2008 – Page 15 – NO CAPTION NEEDED

Sight Gag: "Mission Accomplished"

Our primary goal with this blog is to talk about the ways in which photojournalism contributes to a vital democratic public culture. Much of the time that means we are focusing on what purport to be more or less serious matters. But as Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert often remind us, democracy needs irony, parody, and pure silliness as much as it needs serious contemplation. For our part, we will dedicate our Sunday posts to putting such moments on display in what we call “sight gags,” democracy’s nod to the ironic and/or the carnivalesque. Sometimes we will post pictures we’ve taken, or that have been contributed by others, or that we just happen to stumble across as we navigate our very visual public culture. Sometimes the images will be pure silliness, but sometimes they will point to ironies, poignant and otherwise. And we won’t just be limited to photography, as a robust democratic visual culture consists of much more. We typically will not comment beyond offering an identifying label, leaving the images to “speak” for themselves as much as possible. Of course we invite you to comment … and to send us images that you think capture the carnival of contemporary democratic public culture.

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BUILT: Dinner in the Sky

BUILT explores the changing city in the US and the challenges that will affect housing, infrastructure, neighborhood cohesion, and equity in the coming years. BUILT is a series of research, installation, dialogue, interview, and performance events of varied scale, including the opportunity for public conversation offered at this blog.

This week’s post focuses on a photograph from Dinner in the Sky:

“Dinner in the Sky is hosted at a table suspended at a height of 50 metres, by a team of professionals.”

One might speculate about the dinner conversation that occurs while floating above the rooftops. Are they talking about the relationships between luxury, space, and democracy?

Do they ask, how much privilege can you purchase before you feel complicit in others’ lack of privilege?

What do you see? Harmless pleasure or a fantasy of escape? Want a seat?

BUILT is a performance/civic dialogue project and a collaboration of Northwesten University’s Theater Department & Portland, Oregon’s Sojourn Theatre, led by visiting artist Michael Rohd.

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Eye Walkers and Animal Reflections

Public space is designed for seeing and being seen, as the performance group Medaman-Medaman demonstrated in Tokyo recently.

Here you have Benjamin’s flaneur but without invisibility or empathy–as if the transitory spectator of public life had evolved into a hypertrophied version of itself: the enormous eye, engorged with the urban spectacle, no longer needs the other senses (note that the hands are gloved) or any mental acuity other than raw encompassing vision. Nor does it worry about being seen–this is a creature of optical interaction.

The girl is fascinated, but she’s young. The adults, more accustomed to the spectacle of urban life, go about their business. Why shouldn’t they? Look at all the windows looking down on the open vista of the street–this is a place where everyone is constantly transecting lines of sight, so much so that to be seen becomes little different than not being seen.

There are other reasons to take the walking eyes in stride. The idea that a mediated world is a world of extended vision has been second nature for decades, and I’m not talking about 1984 but rather things like this Old Media logo:

Things have changed, however, The CBS eye was abstract, centralized, and otherwise godlike enough to be at once omnipresent and no part of everyday experience on the street. The eye walkers, by contrast, are directly accessible and obviously individualized. If standing here, they can’t be somewhere else; if looking one direction, even they don’t have eyes in the back of their heads. In other words, they are much closer to the new media that are widely distributed because woven into the fabric of everyday life. As this photograph suggests:

The big eye is aligned along the same line as the camera, two organs of viewing especially active in public spaces. As the eye walker mimics a typical visual practice we are invited to reflect directly on the ubiquitous yet still personal nature of the visual public sphere. And amusingly so: instead of the imposing figures of the first photograph, this one gives us an entertainer playing his part in the everyday carnival of the urban center. The attitude is comic, as everyone is secure in a world of shared vision and civil interaction.

