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.

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.

Plagiarism? (again)

"Sometimes there is no acknowledgment, tacit or express, of the original author but [viewers] are indifferent; they may be deceived, but the deception has no consequences. . . . A judgment of plagiarism requires that the copying, besides being deceitful in the sense of misleading the intended [viewers], induce reliance by them. By this I mean that the [viewer] does something because he thinks the plagiarizing work original that he would not have done had he known the truth. . . . The [viewer] has to care about being deceived about the authorial identity in order for the deceit to cross the line to fraud and thus constitute plagiarism. More precisely, he has to care enough that had he known he would have acted differently. There are innumerable intellectual deceits that do little or no harm because the engender little or no reliance." ~ Richard Posner*

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The Mosque of Istiqlal, Jakarta, Indonesia, 1996.
Photograph © Sebastião Salgado

The National Mosque in Jakarta, Indonesia, 2009.
Photograph © James Nachtwey/National Geographic.

This post is a follow-up to this one - hence the (again). I am preparing a talk and came across the Salgado image which I do not recall having seen before. It reminded me of the Nachtwey image on which I commented here a few months ago. In any case, the confluence allowed me to come back to the topic and refer readers to the Posner book from which I've properly quoted and which I have (properly) cited. (I have altered the passage to substitute 'viewer' for 'reader', which is in keeping with what Posner himself allows.) Mostly, I think Posner pushes us to recognize that the recent fracas about plagiarism in photography is - in legal terms at least - much ado about not very much. Did Nachtwey (or, in my earlier post, Rai) set out to reproduce Salgado's photographs? The later images are in neither instance identical to the earlier ones. But the vantage point and subject matter and impression are virtually the same. Yet there is no reason to allege deceit in either case. Would you not buy Nachtwey's (or Rai's) image if you discovered Salgado's? There is no reliance in either case either. As I remarked in the earlier post the history of photography is replete with convergences like the ones I note.

That leaves our judgment of the creative merits of this or that photographer. This, I think is what is at issue. In the cases I have adduced - images by master photographers like Raghu Rai or James Nachtwey that reproduce earlier images by master photographer Sebastião Salgado - I see no reason to suspect that our assessments of the former are in any way diminished by awareness of the latter's work. Each man has an impressive body of non-overlapping work. But this brings us back to Posner who observes that:

"By far the most common punishments for plagiarism . . . have nothing to do with law. They are disgrace, humiliation, ostracism, and other shaming penalties imposed by public opinion on people who violate social norms whether or not they are also legal norms. . . . The stigma of plagiarism seems never to fade completely, not because it is such a heinous offense but because it is embarrassingly second rate: its practitioners are pathetic, almost ridiculous."

Posner concludes that mockery and disdain - not legal action - are in most instances the proper response to plagiarism when it is suspected. I agree. But that creates an immense burden. When thinking about behavior of various denizens of the art world, how are we to pick out the egregiously second rate, pathetic and ridiculous from that which is simply run of the mill?
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* Richard Posner. The Little Book of Plagiarism. New York: Pantheon, 2007.

Envisioning Aggregates: The Faithful

"Great numbers, however, cause particular difficulties for
our imagination. As if we observe humanity in a way that
is not permitted for humans, and allowed only to gods. ...
In other words, they can think in categories of masses.
A million people more, a million less - what difference
does it make?" ~ Czeslaw Milosz

The National Mosque in Jakarta can hold 120,000 souls for Friday
prayers. Arab traders brought Islam to the region a thousand years
ago. Now 86 percent of Indonesia’s 240 million citizens are Muslim,
mostly Sunni. Photograph © 2009 James Nachtwey/National Geographic.

Politics is about numbers - often very large numbers. Politics, in many cases, also intersects with imagination, with our ability to envision possibilities. Hence the quote from Milosz, which I've used here several times before. Among the issues that perplex me is whether - and how - photographers might depict aggregates. This image, from "Indonesia: Facing Down the Fanatics" does just that.

Beauty as a Tactic

One of my very first posts here and a whole slew of those I've written since then address one or another topic at the intersection of beauty and politics in photography. As I've made pretty clear, I find most discussion of this topic irritatingly simple-minded. That said, I came across this post, entitled "Beauty as a Tactic," by Canadian photographer Tony Fouhse at Slightly Lucid*. Not only do I generally agree with Fouhse that we need to think about the uses of beauty and the consequences of using it. But I am intrigued too by the parenthetical aside in this comment:

"James Nachtwey and Simon Norfolk take their cameras to war, not exclusively, but a lot. Both have an "eye" (though I prefer the word "brain") that can, and usually does, turn the horror they witness into beautiful photographs."

