What Do Prizes Do for Photography? Encourage clichés and carelessness.

Here is a nice report* on the impact (perversion?) of photography by the various "prizes" that denizens of the photo world bestow on one another. It raises a bucket full of interesting questions. One thing I'd like to suggest - a lot of the hand wringing about "post production" adjustments to the raw image are way overblown. Nothing new: for starters, go watch War Photographer, the bio-documentary on James Nachtwey. He spends lots and lots of time on film talking to folks in the "post production" stream and adjusting the lighting and so forth in his images.

What I find more troubling is the topic of clichés, the tired conventions that the prize competitions simply encourage:

“Also: this is World Press Photo. A place which year after year provides a rather predictable vision of the world which, in a sort of self-castigating or suicidal mode, fits perfectly in a dwindling and whining editorial market. . . .  Perpetuating an ailing system. It’s not that the photographs aren’t any good. It is that pre-formatted vision of the world I have difficulties with." ~ John Vink

Last year I leveled precisely this criticism of the World Press Photo overall winner [1] [2] [3]  and I have raised similar complaints in the past as well [4].

And, of course, I also think that the fracas over Paolo Pellegrin's visit to Rochester this year [5] [6] [7] [8] raises important questions about the relationship between images and text, and between photographers and locations that the various prize-giving outfits - to say nothing of the photographers, editors, and so on - ought to attend to.
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* Thanks to Loret Steinberg for calling this to my attention.

Photography for the 1%

I came across this story in Forbes about the apparent bull market in "fine art" photography. I have to say that I find that category a contrivance and repeatedly have said so before (e.g., [1] [2] [3] [4]). Mostly it is an artifact of the hard work of certain photographers Alfred Stieglitz and Walker Evans (abetted by eager curators like Lincoln Kirstein) drawing self-serving distinctions between their own images and those produced by"mere" documentations or photojournalists like Lewis Hine and Margaret Bourke-White. If we are to take the Forbes story at face value, the discrimination seems to be paying off.

Before and After: Variation on a Familiar Theme

What follows is, of course, just me beating out a familiar theme. I came across this post, which links to a story in the Brazilian press, the latest (I suppose) in the genre "track down the subject in the documentary photo." The initial image of the little girl is a famous photograph by Sebastião Salgado. Some earlier installments in the genre:

The original portraits are (from the top) of Joceli Borges (Salgado, 1996),  Sharbat Gula (Steve McCurry, 1985), Kim Phuc (Nick Ut, 1972), and Florence Thompson and her children (Dorothea Lange, 1936). Typically these sort of "before & after" reports do two things. They demonstrate the determination and cleverness of the reporter who tracks down the subject years after the initial photograph is taken. And they provide an outlet for vaguely liberal anxieties about the "ethics" of documentary photography. Rarely do they prompt serious questioning of either (1) the political catastrophe the portrait is meant to convey - economic dislocation, destitution, war and the sorts of  forced migration they typically generate or (2) the photographic conventions that, over the course of six plus decades leads photographers and their editors to depict large scale political problems reductionist in terms of the plight not just of individuals but of individual women.*
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* There are a few exceptions to this latter claim. Martha Rosler ["In, around, and Afterthoughts (on documentary photography)"] and Bob Harriman and John Lucaites [No Caption Needed] both of whom and who discuss the Lange image at great length. Likewise, Holly Edwards [In her contribution to Beautiful Suffering] traces the career of the McCurry photograph in insightful ways.

"Can Americans Really Trust Mitt Romney to Decide Which Citizens Get Extrajudicially Assassinated in Drone Strikes?"

You should watch this short video at The Gawker. The point is simply to ask prominent Democrats at the convention a simple question: "Can Americans really trust Mitt Romney to decide which citizens get extrajudicially assassinated in drone strikes?'  Just imagine if all the media actually talked about issues like this, meaning in a straightforward, non-euphemistic way. After all, I was outraged to learn that Condi Rice, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld and the other war criminals from BushCo sat in a room deciding which torture techniques should be applied to which "high value assets." Why should I not be equally outraged when Obama (and, no doubt, his minions) sit around making the same sorts of decisions? With one exception, the respondents on this video punt. In so doing they reveal the ethical, legal and political culpability of their party and its leadership.