And when weirdness becomes familiar, it’s time for another jolt. Lest we think the eye walkers are all we need to see ourselves, take a look at this:

Another photo of an eye, and yet this is everything the first is not: nature, not culture; enclosed, not in public space; marked by the flesh of mortality, not masked for whimsical performance; evoking the empathy of a fellow creature, not mirroring the hard surfaces of the city. The eye walkers awaken one kind of self-awareness, but not the only kind. Living in highly mediated environments, we need to be attentive to seeing. Living in highly mediated environments, we also need to be attentive to what else we share with others beyond intersecting lines of sight.

I’m anthropomorphizing, of course, but that single eye and wrinkled brow look so mournful. It is not hard to imagine that he somehow knows that he should not be on that truck. Pigs and humans have many physiological similarities, so it can’t hurt to reflect on how we also are often not free, fated for suffering, sure to die, and before then seen only in part. That, too, is part of city life, even if it can’t be seen so easily.

Photographs by Yoshikazu Tsuno for AFP/Getty Images and Casey Bhristie for The Bakersfield Californian/Associated Press.

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Gas Tax Holiday in the USA

It is a stock image. We see it every time there is an abrupt jump in the price of gasoline (which has been a great deal lately). The only thing that changes are the numbers as they move ever higher (always ending in 9/10th of a penny as if that somehow minimizes the impact of the increase.) This sign is in San Francisco, but of course there is nothing in the photograph that would give that away. It could be “Anywhere, USA” for all we know, and that is part of its rhetorical appeal as it functions as a cipher for the state of the national economy.

Shot from a low angle, it puts the price of gasoline—and the oil companies that bring it to us—out of reach of ordinary consumers who have little choice but to look up and to pay up. But what is perhaps even more interesting than the billboard which features the price of gasoline, is the social surround that fills out the photograph: there are no long lines of people waiting to buy gasoline; and there are no angry consumers protesting the price or challenging the legitimacy of the cost or price hike. In point of fact, there is nothing that would point to a crisis or serious discontent of any kind as consumers—pedestrians and drivers alike—go about their business calmly and without any apparent concern for the price of fuel. Indeed, if anything, the sheer repetition of stock photographs like this one across time has a normalizing effect on such price increases that suggests that there is really nothing out of the ordinary here. Sure, prices go up, and sometimes it is inconvenient, but it’s happened before and life goes on. And the proof, of course, is in a photograph that we see over and over again.

But of course we know that most people are feeling the pinch of increasing fuel costs, especially the most recent spike in prices at the pump—nearly 20% since January 1, 2008—and so we have presidential candidates from both parties advocating a summer gas tax holiday designed to give consumers “much needed financial relief.” The details for how to pay for such a holiday vary, but however it would work the appeal for such a policy smacks of the worst kind of political pandering as it is designed to address short term, personal needs (votes in the coming election and marginally cheaper fuel for individual U.S. consumers/voters) rather than longer term public interests (a sustainable national energy policy in a global economy). And what all of this ignores is one of the primary reasons that we face a problem with rising energy prices: years of excessive and uncontrolled consumption fueled by a normative sense of national entitlement, a belief in the infinite renewability of oil and gas resources, and the assumption that in the end market driven price increases are … well, altogether legitimate and … normal.

That said, one would not think that it would take a Noble Prize in economics to figure out the obvious corollary that lowering the price of fuel with something like a tax holiday will increase consumption—a prospect that can only have the oil companies licking their chops as, once again, it reinforces the natural and normalizing tendencies on display in the photograph above. And, of course, it will do nothing to undermine the sense of national entitlement or the false belief in infinite renewable oil resources. After all, it is just another day in “Anywhere, USA.”

Photo Credits: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

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Conference Paper Call: Sprawl

Sprawl
Society for Photographic Education

46th National Conference
March 26-29, 2009 – Dallas, TX

Call for Proposal Submissions
POSTMARK DEADLINE: JUNE 2, 2008

The Society for Photographic Education is seeking conference proposal applications for imagemaker, panel, lecture, demonstration, graduate student and Academic Practicum Workshop presentations for the 2009 National Conference in Dallas, TX. SPE welcomes proposals from all photographers, writers, educators, curators, historians and professionals from other fields. Topics may include, but are not limited to, imagemaking, history, contemporary theory and criticism, multidisciplinary approaches, new technologies, effects of media and culture, educational issues, funding and presentations of work in photography, film, video, performance and installation.

