Best wishes for a peaceful holiday. We’ll return to our regular schedule on January 7.
Photograph by Kenneth G. Libbrecht, author of The Art of the Snowflake: A Photographic Album and SnowCrystals.com.
You Say Icon, I say Instagram
Ryan Gerhardt reports that the Lowe Cape Town advertising agency has been running a campaign for The Cape Times that features iconic photos as if they had been self-portraits taken on the fly, as with a camera phone.
In place of the dead hand of history, a renewed sense of presence and immediacy, right? You Are There, or They Are Here. OK, something may have have been lost in the style category–this is definitely NOT a photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt–but you can imagine the iconic moment in real time as opposed to the faded newsprint of its original publication.
But, of course, it is the Eisenstaedt photo, in part, and the manipulations can only make the photo more contemporary because it already is here and has that effect. Indeed, the transfer of meaning also works in reverse: the iconic image is imparting significance to the new visual media and their vernacular practices. And in any case, past and present are being sutured together no matter which way the joke runs.
Not all public cultures have iconic photographs (as a genre, anyway), but South Africa apparently does. And with that comes parody and other forms of playfulness, and for a variety of uses including advertising. It may be the newpaper’s last gasp–and all too revealing of how the iconic photo and print journalism were tied together in a particular era–but it also may be an example of how iconic images and journalism more broadly are making the transition into the new media environment.
Time will tell. If I had to bet, however, I’d say that self-portraits are not going to become great public art. Or perhaps that is more of a wish.
Sebastião Salgado on the Winter Planet
The Best of 2012 photography collections are ablaze with color, and the above average temperatures and continuing drought keep talk of global warming in the air, so what should a documentary photographer do? Take us to Siberia, of course.
One species follows another across the frozen landscape. The reindeer know the way, as the Nenets people have been moving them between summer and winter pastures for centuries. Sebastiao Salgado’s photograph might as well be from some ice planet in an outer galaxy, the barren field of snow and sky is so uniformly stark, harsh, and endless. And yet you can almost feel the body heat of the herd, its precious calories being expended in the empty abstraction of the arctic air, and then of the few people and dogs trailing behind them. The photo at once stretches life almost to the breaking point, as if the herd were a single strand of genetic material in some petri dish, but at the same time makes you yearn to be closer. And while the two species are clearly separate, and the human train obviously smaller and more precarious, they are intimately joined in their symbiotic journey. As David Levi Strauss has observed, “Salgado’s subjects are seen only and always in relation” (Between the Eyes, p. 44).
Strauss’s essay on Salgado captures another feature of this photograph as well, which is its “extraordinary balance of alterity and likeness, of metaphoric and documentary functions” (42). The photo is unquestionably of an experience very few humans have, and yet it is immediately recognizable as an example of organic life forms co-existing, and, if you look closely, of the more organized form of human association, at once more powerful and fragile for that. Likewise, the photo need be only a photo of reindeer and nomadic herders in Sibera–there aren’t too many other places or species that could qualify–and yet it quickly doubles as a symbol of something else, something more general and fundamental to living with others in a condition of necessity.
But for how long? What might seem to be a timeless image of natural cycles and sustainable culture is also a witness to change. Reindeer and Nenets alike are threatened by climate change and the encroachment of civilization–if you want to call it that–as the extraction industries move into the region. Although the arctic environment seems to be the present threat, in fact it has been home to both species for centuries, and now energy production to heat and power the rest of the world is the real danger. This is not to say that living on the edge of survival should be romanticized, or that the Nenets don’t need or want to avail themselves of modern goods. But the photo can challenge complacency and rationalization by revealing another dimension of common life: that all humanity lives close to extinction, and that survival requires learning how to live with sustainable resources rather than simply plunder the earth for profit.
But let’s not forget the need to balance symbolic and documentary functions. Ironically, another ice age is coming, albeit one that will be delayed a bit while this civilization burns up the oil, gas, and forests. Some say it will begin in 1500 years, which is not that long: roughly from the fall of Rome until today. It’s not too hard to imagine that a scene like the one above could become the norm rather than the rare exception. Survival won’t be a metaphor, but a lived reality. Something that can be seen today, if one is willing to accept the photographer’s challenge to see humanity in relation to itself, other species, and its future–if it is to have one.
Photograph by Sebastião Salgado/Amazonas/nbpictures. Additional slides can be viewed here. (Note that the photo was taken in March, when the herd was being moved north to the summer pastures.)