Otherwise Known as Propaganda: Embedded Photojournalism as Seen by Michael Shaw

I highly recommend this recent post by Michael Shaw at BagNewsNotes, itself a follow-up to this earlier post on the same subject. Michael astutely points out that despite the intentions of dedicated and talented photojournalists, we are getting a highly conventionalized view of American military adventures. Why? The photographers are embedded and see what the military wants them to see. I have commented on other dimensions of such new conventions here and  here and here and here.  This is a troubling trajectory.

Criticisms of the World Press Photo Award ... A 'For Instance' or Two

A woman holding her wounded son in her arms, inside a mosque
used as a field hospital by demonstrators against the rule of President
Ali Abdullah Saleh, during clashes in Sanaa, Yemen on 15 October 2011.
Photograph © Samuel Aranda/Corbis.

Last month I posted this critical assessment of the image above, for which Samuel Aranda won the 2011 World Press Photo award for 'photo of the year.' Pretty much every year I take the award announcement as an excuse to argue about photography. That is not because, in any given case, I want to question the photographer's motives or talent. Mostly, I pursue my own preoccupation which is with questions of pragmatics - of how images are used, by whom and for what purpose. I am more interested in photography than in photographs.

My complaints were that the Aranda's image was derivative in straight photographic terms (I offered a couple of examples) and, more importantly, that it (1) depoliticized the uprisings across the Islamic world, (2) reinforced traditional gender roles, and (3) assimilated Islamic politics to a distinctly Christian iconographic tradition. In the comment thread I had a frank exchange with Nina Berman, who had served on the Selection Jury. (I will say that I really appreciate Nina's intervention - straightforward and smart without being defensive.) Nina did a good job of shifting the burden of discussion - essentially asking the critics (including, but not just, me) to suggest a more appropriate image. In particular, Nina challenged critics to suggest images that, while strong photographically, also both underscored the role of women in the protests and avoided clichés of gesticulating/screaming/rock throwing demonstrators. Fair enough. This post is an overdue attempt to take up Nina's challenge. I hope simply to provide a somewhat better idea of the sorts of images that avoid the problems I find in Aranda's winning photograph.

Another commenter - Tom White - had suggested this image by Andrea Bruce which appeared (among other places) in The New York Times.

The body of Ahmed Fahran, 30, cleansed before burial;
killed by security forces in Sitra, Bahrain on March 15.
Photo © Andrea Bruce.

And while I do think it meets Nina's first criterion, it leaves women out of the picture (pun intended) altogether. (Nina pointed out that this image was not in the pool the jury was asked to consider, suggesting that if it had been nominated, it was eliminated in a earlier round of assessing.) In any case, Bruce's photograph was included among 30+ images of the 'Arab Spring' in the 'year in pictures' wrap-up published here at The New York Times. That latter threshold seemed to offer a rough proxy for 'quality'; and I found these two images in the same selection.

Anti-government protesters in Pearl Square in Manama, Bahrain,
on Feb. 20. The opposition wanted the country, an absolute
monarchy, to make the transition to an elected government.
Photograph © Lynsey Addario.

Young Egyptians posted videos online on Feb. 7 that they had
recorded earlier in Tahrir Square in Cairo. The group collected
testimonies of the protesters and published them on social
networking sites. Photograph © Ed Ou.

I think both of these images are powerful. Are they stronger in photographic terms than Aranda's? Maybe. Perhaps not. But both avoid the aspects of Aranda's image that I thought (and still think) are quite off-putting. Both centrally include women and both focus on the politics not the aftermath. Both avoid the Christian theme. Still, are they stronger in photographic terms?

Instead of sifting through thousands of images and arguing about whether this or that had greater photographic merit, I thought it might be more useful to simply contrast Aranda's image with a previous 'photo of the year' winner:

Women shouting from a rooftop in protest at the presidential
election results in Tehran, Iran, June 24, 2009.
Photograph © AP Photo/Pietro Masturzo.

