Can you photograph something as contentious as the Israeli “separation wall” in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and refuse to discuss the politics? It’s a question that has aroused debate following the publication of a two-part interview with Josef Koudelka on the New York Times Lens blog on the publication of his new book “Wall: Israeli and Palestinian Landscapes“, images made in 2008-2012.
There is a fine introduction to the controversy by Henry Norr on Mondoweiss, which also looks at the slowness of the NY Times to correct an error of fact about the wall which Norr pointed out on pubication, but took much prodding and nine days for the paper to admit and correct. Norr asks why it should take so long and require a “great deal of consultation” to correct a simple fact. If the NY Times can’t get facts right, who can? And what business does it have publishing a newspaper?
Norr gives the links to the Lens posts, but it is worth reading his piece before you go to them, so I won’t post them here. But the problems in the interview – at least as printed by the NY Times – are discussed in some detail in another post he refers to, The Moral And Intellectual Cowardice Of Josef Koudelka, written by photographer Asim Rafiqui (you can see his Idea of India online.) He also links to a post by a Nazareth based prize-winning journalist, Jonathan Cook, A photographer who obscures the victims, who takes up Rafiqui’s complaint.
Cook makes the point :
By all accounts the photographs are an unequivocal indictment of Israel’s imprisonment of the Palestinians. If only the same could be said of his interview.
and Norr too makes the point that much of the details of the situation are given in the book (if in very small print) along with the photographs (though he doubts if many will read them.)
Like Rafiqui I’m an admirer of Koudelka’s work (his Magnum portfolio has a good selection up to 2004) and I also find the evasive NY Times interview rather shocking.
Addition:
I wrote this yesterday, here is another post on the issue I’ve just seen:
http://politicstheoryphotography.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/koudelka-interview-follow-up-2.html
It seems fairly clear to me that the interview reflects a lack of integrity at the New York Times rather than the “cowardice of Josef Koudelka”. As Jim Johnson writes:
‘Although I would need to inquire further, the problems seem to lie primarily with editorial decisions at The Times rather than with Koudelka.’