple

“I actually think Apple does one of the best jobs of any companies in our industry, and maybe in any industry, of understanding the working conditions in our supply chain . . . I mean, you go to this place, and, it’s a factory, but, my gosh, I mean, they’ve got restaurants and movie theaters and hospitals and swimming pools, and I mean, for a factory, it’s a pretty nice factory.”~ Steve Jobs (2010)

Manufacturing #11. [Cafeteria at] Youngor Textiles,
Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, 2005.
Photograph © Edward Burtynsky.

Manufacturing #10AB. Cankun Factory, Xiamen City, 2005.
Photograph Edward Burtynsky.

I use an Apple MacBook Pro. It is a nice, but hardly flawless, machine. While using an Apple gives me something in common with Lisbeth Salander, it does not make me cool (that is really difficult to imagine) or especially insightful. In fact, her Apple laptop it is not what makes everyone's favorite, slightly wacked, avenging anti-heroine cool either.

I have written, mostly critically, about Apple and the impulse to canonize Steve Jobs here on several occasions since I became un-PC. ( I will say for the record that when, during the State of the Union Address earlier this week, our Hoper-In-Chief pointed out Jobs's widow, I wondered how she must've felt about being invited to the official ritual to serve as a prop.) But Apple has been in the news lately for its knowing complicity in highly exploitative environmental and labor policies. In particular you should read this extensive piece in The New York Times earlier in the week. Alternatively, Apple hipsters might download this segment from This American Life and listen to it on their iPods as a podcast.

What is the point? Surely not that Steve Jobs (or any of the other Apple execs) is a bad man. He may or may not have been a nice fellow or a jerk, honest or duplicitous, caring or oblivious, and so forth. Character issues are a sideshow. Surely not, also, that Apple is the only company knowingly complicit in environmental degradation or exploitation of workers in the developing world. The report in The Times makes it crystal clear that that hardly is the case. So too do Burtynsky's images of nice Chinese factories. (If you don't care for Burtynsky on all this, try Chris Jordan or Pietr Hugo.)

So, here are some points to take from the recent revelations about Apple.

First, a cool logo and image does not make a corporation less capitalist, less preoccupied with profit. Apple differs not at all from Wal-Mart in that respect.

Second, there is little room for moralism here. Using this or that product or brand does not make you guilty or culpable any more than abstaining from doing so absolves you of guilt or culpability.

Third, as the This American Life segment I link to above makes clear, lots and lots of things are "hand made"; that, for instance, probably includes your cell phone. When labor is very, very cheap "handmade" loses its romantic connotations.

Fourth, it is not just manufacturing that has been globalized. So too has environmentalism. And recycling of high tech gadgets (with its attendant health disasters - think carcinogens, heavy metals, etc.) is done by hand too. On this it is important to go back and read the earlier comment on moralism. Recycling your electronic toys as you engage in planned obsolescence does not make you a better person. It simply means that somewhere in China, or another developing country, people are taking your junk apart by hand.

Finally, all this news about Apple suggests that voluntary standards - whether for fair labor practices or environmental protection - are a joke. Companies will fabricate vacuous criteria that they will then work around. And they will turn a blind eye to the evasions. That is how capitalism works.

So, even if - as Jobs opined - the Cafeterias are nice, making iPhones-Pads-Pods by hand is a pretty crappy way to make a living. Apple ought to do better, but they won't. That is how capitalism works.

China Recycling #12. E-Waste Sorting, Zeguo,
Zhejiang Province, 2004.
Photograph © Edward Burtynsky.

Manufacturing #16. Bird Mobile, Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, 2005.
Photograph © Edward Burtynsky.

Pieter Hugo

On route to Kigali International Airport, Kigali, Rwanda.
Photograph © Pieter Hugo.

Gatwaro Stadium, Genocide site, Kibuye, Rwanda.
Photograph © Pieter Hugo.