I posted, almost without comment, when this image by Pietro Masturzo won the 'photo of the year' for 2009. Both then and now it recalls these very early posts I made on the politics of space in the Middle East revealed in various photographs of roof tops. In any case, here again we have an image that focuses on the particularities of oppositional politics in an Islamic (not Arab) country. And, again, we have one that avoids not just the cliché's that rightly worry Nina, but the substantive problems that bothered me.

Uses of the Pietà ~ Criticisms of World Press Photo Award

A woman holding a wounded relative during protests against president
Saleh in Sanaa, Yemen October 15, 2011. Photograph © Samuel Aranda.

This is the image that has been named 2011 photo of the Year by the folks at World Press Photo. No offense to Aranada, who is a talented photographer, but this selection is yet another disappointment. Let's set aside the multiple versions of the Pietà (from, say, Michelangelo to Sam Taylor-Wood) scattered across the history of painting and sculpture in the west.* The winning image is derivative if we focus just on the recent history of photography. Consider these two prominent examples:

A boy experiencing severe pain from TB meningitis is comforted by
his mother at Svay Rieng Provincial Hospital, Svay Rieng, Cambodia.
Family members provide much of the personal care at hospitals in
the developing world. Photograph & Caption © James Nachtwey/VII.

Tomoko Uemura in Her Bath (Minamata, 1972).
Photograph © W. Eugene Smith.

I've posted about these older images here before. My complaints, however, are not simply to note the "not again" feeling I had when the jury announced its selection. Consider the motto splashed across the bottom of each page on of the WPP web site:

We exist to inspire understanding of the world through quality photojournalism.

What I really would like to know is how the winning photo advances that mission. There are at least three deep problems that I see.

First, the image, according to remarks by jury members, is meant to call attention to the "Arab Spring" which is admirable enough. Yet this image reduces the public and the political to the intimate and the personal. The Arab Spring is centrally a broad, ongoing struggle to throw off dictatorship. Where does that primary theme go in this image? It is nowhere to be seen or inferred. This is de-politicization by convention. As such it is what, too often, photojournalism seems drawn to do almost irresistibly.

Second, the jurors too note the crucial role that women have played in the Arab Spring. They are right to do so. But they then turn around and select an image that reinforces traditional gender roles and neglects the real active role women have played. Here the woman provides care and solace to a man who has been injured, presumably out in the public world of political conflict. What about all the women who played a direct role in the resistance, not as care givers, but as strategists and organizers and spokespersons? Women across the world have been making trouble all year, not just cleaning up the mess or mourning it.

Finally, how does this image encourage "understanding" of the complex politics of Islam? Not only does it reduce politics to the personal, it does that by assimilating the stereotypical burka-clad woman to deeply Christian iconography. We don't even get universal humanism here. We here in the west are encouraged not to appreciate the realities and particularities of another world. Instead we are encouraged to see others as essentially just like 'we Christians.'

In all three of these ways, Aranda's image - presented as the "photo of the year"** - seem to me to divert understanding, to make it more difficult.
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* The folks at Lens/NYTimes rightly remark on the "painterly" nature of the image.
** Here, again, I want to stress that I am not criticizing this particular image or the photographer who made it. I am criticizing the jury for its selection and rationale.

Photographic Conventions: Prayers and Protests

I've started to notice a pattern of imagery surrounding the political conflicts roiling across the Islamic world. Some of the pattern is embodied in images from different photographers, some is due to the tendency of editors at Western publications to print images from the same photographer. No matter. What are we seeing here?

Sitra, Bahrain — Wearing a Bahrain flag tied into a cape, a man
prays with others Friday in the city that hosted three funerals for
victims of a government crackdown on protesters at the Pearl
roundabout. Photo: Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times.

Sana'a,Yemen: A Yemeni girl stands among female
anti-government demonstrators attending noon prayers.
Photo: Muhammed Muheisen/AP.

Sana'a, Yemen: Anti-government protesters attend Friday prayers during a
demonstration demanding the resignation of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah
Saleh. Photograph: Muhammed Muheisen/AP.