Strange Fruit in California
So what do you see in this photograph? Look closely and carefully. The tree is knotted and gnarled, its branches reaching out like so many arms, going this way and that, almost as if it were a human being thrashing about in a hostile world. At first blush it reminded me of the tree in The Wizard of Oz that throws its apples at Dorothy and her troupe. Then again, it looked like might be from a more recent movie, perhaps one of the episodes of The Lord of the Rings or maybe even the fantasy world of Harry Potter. But whatever you think you might see, look closely and ask yourself: What is missing?
The photograph was once the scene of a brutal lynching. Lynchings are a part of American history, and as James Allen helped us to understand a few year back with his Without Sanctuary project, they were not simply events that took place in the dead of night and away from the public eye. Indeed, lynchings were often carefully planned activities—spectacles really—with the trains adjusting their schedules so that church goers could attend the “festivities” and numerous photographs taken to mark the occasion, many of the later converted into postcards to be sent to friends and family.
Lynchings of this sort no longer take place in the U.S. and so it is all too easy to locate such events in a distant past, a time we might imagine as long, long ago. And perhaps that is so inasmuch as such lynchings have been exceedingly rare since the early 1950s. But the problem with such consignment to a once malignant but now benign past is that it invites us to ignore the depths and ignominy of such behaviors. Most, no doubt, think of lynching as an activity used by southern whites to discipline blacks in the reconstruction and Jim Crow eras. That it was, but we should not forget that such lynchings also occurred in many places north of the Mason-Dixon line (one of the most famous took place close to where I write from in Marion, Indiana) and as Ken Gonzales-Day, has recently demonstrated, several hundreds of Latinos, Native Americans, and Asians suffered a similar fate in California between 1850 and 1932.
And so, back to the photograph above. It is one in a series of photographs taken by Gonzales-Day called Searching for California’s Hang Trees and is part of his attempt to witness an aspect of our national past that it has been all too easy to erase from our public and collective memory (see also his Erased Lynching series)—both geographically and otherwise. The “strange fruit” that Billie Holiday sung about is nowhere to be found in these photographs, but that would seem to be the point. The tree could really be anywhere: north, south, east or west. And those tortured while hanging from its branches could have been men, women and children of many different ethnicities and colors. It is not a part of our past of which we can be proud, but it is a part of our past and it needs to be remembered. And visualized. So, once again, what do you see when you look at the photograph?
Photo Credit: Ken Gonzales-Day
Call For Papers: Domestic Images in the Digital Era
Visual Communication Quarterly
Call for Papers
Visual Portfolio: Domestic Images in the Digital, Online, and Viral Era
Guest Editors: David D. Perlmutter and Lisa Silvestri, The University of Iowa
Today anyone with a cellphone and an Internet connection can create and distribute images without professional training or a governmental or industrial institutional affiliation. Whether funny cat YouTube uploads, vacation videos (from a tsunami site) or pictures of the humiliation of Iraqi prisoners, images that once fell under the genre of “domestic” are now regularly erupting onto world attention, controversy, and influence. Likewise, ordinary citizens are delivering the first visual “draft of history” because they are first on the scene of breaking news-from terror-filled moments in a London subway after a bombing to an airliner landing on the Hudson River.
This special issue of VCQ seeks scholars and practitioners who study or document the blurring between “home” photography and “public,” professional, or commercial photography as it becomes increasingly indistinct in our viral digital/online/social media age.
Among possible questions to ask: What does it mean when the “home mode” goes viral? How does the role of the professional photographer and industry change when “citizen journalists” are creating so much public content? What new genres of photography are emerging in the home-public fusion? How does the domestic origin of an image affect its reception? What are the historical antecedents to this phenomenon (e.g., images of the Holocaust that were originally souvenir snapshots by its perpetrators or domestic scenes of celebrities made famous after their deaths?)
VCQ: Visual Communication Quarterly solicits contributions for an upcoming special issue on the domestic image. VCQ welcomes essays that consider the relationship between “home” and “public” modes of photography, visuality in a viral era, digitization, Photoshopping, cropping, and dissemination. In addition to theoretically grounded, critical essays, we will consider the submission of visual essays and photo pieces. Max. word length for essays: 7500.
Deadline for submissions: February 20, 2013
VCQ: Visual Communication Quarterly publishes scholarship and professional imagery that promotes an inclusive, broad discussion of all things visual, while also encouraging synthesis and theory building across our fascinating field of study. See: http://vcquarterly.org/ for submission style and guidelines. Please email an electronic version of your essay (as an MS Word document), along with a 100 word abstract, to david-perlmutter@uiowa.edu. For portfolios, send inquiry first.