Some years ago I wrote this not-terribly-enthusiastic post comment on South African photographer Pieter Hugo and his work. Earlier in the fall seemed to be getting a fair share of quite positive exposure - from Sean O'Hagan here at The Guardian, for instance, or here at The New York Times Magazine - so I thought I'd see if it might do to reconsider. Hugo has done two major projects recently. One, Permanent Error, documents the environmental and human disaster of a massive dump outside of Accra, Ghana. The second, Rwanda 2004: Vestiges of a Genocide, focuses on just what the title suggests. I suppose there is nothing wrong with either of the two undertakings. Permanent Error seems fairly derivative - I think of Edward Burtynsky's images of computer salvage in the Chinese countryside or of Salgado's images of impoverished scavengers at massive dumps across the developing world. The same might be said of at least parts of the "vestiges" project - think of Nachtwey or Peress or Salgado. But there are some images of Rwanda that are strikingly provocative. These depict the Rwandan countryside, mostly now tangled overgrowth, all seemingly banal, where atrocities took place.

In the end, I have not updated terribly much. Hugo seems more able to resist the 'Africa as freak show' thrust of his earlier work. But he has now turned instead - with only mixed 'success' - to 'Africa as disaster zone.' (Note: in many respects the other photographers I mention above might be accused of falling prey to a similar pre-occupation.) He clearly is a talented photographer. But he is caught in the tropes that dominate photography of the African continent. I wonder if he might some day break out from those constraints. That, in my mind, would warrant some of the superlatives that rain down around him now.

Oil from the Air

Oil Spill #10, June 24, 2010. Photograph © Edward Burtynsky.

Oil Spill #13, Mississippi Delta, June 24, 2010.
Photograph © Edward Burtynsky.

Expansive and Up-Close, Photographic Environmentalism

I recently confessed to being the owner of an Apple laptop. I therefore found this report on the newly established relationship between Apple and photographer Richard Misrach pretty interesting. Apple has made one of Misrach's remarkable images the default wall paper for their new iPad device. You can find the image here. I guess this makes Misrach's work the visual equivalent of Muzak?

More seriously, Misrach is an environmentalist. Rebecca Solnit has typically smart things to say about the politics of his work in her recent Storming the Gates of Paradise where she suggests of his beautifully expansive landscapes that they "challenged us to feel the conflicts of being fully present in a complicated world." I think she is right in that assessment. The irony, I suppose, is to imagine Ed Burtynsky or Chris Jordan making one of their disconcertingly tightly focused close-ups of discarded high-tech devices only this time using defunct iPads.

Local Event ~ Edward Burtynsky at RIT Tonight

Edward Burtynsky
The Landscape of Oil
Wednesday, 21 January 2009 ~ 8:00 p.m.
Webb Auditorium
(James E. Booth Memorial Building - 7A)

From the Press Release: "The central place that oil, including its positive and negative aspects, holds in our society is the subject of “The Landscape of Oil,” a presentation and photographic exhibition by Edward Burtynsky to be held Jan. 21 at Rochester Institute of Technology. Burtynsky has spent the last decade traveling the world to chronicle the “attraction and repulsion” of this central commodity, from drilling operations in Bakersfield, Calif., to oilfields in Azerbaijan. The talk and exhibition, sponsored by the Caroline Werner Gannett Project, are based on a book that will be released in 2009 and gallery show that is being prepared by the Corcoran Gallery of Washington. The RIT event, which will be followed by a book signing, is free and open to the public."

I've just learned about this talk thanks to my friend Evelyn Brister, a very smart philosopher who teaches over at RIT. If you've hung around here much, you my recall my various, quite ambivalent discussions of Burtynsky and his work: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]. Needless to say, the reason I've spent so much time on those posts is that Burtynsky's work is very provocative. I highly recommend the talk if you can make it.

Burtynsky on iTunes

Perhaps I am just too old. At least I am too old in "technological years." When I received an announcement today that it is now possible to obtain Manufactured Landscapes, the film about Edward Burtnsky and his work via iTunes, I just figured "That seems cool, but I am not sure what to do about it." So, I've decided to post about it and there you have it. For all you young whippersnappers the relevant link to the iTunes site is here.

Best Shots (39) ~ Edward Burtynsky

(65) Edward Burtynsky ~ Tailing Pond (oil), Northern Alberta ~
(21 August '08).

Renewble Energy?

"Big Dams are to a Nation’s ‘Development’ what Nuclear Bombs
are to its Military Arsenal. They’re both weapons of mass destruction.
They’re both weapons governments use to control their own people."
~ Arundhati Roy (1999)

"Construction Site", Three Gorges Dam, Photo © Steven Benson, 2006

Various press sources reported last week that the 3 Gorges Dam in China already is creating more environmental havoc than the Chinese government anticipated. As a result a significantly several million more people will need to be relocated due to construction of the dam. Here is part of a report from The Wall Street Journal:

"Already, 1.4 million residents have been relocated to
make way for the dam. On Thursday, China's state
media said the government plans to move an additional
four million residents from the reservoir area created
by the dam because of worries about pollution fouling
up the new lake's waters, as well as landslides that
have made life hazardous for millions who live nearby."