I think too much writing about photography wallows in overly romantic musings about intuition and sentiment and simple luck (although the latter is probably the most important of the three). Seeing is a cognitive activity and that means "brains" are going to be pretty important. It is no coincidence that Nachtwey and Norfolk appear pretty regularly in my posts. They are really smart photographers.
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* Slightly Lucid, by the way, is the very insightful blog of the apparently also very smart Montreal-based photographer Aislinn Leggett.

Pietà Redux

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

A couple of weeks ago I lifted this image of James Nachtwey's - which I called "the pietà transported to contemporary southeast Asia" - for a critical post on the conventions of documentary/ photojournalism. I am no historian of photography. But the image resonated in a way that made me think I'd seen it before. It turns out that I had:

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

James Nachtwey & the Campaign Against XDRTB ~ Caught in the Conventions of Photojournalism

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

Let's start with the obvious, since I want to talk about what I think are more important things. James Nachtwey is an extraordinarily talented photographer. In his work he has captured the dangers and depravities of war and famine and other forms of systematic, man-made devastation. And he's done so in ways that have proven both profound and powerful. It is perhaps only a slight overstatement to say that he is unrivaled. Yet, despite his own admirable aims, Nachtwey is operating within conventions that are highly constraining.

O.K. - now for the critical part. Here I am prompted by this post Jörg Colberg made at Conscientious yesterday.** Jörg used a recent undertaking by Nachtwey to raise a set of general critical questions about photojournalism. He is uneasy about the genre and its conventions - at least as these operate in our current circumstances.

Background: Last year Nachtwey won a TED Award. As part of that extravaganza, winners are granted "wishes." Nachtwey used his wish to request help in mounting a campaign that he was then working on. At the time the subject remained "secret." Earlier this month a coordinated publicity campaign revealed that the subject is the prevalence and spread of extremely drug-resistant Tuberculosis (XDRTB). Nachtwey had traveled to a half-dozen countries (Cambodia, South Africa, Swaziland, Thailand, Siberia, Lesotho, India) to photograph the epidemic. His stated his wish this way:

“I’m working on a story that the world needs to know about. I wish for you to help me break it, in a way that provides spectacular proof of the power of news photography in the digital age.”

You can find the web site for the Nachtwey's campaign here. Like Jörg, I resisted the multiple pleas I received (directly and indirectly) to post on the project and thereby publicize the campaign. Like Jörg too, I have various reservations. And like Jörg not just the campaign but my own reservations make me uneasy.

Jörg focuses his attention on the content - more accurately, on the conventional style - of the images Nachtwey has made. He finds the images troublesome; so do I. But I want to put that off for a bit. That is because I think the ways - the tacit purposes for which - the images are deployed is troublesome too. Indeed, Nachtwey's style is crucially, a reflection of the way he understand the aims of his campaign.

[0] Nearly all public problems, actual or threatened, tend to be aggregate phenomena - think of epidemic, forced displacement, war, famine, etc. None of Nachtwey's images, however, give any sense of that basic fact. This is true of this project, but is true as well of his earlier work.* He not only focuses on individuals but does so in an especially intimate way. This is intentional; in this interview following the publication of his book Inferno, he observed:

“Virtually every picture in Inferno was made at close range. I like to work in the same intimate space that the subjects inhabit. I want to give viewers the sense that they’re sharing the same space with a photo’s subject.”

In this respect, Nachtwey's work epitomizes the conventions of American (at least) photojournalism - think of such iconic images as Walker Evans's portrait of Allie Mae Burroughs or Dorothea Lange's 'Migrant Mother.' The problem is that by presenting individuals as the exemplars of collective or group circumstance, we too easily lose sight of the aggregate nature of the phenomena and become absorbed in the pathos of individual hardship and suffering. The image I've lifted above - the pietà transported to contemporary southeast Asia- is a perfect example.

[1] The aim (at least tacitly) of photojournalistic conventions is to elicit 'compassion' among viewers in hopes that they will move from compassion to some political (collective) response. In the "Afterward" to Inferno Nachtwey makes this explicit:

“What allows me to overcome the emotional obstacles inherent in my work is the belief that when people are confronted by images that evoke compassion, they will continue to respond, no matter how exhausted, angry or frustrated they may be.”

