Re-photo

Although I have to say thanks to Jörg Colberg of Conscientious for alerting me to the Aperture interview with Philip Jones Griffiths, I find his comment on the piece pretty trivial and a little unpleasant. Whatever Jones Griffiths may say about photography doesn’t make his pictures one tiny bit less great. He would remain one of the greatest photojournalists of the 2oth century – and as well as the slide show in the Aperture Interview you can see more of his work on Magnum, including Vietnam Inc.

Colberg finds him “narrow-minded and outright disappointing (apart from intellectually lacking)”. Looking at what he writes and what Jones Griffiths says, I think that largely means that they come at photography from different perspectives. If Colberg can’t work out what Jones Griffiths was saying – and his comments suggest he didn’t – its a failure on his part .

For me – as I think with Jones Griffiths (certainly my favourite Welsh photographer) – the power of photography as a distinctive medium comes from its curious relation with reality, something that has been explored at great length but not always much light by many. For me it certainly isn’t something limited to photojournalism – and is even more important in much documentary photography, and also in much photography that comes under the rather vague category of fine art. But there are certainly works which although produced with the help of a camera don’t seem to me to be a part of the photographic tradition and that I don’t feel it appropriate to think of as photographs, although I may still appreciate them as art.

The PDN’s annual choice of 30 “New and Emerging Photographers to Watch” is always of interest, and earlier years have certainly picked some fine photographers who have become well-known at least among other photographers – as well as quite a few we’ve yet to see more from.

Most of the photographers included – 25 out of the 32 (two of the choices are photographers who work as a pair) are 30 =/- 4 years old, and a majority live New York City and Brooklyn, with half a dozen others residing elsewhere in the US, mainly in California.

You could take that as representing the way that photographic talent is spread around the world, but probably only if you are a New Yorker. More likely it tells you that there is more interest in photography in NY than anywhere else on the globe, and that if you want to get noticed, NY is the place to be. And of course that PDN is based in NY.

Of course you don’t have to be American to live in NY, and one of the 30 (or 32) was born in Chorleywood, a northern fringe London suburb. Andreas Lazlo Konrath‘s father was a Hungarian architect, mother an English ballet dancer, so he became a skateboarder and played in a punk band, turning to photography after his elder brother gave him a Larry Clark book for his 18th. After writing off his knee in the way of skateboarders he turned to punk and punk photography, living in the East End and getting a fine art degree from London Guildhall. Now he’s taking portraits in New York.

Ed Ou stands out partly because he’s only 21 and lives in Israel, although he’s Canadian. At 21 his history is phenomenal. Working for Reuters, AP and Sipa in Africa, the Middle East, Asia. It helps that he speaks Mandarin, Arabic, French and some Hebrew too. Some very impressive images too.

Espen Rasmuissen is Norwegian, based in Oslo, where he is a picture editor for the biggest newspaper as well as a photographer. Represented by Panos, he has done a lot of work with Medecins Sans Frontieres. Perhaps more emerged than emerging, as his powerful images have won both World Press Photo and POYi awards.

Mikhael Subotzky is another photographer perhaps already too well-known to be considered emergin, with images by this South African already in the collections of MoMA as well as SA museums, several awards already in his bag and exhibitions around the world. I wrote quite a long time ago about his amazing stitched 360 degree panoramic images from South African prisons, although these are only a small aspect of his work.

Munem Wasif is from Bangladesh. Born 1983, he studied at the South Asian Institute of Photography and is now a staff photograph at DrikNEWS. Drik, set up in 1989, aimed to show the views of photographers and writers from the developing world, presenting images from that showed the majority world “not as fodder for disaster reporting, but as a vibrant source of human energy and a challenge to an exploitative global economic system.” It has become a very impressive organisation, known around the world, not least for its organisation of the Chobi Mela international photography festivals in Bangladesh. The 2008 festival is on the theme of ‘Freedom‘ and submissions can be made by post or on-line until 31 May 2008.

I’m not sure why my top five from the PDN30 are all of photographers whose background is far from the typical. Only one living in New York, and that an English photographer. Certainly there are others whose work interests me – Donald Weber, Brian Sokol, Dustin Snipes in particular – but on checking I find that none of them live in New York either. It must mean something, if only that I’m not a New Yorker.

I was a little shocked but not really surprised to find that the winner of this year’s Deutsche Borse Photography Prize is Esko Männikkö. He certainly didn’t come in my own top two choices of the four on the shortlist. Is he really the photographer of the four “who has made the greatest contribution to photography over the previous year?”

I’ve previously posted my thoughts on the 4 contestants. You can read them at:

John Davies
Jacob Holdt
Esko Männikkö
Fazal Sheikh

Prizes like this are of course a lottery, decided on the whim of a particular jury, and another group of equally eminent jurors would likely have reached a different decision. It isn’t really possible to come to an objective decision over something like this when the four bodies of work are so different.  If like me you have a strong conviction that documentary is the real centre of photography, then Männikkö’s work for this show was unlikely to get your vote.

So congratulations to Männikkö and commiserations to the other three contestants who the pin missed. Although it’s a great honour to have been short-listed, the disparity between the award made to the winner and the others seems, as always, greatly unfair.

This is only one of several important prizes awarded recently, which I’ll look at it a later post.