And let's not mention the concerns about seismic activity that might someday threaten the integrity of the dam. These sorts of report remind me of the essays Arundhati Roy wrote about India's big dams. She portrayed them as fiascos that not only displaced millions of people but that never came close to fulfilling their intended purposes. In fact, Roy argues that those purposes were never actually spelled out. Massive projects like this, often rationalized in terms of energy production (compare nuclear plants), seem designed to fail. (She relies, in addition to many government and NGO reports, on Patrick McCully Silenced Rivers: The Ecology and Politics of Large Dams.)

Three Gorges Dam Project, Dam #2,

Yangtze River, China 2002 © Edward Burtynsky

Should you find Roy too irritating or simply too suspect because she is a woman speaking in public on behalf of the relatively powerless (I actually think her political essays are extremely pointed and extremely funny) you might consider Jim Scott's Seeing Like a State (Yale UP, 1998) for a related argument.

Solidarity (6)

Mines #19, Westar Open Pit Coal Mine, Spawood,
British Columbia 1984 © Edward Burtynsky

It is perhaps difficult to comprehend the daunting scale of mining operations that coal miners confront on a daily basis insofar as many are more or less wholly underground. This picture of an open pit coal minie offers a hint of the magnitude of the excavations.

Burtynsky & Politics Redux

Dam #6, Three Gorges Dam Project,
Yangtze River, 2005 © Edward Burtynsky

My recent post on Edward Burtynsky generated a number of longish, thoughtful replies, at least half of which disagreed pretty vigorously with me. Instead of adding to the comment thread I figured I would write another post. I guess the replies suggest why discussions at or about the intersection of politics and photography often seem mostly like a train wreck to me. I appreciate the comments because they are pushing me to try to be clearer. So, here goes ...

Joerg Colberg, with whom I have disagreed on this before, writes: “I simply don't see why Burtysnky would have to climb on a soap box and rant about waste and pollution when his photos show just that.” Nolan Smock agrees, saying: “Allowing these images to be associated with didactic rants would be a disservice.” And Miki Johnson herself also seconds Joerg’s assessment. (Arcim & Ed Nixon largely agree with Jeorg, too.) I don't think I could disagree with this convergence of views more strongly.

First, it is important not to identify “politics” - especially critical or progressive politics - with “rants” or “preaching.” If we do we’ve given up the battle, we’ve succumbed to the conservatives or the merely complacent who insist that we should stop “complaining” and simply be thankful that we are here in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Dissent involves discussion and debate, speaking up and speaking out. Politics is about speech. And it is about using ideals and principles and commitments in ways that might shape the future for the better. We demean ourselves, we evacuate the public terrain of citizenship if we automatically characterize political speech reductively as “rants.”

Even if one thinks most of what passes for political speech in fact amounts to little more than ranting and preaching perhaps it is possible for photographers (and other visual artists) to alter that in big or small ways. Consider Salgado and Nachtwey, to take two photographers of Burtynsky’s stature. When they discuss the political implications of their work would you say that they “rant?” Are they up “on a soap box?” No. Both do, however, see themselves as engaged in politics in the broad sense I’ve been depicting. They both repeatedly proclaim that they hope their work will promote discussion and debate about political problems. Burtynsky, as we will see below, abjures even so restrained an aspiration.

Second, is environmental degradation of the sort that Burtynsky depicts less lethal, less of a humanly created catastrophe than war or famine or massive forced displacement? Would it be acceptable to simply remain non-committal (and, as I suggest below, that is precisely the stance Burtynsky strikes) about the latter sorts of events? Again, think of Salgado or Nachtwey. How would we judge them if they adopted so non-committal a stance regarding the political and economic implications of their photographs of devastation and mayhem? Why is it easier to let Burtynsky off the hook here (in say his pictures of large dams in China like the one I've lifted above) than it would be to allow Salgado or Nachtwey to remain analogously silent regarding, say, their images of corpses of cholera victims in Zairean refugee camps? I simply do not get this.