Unfortunately, as I've noted here before solid psychological research (by, say, Paul Slovic) suggests that this move is virtually impossible. This research establishes that compassion is highly individualistic - it founders more or less immediately if we move from concern for one individual to concern for as few as two. Yet, any plausible remedy to a major (or even not-so-major) public problem requires not just individual "awareness," but concerted, coordinated action. And that action must aim to remedy general patterns. Even if one were to insist that public awareness is a first step, it would be important to establish how - by what mechanisms - that public awareness could be coordinated into action or even support for action. All this is a political problem - one of constituting a 'we' out of the vast distribution of individual awareness. As political theorists as diverse as John Dewey and Michel Foucault and Hannah Arendt remind us, we should not be naive about the obstacles and difficulties that stand in the way here. My own view is that campaigns animated by celebrity are unlikely to be effective.

[2] The TED Awards, at best, are a recognition of accomplished individuals, prizes that allow them to pursue some 'wish' in a more or less ad hoc manner. Nachtwey fits the bill. There is no sense in which there is a permanent or even persisting organizational outcome to his campaign. This is not meant as a criticism but as a description of the situation in which he is operating.

Nachtwey's campaign has emerged as a philanthropic enterprise in which various firms donated talent and labor of various sorts. This becomes clear in the credits to the XDRTB.org web page:

"XDRTB.org is a project of the Sapling Foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization. © 2008 XDRTB.org. All Rights Reserved. Design donated by Radical Media. Website design and development by Mammelfish. Site hosting donated by PEER1. Video on demand donated by Akamai."

All neatly tax compliant or, at least, set up to be able to claim tax credit. But note - the tax code precludes non-profits form acting politically. The funding mechanisms here insure that this plague will be defined as a problem of charity or philanthropy. And the providers in the field - all good NGOs - rely on the same sorts of funding. Again, I am not criticizing - I make monthly contributions to Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières, but I also understand that that is necessary as a remedial gesture and in no way constitutes political action.

[3] Here we arrive back at Jörg's worries. He is concerned that Nachtwey's photographs (and not just his) are not effective in the same way that similar work has been in the past. This is a crucial worry since, as Nachtwey himself makes clear in his 'wish,' his aim is to establish the continuing relevance of photography in a 'digital age.' Yet, if what I have claimed here is close to being on point, it is unlikely that photojournalism ever had demonstrable effects of the sort that either Nachtwey or Jörg are ascribing to it. Here I think Sontag is correct when she insists that photography has important effects largely when it is taken up and used by those who already are engaged in some movement or other.

Recall that, as I noted here early on, Evans and Lange and others were "embedded" in a government program, not in a philanthropic organization. Recall too that their work - like that of virtually every other photographer I find compelling, including Nachtwey - trespasses across the conventional boundaries of photojournalism and art photography. (I've made the case here and here that that distinction is more or less useless as a guide to thinking about photography and how it is used.) It seems to me that Nachtwey's campaign will be most successful if - beyond perhaps attracting attention and funds to relieving the pain and suffering of those with XDRTB - it prompts a re-thinking of how we use photography in such cases. This is where, I think, Jörg and I and perhaps even James Nachtwey, might agree.
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* If you are interested in Nachtwey's previous work, I recommend Susie Linfield, “Beyond the Sorrow and the Pity,” Dissent (Winter 2001), pages 100-106.

** Jörg has just added this helpful update to his first post.

Nachtwey Exhibitions

There are two different exhibitions* of James Nachtwey's** work currently showing in NYC. Here is an insightful review/essay by Michael Kimmelman in The New York Times. What I take to be the crucial passage runs as follows:

"Beauty is a vexed matter in scenes of suffering, cruelty and death. The difference between exploitation and public service comes down to whether the subject of the image aids the ego of the photographer more than the other way around. The two are not mutually exclusive.

Along with bravery and perseverance, Mr. Nachtwey’s pictorial virtue makes him a model war photographer. He doesn’t mix up his priorities. His goal is to bear witness, because somebody must, and his pictures, devised to infuriate and move people to action, are finally about us, and our concern or lack of it, at least as much they are about him and his obvious talents."

Kimmelman, with whom I regularly disagree, rightly points out that Nachtwey's images are designed to outrage us, to haunt us, to provoke us. And the question arises as to how they might be best used to that effect, how they might be located so as to be unavoidable, standing remonstrances to we who are complicit but do not actually suffer directly from the wars and epidemics and mass displacement that Nachtwey captures.
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* [1] “The Sacrifice” runs through April 24 at 401 Projects, 401 West Street, at Charles Street, West Village, (212) 633-6202.

[2] “World Free of TB” runs through April 27 in the visitors’ lobby of the United Nations, First Avenue at 46th Street, Manhattan, (212) 963-0089. (Closed on April 6.)

** By the way, Nachtwey won the 2007 TED (Technology, Entertainment Design) Award.