This piece relates to work by walker evans and susan
meiselas, but has relevance to any piece of work which discusses any group identity.
This essay by Allan sekula features in “In History” (REFERENCE), as an
introduction to susan meiselas’ Kurdistan work. I have selected a few excerpts
from the piece which I found interesting and relevant in discussion of the
documentary elements in her Kurdistan work.
“susan meiselas and
her colleagues seem to me to be developing the case for a highly cautious, even
suspicious view of photographs representing the kurds. Here are a people
defined from without by multiple oppressors and scientists and adventurers.....
with periodic busts of western journalistic intervention. The archive itself is
dispersed, must be constructed from discontinuous and even mutually antagonistic
sources. Everything is shadowed by fakery (or at the very least, circumspection
and doubt) and fear.” (REFERENCE)
Allan speaks of considering the Reliability of images in
identifying a race/culture. Having often been photographed from the outside, a
large body of found images could create an unreliable representation of the
race/culture. It would be an outsider’s point of view, which has often been one
that looked down upon the kurds.The source of photographs has to be questioned, and why the
images exist.
Sekula then goes on to discuss how the kurds are
characterized and stereotyped as a group, but have to be catalogued and
destroyed individually by oppressors in order for the group to be destroyed.
Similarly, it is images and stories of individuals which exist that have to
come together with other images/stories of other individuals to create a group
identity through photographs and text. (REFERENCE/QUOTE)
He then
discusses how each image can have great significance.
“I recall visiting Susan Meiselas in New York
while she was working on her Kurdistan book. At that moment she felt that
nothing could be left out, that each and every image she had unearthed had
unfathomed meaning for someone, and thus demanded to be included in her archive
of a stateless people… Her radical nominalism, that is, her reluctance to allow
any one image to stand as a type for other images that were excluded was worthy
of the utmost philosophical respect... In theory, no potential story should be
thwarted by editorial selection or publisher’s page counts.” (Reference)
Each
photograph has meaning to someone in the world; otherwise it wouldn’t have been
taken. And Meiselas was apparently insistent on this. This all feeds in to why
she created such a large (and growing) piece of work. To create a more accurate
national identity than a short series or photo essay could.
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