Photographers | >Re-PHOTO

Magnum Magnum

Three posts on the Magnum blog let you take a look at three sample chapters from the incredibly weighty recently published “Magnum Magnum” in which Magnum members write about other Magnum members and half a dozen of their photographs. The book weighs in at 6.5 kilograms, almost a stone for those who still think in old money.

The samples on line are Chien-Chi Chang by Bruce Davidson, Eve Arnold by Elliott Erwitt and, to me the most interesting, Antoine d’Agata by Patrick Zachmann.

Chien-Chi Chang’s work is great, but perhaps I find it a little too pretty – but I also respond that way to some of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s work.

I have to admit to a blind spot so far as Eve Arnold is concerned. Of course her work is very professional photojournalism, but it seldom makes me sit up and take notice. Her portrait of Francis Bacon – one of the six – is fine, very recognisable, tightly framed, nice colour, but really pales beside Bill Brandt‘s photo or the artists’s own self-portraits or those head shots by John Deakin and Dmitri Kasterine or… And I wonder what Brian Griffin would have made of him (I was pleased to be at Space in Hackney yesterday on the last day of his show there to hear him talk about his career, and about making many of the portraits.) Don’t get me wrong, I would certainly have been pleased to have taken a picture like hers, but it just seems to lack the spark of the others. The only picture among her six that strikes me as a little special is the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, which could so easily have been extremely boring.

What I like about d’Agata‘s work is the element of surprise or even shock. Zachman writes about this very well, and I won’t attempt to repeat or better him. Where I don’t think he really does the photographer justice is in his choice of six images, with a couple that are surely not among his best images. Take a look at his Magnum portfolio and you will find it hard to avoid the same conclusion.

You can currently see d’Agata‘s work at the Photographers’ Gallery in London until 27 Jan, 2008. It is worth a visit, although I think the display is rather poor compared to seeing his work on screen. As well as large images from the series Insomnia (2003), the gallery has a montage of several hundred small images from other projects including Vortex (2003) and Stigma (2004), which for me are far too dominated by the way they have been put in frames and fixed to the wall. Many are also virtually impossible to see.

Magnum Magnum seems to me to be a volume making a great case for the death of the book and its replacement by some more convenient viewing method. Or else trying to be both book and trouser-press or exercise equipment. Surely it can’t be long before we can have a lightweight device with a large, paper-quality viewing screen, given that small and slightly primitive versions such as Amazon’s Kindle have appeared.

Cannon Balls to Fenton

I have to admit that when I first read Errol Morris‘s lengthy blog post on which of two Roger Fenton images of the ‘Valley of the Shadow of Death‘ where the Light Brigade charged to its death in 1855, my first thought was “who cares?” Or, as Simon Grant put it last year in his piece for the Tate, “Does it matter?”

In fact I still somewhat feel that way, but there is no doubt that the controversy that his article and the follow-ups to it have aroused are of interest. You can read part 2 and part 3 here – the link on his blog is now incorrect. (though perhaps he will put it right if he reads this.)

Fenton made two pictures of the valley. One with no cannon balls on the road, but plenty on the rougher and apparently lower ground at its edge and the second with quite a few on the smoother road.

Library of Congress: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3a06028

Ask yourself as a photographer, going to photograph this scene, whether it is likely that you would decide to clear off the road to make another photograph? Can you imagine Fenton saying, “Marcus my man, just tidy up that roadway there’s a good chap, those cannon balls just look too untidy.” and Sparling saying “Yes Sir, right away” getting down to it? (You might also ask why so many balls should have stopped rolling on the smoother road rather than going down into the gully by its side, especially if you’ve ever played bagatelle.)

Then read many thousands of words and consultations with experts of all kinds by which Morris finally proves (in part 3) – at least to his satisfaction – what I think any successful working photographer would have known all the time.