Cultural depictions of sprawl have long been a mainstay in popular culture, including the 1970s photo movement New Topographics, William Gibson’s cyberpunk fiction, the music of Sonic Youth, and in TV shows, such as “Weeds,” with its ‘burb’-inspired theme song “Little Boxes.” Sprawl-suburban landscape and life-serves as both cultural inspiration and critique. The organizers of the 2009 SPE National Conference invite proposal submissions illuminating the visual and cultural complexities of Sprawl as a defining concept and reality of our twenty-first century public experience.

The city of Dallas provides an informative and imaginative backdrop for the conference theme. Like other metropolitan areas since the 1960s, Dallas has seen suburban sprawl reshape its civic geography and identity. Sprawl then is a physical manifestation of civic growth and population migration, housing developments and ‘big-box’ retail parks. But the concept of sprawl also prompts discussions of environmental conservation, the appropriate use of land and resources, the loss and/or renewal of city centers and close-knit neighborhood communities.

The conference, Sprawl, will take place March 26-29, 2009 in Dallas, TX. Proposals must be postmarked by JUNE 2, 2008. For more information, please find the PDF proposal form attached or on the SPE website: www.spenational.org.

Contact: SPE National Office
speoffice@spenational.org
216/622-2733 ph
216/622-2712 fx
www.spenational.org

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Hiding the News in Plain Sight

Although a democracy requires constant vigilance regarding censorship, too little attention is paid to how bad news is hidden in plain view. It often is enough to frame disclosures within a larger context of justification–the war on terror, the economy, the electoral campaign–and it certainly helps to treat them as just the daily news, page 6, nothing special. Both strategies are evident in a recent report in the New York Times that included this photo:

The report was titled “Double Bombings in an Iraqi town Kill 35 and Wound 62.” Awful, right? And that’s before you know that the attackers were targeting both a wedding caravan and the medics that arrived after the first explosion. The words “civil war” never appear in the story, however. What does appear is the photograph, but it shows the aftermath of a third bombing, one in Baghdad that killed nine Iraqis and one US soldier. So, the news about the continuing (escalating?) carnage throughout Iraq is there but not there, in print but displaced by this photograph (and another as well) about an assault on US troops. And in this photo we see not the dead or wounded but rather an able-bodied soldier working like a traffic cop after an accident. The war could be smackdown between SUVs and other vehicles, not a bloody cycle of violence killing thousands of civilians. The bad news is reported, but it becomes easy to see it as something else.

But even this photograph reveals too much, so it had to be framed with this caption: “An American soldier secured an area on Baghdad on Thursday after a car bombing killed a soldier and nine Iraqis. An American patrol seemed to be the target.” Now look at the photo, and keep in mind that you are looking at a “secure area.” Does it look secure, or would “wrecked” be closer to the truth? The cars in the background are destroyed and the shops along the street have been seriously damaged. Rubble and debris can be cleaned up, but the trauma will extend well beyond the physical wreckage. (Two Americans and 23 Iraqis were wounded.) Note also the damaged Humvee being towed away. The costs extend in every direction, which is how the US can spend $341,000,000 per day on the war. The soldier who supposedly is doing the securing seems to be following the tow truck while talking into his radio, probably to report that the mission has been accomplished. In short, securing the area means deploying troops to allow removal of the dead and wounded and any damaged equipment, then leaving again. It does not mean rebuilding Iraq.

The road in the photograph used to be called Death Road because of all the explosions, but it had been quieter lately. Secure, one might have said, until this bomb, which one shopkeeper said was the worst of the 19 bombings he has seen on the street. The news is not good and current US policy is not going to make it better, but that’s hard to see when right there in plain view.

Photograph by Moises Saman for the New York Times.