If you think it sheer hyperbole to compare the construction of big dams to refugee camps created in the wake of genocide, perhaps you should read Arundhati Roy’s essays on the topic (find her essays on "The Greater Common Good" at Outlook India) where she documents both the true technological idiocy of such projects and the way they target vulnerable populations. Perhaps you will think she is ranting and perhaps she ought to be. I actually find her writing on the topic pointed and reasonable and often extraordinarily funny. And lest you think it unseemly for photographers to speak up about such matters, please read the essay on Elliott Porter in Rebecca Solnit’s new book. Or read Robert Adams's interviews and essays. Neither Porter nor Adams seems remotely to be a ranter or preacher. Neither was an activist - the prospect of which seems to worry other commentors - Ed & Arcim. But neither refused public comment as Burtynsky seems to do.

Since the other commentors essentially endorse Joerg's remarks I will take issue with some of what he says. In particular I want to contest the notion that it is "obvious" what Burtynsky is up to. In so doing, I will set aside a disagreement I have with him about the relative impact of small vs large scale items in the creation of our carbon footprints.

To start I will recommend this brief audio clip of an intriguing 2005 interview with Burtynsky that's been posted over at lensculture. The interview is about Burtynsky's recent work in China. In it he addresses some of the themes (e.g., matters of gaining access to China) that commentators raised in the comment thread oon my earlier post. It also offers, I think, insight into why Burtynsky affords so provocative an example for discussion. I want to make it clear that I find his work incredible in visual terms. I also think that, as the interview makes clear, he has pretty firm sympathies with those for whom environmental degradation is, as he puts it, "a global concern." On his account - which I have no reason to doubt - he was quite straightforward with high government officials in China about that concern. Burtynsky claims to have warned the Chinese not to repeat the environmental errors that we in the west have made in our pursuit of progress. In that sense he provides a commendable example.

But let's pay attention to how Burtynsky talks about his photographic work. It is (I think, and as I already have intimated) fair to say that he is pretty much entirely non-commital. Here are some passages from the interview (with apologies for minor transcription errors I might've made):

"I like to keep the work - and I think visual art is particularly suited to kind of keeping the reading of it somewhat open. To make it overly political, and say 'this is wrong,' is too simplistic . ..."

"[T]he work could be seen as a critique or it could also be seen as what they're celebrating in terms of their transition ... because they could look at that and say 'look we've joined the rest of the world' ..."

Earlier on, discussing the industrialization and urbanization he depicts in China, and the displacement caused by large dams in particular, Burtynsky suggests "one can read both good and bad in that" and rationalizes this by noting "there's a consequence to progress." [I could not have made that up except I suggested something quite like it in my initial post.] As with the images in his earlier project Manufactured Landscapes he very strenuously resists the notion that his photographs are "an indictment." My point is that Joerg is infering from the photographs something that their maker, at least, hardly thinks they portray. Joerg is perhaps correct (I personally would like to think that most folks saw what Burtynsky depicts as "waste and pollution." I simply don't think they do.) But, if we are to take Burtynsky at his word, what Joerg thinks is "obvious" is not quite that. If Joerg is correct, Burtynsky has failed.

In this interview Burtynsky operates with a sort of dualistic view of politics. Either it is a command driven, top down enterprise of the sort practiced by totalitarian regimes or it is characterized by a "cacophony" and "anarchy" of views, as under capitalism. This too seems a caricature of politics. Perhaps democratic politics can shape and constraint the cacophony of views in ways that are less objectionable than coercive techniques deployed by dictatorships? That would allow Burtynsky, like Salgado, Nachtwey, Porter or Adams, to speak out in ways that might address fellow citizens. But that brings us back to where I began.

Back to Burtynsky & Politics

Photo: © Edward Burtynsky

Over at State of the Art Miki Johnson (no relation) has a brief review of what seems like a not terribly interesting "documentary" film that is not-quite-about Ed Burtynsky and his work. I've not seen the film, but will get our library to buy it. That said, I find the review interesting because it raises the matter, once again, of in Johnson's words "why he [Burtynsky] hasn't gotten involved in the politics of environmentalism -- even though his large-format prints of humanity's effects on the landscape could easily serve as its posters." Although Johnson praises the visual aspects of the film ("with beautiful long pans and careful attention to composition"), she (I think, she) finds the soundtrack to the film irritating and distracting because it is ominous and seems to be prompting the viewer to find Burtynsky's "enthralling pictures" similarly darkly disconcerting. Johnson seems to think the images simply are disconcerting. And she therefore criticizes the filmmakers for departing from "Burtynsky's diplomatic apolitical" stance.