But I’m being unfair, because a) other people have suggested the opposite, and b) much of the discussion the issue invoked is fascinating. Point a) perhaps just goes to show that many people – even people with big reputations – who write about photography are basically word guys who’ve never really worked with the medium. But read it – along with Morris’s earlier pieces, Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire and Will the Real Hooded Man Please Stand Up for some fascinating argument that often relates to the peculiarly American obsession about not posing or in any way interfering with news photographs. (His latest piece,
Primae Objectiones Et Responsio Auctoris Ad Primas Objectiones (Part One),
is a reply to some of the over a thousand comments made about his previous Fenton pieces, and is also worth reading, although I feel at times far too long-winded and suggesting he has run out of anything fresh to say. Given the number of words he has now expended on the issue, I’m only surprised he hasn’t yet found the 7th Lord Lucan, descendent of the unfortunate 3rd who got Raglan’s order to charge in 1854, carrying it out to the letter despite knowing it was mad. Almost as mysterious is the change of the Lucan Arms, down the road from me towards Laleham, once a decent local, now morphed into the abysmal and anonymous Anglers Retreat.)

I’m a photographer who doesn’t like to pose things, and have spent an awful lot of time cursing (if usually only inwardly) the guys from the big print (what we once called ‘Fleet Street’ – about all that’s left is the Cheshire Cheese) as they get in and interfere with the people I’m photographing. But even though I don’t like to pose people, I’m very aware that I can’t photograph without a point of view.

Make a fortune from copying

If I were Jim Krantz I’d be talking to a lawyer.

In 2005, of his pictures sold for $1.2 million and he didn’t get a cent. Not even a name check. Trousering the big money is Richard Prince, an acclaimed artist, whose contribution was to copy and enlarge Krantz’s image, taken as a Marlborough ad – and apparently – if the reproductions on Art Knowledge News and the New York Times are reliable (Randy Kennedy’s article appears in both), add a colour cast.

Of course the whole thing is an incredible admission of a total aridity in the art world, and of course the total lack of appreciation of photography – Prince is quoted as once sending an e-mail saying “I never associated advertisements with having an author.” What phenomenal ignorance and arrogance.

Krantz of course is such a successful commercial photographer that he doesn’t need the money, and what he is really concerned about is “attribution and recognition.” But I’d certainly like to see him take Prince to the cleaners.

And I’d like to see all the art critics and increasingly photography critics who for some odd reason feel that Prince’s work is worth writing about to acknowledge that what they are really writing about is work by other people – just blown up large.

I’ve written previously about the importance of moral rights. This is a good example that makes the case.

You can also see Jim Krantz’s ‘art work‘ on line. Not entirely my kind of thing, but more interesting than Prince.

Big Sister

Although it’s the pictures taken in a Prague on-line brothel in ‘Big Sister‘ by Czech photographer Hana Jakrlova that are attracting most attention (my favourite is a polar room set with roofless igloo and large polar bear, otherwise vacant) I think the best work on her site are the black and white images, particularly in her ‘Europe’ portfolio.

I’ve not previously come across the idea of an on-line brothel, but apparently it is yet another case of de-professionalisation, this time of the porn industry, where male performers now actually pay while punters watch over the internet. At least as yet photographers are only expected to work for nothing rather than pay for the privilege.

Jakrlova was born in Brno 1969, and studied architecture for 7 years in Prague, then two years at the Institute of Creative Photography in Opava. Later she did a year at the ICP in New York. She has lived in London, Paris and New York, and now works from both Prague and New York.

On the website you can also preview her two books, in the meantime: europe (2006) and the rather more conventional ways of communication (2000.) It’s a shame that this actually seems to be the only way that either of these two books are generally available, although a Dutch version of the later book is listed.

Peter Marshall

Positive Lives

December 1 is World AIDS Day, with thousands of events taking place around the world to encourage leadership at all levels in the fight to get ahead of AIDS.

One of the major photographic projects about HIV/AIDS is Positive Lives, which includes the work of around 30 photographers with stories from around much of the world. One of those stories was by Stuart Freedman, and you can see more work from it on the Panos Pictures site (as well as some other fine essays by him.) Facing the Virus (click on the image there to see two pages of images) shows people in Rwanda working as a part of a programme with the government’s health authority and Concern, an Irish-registered worldwide charity facing up to the problems of living with HIV/AIDS.