Yemeni children stand among women attending Friday prayers, during
a demonstration demanding the immediate resignation of Yemeni
President Ali Abdullah Saleh, in Sanaa on Friday. For weeks thousands
of Yemenis have been calling for Saleh's ouster. He said Friday that
he's willing to leave power "but we need to hand power over to safe
hands, not to sick, resentful or corrupt hands." Photo: AP.

Israeli soldiers keep watch as Palestinians perform their Friday prayers
in an open field in the village of Qusra, near the Jewish settlement of Shilo.
A Shilo resident was sentenced to 8 months in prison this week
for kidnapping and beating a 15-year-old Palestinian boy in 2007.
Photo: AFP.

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Sources: The images here are the product of a very unsystematic search. I'd wager you can find other, similar images pretty easily. The top image is from the "Framework" feature at The Los Angeles Times - 02/18/2011. The second and third images are from the "24 Hours in Pictures" feature at The Guardian - 03/22/2011 and 04/02/2011 respectively. The bottom two images are from the "Picture This" feature at Spiegel International - 04/01/2011 and 03/25/2011 respectively. In each instance. I've lifted both image and caption from the source.

Elections in Exotic Places (2)

There were national elections this past week in both Burundi and Equatorial Guinea. Here are the requisite images of the current, slightly ominous, leaders of the respective countries, each accompanied by a retinue of security personnel, casting their ballots.

Burundian president Pierre Nkurunziza (R) casts his
vote at a polling station in his hometown of Mumba,
in northern Burundi's Ngozi province (28 June 2010).
Photograph: AP.

General Konate, the transition president, votes on
Sunday in the capital, Conakry (27 June 2010).
Photograph: Agence France-Presse/Getty Images.

Elections in Exotic Places (1)

A while ago I promised a set of posts on the conventions that govern images in the Western press of elections in 'faraway places.' Here is the first installment. This week there have been elections in Burundi.

A voter goes to a voting booth to make her mark at a polling station in
Bujumbura, Burundi, as people prepare to vote in the presidential election
Monday, June 28, 2010. After all the opposition parties pulled out of the
race, the voters have only the choice between the ruling CNDD-FDD party
or declaring their votes invalid. Photograph © Marc Hofer/AP.

A voter at the Burundian presidential elections shows his inked finger to prove
he has cast his ballot, after voting at a polling station in the Burundian
capital of Bujumbura, Monday, June 28, 2010. After all the opposition
parties pulled out of the race, the voters have only the choice between the
ruling CNDD-FDD party or declaring their votes invalid. Despite many fears
that the voting will be disturbed by violence, the polling stations remain calm,
and attendance is not brisk. Photograph © Marc Hofer/AP.

The folks at the Lens blog over at The New York Times included the top image among the "Pictures of the Day" (28 June 2010).

My plan is to simply start posting sets of images; once I get a 'critical mass' up, I will write something. For the moment, the images are food for thought.

The Problem With Conventions

Election observers taking notes at a polling station. Voting in
Sudan’s elections has been extended by two days to ensure
technical problems do not prevent voter participation.
Photographer © Pete Muller/AP (The Guardian, 13 April 2010).

David Campbell has written this typically smart post on the photography of famine generally and famine in Africa more particularly. His concluding comments, referring to the image I've lifted above, are especially on point:

"One of my refrains for how we should understand photographs in these situations is that the problem lies with the absence of alternatives as much as it does with the presence of the stereotypes. Which means I should conclude with a double-page spread published by The Guardian this morning on the Sudanese elections. Clearly any place that is home to both food insecurity and a practicing democracy cannot be simply represented."

David is concerned with the conventions of documentary photography and photojournalism that inform depictions of large-scale human suffering in forms such as famine, epidemic, war, and other sorts of mayhem. He is especially concerned that such depictions dominate the ways that African countries appear in the Western media. David has put his finger on two distinct problems:

(1) How can one depict famine and so on in ways that do not assume stereotypical form (familiar images of starving babies, lines outside of distribution centers, the crush of people with outstretched hands as aid workers distribute provisions, etc.)?

(2) How can one depict the diversity of social and political experience in African countries in ways that, while not ignoring the difficulties that people face across the continent, nonetheless do not perpetuate what some refer to as 'Afro-pessimism'. (I've posted on this matter here a number of times.)?

