Chris Anderson Interview

 Vice magazine is currently running a series of interviews with magnum photographers. Here are some exerpts from an interview done with magnum photographer chris Anderson, which I found very interesting and down to earth. The full interview can be found on the vice website, at http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/christopher-anderson-interview .

“Unlike most agencies, Magnum's members are selected by the other photographers on the agency, which, given they're the greatest photo agency in the world, means becoming a member is a pretty gruelling process”.  (Bayley,B. 2013)

 Magnum is more of a community of renowned photographers, rather than having some distinct aim. This is a healthy way of considering magnum, rather than struggling to understand how they work, and what they’re mission is.

 Here are two questions and answers which I have highlighted from the interview. The bold is spoken by Bruno Bayley, and the answer is by Christopher Anderson

RUSSIA. Novosibirsk. 2006 © Christopher Anderson/Magnum Photo

“Hello Christopher. You've vocally distanced yourself from "photojournalism" in the past. Why is that?”

“There are photojournalists in Magnum, but I don't see it as a photojournalist agency. It's more founded in documentary photography. If I were to use a term for myself, I feel I'd fit more closely in the bracket of documentary photography than photojournalism. The term "photojournalist" tends to be loaded with meaning: specifically that one reports the news. I don’t see that as my function. Even when I was photographing things that were news topics, like conflicts, my function was not that of a news reporter, my function was to comment on what I saw happen that day and to offer a subjective point of view. In my role I was commenting on what was happening, but also trying to communicate what it felt like to be there when it was happening.”

Wow, this guy is great, and so is the interview. He recognizes that his work isn’t photojournalistic, and he is see’s himself more of a documentary photographer, despite being quite subjective. The argument of objectivity vs subjectivity is quite large in documentary, but with my recent readings, it feels like can ever be objective.

KUWAIT. 2002. Soliders from the 2nd Brigade Combat Team 3rd Infantry Division take a snapshot of the battlefield during excercises in the Kuwaiti desert. © Christopher Anderson/Magnum Photo

“Have people ever reacted negatively to your work because you champion subjectivity in a field which many argue should be entirely objective?”
“Yeah, especially with the blogosphere there is a lot of criticism. I can't pay attention to all that; I don't mean that in an arrogant way, it's just a waste of my energy and time. My photographs are a reflection of the experience I have, I can't really be ashamed or embarrassed about the photograph that results from those experiences, any more than I could be uncomfortable about the experiences themselves.”

 The key thing is that he says his images are a result of an experience, and thats how they should be read. He’s not trying to profile some exotic culture, or dramatise a situation. He’s simple commenting on an experience. What a wonderful way of working, which has reignited my passion to create similar works!

 This interview has made me realise many things about the photographers of magnum, and their place in the documentary world. magnum is simply a community of like minded photographers, but not too like minded. They all have their own distinct ways of working, and their work showcases experiences of humanity. I shouldn’t worry about making works which are accurate and valid to a specific group of people, I should just go and experience the people and places, and my pictures should voice that experience.

References

• Bruno Bayley. (2013). The Way Chris Anderson See's The World Is Amazine. Available: http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/christopher-anderson-interview. Last accessed 28th March 2013.

pictures

Chris Anderson/Magnum Photos, (2006), RUSSIA. Novosibirsk. 2006 [ONLINE]. Available at: http://mediastore.magnumphotos.com/CoreXDoc/MAG/Media/TR2/7/0/d/8/NYC70198.jpg [Accessed 02 April 13].

Chris Anderson/Magnum Photos, (2002), KUWAIT. 2002. Soliders from the 2nd Brigade Combat Team 3rd Infantry Division take a snapshot of the battlefield during excercises in the Kuwaiti desert. [ONLINE]. Available at: http://mediastore3.magnumphotos.com/CoreXDoc/MAG/Media/TR2/5/3/5/f/NYC52276.jpg [Accessed 02 April 13]

Notes on Michelle Bogre: Photography as Activism

This was a great book which I wish I had read earlier on in my research. Even from the first chapter, I found many paragraphs useful to my study which summarised key ideas about documentary photography.

