Re-photo

On the World Press Photo site you can see and hear jury chair MaryAnne Golon talking about the winning photo by Anthony Suau (and I also learnt that she at least pronounces his name An-thony with a “th” rather than in the normal British English fashion, and his second name as “swore”, so I shall have to learn to stop thinking of him as Antony Sow.)  She doesn’t talk about the way the figure with a gun is so clearly shown and dramatically in front of a white wall between two doorways, or that curious head he thrusts forwards behind the arm and gun makes him appear almost a cartoon figure projected on the scene, or how the simplicity of the upper half of the image and the chaos in the lower, but she does make some points about the image.

It’s well worth seeing the picture in the context of Suau’s essay on the site which got him a second prize for stories in the Daily Life section. Overall I think this is perhaps the most interesting story on the site, and one reason for this is the diversity of the ideas in this Time essay covering the crisis in the US economy (of course also something the rest of the world can thank America for.)

You can see his work Beyond the Fall on his web site and also on Time, (at least I think you can, though I’ve not managed to get beyond the opening sequence), with a work from a number of projects at Photoshelter and also on the Bill Charles site.

Elsewhere there is perhaps less of interest than in some years and there are a number of pictures and stories I find it hard to understand either why they are there or why they deserved their rather peculiar treatments by the photographers concerned. Sometimes competitions like this place too high a value on novelty without perhaps considering whether an artsy effect is anything more than that. But there is – as always – a considerable amount of work worth looking at.

Among work that particular caught my eye was the work by Davide Monteleone (Italy, Contrasto) taken in Abkhazia in September-October that won him first prize for General News stories, Polish photographer Tomasz Gudzowaty‘s Child jockey, Mongolia (3rd prize sports singles in Sport Features), and a story on where homeless people sleep in São Paulo, Brazil by Carlos Cazalis (Mexico, Corbis) which gained first prize in Contemporary Issues.

Interestingly the 3rd prize in Spot News stories went to Wojciech Grzedzinski, (Poland, Napo Images for Dziennik) for a set of images from the conflict in Georgia which included images of the same two men that became the subject of controversy on the Internet over photographs by Gleb Garanich and David Mdzinarishvili of Reuters which I covered in my post Byzantine Photographs last August. Although I found that the pictures showed no evidence that would make me in any way doubt their veracity, despite the comments of conspiracy theory obsessed bloggers, it does go to suggest that the world which is covered by news photography is perhaps a rather smaller place than we might hope.

Yesterday evening I was standing in a packed Photoforum meeting in central London with other photographers listening to two photographers talking about and showing their work. Ray Tang of Rex Features presented some of his stories on sex trafficking and drugs in Eastern Europe, and Carl de Souza showed us what it was like to cover the Olympics for a major agency (AFP) – if I remember correctly he was one of over 70 photographers they had covering the event – as well as the month or so he took off in China after that event.

De Souza had a fast-moving slide show of his work with some very graphic images, particularly from the various cycling events which was one major area he was assigned to. It was a shame that through some technical mis-match his whole presentation was shown with the images at a noticeably incorrect aspect ratio which made his horizontal images almost square and turned verticals into upright pillar-box slits.

One of the more amazing of many facts and figures was that AFP had pictures from the 100m final on the wire in just over a minute after the end of the event – from memory 1 minute 14 seconds. These first pictures came from a remote camera linked by fibre cable to the AFP editing suite where they were selected and dropped into waiting templates with captions etc for immediate transmission.

After the end of the Olympics de Souza got AFP to change his ticket home to give him a month in China and set off on his own to travel around one of the outlying provinces. He had to pay his own expenses, but with hotels at 20p a night and an enormous hospitality from the people he met this wasn’t a great problem, but he had to find his way and make himself understood purely by sign language and pointing at symbols in a guide book, as absolutely no English was spoken.

One question that came up was whether he had sold any of this work from China, and he told us that we were the first people except his family and friends to see it – and were asked if we had any ideas on how it could be market or published.

Most of the discussion over Tang’s work was about his paying for the drugs used by one of his subjects to set up a photographic session. As well as raising moral issues around drugs, some suggested it was an interference with the subject that was unacceptable in a documentary project. But there were also some useful practical questions about how you get to find and work with people on sensitive issues such as prostitution and the victims of sex trafficking. Tang used the Internet to make contacts with local people, mainly students who he employed cheaply on a daily basis to find people and places, make phone calls and go round with him, as well as working with various NGOs involved with the problems.

