Recently in War photography Category
Alas, nomenclature is sadly lacking in the field of 'art'. Am I a news photographer? A press photographer? A photojournalist? An artist? I deplore the latter moniker because the word is so misused. For me, art is the melding of form and content, and as that is what I strive to do then perhaps 'artist' is correct. But I'm happy to be called a photojournalist!
Sometimes, when things get hard to witness, I use my camera as a shield. It creates a space for me to work -- and distance to keep my eyes open and my feelings in check. But Miller had no use for a photojournalist. He needed a helping hand.(via Exposure Compensation)
Ashley Gilbertson has been photographing in Iraq since 2002. The latest issue of The Virginia Quarterly Review features a long, detailed article by Gilbertson and his wife called "Last Photographs" covering various experiences in Iraq, all centering on death and photography in some way. "Last Photographs" refers to the times Gilbertson has been the last person to photograph someone before they died, whether a US soldier or an Iraqi matriarch. In June, he was interviewed on NPR to promote his new book, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. The interview sheds some light on Gilbertson's motivations, including how his pro-intervention views have changed after years of covering the conflict. Photographs from the book will be on exhibit in October at Gallery Bar, 120 Orchard St.
Suaada’s dentures by Ashley Gilbertson
For comparison, listen to this interview with Time photographer Christopher Morris, from July 2003. At that time, according to Morris, photographing the wounded was allowable, but release of such photography was delayed to allow for notification of families.
Morris covered the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, and like a lot of the photojournalists that covered that war, was outraged that the US did not act faster to intervene and put a stop to the genocide. Asked whether the US intervention in Iraq represented a change for the better in this regard, Morris squirms and says "I don't know if my role in society is to give my opinion." That strikes me as an astonishing position for a photojournalist to take, but maybe not for a modern Western journalist who believes journalism truly can be, and is, wholly objective and the only opinions that appear in a paper are on the editorial page. Compare to the position of Philip Jones Griffiths from a generation before: "To me, there is no point in pressing the shutter unless you are making some caustic comment on the incongruities of life. That is what photography is all about. It is the only reason for doing it."
He goes on to say, "We have bit off more, ah, than we can handle in the sense that we are in a region, as part of the world where we are not liked. No matter what we do, what good we do, what our intentions are, it will be turned against us. And I think we have opened a very serious can of worms that we will have to deal with for a long time." That was in the summer of 2003.
Meat is Murder 2007, Hrad Kuzyk
Much has been made of the amateur documentation of the Iraq War by soldiers on the ground, particularly in contrast to the professional coverage. The photographic evidence from Abu Ghraib is the most significant, but in the long run, perhaps more important is the day to day vernacular record opportuned by the presence of digital point and shoot and camera phones in the war zone. "Junk Camera Soldier" represents an interesting counterpoint to this phenomenon. Captain Hrad Kuzyk has created an archive of black and white photography shot while on an Iraq tour of duty, using a variety of cheap toy cameras.
Hrad claims these are neither pro- or anti-war. It's hard to look at a photograph of a "Mistake" candy bar and believe there's no point of view behind it.
(via aphotoaday.org)
Two James Nachtwey shows are reviewed in today's NY Times.
Beauty is a vexed matter in scenes of suffering, cruelty and death. The difference between exploitation and public service comes down to whether the subject of the image aids the ego of the photographer more than the other way around. The two are not mutually exclusive.
I recently commented on War Photographer, a documentary about Natchwey.
The Sacrifice
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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.
On Sept. 11, 2001, I worked about a mile north of the World Trade Center and watched from the middle of 5th Avenue as the north tower collapsed. It seems a small and insensitive thing to call out, but while I always carried a digital camera to work, the batteries were dead and I have no photographs from that day. I remember saying to a colleague after the first plane hit (and we were under the impression it was a small private plane) that I'd have many days to shoot that gaping whole as it'd take months to repair. Now, the camera has become my talisman - leaving home without one is an invitation to disaster.
In the Sept 3 Times, Garrison Keilor review's Watching the World Change, David Friend's meditation on photography's role in recording 9/11 and its aftermath. From the book:
As the morning crept on, New Yorkers poured into the streets, many to help, many in flight, all of them aghast. Out, too, came their cameras. Men and women by the hundreds, then thousands — bystanders with point-and-shoots, TV news teams, photojournalists by the score — felt compelled to snap history, fiery and cruel against the blue.
Keillor, as a writer, plays up the limitations of photography and a bit of disdain for the photographic impulse (and later, the commercial impulse to sell those images) but perhaps this is only a good counterbalance to Friend's cheerleadering for photography and its redemptive effects on memory. Maybe memory alone is not enough, yet there are some things about that day that some found just too much for photography's cold, eternal gaze. In any case, the act of putting the viewfinder to your eye amidst those events still seems an insensitive and self-absorbed response, but it was a necessary and good thing in many other ways. I'm guilty of a fascination with recording the event, too.
Particularly critical to our memory of what happened is the effort by Joel Meyerowitz to record the destruction and recovery efforts that started on Sept. 12th. After discovering that no photography was being allowed in the vicinity of Ground Zero (I ran into this several times over the course of the next few months.) In describing his impetus, Meterowitz says, "To me, no photographs meant no history." Now, putting aside the question of how we can understand history in pre-photographic times, it's a powerful project he undertook to catalog the clean-up effort, recorded in 8X10 negatives under the auspices of the Museum of the City of New York. The Guardian has a review...