“It is important to define documentary for the purposes of this book. The definition of documentary photography in the twenty first century is complex, multilayered, and nuanced. It is both process and aesthetic and applies to a broad range of imagery, from traditional, straight reportage-type images to the manipulated faux documentary images that appear on gallery walls.” (pg2)

Documentary has an ever changing definition throughout its history.

“To some degree, all photography is documentary because all photographs document something. Each photograph is evidence of something that appeared in front of the camera.” (pg2)

Bogre then goes on to quote Walker Evans as I already have, about documentary having uses. Every image is a document of something.

Dust Storm, Cimarron County, OK, 1936. Arthur Rothstein

“Edward Steichen, when reviewing some photographs from the farm security administration’s (FSA) photography unit, wrote that the photographers produced a series of “...the most remarkable human documents that were ever rendered in pictures” because they were so direct that “they made many a citizen wince” leaving the viewer with a “feeling of a living experience” not soon forgotten.” (pg2)

The photographs Steichen was referring to had the power to elicit emotion from viewers. This leads on to the adoption of emotionally charged images to being popular, and photojournalism being quite popular as it gives viewers some emotional response. Although it may not be truly representative of the situation or scene.

“The quest for a definition of documentary continued. In 1938, the word made its way into the lexicon of photographic history when Beaumont Newhall identified documentary as a means, not an end – an approach to a photograph, not the photograph itself” (pg2)

Documentary photography is about the mean, then approach, the subject, the context. The photograph doesn’t have to have something exotic or dramatic, they just have to be relevant and accurate and displayed in the correct context. The image itself is almost irrelevant.

“Even with this expansive definition, traditional photography... has been under attack for more than a decade by postmodern photographic critics and theorists, most notably Martha Rosler and Allan Sekula. The general assertions that photographs are not simple records, that they are not evidence, and that they can’t be objective leads critics to challenge the very nature of documentary work.” (Pg3)

Bogre recognizes that there are many valid critics of the documentary genre.

“If, as critics claim, all photographs are suspect, contextual, complex layers of symbols and meanings laden with the photographers hidden agenda, then how can documentary be truthful and representational?” (pg3)

Similar to Tagg’s idea, that there are so many factors and varieties of bias that can be brought to creating and reading images, that a photograph can possibly never be true. There will always be some bias, even if it is ever so slight, and subconscious to the photographer/reader.

“Documentary photographers are still faithful to the notion of a truth, although maybe not the truth, and still pledge an allegiance to the idea that photographs can and should be rooted in the moment, not directed, not staged, and not manipulated.” (pg3)

“Documentary photography doesn’t ever “change” anything; rather it simply transfers information about a “group of powerless people” (the subjects; otherwise, they wouldn’t be photographed) to a much more powerful group (the elite gallery goers or viewers). “The expose, the compassion and outrages, of documentary fuelled by the dedication to reform has shaded over into combinations of exoticism, tourism, voyeurism, psychologism, and metaphysics, trophy hunting – and careerism.” (pg3)

Bogre summarises some of Roslers critical essays here. Rosler makes good points, but perhaps she is being a bit too critical. It seems like Rosler assumes that photographers make images of these downtrodden people because it boosts their own profile. She does make a good point that the photographers don’t seem to care about the people, and aren’t fighting for some great social change (a criticism Rosler had of Meiselas (Roth, P.2008)) but this isn’t always the case. (Meiselas then proved her wrong by making work that came through her strong bonds and compassion to Nicaraguans).  This is a good summary, and the notion of the transfer encapsulates the situation well.