As with De Souza’s pictures of China, this work by Tang was self-financed and little has been sold. Both work for agencies and get a living from what the agencies want, but also spend a considerable amount of time and money on personal work.

I thought while listening to this about a piece that Simon Norfolk wrote in December for World Press Photo (and it was a big day for them yesterday when the results of the 2008 contest were announced – you can now see all the winning pictures including the winning image black and white image by Anthony Suau, which I think may be less controversial than some other recent winners.)

Norfolk’s piece comes in the on-line magazine from WPP, Enter, and in a section called ‘ask the experts‘ under marketing, which I think is intended to give advice to people coming in to photography. It’s worth reading in full (and isn’t very long) but early on in the piece he writes “I gave up trying to make a living from editorial a few years ago…”

Magazine commissions still get him to places – as they took de Souza to China – and he then stays on and makes work that he can sell as fine art prints. Or used to be able to sell – since much of that market was fuelled by those obscene bonuses that gave bankers more money than they knew what to do with.

Norfolk sees hard times ahead and suggests photographers learn other trades to keep them going: “soon we’ll all be amateur photographers with real-money making jobs on the side..”

Actually this isn’t a new thing. Many of those great names that fill the history books were never able to make a living from photography. And on a much humbler personal note, I took a serious look at the business in the 1970s and decided (despite the encouragement of some whose opinions I respected)  that I couldn’t afford to be a full-time photographer – unless I was prepared to do weddings. My situation is different now mainly because I need less money to live – just as well as fees are now plummeting back to those 1970 levels.

A Dear John letter by John Benton-Harris to a colleague about:

“This is War” & “The Subject of War”

at the Barbican Art Gallery (16 October –  25 January 2009)

Dear John,

It was nice running into you at the Barbican, and good to see that you are keeping well. It was also good that the Barbican has retained something of my improved thinking on exhibition design and traffic flow in that very peculiar and difficult space. For as you I am sure have noticed, this gallery resembles something more akin to the dining room of the TITANIC, then any appropriate space for hanging art. It was also swell to socialize with some of the artists who make up the gallery’s hanging crew. I must tell you however that I was very disappointed with both the upstairs presentation – Robert Capa’s “This is War” (AKA – Endre Erno Friedmann) and a much smaller presentation by his non-notable girlfriend Gerda Taro (also previously named – Gerda Pohorylle). Anyway, looking around this presentation, I would be forgiven for thinking that these small, toneless, grubby un-spotted prints came out of that same long lost valise, which housed those negatives. It may have been sufficient to represent Gerda’s contribution to photography, but not Robert’s, for this staging reveals more of the weaknesses of his seeing then its strengths. So if I were forced to come to a decision about Robert’s ability based on this presentation of his work, he would fail spiritually, emotionally and intellectually. And about any question of him being an artist, he would fail there as well. 

I realize these are harsh words, but looking at these repetitive rows of small, shapeless and thoughtless moments (although beautifully over matted, framed, lit, and presented) this poor limited selection tells me he was only physically present. And that, in my book, denies him the title of the “greatest anything”, for greatness is a privilege reserved for those who consistently find themselves in the right place at the right time, just for starters. These images for the most part have no real clear readable central drama, and no edge concern either, and both are required to make a message taut, to maximize viewer response, and to clarify one’s intent, to go beyond showing that one was merely present. The majority of these out-takes from time suggest that most likely he was holding the camera away from his eye and possibly even above his head, while running. The bottom line, from this credible reading of them is that Robert failed to adhere to his first principal of seeing, which is, in his own words – “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough”.

This selection of weak, loose and wanting moments, taken from wherever Robert was, rather then from where he should have been, along with their tortuous repetition and unimaginative juxtapositionings further diminished by slow shutter speeds which resulted in camera shake. All taken together tells us looking at what we got away from the written blurb, that Robert was simply a very nervous adventurer, with poor technical skills, there for the buzz – and didn’t even have the sense to keep his bit of skirt out of harm’s way.   

So in order to reassure myself about him and his dedication, I needed to revisit my library to remind myself afresh that there was more to him then met my eye at the Barbican. Although there were those few classic historical moments in this poor portrait, such as “Death of A Loyalist Soldier – 1936” and “D-Day Normandy Beachhead -1944”,  their shock was considerably lessened, indeed almost lost, among so  many “SO WHAT” images, denying us his humanity or his reason for being a man at war.