Freedman’s work, which won him the prize for photojournalism at the 15th annual Amnesty International Media Awards in 2006, is one of many fine features on the Panos site by some of the best photojournalists currently working. You can also find work by this year’s winner, Andrew Testa, on the site, although his work, on Acid Attacks in Bangladesh, appeared in Foto 8, a magazine that has featured a great deal of fine photography and is currently relaunching.

Photo Histories

Some months ago, Graham Harrison contacted me about a new on-line photography site he was setting up, looking at photography in an intelligent way, and invited me to have a look at the preview site. I was impressed, and offered to write something, though as yet I’ve not got around to it. Perhaps later…

Photo Histories is now up for all to read, and the content so far is impressive, with a great interview with Philip Jones Griffiths, who talks about “why the ideals of the thinking photojournalist forged in the 20th century should not be sacrificed for the dumbed down culture of the 21st.” His ‘Vietnam Inc’ (1971) was one of the most important books of the era, and one that moved me and others powerfully when it came out – and is still a fine example of why photojournalism is important. I also have a great deal of sympathy for his views on the current state of Magnum which you can read in the interview. While others – including myself – have written about his work and its significance, this interview does add some insights into the work and the man who produced it – and has a nice picture of him by Harrison.

Another photographer I’ve also written about previously is Homer Sykes, whose self-published books Hunting with Hounds and On the Road Again I reviewed at some length. (You can download a pdf file of the Autumn 2002 issue of the LIP Journal where my review of On the Road Again appeared in print – and both – along with features on photographers Berenice Abbot and Brassai mentioned below – are probably available on the ‘Wayback Machine‘ or its mirror from About Photography.)

In Photo Histories there is another detailed interview with Sykes, as well as a interesting set of pictures ‘Unknown Homer Sykes : The English 1968 – 78‘.

I met Homer again earlier this year, when he was back photographing Swan Upping on the Thames for the first time for many years. You can see some of my pictures from the event at My London Diary, but surprisingly I don’t seem to have mentioned him. The two of us were the only photographers who ran along the river bank to record the Dyers and Vintners men raising their oars to salute the Royal uppers at the end of the day. I hope he got the exposure better than I did in the wickedly contrasting light. I left the D200 to sort it out and it didn’t.

Other features on Photo Histories include some on key books from the history of photography, including Berenice Abbott‘s ‘Changing New York‘ and ‘Paris de Nuit‘ with pictures by Brassai. Perhaps these were a little disappointing in not really dealing with the images, more with biography and background matters, but still useful introductions. Perhaps it might be a useful addition to have features about key images or sets of images from them as well.

Graham Harrison has of course worked for some of the big names in British publishing, and at the centre of Photo Histories is a section called by that same title, which includes an article (originally published on EPUK) about the first Press Photographer’s Year Expo held this summer. At the end is a footnote:

After the success of the Press Photographers Year Expo it was sobering to see Stoddarts stills used with effect throughout the C4 TV documentary The Rise and Fall of Tony Blair credited to Getty Images only.

Moral rights – including that of attribution – are something that photographers still have to fight for. The Photo Histories section also has a very nice insider story by Brian Harris about working with the late Don McPhee during the 1988 US Presidential campaign.

As well as his main site, you can also see more of Graham Harrison’s work in ‘The Oxford Year,’ though in the two years this has been going he seems so far to have missed those swan uppers!

The Picture Lady – Martine Barrat

Martine Barrat‘s show Harlem In My Heart is at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris until January 6th, 2008, and I spent quite a while looking at her warm record of her over 30 years in Harlem and the many friends she has photographed.

You can see some of the best of her pictures at Contact Press and more of her work at her own web site, which suffers from a rather odd flash interface (the kind of thing fortunately that seems very dated now, but is worth persisting with.

As well as her work from Harlem, there are also a number of other galleries on her web site, though I got too annoyed with the site to look at them all. There are some nice black and white images from the Goutte d’Or (Paris Voice describes it as “a tiny patch of Africa transported to Paris“) at the eastern edge of the 18e.

Barrat was born in Algeria but grew up in Paris. She moved to New York in 1968, at first to co-ordinate a theatre workshop working with a jazz group, later becoming a photographer and film-maker. One of her early films was on youth gangs in the South Bronx, and was shown at the Whitney Musuem in New York as a part of the exhibition with her still photos, “You Do the Crime, You Do the Time“, later winning a prize for best documentary in Milan.

