Images are in the news - not just literally, but also as a topic themselves. In a day and age where image manipulation has become very simple to do, hardly a day goes by without yet another “scandal” about some manipulated image somewhere. As I indicated on this site before, I think without a proper understanding how images work, this situation will not change. Introducing very unspecific - if not unrealistic - rules about the amount of manipulation that is acceptable totally misses the source of the problem. When Michael Schäfer sent me the link to his new work, I thought talking with him about his images and what they mean might be a good idea. Of course, here we have an artist, not a news photographer; but I see a lot of his work as a good way to start investigating how images work and how they are being used. (more)
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After publishing my review of Christopher Anderson’s Capitolio, I ended up exchanging emails with him about the work and its purpose and reception. Things got so interesting that I thought this would be a great opportunity to take things public and to have a conversation with him on this blog. Thankfully, Chris agreed. Note that larger versions of all images (all of them, of course, are copyright Christopher Anderson) can be seen by clicking on them. The b/w images are from the book, and they are presented just like in the book (see the conversation for details).
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Mikhael Subotzky is one of Magnum’s youngest and newest members, and his first book Beaufort West was one of my favourite photography books last year. I got interested in talking to Mikhael after seeing the book and reading a comment he had left on Magnum’s blog, under a post about photojournalism.
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I have been thinking about book publishing a lot these past few months, and when I looked through Rob Hornstra’s website I found not only a lot of very interesting photography but also a whole set of self-published books, most of them sold out. I got in touch with Rob and he agreed to sharing some of his “secrets”.
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Miguel Rio Branco was a freelance photographer and director of photography for movies when he embarked on documentary photography and was soon noticed for the dramatic quality of his color work. In 1980, he became an associate with Magnum Photos.” I talked to Miguel about his work for Magnum’s blog. (note that some of the images are not safe for work)
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SGT Jason Thompson waits for a nurse to clean his face of blood and grime after he was wounded along with two of his soldiers when an IED hit their vehicle. All three soldiers were returned to duty. Peter van Agtmael “studied history at Yale University. After graduation, he went to China on a fellowship to photograph the areas of the Yangtze River being inundated by the Three Gorges Dam. Peter lived in South Africa in 2005, and worked extensively throughout sub-Saharan Africa. He is currently working on a long-term project about the toll of America’s wars, at home and abroad. In 2006, Peter was named one of “25 under 25 - Up and Coming American Photographers” by the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. And in 2007, he came second in the General News Stories category at the World Press Photo awards for his coverage of night raids in Iraq.” (source) Peter emailed me after I had commented on an Iraq war photo, and after we started talking, I asked him whether he’d be up for a conversation. I’m very glad he agreed to it.
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Bruce Haley and I have been talking via email occasionally about various issues that I had mentioned on the blog. At some stage, I wondered why I simply didn’t ask him whether he’d be up for one of my conversations, and much to my delight he agreed. The following conversation touches upon many different aspects of photojournalism and the kind of fine-art photography that one could call “documentary”, but I do have to warn about the very graphic and shocking nature of one of the photographs. Given that the photos from that series are being discussed in detail in the conversation, I decided against not showing it.
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As a Magnum and Newsweek photographer, Luc Delahaye covered many of the most recent areas of conflict like, for example, Bosnia, Chechnya, Afghanistan. Apart from other prizes, he won the World Press Photo three times. With time, his work evolved from standard photojournalistic practice, both towards other areas (for example, for his project “L’Autre” he stealthily took photos of Parisian subway passengers) and methods (he started to use a panoramic large-format camera for photojournalistic assignments). “History” might be considered the culmination of this development, a series of panoramic photos often showing vast scales, such as the whole UN assembly hall while President Bush was giving a speech, and printed quite large (4 by 8 feet). Most famously, his photo of a dead Taliban soldier, exhibited and sold by a commercial art gallery, caused a stir a few years ago. A year later, he resigned from Magnum. I talked to Luc about his earlier and current work.
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Just a little while ago, Chris Jordan’s book In Katrina’s Wake: Portraits of Loss from an Unnatural Disaster was published. The book contains images taken in the area devastated by Hurricane Katrina, and given the contents of Chris’ earlier work I asked him for an interview.
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If there is any kind of photography that I have my problems with it is photojournalistic photography from war zones. I usually refer to it as “war pornography”, and by that I mean that photos of dead or maimed soldiers or civilians are often just used for a cheap thrill, not unlike the sexual equivalent. Needless to say, this point of view is not all that fair. People usually tell me that photos from wars have the power to change our perception of wars; and I think a large part of my repulsion stems from me simply not seeing much evidence for that to be true. You just have to think back a few years, back when the Iraq war was not a very unpopular war that nobody really wanted, but a war that was necessary, with good reasons - I’m sure you will remember the jingoism. It was almost like those images from Vietnam, say, or the absolutely gruesome images from the earlier Gulf War. I will admit that some images have had an impact on the public’s perception of an ongoing war, but in all cases that I can think of, the war had already gone on for many - too many - years. Following one of my posts about some war photography, Roger Richards emailed me, and we had a brief exchange of emails about various topics. I was absolutely thrilled to be able to talk to somebody who had actually worked as a photojournalist during a war - Roger spent a long time in Bosnia during and after the war there. I think if there is any insight to be gained into the topic of what this kind of photojournalism can achieve and how it might have to be done, then that insight will not come from people who are writing articles (or silly blogs) from the comforts of their middle-class existences, but from people who have actually experienced the conditions, which produced the images we get to see. I was thus very happy to learn that Roger agreed to participate in one of my conversations with photographers.
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