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Sight Gag: Lincoln-Douglas Debate (Fox Style)

(For the full story click here.)

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BUILT: Section 8 Made Simple

This week’s post focuses on the cover of a book by a firm in Texas:

From inside the cover:

“The Section 8 program is a truly public-private relationship that serves the needs of low-income families by providing safe, quality housing opportunities using public funds for financial assistance. Public Housing Authorities (PHAs) manage the Section 8 program within specific geographic areas, and they represent the public side of the public-private relationship. The private side of the relationship is made up of real estate investors who profit by making their investment properties available to the Section 8 program.

As you will see, savy real estate investors reap many benefits from the Section 8 program that others who invest in real estate miss completely. This includes on-time rent collection, long-term tenants, shorter vacancy times, and at market or above market rents. But investors who participate in the Section 8 program get an added benefit that doesn’t relate to the bottom line – they are helping to serve the public interests by providing housing to those less fortunate.

Given all these benefits, the natural question that comes to mind is “Why don’t all real estate investors participate in Section 8?” Why indeed.

Once a new investor said to me, “I can do what you do and save money.” I said, “Exactly! I want you to be able to do what I do. That way, more Section 8 clients will have a decent place to live. However”, I also told him, “if you ever find yourself in legal trouble would you represent yourself, or have an attorney represent you? And if you chose to represent yourself, do you know how to properly defend yourself?”

If you are serious about your investments I would urge you to seek professional representation to ensure you are getting the most out of your investment and to reduce the time that you must invest in each property.

Having said that, this book will give you some tips on how to not only defend yourself, but will show you how to work within the Section 8 program to save you time and a lot of frustration.

Buy the book – Learn the process – Make a difference for yourself and your community!

$24.95

One might ask, What exactly is this book selling? How is it selling it?

BUILT is a performance/civic dialogue project and a collaboration of Northwesten University’s Theater Department & Portland, Oregon’s Sojourn Theatre, led by visiting artist Michael Rohd.

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Empire and Serenity in Visual Poems

One of the important characteristics of photography is that it is used across public and private life. Most people have not printed a newspaper or erected a statue, but everyone has taken snapshots. Photography is a democratic art, and so we are exposed to a wide range of images that in turn offer many different moods. Likewise, there always is an audience for those images that stand out from the rest because they are so evocative. This blog devotes a lot of space to those images that are patently newsworthy and so caught up in complex structures of meaning and power. Some images, however, ought to be seen as poems–indeed, as small poems that capture a specific experience, emotion, or moment of reflection.

The visual poem can stand for everything from state power to personal serenity. There are always court poets and the course of empire has its bards–think of Kipling. The image below is as good as anything intoned at a public ceremony.

This photograph of a space shuttle launch is a visual gem–and also, of course, laughable in its fully realized phallic symbolism. But those who groove on shuttle launches will love it. This is the dream of technocratic power: sheer technological ascendancy, harnessing nature to overcome gravity on the way to a glorious apotheosis with the heavens. And safely, even serenely so. Set at a distance across the calm, glassy water, any sense of risk or cost is muted. The poem takes one outside of any context of debate, providing instead a fantasy of divinely ordained connection with great but not dangerous power.

My placing the image in the context of poetry is odd, as most of the images that one could include are from the opposite end of the spectrum between public institutions and private pleasures. These include the endless supply of nature photos; look, for example at the many fine images by amateur photographers in The Daily Dozen at the National Geographic website or at similar digital archives provided by online news services. Some appear as well in the daily slide shows, and these images clearly are offered as moments of respite from the insistent clanging of the news. Images like this one:

This photo of incense smoke could be of a diaphanous fabric, the body it covers, the desert at night, sound waves, the music of the spheres. . . . Note also that it shares key elements of design with the one before it: smoke, light, and darkness combine to shape a dynamic form both composed and possibly eternal. Here, however, one joins that deep beauty by letting the image sink into the soul rather than watching in awe from a distance.

