Brawling Houses and Trees

Both Images: New Orleans, 2005 © Katherine Wolkoff.

I've been asked to write an essay on politics and photographic depictions of post-Katrina New Orleans. There obviously is a pretty rich trove of photojournalism available. But I hope to avoid it. Instead I plan to pursue the work by photographers "art" like Chris Jordan, Larry Towell, Robert Polidori and Richard Misrach. My plan generally is to talk about the politics of landscape and rely on the typically depopulated scenes that all of these photographers produced.

In any case, I've started to collect materials for the essay and came across work by Katherine Wolkoff that I had not recalled. Although it is quite good I'm not going to say much about it here. But I wanted to contrast two of her images of collision because they suggest a certain madcap brawl between uprooted trees and houses departed from their foundations. There are bits of macabre humor in these depictions of disaster.

Larry Towell

Tijuana* ~ Photograph © Larry Towell/Magnum Photos

In The Walrus you can find this appreciation of Larry Towell. A while back, in the wake of a remarkable talk/performance Towell gave here in Rochester, I posted several times on he and his work [1] [2] [3] [4]. His work typically is subtly but quite unmistakably political. And he is extremely creative in his efforts to link images and words.
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* "In Tijuana, Mexico, a memorial hangs on the US-Mexico wall to honour the more than 3,000 migrants who at the time had died attempting to cross the desert. Children walk along the wall, known locally as “the scar”, on their way home from school." UNFPA, State of World Population Report 2006

Larry Towell (3)

Well, Larry Towell was truly, truly terrific this afternoon. He did not actually “lecture” - explaining that, given that he has a bunch of kids, he already has done more than his share of lecturing in his lifetime already. Instead we had a performance, with Towell speaking and singing, playing guitar and musical saw and a variety of what members of the Art Ensemble of Chicago have for many years called “little instruments” (odd percussion, toy whistles, balloons, and so forth). Larry was accompanied by harmonica virtuoso Mike Stevens. All the while Towell’s images were projected, one after another, on a screen above him. During the course of the afternoon Towell traversed his photo-essays on The Mennonites, on politics and civil war in Central America, pictures from NYC on 9/11 as well as from anti-globalization protests, a segment of pictures from No Man’s Land (here too) and, finally, images from a “forthcoming” project called The World From My Front Porch, which is made up of Towell’s pictures of his home and family over the past dozen plus years.

The performance was exemplary of how one might insightfully entwine words and images in ways that strengthen both. Much of the time Towell played pre-recorded statements - “stories,” as he called them, which after all, he also claimed, is what photographers tell. I bought a 2CD package of his reflections entitled The Dark Years - Chronicles of War. These relate episodes, and Towell’s reflections on them, from periods of time he has spent working in both Central America and Palestine.

So, despite my qualms about the auspices under which the folks at George Eastman House brought him to town (here and here) I urge you to go and "hear" Larry Towell if you get the chance. His creativity affords a glimpse of how much more vital our experience of photography might be if we resisted the temptation to simply hang pictures on gallery walls.
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PS: Here is a nice example of the way Towell intermingles words and images in a "lecture" on landlessness. (ADDED: 9/11/06)

Larry Towell (2)

Hare is a sample of images I have found on-line from Larry Towell's work in Palestine/Israel. All images are © Larry Towell/Magnum Photos. Here he depicts Palestinian youth with rocks and slingshots and as well as shadows cast and absurdities created by the wall the Israelis are constructing in a futile hope of sealing themsleves off from danger. So, to pick up on the theme of the last post, why not a series on land and landlessness? Why not a series on borders and boundaries? Why not a series on resistance? These are "travel" photos only under pressure to remain insipid and uncontroversial. There are politics in these images and politics in the ways they are presented. Museum curators should resist the urge to sanitize.




You can find examples of Towell's previous work here. It is, by the way, no less political.

Larry Towell

On Sunday afternoon I am going to a talk by Canadian photographer Larry Towell at the George Eastman House. Towell will be there as part of an odd series entitled "Wish You Were Here: Travael Photography Lecture Series." I will explain in a moment why I think it odd and how I account for the oddity.

First, though, let me say that I am excited to hear what Towell has to say. Just coincidentally I recently bought his book No Man's Land published by Chris Boot in collaboration with the Archive of Modern Conflict (which is evidently located in London but about which I can find nothing much on-line). Towell won the Cartier-Bresson Award for this work and it is indeed impressive. The back cover of the book reads: "No Man's Land is photographer Larry Towell's account of his journeys to Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank between 2000 and 2004 - the years of the second Palestinain intifada. Born of an identification with the dispossessed, Towell's essay reveals a scarred and battered landscape, and the physical and psychological walls that separate its people." This blurb seems accurate. Here is what Towell has to say about his work:

"I guess what I'm trying to do is explore power. Look at power, what it has done to the world, and particularly its victims. I don't think we should be photographing the politicians.

I don't think we should be listening to them. I think we should be looking at the victims of those policies, and having a camera around your neck gives you that freedom. That excuse. The only thing really worth documenting is the civilian victims."

I do not entirely agree with Towell here, but that is grist for a later post. This, though, leads me back to the oddity I mentioned above. It seems odd to me, given Towell's professed motivations and commitments, to say nothing of the content of his images, that he is speaking in a series on travel photography. Sure, he traveled to Israel/Palestine. But the other photographers in the series will be talking about their work on everything from Adams-esque pictures of Yosemite to the grisly forensics necessitated by political repression in Guatemala. The common element here is "travel"? I would ditch the Yosemite stuff (or at least shift it elsewhere) and then re-label this series as one about power and politics and repression and violence. That, of course, would likely be discomfiting for the Rochesterians who frequent the staid Eastman House. It likely would be troubling for the donors and trustees too. That is my explanation for the oddity. Just another example of why photography is poorly served by museums.