These are daunting questions and David is correct both to raise them and to suggest that on both dimensions we are captive to conventions. The problem, in other words, is not necessarily one of bad intentions on the part of photographers or the NGOs who host them. Moralism, after all, is a none-to-attractive convention too.

My suspicion, though, is that very similar conventions inform photographic depictions of democracy, especially in African countries and in other 'exotic' places that have yet to embrace our own faith in that political form. It is not so much that I want to question the faith (although it is important to keep an eye on how it actually manifests itself) but that I think we need to keep an eye on how we serve up democracy as antidote. This is a theme I plan to take up over the course of the summer. Thanks David.

Optimism & Pessimism ~ About Africa in Particular

At The Guardian yesterday Jonathan Jones published this provocative post on South African photographer Guy Tillim. Jones seems to start off contentiously:

"You won't often hear me call a photographer a genius. I think there's too much homage paid to an art that's basically just holding up a piece of machinery and pushing a button.

There are great photographs and great photographers. But far too much fuss is made now of average photographs by average artists. It's not so much a cult of the camera as of the run-of-the-mill."

But notice that, having denied the appellation"genius" to anyone engaged in so mechanical a process as "pushing a button," he then more or less immediately takes it back. The alternative would be to appear just plain silly and, of course, to deprive himself of a subject - namely Tillim. The problem is not with photography but with the art world and those who inhabit it as, regardless of medium, tends to push the mediocre work of "artists" in the cause of making a buck.

O.K., let's not use the word "genius." How about talented, insightful, or whatever. Tillim is indeed a terrific photographer. The portraits to which Jones links are pretty ominous. And here Jones really raises some important issues. There has been a push recently to decry "Afro-Pessimism" [1] [2] and how it informs the conventions that frame too much of how photographers depict events and conditions on vast, variegated African continent. It seems fair enough to complain that we too often get predictable images of tragedy, violence, deprivation, and chaos and little more. But it also seems fair to insist that there is too much of such such things across Africa and, as Jones intimates, ignoring them does not make them go away.

"Tillim is a South African photographer whose work is at once a report on contemporary Africa and an artistic image of it. His pictures deliver the shock of classic photojournalism as he traverses the continent, visiting crisis zones such as the Democratic Republic of Congo or, on his home ground, downtown Jo'burg. But they are at the same time chosen and composed images. Tillim photographs Africa in a way that communicates ambivalent and disturbing ideas and perceptions; every one of his pictures is at the same time a record of something seen and something he seems to have thought about for a long time.

Tillim is a provocative artist. At a time when art museums in the rich world often seem to want to create a fictionalised modern Africa – as if by celebrating something that does not exist it can be brought into being – he portrays a continent in chaos. His portraits of child soldiers are particularly scary. In his recent body of work, Avenue Patrice Lumumba, he documents buildings whose modernist idealism dates from the early years of African independence. Today these buildings are in various states of decay and transformation. It is not an optimistic series.

But I don't think Tillim is a dubious gloater over misery and poverty. He is a truth-teller. And it's in telling the truth - directly or indirectly, prosaically or poetically - that photography discovers its artistic power."

The most obvious problem in this discussion, I think, is that it is cast in dichotomous terms ~ optimism or pessimism. I don't think this dichotomy captures Tillim's work. Nor does it capture the work of other terrific African photographers such as David Goldblatt, Andrew Esiebo, Phillip Cartland, Santu Mofokeng or others whom I've commented on here in the past. Nor does it capture the work of non-African photographers who have depicted the continent ~ James Nachtwey, Robert Lyons, Sebastiao Slagado, Ron Haviv and so on. Even when such photographers depict tragedy, violence, deprivation, and chaos, they hardly do so because they think such conditions are irremediable. If they did they would be either wasting their time, or playing the role of voyeur in which critics like Sontag notoriously cast them. If the latter interpretation (or some variation on it) were not so common, it would be too obviously shallow to merit a response.