EDITOR
Berkley Hudson, Missouri School of Journalism
Hurricane Sandy and Nature’s Inexorable Path
There really isn’t much to say, is there? In the real world–the one where climate change isn’t a myth–nature has a way of calling in the chits. If you’ve got a levee, you might be OK, and if not, not. If you have a new electrical grid designed to withstand more than a Christmas card snowfall, then you might be OK; if you have the aging, jerry-rigged network that passes for standard in the US, not so much.
If you understand that it is the job of government to plan, invest, and build as necessary to provide the transportation network, electrical power, clean water, waste management, and other common necessities for the general welfare and individual prosperity, then you know that a natural disaster is not entirely natural, but rather an empirical test of how well a society has been distributing its resources and otherwise making the tough decisions required for sustainability. If, however, you think that government is the problem and that the patriotic thing to do is to drown the beast, well, then I guess you might as well let nature take its course.
Which it will do, which is why I like this photograph.
No one is likely to nominate this image for an award, not least because it was taken by a security camera. You are looking at water surging into the PATH subway station in Hoboken, New Jersey. The station is deserted–good job by the government on that one–and thus its bland, gritty functionality is all the more evident. Electrical cable tubes are exposed along pillar, ceiling, and walls; cheap surfaces, ugly paint, and impersonal signage look no better in the harsh lighting; the scene looks like it was designed more for the machines in the front and rear of the frame than for human beings.
Any subway system is likely to be vulnerable to flooding, and even in the good times it will endure a lot of wear and tear, so functionality is hardly a basis for indictment. Even so, I can’t help but think that this system has been overused and underfunded for too long, and that it is far short of having been retrofitted for better environmental security. And didn’t Chris Christie, the Republican governor of New Jersey, kill an interstate plan to built a new transportation tunnel between NJ and NYC? Well, yes, he did.
Which gets us back to the photo. It would be enough to illustrate that the PATH system was already degraded, already undergoing a slow-moving catastrophe called the Decline of America. But this photo does more as well, for it shows how nature cannot be stopped, cannot be held at bay forever by merely looking the other way and pretending the “once in a century” storms will never happen in this century. (Where I come from “once in a century” floods now come along about every decade. . . .) Floodwaters are no respecter of human habits: you might think an elevator shouldn’t be used to sluice water to where it can do the most damage, but the water has other ideas.
Or, worse yet, no ideas at all: the water doesn’t have to think, and it can’t be lied to. You can’t tell it that climate change isn’t happening or that prudent investment in infrastructure is socialism or that this wouldn’t happen if we had more confidence in the market. In place of that magical thinking (to draw on Paul Krugman’s astute analyses of right-wing ideology), the photo responds with its own fantasy of terror: the waters bursting through the mechanical doors evoke an image from a movie trailer for The Shining, when blood flowed from an elevator like water. Here the water almost flows like blood, that is, as if the arteries in subway system were rupturing.
No matter how you try to describe it, the important point is that nature will not be denied. It can be controlled, but that takes foresight and solidarity and many other political virtues that once were not in such short supply. Maybe, just maybe, there still is time to learn that natural disasters are also products of human obtuseness. If that lesson is not learned, nature some day will reclaim the city. And as in the photo, perhaps by then only the machines will be left to watch as they too are destroyed.
Photograph by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
Sony World Photography Awards 2013
The World Photography Organization manages the Sony World Photography Awards, which offer several levels of competition ranging from amateur to professional photography. This year’s deadline for submission is January 4, 2013. Information is available at the website, along with images of previous winners and notables as well as current entries.
“Bear’s Claw,” Moorcroft, Wyoming, by Mitch Dobrowner, 2102 SWPA Photographer of the Year.
Visual History of the World
In two minutes, no less.
Our Story in 2 minutes/Notre Histoire en 2 minutes
Click on the link for a montage of photographs (and a few illustrations) that provide a rocket sled ride from natural history through human history.
Edited by Joe Bush. Song by Zack Hemsey.
China National Day: The Flower Detail
Before concluding that the mass public is mesmerized by political spectacles, it might help to note that photojournalism includes a fair share of backstage shots. And some can be taken in broad daylight.
This image verges on the visual joke–just think of how you might caption it using the word “butt” or “ass” or otherwise going down that path. Jokes aren’t serious, by definition, but some very good photographers have not been above them, with Elliott Erwitt being the master of the genre. Erwitt’s example suggests that the photo above isn’t merely a joke, but something related to that: not quite a parody, but mildly comedic comment on a more conventional form.
