On the Web: December 2006 Archives
Great interview with John Szarkowski in LA Weekly.
Some photographers think the idea is enough. I told a good story in my Getty talk, a beautiful story, to the point: Ducasse says to his friend Mallarmé — I think this is a true story — he says, “You know, I’ve got a lot of good ideas for poems, but the poems are never very good.” Mallarmé says, “Of course, you don’t make poems out of ideas, you make poems out of words.” Really good, huh? Really true. So, photographers who aren’t so good think that you make photographs out of ideas. And they generally get only about halfway to the photograph and think that they’re done.
(via MAN)
Two weekends back, I was astonished to find a long and prominent article in the Wall Street Journal (page 1) about the history of a single photograph. The photo depicts the execution of Kurds by Islamic revolutionaries and the article traces the history of the photograph in an attempt to identify its photographer, hidden for years by a shroud of anonymity for fear of retribution by the Iranian government. After being unable to find the article for free online (or the images), Google has helpfully pointed me to other folks more 'Net savvy than me.
Firing Squad in Iran, 1979 by Jahangir Razmi
No real time to comment beyond a couple of thoughts. First, though the article indicates that the photo was reprinted far and wide and generated great international condemnation of the revolutionary government, the lack of real action and change further underlines the limits of photojournalism even as powerful as this. Second, the visceral reaction to this particular image and why it was picked from a couple rolls of film to represent this event seems to be its similarity to "great execution art" of the past, as illustrated below. The aesthetic elements of even repulsive imagery simultaneously attracts our attention while dulling our understanding that such a picture represents a true event.
The Third of May, 1808: The Execution of the Defenders of Madrid, Francisco de Goya
The Execution of Maximilian, Édouard Manet
Over the past few weeks, the Guardian's arts blog has been accepting suggestions for the 50 greatest art works of all time. They've posted the results thus far (not entirely sure how this works, but whatever) and after a quick glance I see photography is completely unrepresented. Granted, the other media have a heckuva head start, but still...
Long, long interview with landscape photographer and sometimes photojournalist Simon Norfolk. over at the architecture blog BLDGBLOG. Rambling interview covers current political ramifications of war coverage, efficacy of photojournalism, the impact of military activities on our daily lives even in the most innocuous ways. The guy's a bit sour, as you can detect from this quote:
I got fed up with the clichés of photojournalism, with its inability to talk about anything complicated. Photojournalism is a great tool for telling very simple stories: Here's a good guy. Here's a bad guy. It's awful. But the stuff I was dealing with was getting more and more complicated – it felt like I was trying to play Rachmaninoff in boxing gloves.
Take a look at Norfolk's work. I like it, but it certainly isn't "more and more complicated" in terms of explaining the effects or contributing factors to a war than traditional photojournalism. Mostly it's an after action report, beautiful, but far from impacting the causes or closures of war. Result of burnout? Maybe. I imagine it's tough to be constantly engaged as a caring observer in some of the most hopeless situations the world sees and the urge to find something beautiful in all that mess is probably a powerful one.