I find Burtynsky's stance here (and Johnson's endorsement of it) irresponsible. Given his purported concern for the environment, and given the pressures of environmental degradation, how does he justify being diplomatic or apolitical? His images are big and colorful and striking and they could well be "posters" for virtually anything. The notion that they somehow speak for themselves, or that they necessarily prompt viewers to reflectively examine their environmental "footprint" is amazingly naive and complacent.

About Burtynsky, Johnson writes: "With his vast photos he has uncovered the disturbing breadth of our greed and ambition." There are people who might look at the picture reproduced above (lifted from Johnson's post) and see not waste heaps but, at worst, the inevitable by-product of economic progress and, better, an opportunity. Various sorts of entrepreneurs, after all, can collect wire, strip the insulation, and sell the metal as scrap. And are there not more direct indications of 'our greed and ambition?' If you want to get people to reconsider their carbon footprints, why not look at the 'big ticket items' instead of simply the waste to which they contribute only marginally?

"Glowing" © Patti Hallock

For instance, compare the Burtynsky image above to any in this terrific series Nocturnal Suburbia by Patti Hallock.* These images reveal immensely wasteful patterns of resource use - McMansions built in sprawling subdivisions. [1] (Let's leave aside the tacit commentary on family or community life in suburbia.) They are no more preachy than Burtynsky. The composition and use of color and lighting all are, I think, striking. But, this image is no more "political" than Burtynsky's. It might serve as a "poster" for real estate developers, home security firms, lighting systems, etc. - what about those ominous shadows!?! ... And I know lots of folks who would find the images in this series (or Burtynsky's!) not in the least discomfiting.

I have, in the past, recommended this review of Burtynsky's Manufactured Landscapes by Rebecca Solnit. She has reproduced it in her new book and it gets directly to the heart of what I like about Burtynsky and what I find troubling about him too. Solnit argues persuasively that Burtynsky "approaches" the task/accomplishment of getting viewers to think about the causal structures and processes that generate the startling scenes he depicts. I think he does, but only incompletely. And in order to go further and accomplish that task, he really needs more than pictures. They don't speak for themselves. Someone needs to speak for them too. ... Ed?

__________

* Thanks to Alec Soth for bringing Hallock's very impressive work (as well as that of a couple dozen other photographers) to my attention.

Moving Walls 13 (Soros/OSI)

The Open Society Institute, funded by George Soros, runs a Documentary Photography Initiative that concentrates on funding the distribution rather than the creation/production of long-term documentary projects. I don't have any quarrel with that focus since the problems of getting good photography out into the world where it can be seen are notorious. The Initiative has two components: (1) Distribution Grants to photographers working with some "partner organization" to get their work out, and (2) the Moving Walls Exhibitions, the 13th iteration of which is just now opening at OSI headquarters in NYC.

Here are a couple of observations occasioned by line-up of Moving Walls 13, which includes work by Edward Burtynsky. The first observation concerns whether Ed really has so much difficulty getting his work seen. It seems to me that funding his work through this grant process is a bit like bringing sand to the beach. Perhaps including Burtynsky in the exhibition will draw larger audiences than it might otherwise attract. But, come on, he hardly is hard pressed for venues to exhibit his work and including him presumably meant excluding someone else, almost surely someone else with fewer resources and opportunities. (I assume that the OSI initiative, which is a competitive one, in fact is funding Burtynsky in the same way it is funding the other participants in the group show.)

The second observation is this - and here regular readers likely will say "There he goes again!" - I'd like some clear account of why Burtynsky's work is "documentary" rather than "art" photography. I have nothing against Burtynsky; as I've said here before, I actually like his work quite a lot. I can imagine an argument for categorizing his work as either art or documentary. But I think Burtynsky is a perfect example of why we ought to chuck that conventional distinction altogether! Of course, I have said all that at greater length before.