But what is it that is being cut down to size? I think at least two stock images lie behind this photo. One is the image of goosestepping troops that symbolizes authoritarian regimes. (I’ve posted here and here on how these images are faring in the 21st century.) In the photo above, the conventional boots, arced legs, pointed toes, and uniformed entrainment are all present, but firmly planted on the ground and immobile instead of striding forward as disciplined menace-in-motion. And instead of seeing right arms swinging in unison while the left hold weapons (“arms”) upright, we see only legs and asses. Worse yet, instead of all heads cocked in the same tense direction, all eyes on the great leader at the reviewing stand, these guys are headless. Decapitated obedient bodies still symbolize the mass man and mechanized slavery of anti-communist demonology, but the image now is a long way from threatening. After all, we’re looking at the flower detail.
National Day provides plenty of more impressive images of troops marching in formation, heavy military equipment on display, and all the features once found in the Western press after every May Day. Those concerned about global security would rightly point out that the troops and weapons on display are real and receiving more funding every year, and that the event was held at Tiananmen Square, and perhaps any bemusement should be tempered accordingly. But militarization is a global problem in another sense as well, as it sucks up ever more resources despite the fact that war has becoming ever more unnecessary and stupid. Thus, spectators East and West need to be reminded that it’s one thing to enjoy the show and another to buy the whole package, and that those images of goosestepping troops help sell the package on both sides of the street.
So it is that the political spectacle itself may be another object of commentary in the photograph above. Instead of seeing only the staged performance, we are taken backstage to be reminded that it is just a show. Instead of seeing a display of power, we are reminded that the performance depends on ordinary people who are vulnerable in spite of their uniforms. It will still be a good show, but now we can keep it in perspective instead of seeing a National Security Threat in every parade and Escalation in every salute.
And just to gild the lily, I’ll put up one more photograph from the same role. This one seems the more direct parody, and a more direct put-down, but let’s wait a moment on that.
Now the goose step is revealed. Are you terrified? Of course not. The stride is limited by the soldier’s load, but more than that, they are carrying flowers, gigantic bouquets of flowers. On a carpet, no less. OK, Defense Department, can you match that? Do you have the latest intelligence on garlands? Are you prepared to fight a two garden war?
This is another version of a backstage shot in a public space: the photo positions the viewer as if in the wings while watching the actors march out onto the stage. The double vision of seeing them both backstage and on stage creates a slightly comical, skeptical frame for the event. And once again the joke turns serious. The better political vision in this image comes precisely from how the soldiers appear ridiculous. Would that all soldiers were so: that is, that all the troops were doing nothing but competitive displays for peaceful onlookers. Not great material for the video games, but one of the keys to the 21st century is figuring out how to turn military expenditures, and cultures, toward less lethal forms of service. So is is that marching in parades, at least if you are in the flower detail, might be an important military exercise after all.
Photographs by Andy Wong/Associated Press.
The Instruments of World Making
The scene is actually a street in war torn Aleppo, where Syria’s rich cultural and historical legacy is being rendered in rubble and ashes by a revolution that seemingly knows no bounds or ends, but truth to tell it could be any number of war torn countries, now and in the recent past. At first glance the man walking away from the viewer appears to be carrying a grenade launcher or some other kind of weapon, cautiously at the ready. But on closer inspection – and with the help of a caption – it turns out he is actually carrying a guitar. And not just carrying it, but actually playing it as he walks down the street.
The photograph is extraordinary in this regard, for while the individual dominates the scene, so much hinges on whether we see a guitar or a weapon. If the first, we might be inclined to cast him as something of a troubadour, strolling down the street, feeling safe, or at least safe enough to express himself on a deserted public thoroughfare with music; if the second, we might be inclined to see him advancing cautiously, nervously, through a war zone, vigilant against the dangers that presumably hide behind closed doors and shuttered windows or on rooftops.
But of course even in the first case we cannot assume that he feels too safe, as signaled by the automatic weapon he carries slung over his right shoulder, apparently ready to choose to employ one or the other as conditions dictate. And so perhaps what see really is not a dialectic between the instruments of artistic expression and war so much as an allegory for the human condition of everyman, tragically faced with the choice for how he might engage and seek to (re)make the world, through art or violence. Sadly (or is it tragically?), the photograph offers no real resolution to this problem. But what it does is to remind us of the possibility of the choice. And it is that possibility—perhaps only that possibility—that enables the hope to keep walking down such corridors.
Photo Credit: Stringer/Reuters