This show also attempted to prove that Gerda Taro was Capa’s equal, or possible his superior, simply because her two rooms worth of shaky out-of-focus snaps that filled her viewfinder slightly better than those of Robert’s on display. Hence Gerda’s importance to photography (as seen by the Barbican and possibly ICP – the New York International Center of Photography – originator of this show) has more to do positive discrimination and a feminist agenda then it does with any sighted humanism or commitment to minded seeing.

I do hate it when market forces and distortions of this or any other kind, work to devalue this history. It’s simply much too high a price to pay for her inclusion.

Returning to that Omaha Beach image of a soldier seeking protection behind tank traps from the onslaught of bullets and mortars ricocheting and exploding all around him in on that Normandy shoreline, littered with the floating dead, in the cold early morning light of the 6th of June 1944. This D-Day image was the image that started my modest print collection, back in 1961 although I had to part with it when hard times struck 33 years later. On a more pertinent and optimistic note, my print of this moment was given extended significance by it’s new custodian – Steven Spielberg, and it’s influence on him helped to create the opening sequences to his film “Saving Private Ryan”, so giving the world a greater dramatized reflection of the events of that horrific morning. To my mind, this was a price worth paying for my personal loss of this historic moment.  

The title of this show was lifted from Davis Douglas Duncan’s Korean book, of the same name, published in the early 1950’s. And unlike this show this was a presentation about several things, firstly one man’s dedication to fallen colleagues, secondly about a clearly defined subject and chapter structure, delivered in three parts (1) The Hill, (2) The City and (3) Retreat Hell. As such it had a planned and executed focus, unlike this show, which was plainly based on the contents of a long lost suitcase. So let’s not delude ourselves, into thinking this Barbican offering was about WAR or Robert Capa, it’s simply a cheap, off the peg merchandising opportunity of a known name.

If the Barbican truly wanted to show us war, they would have commissioned someone with the knowledge, commitment and overall sensitivity they lack, so the public could experience the best by those that described its horrors. Someone who would know it needed to include people like – Bernard, Brady, Brandt, Burrows, Capa, Cartier-Bresson, Doisneau, Duncan, Eisenstaedt, Engel, Fenton, Frith, Gardner, Jones-Griffiths, Jackson, Nicholls, Mc Cullin, Robertson, Rodger, Sander, Smith and Steichen.  And if they wanted to do a show about Capa, almost any other published or exhibited view of Robert would have given us a more complete, accurate and complementary view of this man who successfully invented himself.

Now moving on briefly to the downstairs show “The Subject of War”, it was immediately better in several ways. To start with new advances in camera technology make it almost impossible to take an un-sharp image, unless it’s ones intent, as today’s new advances in camera technology have given us light, easy to use, cameras with fast zoom lenses and anti shake devices to reach out and get closer to the subject, without getting closer to the action. We also have the ability to alter our ASA (ISO) up and down, and from shot to shot, to guarantee the sharpness and the depth of field needed to tailor a moment to ones intent. This show amply illustrates that so much can now be done in the camera (and or one’s lap-top)

So we can produce, or more correctly have others produce for us (as with Capa and these photographers), clearer grit free moments that are more complete and compelling to the eye, emotionally, aesthetically  and technically, while now also possibly eliminating what isn’t wanted. And all of this technical excellence is present in abundance in this larger gallery space, which also has the added genuflections to current gallery installation thinking. In the case of this presentation this included introducing video screens, positioned (bumper to bumper) to tell two separate stories simultaneously, neither of which were digestible, and both seemingly influenced by morning soap-opera TV. One enormously large wall at the back the gallery has the appearance of a chequer-board, viewed from above, with a multitude of large images running down and across it, without giving us clue as to how to decipher its message.

However, at the opening the staircase between both these offerings seemed to offer me some momentary sanctuary from the past that valued the presence of a camera, more then the mind of the person behind it, and from the now, that seems to value the originality of the observer, more then the content of the message. Maybe I’m being super-sensitive hear, but I kind of feel the designers of this poor donation to photographic understanding also felt that the base of this staircase was an ideal place to offer alcoholic refreshment, for it served as a kind of  “Oasis Point” in this desert of  deprived expression.

John Benton-Harris

This review is also published on John Benton-Harris’s own blog, The Photo Pundit