“Only those born into or those from a culture or community can truly understand that culture or community, or so it goes; hence, only the insider has the right to photograph inside that culture. This specious argument ignores the reality that insider truth is not necessarily more accurate than outsider truth. Misrepresentation, intrusion, and exploitation are as likely to occur when an “insider photographs as when an “outsider” does.” (pg4)

The in/outsider argument is actually irrelevant, because there are the same pros/cons. The same mistakes can happen in reliability and accuracy of work.

Here is an example I have created:

• I go to Syria, and photograph the conflict that is currently occurring. I know about rebels and government from news, and find more stories by hanging out with one of the factions.

• Someone living under the government, who has lived their all their life, photographs the conflict. They are fighting what they perceive to be an evil government, and that government wants to kill them.

Although the Syrian can create images that are reasonably accurate and suitable because they are directly in contact with the situation, there is bias as they are on a side. I may not be on a side, and I can view the situation from the outside and appreciate more factors on the conflict, rather than having one vision (at least to start with). In reality, I do have a personal agenda towards the conflict. But if I was to document it accurately, I would have to ignore it.

“They function as a social lens and can be both a “mirror” and a “window”. A documentary photograph makes the random, accidently, and fragmentary details of everyday existence meaningful while preserving the actual details of the scene. It simultaneously hosts an internal dialogue (content, style, the transformation of reality not a two-dimensional representation) and an external dialogue that changes as the time changes. Today for example, we look at photographs differently than a nineteenth century viewer would.” Pg5

Documentary images can be a window into another culture, but can also be a reflection on ourselves as viewers, and photographers. It makes us consider our own position, our connection to what is being displayed. Or the images may be of our own culture, making it both window and mirror.

In a later chapter, named modern history, Bogre talks about the history of photojournalism and documentary work in modern times.

“Photography retained its activist status throughout the late 1930s and 1940s because the photograph had no competition. In world war 2, news organizations and publications geared up to cover the war, providing support and precious print space for the newer generation of photographers. For example, life magazine sent photographers to the frontlines and even ran a photo school to train army photographers.” Pg46

“Activist photography peaked again in the 1960’s and 1970s, the heyday of life and look magazines. Photographers imaged the great social movements, upheavals and issues (for example, civil rights, the Vietnam war, and drug addiction) in America, and then travelled to photograph the injustices and social inequities around the world, just as their Victorian counterparts did in the 1800’s.” Pg46

Iwo Jima, 1945 - W. Eugene Smith—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

War is a great supplier of drama and photographers and thus media outlets could consume it. This could be a reason that people like Sekula and Rosler start to become critical, as they are surrounded by people who long to find conflicts and situations, so when a small situation crops up, photographers flood to an area, photograph, consume all the imagery the area has and head home looking for admiration and decoration. This is slightly touched on in my Meiselas post, as she stays in Nicaragua for quite a while after the worlds press have left.

“Photography’s power wanted somewhat in the 1950s and 1960s as television journalism supplemented the still photograph. Television news was more immediate; it’s moving image and sound intrigued viewers.” Pg46

  

The role of moving image in documentary/journalism is important. It can be more immersive, but I believe photography to have the power to dramatise stories more. If photographed at the right time, the decisive moment, the most banal scene can be elevated to one of much drama.

“Advocacy photography almost disappeared in the Reagan era as the limitations of print media forced magazines to close, television viewing increased, and the greed is good culture emerged. Americans did not want visual reminders of social inequities.” Pg46

 The consumerist cultures of capitalism lead to a decline in activist photography. People became more self interested, and unconcerned with the injustices around the world.

References

• Bogre, M (2012). Photography as Activism. Oxford: Elsevier. .

• Roth,P(2008The Uneasy Documentary Vision of Susan Meiselas, the nation, available at http://www.thenation.com/article/uneasy-documentary-vision-susan-meiselas last accessed 1st april 2013

Pictures 

Arthur Rothstein, (1936), Dust Storm, Cimarron County, OK, 1936 [ONLINE]. Available at: http://www.weru.ksu.edu/new_weru/multimedia/dustbowl/big/cimarron_ok.jpg [Accessed 02 April 13]

W. Eugene Smith—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images, (1945), Iwo Jima [ONLINE]. Available at: http://timelifeblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/ugc11388312.jpg?w=1024 [Accessed 02 April 13].