A second problem is that in thinking of the problems Africans confront and the accomplishments of which they can boast the parties to this disagreement reduce the role of photography to how this or that photographer is representing one or another truth. What about thinking of a conversation among photographers - one that does not rely solely on textless images, which I think is a hackneyed conceit of the profession - as though a picture (or set of pictures) speaks for itself? Different photographers might bring different perspectives and talents to bear on the continent. And we might recognize that there is way more in "Africa" than any one photographer might capture. So we could tack back and forth between the work of the many talented and insightful folks who are working there.

A third problem is related to the last. Photography does not simply depict reality; it does not simply capture some pre-existing "truth." It can also be transformative and prefigurative. And while Jones is no doubt correct to say that we cannot simply bring something into being by celebrating our aspirations (a form of dangerous wishful thinking that does not take the travails off real people seriously), he is way to harsh in his judgement. Why? Because photography can also play a role in prefigurative role in social and political change. It cannot accomplish such change on its own. But it can enter into movements for change and hold out possibilities that will motivate actors and animate movements. Call me naive or utopian. Want an example? Think of Josef Koudleka's (anonymous) photographs of Prague in 1968. Did they stop the Soviet brutality? No. Could they? No. But they entered into the politics of oppositions across Eastern Europe and came back to haunt the Soviets. I am sure you can think of other examples. Chuck your pessimism and cynicism overboard.

And More Disturbing News from the Twin Cities

There is a report on Alternet on a "preemptive" raid staged by St. Paul police, on a house where video activists were staying in preparation for the Republican convention. The activists, some of whom are affiliated with I-witness Video, record police activities. And now there is this video uploaded to Huffington Post, showing Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman being arrested for no apparent reason:




The story is being run on blogs at Minnesota Public Radio, The Nation, Alternet, and other outlets.

More on the Convention

Last night I drove from Rochester to Boston for the convention. No, not the convention, the one everyone is talking about. Once again this Labor Day weekend I am attending the annual convention of the American Political Science Association. I did get the chance to listen to most of what the Democrats were up to in Denver, though. My basic assessment has not changed since yesterday.

That said, I think Hilary has done the right thing. Whether she is sincere or not really doesn't matter. This is politics. What matters at this point is that the Democrats get their shit together. Bill did his typically narcissistic thing, but he too seems to understand the task at hand. And I did like the analogy he drew between what the Republicans said about him when he first ran - "too young and inexperienced" - and what they are saying about Obama now. So far, so good.

What I do not get at all is the adolescent response of most of the Clinton supporters in the face of having lost an electoral process. Yes, Hilary would've been the first woman President. Yes, that is long over due. But three things are crucial.

First, democracy works better than all the other available options for organizing politics because it creates losers. It offers those folks the impetus to work harder, to look over the existing rules to see whether they are fair, to call their opponents on things like, in this instance, being sexist. and to then pursue their best option. If you discontented Clinton-ites think a McCain victory in two months is your best option in two months, knock yourself out. That will simply confirm my view - expressed here many times before - that Hilary is basically a moderate Republican. If you think the rules worked against her propose changes (remembering, of course, that her centrist cronies basically established in the rules in the first place.)

Second, comparative victim-o-logy is just not a useful exercise. This is an historic election even though Clinton lost the primary. It is crucial to recognize that fact without the immediate caveat "but Hilary lost and I'm unhappy!" In terms of sheer political symbolism it seems extremely difficult to me to adopt anything other than a celebratory stance about Obama's success. That said, African-Americans have been more loyal to the Democratic party and arguably less well served by it historically than any other component of its "base." A question: If Clinton had edged out Obama in the primaries, would his African-American supporters being threatening to stay home? Would they be threatening to work for McCain?

Finally, the Clinton supporters need to get a grip. Hilary has never been a feminist. (If that involves a modicum of solidarity and an abiding concern for women's issues.) Nor is she terribly liberal. She has been a political opportunist. Her votes on the war and foreign policy are evidence enough of that. And I speak as the father of a 19 year old son. So when you look at Hilary and see a symbol of women's success, you are making a bit of a stretch. She is not Margaret Thatcher, but she is no better than a centrist Republican.

Here are two opinion pieces I've read recently about the Democrats current predicaments. The first addresses the Clinon-ites and I agree with virtually everything in it. The second one addresses the Democrat's unspoken problem: How to persuade Older white Americans to vote for a Black man.