There are many poems, and many moods. Let me show you two more that editors thought we might want to see this spring.

This image is literally reflective. Like the others, it suggests an essential harmony between nature and culture. Now, however, the objects are neither grand nor miniature but rather set to human scale. The boats’ colors, like the boats, are neatly demarcated in the water, suggesting social harmony as well. And they are both worn and colorful. Worn by good use but still distinctive, suggesting that although sharing a common mortality we can enjoy our individuality. Or, on reflection, we can do so if we don’t move too fast or demand too much.

One should not let a moral ruin a good poem, so I’ll finish with one more image:

Like the one before it, we see three colors and an unspoken coordination of nature and culture. Bright, plastic trash cans stand like crocuses in the late spring snow. Again, the coordination of the differently colored canisters suggests three households getting along easily. And just as the boats were in the common space of a harbor, here the ritual form of garbage collection has the public world as background for enjoying a moment of private delight. So perhaps there is a moral after all. This photograph is an image of hope and good cheer as it can be achieved in daily life. Empire will not go away, but spring will come.

Photographs by David Bortnick/NASA; Anna Arca/Guardian Unlimited; Rob Garbett/Guardian Unlimited; Leander Starr Jameson/Guardian Unlimited.

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Optical Noise in Iraq

Coverage of the war in Iraq has been showing signs of fatigue lately, and for good reason. Now into the fifth year of the war, yet another parade of generals in Washington provided little consolation amidst the steady death toll–32 US soldiers in March, 46 so far this April, as well as hundreds of Iraqi deaths–and the many, many more who are wounded, traumatized, or refugees. But how many photos can you take of troops tramping through homes or dispensing medical care or just killing time? How often will we look at another bombed out vehicle or another general on PR duty? The carnage continues, but we all know that the political situation is not getting any better, everything is on hold until after the presidential election, and everyone is getting tired. Perhaps that’s why there have been a number of images lately like this:

It may be the season for sandstorms, but you wouldn’t have known it in previous years. Now, however, the slide shows have many variations on this shot. The sand is so comprehensive that it acts like an optical filter. The soldiers seem suspended like a prehistoric bug in amber. The one on the left has become doll-like, a GI Joe figure to be moved around but incapable of changing anything. The one on the right could be lost in thought. Everything is slowed down, grinding to a halt, as if there were sand in the gears of history.

If there had been only one of the sandstorm images, I would have let it pass. But they kept appearing, and then I noticed that there was another series also being spooled out. Images like this one:

This is a photograph taken through the night vision equipment used by US troops. The fact that the photo is taken through a scope or similar instrument while on patrol gives these images some sense of action, but there still is the sense that everything is happening in slow motion. Slow probably is good when men are walking around with guns at night, but the photo creates a sense of suspended animation. The green filter is not eco-friendly green but rather something from a heavy dream. Warriors stand in archetypal tableau as if at the gates of some netherworld. The green air is noxious, miasmic. The war is not a place for action; it is a place that will never change.

Both images may be surreal–or prophetic. They also might be examples of what we could call “optical noise.” That term could refer to the visual din in images cluttered with signage, but I’m referring to something else. Each photograph is an image of the war, but one in which the visual equivalent of white noise is omnipresent. That noise doesn’t occlude the image but it does interfere with emotional response. And, of course, it is tiring.The first photograph shows a scene that could be clear at another time; the second shows something that would be invisible without the cyborg eye. In neither case are we able to see clearly. In both we have a metaphor for the present state of the war, one in which we have seen too much and yet not enough. A war in which everything seems mired in sand, trapped in a bad dream, waiting for change, for clarity.

Photographs by Alaa Al-Marjani/Associated Press and Rafiq Maqool/Associated Press. (The first is from Najaf, Iraq; the second is from Mandozi, Afghanistan. There are many night vision images from Iraq, but this was the one close at hand when putting up this post. There are differences between the two wars, but both now are subject to optical noise, which is created by the repetition of stock images while providing a metaphor for the current stalemate.)

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