She became well-known as “the Picture Lady” for the images she took around Harlem in the 1970s and later. Her first book, on young boxers, ‘Do or Die‘ (1993) had an introduction by Gordon Parks and a foreward by Martin Scorcese.

You can read a more detailed resume on her web site, in English or French.

It is certainly a body of work that shows her heart is in Harlem and warms the heart of the viewer. It’s work that comes from being very much a part of the community she is photographing, and includes some displays of pictures pasted up like those that she made on the walls of a Harlem community centre.

Peter Marshall

Streets of London & Paris

Two rather different photographers whose work I’ve enjoyed on the web in the last few days.

Paul Muse was born in England but has lived in Paris for quite a while. On his site you can see a daily image along with a short text (in both English and French,) and the text for 20 Nov:

“Paris rediscovers the fun of getting around on foot.”

certainly got a response from me as I was still recovering from walking around Paris courtesy of the striking transport workers.

Don’t miss some interesting work on the gallery pages, including ‘London Falling‘, street pictures taken during a short visit to the city in August 2006, and much more. If you are in Paris his work is on show at the ‘Galerie du Lucernaire’ until 2 Dec – details on his site.

I met Paul when I was in Paris recently, but unfortunately didn’t get to see the pictures then. Next November I’ll book a longer stay, because there really is so much to see – and of course even more next year, when November will also be the ‘Mois de la Photo‘ along with its incredible ‘Off’ fringe.

Brian David Stevens is a photographer I’ve known for a while, and we sometimes find ourselves standing together at events in London, although the pictures we make are usually very different. He continues to work with black and white film in a Leica (he tells me the latest stuff is ‘digital Tri-X’ using a Ricoh GR-D) while I’ve moved to using digital colour (sometimes with an M8, but more often with a Nikon) but there are even more significant differences.

He describes his profession in his ‘Lightstalkers’ profile as “miserable sod” (I think it comes from the Welsh blood.) And although its a mode I can do pretty well myself (look, my middle name is Gwyn), I like to have fun when making pictures.

But his work is dark and powerful, with lots of empty blacks, and it works well, both with the images using reflections and the very direct images of people on the street, often viewed looking up from hip level. One of his images of two women in particular really jumps off from the screen with forceful menace.

It’s interesting to compare the pictures on Flickr where he now posts work, with those on his older personal web site. There are some of the same images, and clearly the same vision, but presented very differently.

Peter Marshall

Copycat Images?

Copying of images has been making the headlines again in recent weeks. The estate of Bob Carlos Clarke perhaps appears to be claiming rights on any close-up of lips and a tongue, and preparing to take Pepsi to court – you can judge for yourself the validity of their claim on the Amateur Photography web site.

For me, such originality as exists in Carlos Clarke’s image is in the biting down of the teeth on the lips, the particular upthrust of the curled tongue, the slight dynamic tilt and the grainy black and white tonalites, all absent from the Pepsi offering, which – as one might expect from the US giant – is bland, pink and ugly.

It is after all, subject matter we all have to hand (or at least mouth) and probably many of us are wondering if in turn we can sue the estate if Mr Carlos Clarke given that we’ve been photographing people with mouths since the 1960s (or whenever.)

Another case over a similar issue has been decided in the Paris courts, and you can read about it on EPUK (Editorial Photographers UK.) The court ruled that a picture used by the “French National Tourist Office Federation (FNOTSI) was a deliberate copy of a Getty Images stock photograph” by Ian Sanderson.

Here there seems to me little doubt about the visual similarity of the two images – and you can compare them in the EPUK feature, which lists the similarities. As Getty argued in court, you cannot copyright the idea of a couple kissing on a roundabout, but this was an obvious attempt to recreate the image, including the appearance of the models, clothing, pose, background and viewpoint.