Watching the Convention (Thus far ...)

I have watched portions of the first two night of the Democratic convention (via a free feed from MSNBC). Nearly all of the speakers come across a stilted. Since they have no rhythm (and since those subjected to the dreariness of contemporary American speech-i-fying seem to have gotten use to that) the audience seems to respond in the wrong places. There is no cadence. But what passes for "substance" is even worse. The persistent theme of family and religion are insipid. There are way too many victims - "widows and orphans," wounded veterans," "single mothers," ... the whole litany. None are seen as capable in any plausible way. And the closing prayer is, quite frankly, nauseating.

We don't need prayers and 'compassion' for the pathetic, the abandoned and the decrepit; what we need some plausible policies and the willingness to play political hardball necessary to get them implemented. we need that just not for the pitiable, but for the great majority of Americans who've been screwed by Republicans peddling deeply flawed policies and but who are willing to play the sort of political hardball needed to implement them. Unfortunately, the Democrats just don't seem up to the challenge.

I ave a very bad feeling that the Republicans will tear this lot to shreds.

Photo Clichés

Don't get me wrong. I generally like The Guardian. But it has its flaws. And the flaw I want to note here is one it shares with lots of other newspapers. Like other daily newspapers The Guardian runs a section (the name varies from outlet to outlet) called "24 Hours in Pictures: A Selection of the Best Images from Around the World." You can find the feature here. Usually I wait several days to a week or so before scanning the selected images. Each of the images here appeared in The Guardian "24 Hours ..." feature in between May 26 and June 3. The captions came with the images.

I do not know who does the selecting. But the photo editors at the newspaper and the photographers (regardless of nationality or agency) who are feeding them images seem to converge way too much. As a result, what emerges are pretty clichéd patterns, regularized variations on a theme. Lines of helmeted police, resembling Storm Troopers from Star Wars, clashing with demonstrators always is a favorite. So to are exotic people engaged in exotic practices of this or that sort. This week we had a theme of fish at one or another stage of being harvested. And we had food frolics of various celebratory sorts. But we also had these three themes as well.

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Cliché #1: Antiquities Dashed to the Floor

3 June ~ Sichuan province, China: The head of a statue
of Buddha lies among the ruins of the destroyed Erwang
Temple, also known as the Temple of Two Kings, in
earthquake-hit Dujiangyan. The temple, which is on the
UN's world heritage list, was built 2,000 years ago.
Photograph © Jason Lee/Reuters.

27 May ~ Sichuan province, China: Some of the 108
wooden carvings of China's emperors are seen broken
on the floor of the Fuxing Buddhist temple after the
earthquake. Photograph © Nir Elias/Reuters.

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Cliché #2: The Hands of the Oppressed

3 June ~ Johannesburg, South Africa: Refugees from
xenophobic violence sit on a bus as they wait to leave
Germiston City Hall for a newly constructed camp.
After living in temporary shelters in police stations
and community halls for nearly three weeks, the
displaced foreigners are now being moved to temporary
shelters, with tents supplied by the United Nations.
Photograph © Jon Hrusa/EPA.

2 June ~ Johannesburg, South Africa: A Congolese national
displaced by the recent xenophobic attacks shows his
identification bracelet. Photograph © Gianluigi Guercia/
AFP/Getty Images

28 May ~ Johannesburg, South Africa: Immigrants
displaced by violence against foreigners warm their
hands over small fire outside a police station.
Photograph © Mike Hutchings/Reuters.

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Cliché #3: Boys Throwing Stones

2 June ~ Modin, West Bank: Palestinian youths clash
with Israeli troops during a protest against Israel's
security barrier. Photograph © Sebastian Scheiner/AP.

28 May ~ Nilin, West Bank: A Palestinian boy hurls a
stone at Israeli soldiers during a demonstration.
Photograph © Abbas Momani/AFP.

26 May ~ West Bank, Palestinian territories: Palestinian
demonstrators hurl stones at Israeli border police during
a protest against Israel's separation barrier in Nilin, near
Ramalla. Photograph © Muhammed Muheisen/AP.

