From the Corners of Africa

At The Guardian, I discovered a story by Sean O'Hagan that usefully links to nearly a handful of photographers from across Africa - Adolphus Opara and Andrew Esiebo (Nigeria),  Michael Tsegaye (Ethiopia),  and Daniel Naude (South Africa).  Of these photographers I am familiar only with Esiebo; I've posted here on his work a couple of times. The work is uniformly impressive not only in its variety but in the way it departs both from the too common tendency to present of the entire continent as a disaster zone and from the temptation to depict Africa as a freak show. A good example of a photographer who, it seems to me, tacks back and forth between those unfortunate approaches is Pieter Hugo.

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.

Africa as Freak Show ~ Pieter Hugo

Mallam Galadima Ahmadu with Jamis, Nigeria.
Photograph © Pieter Hugo.

At The Guardian you can find this slideshow and this story on South African photographer Pieter Hugo. I have been wondering about his work for a while now but have been uncertain what I think. So, here you go:

Much of Hugo's work seem to me fairly unexceptional - more or less standard portraits albeit some of albinos or members of various Christian sects. Those that stand out, like the one I've lifted here, seem to me to portray Africa as a freak show - men and boys posing with baboons dressed in human clothes or huge, slouching hyenas on leashes. Is he trying to recreate the exotic? Is he trying to portray menace? Is he establishing a continuum between the local fauna in Africa and its human inhabitants? Beats me.

Sure, we need to see Africa as much more than as series of civil wars, refugee camps, famines, epidemics and droughts. I could not agree more [1] [2]. The alternative, however, is hardly just to present the continent as an open-air circus. Hugo has won a bunch of awards. And in The Guardian piece "Elisabeth Biondi, visuals editor of the New Yorker magazine and one of the most influential taste-makers in modern photography," is liberally quoted singing his praises. Count me among the skeptics though. Biondi exaggerates by way more than half.