Sanderson’s image is widely known, and the only surprising thing about the case appears to me that the agency concerned didn’t just put up their hands, say its a fair cop guv, apologise and then negotiate over the fee. I suspect they may well have tried to do so, but found that Getty were intransigent. The court settlement, including costs, is said to be well below the five times the normal fee that Getty demanded, and given that it took 4 years to reach a settlement one suspects the real costs involved, including all the time of the people concerned, may actually leave Getty out of pocket, though the photographer should be in the money.

FNOTSI have of course lost out – and deserve to on various counts. They had to scrap the campaign and replace it – at an estimated cost of 60,000 euros, as well as paying the fine and damages. And apart from the deliberate breach of copyright involved, they only paid the photographer concerned a miserly 1750 euros for the work, expenses and licencing – when getting the original legally from Getty would have cost around five times as much.

This pair of images is just one of those featured earlier in an earlier feature on Visual Plagiarism on EPUK, now updated, which I’ve written about previously elsewhere.

One vital point to make is that it isn’t sufficient for two images to be visually very similar to cry plagiarism. Your original has to really be original in the first place; there can be plagiarism in copying a cliché. And by my reckoning there are several images featured in the EPUK feature that would be disqualified by that test.

Another problem is that of coincidence. I wouldn’t for a single moment accuse Fay Godwin of either plagiarism or producing clichés, but when I opened one of her books some years ago, I recognised one of my pictures, taken at Chatsworth. One that had actually been hanging on my wall for several years at the time. I made my image in 1984, while hers, in the book ‘Landmarks‘ is dated 1988. (The two pictures are not quite identical, and hers is taken or cropped to a square format.) And although I knew Fay and on various occasions we enjoyed going around exhibitions together and sharing our often similar prejudices, I’m sure neither of us had seen the other’s image when we made our own.

There is a big difference between this case and that of the couple on the roundabout. Neither Fay nor myself arranged anything for the photograph, it was simply a matter of being in the same place within a few inches and using a lens with a similar angle of view (mine was I think a 35mm on an OM body) pointing in more or less the same direction in similar lighting.

I think this was my second picture of the sleepy lion and it was made in May 1984. I’ve put the two pieces of sculpture a little closer together, but the resemblance is fairly striking. (C) Peter Marshall, 1984

Strangely enough, looking through my contact sheets later, I found that I had actually made a very similar photograph on two occasions myself, although I’m fairly sure I didn’t remember the first when I was making the second image. Although I’ve generally got a pretty good memory for images, it is something that has happened to me on a number of occasions.

The Year in Pictures

James Danziger is a well known name in photographic circles, having opened a New York gallery in 1989 and now running Danziger Projects in New York’s Chelsea. So the start of a new blog, The Year In Pictures, in which he promises to write about pictures that have captured his imagination is welcome news. One to bookmark or add to your blog feeds.

My favourite among his postings so far is a piece on Milton Rogovin, entitled ‘The Pursuit of Happiness’ where he publishes a great image from 1973 of Lower West Siders Johnny Lee Wines and Zeke Johnson, along with 4 unpublished and previously unseen shots of Johnny from the same day, and another of his “favorite pictures that blends happiness, romance, and a certain bashfulness” by Malick Sidibe.

Great, I thought, and wouldn’t it be nice to link to my feature on Milton Rogovin. Then I remembered that was no longer on line (or at least only in the Internet Archive), so I wrote a new and revised version, correcting a number of mistakes and adding some new material. Rogovin is a really fine documentary photographer, and incredibly only really started serious photography when he was in his late 40s. He finally retired in 2003, the year when his wife, comrade and muse Anna Rogovin died, and the family are now preparing to celebrate his 98th birthday next month.

This year marks a significant anniversary for Rogovin. It was 50 years ago, in 1957, at the height of the great American Cold War paranoia, that he refused to answer the questions of the House Committee on Un-American Activities and was pilloried by the Buffalo Evening News as “Buffalo’s Top Red”, and harassed by the FBI. 50 years in which he continued to live his courageous belief in the dignity of humanity and the inherent worth of people, channelling his efforts into photography. 50 years over which America changed from regarding him as a national enemy to accepting him as a national treasure, when in 1999 his negatives, contact sheets and around 1300 prints were archived by the Library of Congress, the first living photographer to be honoured in this way since the 1970s.