The Mathematics-Photography Analogy: A Perspective on Knowledge, Creativity & Politics

For pragmatists (like Charles Peirce and John Dewey) knowledge and creativity are collective endeavors, the product of interactions among individuals who make up various communities of inquiry. This point is brought home in this story from The New York Times today about Russian mathematician Grigory Perlman who has "refused to accept the highest honor in mathematics, the Fields Medal" for his work. This is not simply an instance of idiosyncratic, self-effacing genius - although Perlman may fit that type - but about the way knowledge is generated. In his description of Perlman's paper George Johnson (no relation), the author of The Times story makes the following observation:

"Those intent on parceling out credit may have as hard a time with the intellectual forensics: Who got what from whom? Dr. Perelman’s papers are almost as studded with names as with numbers. “The Hamilton-Tian conjecture,” “Kähler manifolds,” “the Bishop-Gromov relative volume comparison theorem,” “the Gaussian logarithmic Sobolev inequality, due to L. Gross” — all have left their fingerprints on [Perlman's accomplishment]. Spread among everyone who contributed, the [awards] might not go very far."

Just so. It may seem clear what this has to do with "theory" - this is a claim about how we think, how our minds work. What, however, has this got to do with photography? Or politics? Well, it has a lot to do with photography. Consider (again) Geoff Dyer's The Ongoing Moment in which the central theme is that influential and creative photographers regularly produce 'the same' pictures. I think he is correct and that he has identified something about communities of inquiry.Or, consider too the topic of my recent post on the current exhibition of digitized reproductions of Walker Evans photographs. The show highlights the ways in which the production of images is a collaborative enterprise, a point brought home by the practices of wonderfully creative contemporary photographers like Burtynsky and Salgado.It also is relevant to politics insofar as photographers too operate in a star system with all sorts of prizes and awards being dispensed in all sorts of categories. Burtynsky, for instance, won the 2005 TED Prize with its attendant "3 wishes". Likewise, Robert Adams, won the Deutsche Borse Prize last year and donated his $52K cash award to Human Rights Watch. It would be naive to think that there are no internal politics involved in the decisions about who receives such awards. But the politics is not simply internal. And they extend even into such rarefied fields as mathematics; so, why, instead of declining awards altogether, should those like Perlman not take the proceeds and (following Adams) distribute them in useful ways? You could even distribute them in mathematically appropriate ways. What would The Algebra Project do with such funds? Or, what would individuals struggling against gender inequalities in mathematics and science education do with such funds? Here we return to photography.

Consider this image from from Phil Borges' forthcoming project "Women Empowered":

© Phil Borges

The caption Borges attaches to this picture reads - "Fahima 37, Kabul Afghanistan: My current project ‘Stirring the Fire’ highlights women heroes in the developing world who are breaking local convention to empower themselves and their communities. Fahima secretly held math and literacy classes for 120 young girls in her home during the Taliban. She was raided several times by the Religious Police and physically threatened. She kept a sewing machine on hand to pretend that she was only teaching sewing—a Taliban sanctioned activity for women."

Fahima will never win the Fields Medal. But some future winner of that award (or others like it) could donate their winnings to projects like hers (assuming, of course, that that would not get her killed). The point, I hope, is obvious. Communities of inquiry, like all other sorts of community, are not pristinely apolitical either inside or out. Let's not pretend otherwise.

Communication Arts - A provocation to creativity? Yes. To politics? Maybe.

Last night I was sitting in the local chain bookstore at the local mall biding time while my two older sons coordinated their social schedules. Driving is a major task in these circumstances since we live out in the country and their social activities revolve around friends in town. The point, you are wondering? Well, ass I waited I was looking at the current issue of Communication Arts (Photography Annual 47, August 2006). It contains some interesting work, some of which I have mentioned in earlier posts (e.g., here).

Perhaps the most interesting contribution in the entire issue is an essay by Nancy Goulet entitled "A Picture's Worth" where she focuses on photographic projects by Edward Burtynsky, Phil Borges, and Sean Kernan, especially on the vicissitudes of finding useful outlets for such work. Kernan provides the exemplar here as he has done work with Sudanese refugees in Cairo and was frustrated in the task of finding an appropriate outlet for his images. You can find his web page facesudan here.