Disaster Conventions

Cite Soleil, Port-au-Prince: Refugees queue up to get food and
supplies from UN peacekeepers after floodwaters and mudslides
caused by tropical storm Noel killed at least 48 people.
Photograph: © Ariana Cubillos/AP

Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo: A mother and
a child sit outside a cholera centre run by Medecins
Sans Frontieres. Photograph: © Lionel Healing/AFP/Getty Images

Here are 2 of the 16 "Pictures of the Week" from the BBC web site last week. Mothers and babies waiting for Humanitarian Aid. Obviously, the are near substitutes.

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.

Photographic Conventions (Again)

In The New York Times you can find a review of Martin Duberman's new biography of arts impresario Lincoln Kirstein. This affords an opportunity to take up the comment in my last post about the dubious nature of the conventional dichotomy between "documentary" and "art" photography. As the reviewer remarks, Kirstein "put Walker Evans on the map." Although that is a slight overstatement, it is important to understand that elevating Evans hardly was an easy task. In that regard I recommend a recent essay "A Genealogy of Orthodox Documentary" by John Stomberg. The essay appears in the recent volume Beautiful Suffering: Photography & the Traffic in Pain. Stomberg details how the elevation of Evans was part of a concerted campaign to not only characterize his work as the pinnacle of proper documentary practice but to diminish the accomplishements of purported "competitors" such as Margaret Bourke-White. Like other social and political insititutions, the conventions governing photographic practice are artifacts that emerge as a by-product of conflict among asymmetrically situated parties. Evans, Kirstein and their allies simply had more cultural resources than those whose work they sought to marginalize.

I will have more to say on this general topic in the next few days.

More Thoughts on Photographic Conventions & Their Vicissitudes

Several days ago I posted some critical remarks on the convention among "documentary" photographers of focusing on the predicament of particular individuals. (I use scare quotes on the word "documentary" because I actually think that that category is nearly meaningless outside of an untenable dichotomy in which "art" photography provides an equally meaningless pole. That, though, is an argument for another time.) Here I want to offer some examples of ways beyond that conventional preoccupation. Consider these two images that quite clearly locate individual hardship within a broader context.

Sebastião Salgado, "Kisangani, Zaire," 1997.

Dorothea Lange, "White Angel Bread Line," 1933.

The first image, part of Salgado's Migrations project, shows Rwandan refugees walking back to their point of departure because Zairian officials had denied them access to their putative destination. It is examplary of the approach Salgado uses of situating individuals in groups and of populating landscapes without ever actually losing contact with at least some of those individuals. Sometimes this occurs in a series of images, somsetimes within individual images. Notice here that some, but not all, of the individuals in the foreground make eye contact with the photographer.

The second, better known, image by Lange likewise situates an instance of individual economic hardship amongst the crowd of others in the bread line. The man with his back to the crowd seems to be shabbier than the rest. But, still, he shares his predicament with the others and is singled out only relatively. (I recommend Geoff Dyer's discussion of this photograph in his The Ongoing Moment.)

Of course one can depict suffering in more allusive ways, without actually depicting the indviduals on whom it has been perpetrated. Compare the image by James Nachtwey I lifted in my earlier post depicting the young Rwandan man who'd survived a machete with this image by Gilles Peress taken in Goma, Zaire near the Rwandan border in 1994. Given our knowledge (even then) that machetes were the wepon of choice in the Rwandan genocide, this image is chilling. Yet it depicts not a single individual.

Similarly, this next photograph, also by Peress is of a photo-album found at the site where Tutsis had been massacred by Hutu during the genocide. While the album contains photos of individuals, it does not depict their suffering directly but instead prompts viewers to imagine what became of them.


Those familiar with Peress's work will know that he also provides photographs of death and mayhem and suffering of individuals; his images from Rwanda are especially grisly. But in the examples I've lifted here, he works by indirection and, in some ways, these images are more haunting than those of corpses.

My point is not that we in the North and West ought to be spared gruesome scenes or even spared confrontation with less final sorts of suffering. Instead, it is that there are ways to sidestep the conventional practices of "documentary" photography. The examples here are merely food for thought.