Kernan's images are terrific and this page offers a challenge to individual viewers, I think. Nancy Goulet ups the ante in her essay by inviting readers to suggest additional ways to use his photographs. She issues a challenge that I hope readers of the magazine will take up. It will be interesting to learn what comes of it. I suggested (via email) that Nancy & Sean look at the Amnesty International campaign I have mentioned here and that they consider incorporating literary as well as "factual" text in something like the way I suggest here. As a more specific example I suggested that, given that the troubles in Sudan are in significant ways the artifact of colonial boundaries and identities, Sean might use something like:

Partition
W.H. Auden

Unbiased at least he was when he arrived on his mission,
Having never set eyes on the land he was called to partition
Between two peoples fanatically at odds,
With their different diets and incompatible gods.
"Time," they had briefed him in London, "is short. It's too late
For mutual reconciliation or rational debate:
The only solution now lies in separation.
The Viceroy thinks, as you will see from his letter,
That the less you are seen in his company the better,
So we've arranged to provide you with other accommodation.
We can give you four judges, two Muslim and two Hindu,
To consult with, but the final decision must rest with you."
Shut up in a lonely mansion, with police night and day
Patrolling the gardens to keep the assassins away,
He got down to work, to the task of settling the fate
Of millions. The maps at his disposal were out of date
And the Census Returns almost certainly incorrect,
But there was no time to check them, no time to inspect
Contested areas. The weather was frightfully hot,
And a bout of dysentery kept him constantly on the trot,
But in seven weeks it was done, the frontiers decided,
A continent for better or worse divided.
The next day he sailed for England, where he could quickly forget
The case, as a good lawyer must. Return he would not,
Afraid, as he told his Club, that he might get shot.

This surely would focus viewer's attention more on political causes and consequences of the current violence and mayhem in Sudan. And it might encourage them to see the troubles there as part of a much more general pattern. That likely would make "humanitarian" organizations nervous and it raises questions about whether humanitarian remedies are close to being adequate. (I have raised something like this issue in a previous post on Burtynsky and environmentalism.)

So I applaud Nancy and Sean for laying down the challenge that they do. Their offer a much needed provocation. And I push they and their readers to consider whether they want to involve themselves in politics. That, I think, is where this challenge leads. And that, I think, is where the action is.

Truthful Imagas (4): Walker Evans Re-Printed

Walker Evans. "Untitled. Selma, Alabma (1936)"

Michael Kimmelman has an interesting review in The New York Times (25 August) of a show currently at the UBS Art Gallery (to which I cannot locate a link) in NYC. The show consists of digitized reproductions of classic Depression-era Evans originals. Kimmelman's review is entitled "Walker Evans. Or Is It?" and he raises interesting questions surrounding the technological reproduction of photographs. I must say that I find it difficult to get too exercised by such matters, but Kimmelman does note that the size differential between the originals and the reproductions surely influences the way we look at the images. He notes differences in contrast and so forth due to differences in the production processes. And, of course, he raises the obvious analogy to what we think when photojournalists engage in "any hanky-panky in the printing process" that might alter images in ways not too different from this process of digitization. The answer, I think, comes down to the uses to which we hope to put different sorts of image.

But Evans, according to Kimmelman, apparently was almost entirely uninterested in the printing process. And among top contemporary photographers it is possible to discern a range of attitudes to such matters - from Edward Burtynsky who seems preoccupied with production issues dictated by his large color images, to Sebastiao Salgado who has a production/layout team headed by his wife Leila, to Josef Koudelka who, I seem to recall, no longer bothers to print most of what he shoots at all (he is too busy shooting pictures to deal with such mundane things). So what precisely is at issue here?

Burtynsky and Environmentalism

Over at Conscientious Joerg Colberg has posted on Edward Burtynsky and his powerful images of environmental degradation. Joerg is addressing the images collected in Burtynsky's new book China (Steidl, 2005). Like Joerg, I think Burtynsky's work is terrific. It is important to note, however, that Burtynsky himself is extremely reticent to speak about the political dimensions of his work. I have not seen the new collection, but this reticence is clear in the text that accompanies his Manufactured Landscapes (Yale UP) from which I have lifted this image. ["Nickel Tailings No. 36, Sudbury Ontario, 1996," © Edward Burtynsky.] If you are interested in an insightful critical commentary on Burtynsky I recommend Rebecca Solnit's essay "Creative Destruction" which appeared in The Nation (1 September 2003). That said, I think it is important to ask what relationship might exist between images and verbal accounts of environmental destruction - or indeed of other distinctly political problems.