Notes on John Tagg: The Burden of Representation

Chapter 7: Contacts/worksheets: notes on photography, history, and representation 

 In this chapter, John Tagg talks about several issues in representation through photography. He starts off by discussing the importance of text in representation. He starts off the chapter with an analysis of a picture by Lewis Hine of a young couple in their living room, in 1936. They seem to be reasonably well off, sat in what is apparently their own living room with decorated furniture, dressed in casual clothing and reading the newspaper. This image is interesting because a lot of American imagery from this time, and especially year, is from the FSA and of apparently poor and struggling people in a time of depressihttps://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1762388788136398997#editor/target=post;postID=6817054879194327046on (pg186). Perhaps an accompanying text or even a suitable caption would affirm what it is exactly that has been documented. Instead, it is only titled “young couple, 1936”

“a direct transcription of the real... encoding and decoding in photographs is the product of work by concrete historical individuals who are themselves reciprocally constituted as the subjects of ideology in the unfolding unfolding historical process. Moreover, this work takes place within specific social and institutional contexts. Photographs are not ideas. They are material items produced by a certain elaborate mode of production and distributed, circulated and consumed within a given set of social relations: images made meaningful and understood within the very relations of their production and sited within a wider ideological complex which must, in turn, be related to the practical and social problems which sustain and shape it” (pg188)

 A direct transcript of the real. That’s a nice notion. I could create a bank of small sentences like this that talk about photography’s ability to capture what is real.

 Tagg talks about Encoding and decoding of images often done by analysers of history, but states that these people exist and work in a context which has some bias in its own ideology. Im still not 100% on what this means. Perhaps people who analyse work bring some bias to a reading of an image, so we shouldn’t rely on their reading. Although everyone brings some bias to a reading in some form.

 He also mentions that the photograph is a material item; Produced mechanically, distributed physically, circulated and consumed by viewers for a purpose.Perhaps he could also be saying how an image exists in a variety of bias factors, and they all need to be understood at every level of the image to understand the image. Why it was taken, how it was taken, who it is off, who took the image, where is it presented, how is it presented; are all factors that need to be considered to truly understand what is being represented.

 “We are now in a position to displace the question about photographs privileged status as a guaranteed witness of the actuality of the objects or events it represents.... the power to bestow authority and privilege on photograph representations, is not given to other apparatuses within the same social formation – such as amateur photography or ‘art photography’ – and it is only partially held by photojournalism. Ask yourself, under what conditions would a photograph of the loch ness monster or a UFO become acceptable as a proof of their existence?  Not is they were ‘frontal and clear’, to use barthes term, that is, if they deployed the allegedly ‘natural’ rhetoric of documentary images.” (pg189)

 If photographs represent what is real, and we start to use photographs as evidence, how can we disregard certain imagery as being evidential? Why is amateur photography not apparently accurate as evidence? And he makes a very good point about images of UFO’s and the Loch Ness monster. This could be extended to the Bigfoot phenomenon, and even many other conspiracy theories which have imagery surrounding them (9/11 theories). There are a fair amount of images in the public realm depicting these items, but does that make them evidential? Are the things depicted even real? What do they depict? A monster, a shadow, a misinterpretation.

 For a tool which replicates reality, it can still be very inaccurate, and this is often informed by factors outside the frame.

References

• Tagg, J. (1988). Contacts/worksheets: notes on Photography, History, and Representation. In: The Burden of Representation. Hampshire: MacMillan Education LTD. pg 184-211.
• Pg 186 : “1936: severn years after the Wall Street Crash and a year before the ‘Roosevelt Depression’” John Tagg

My notes on Allan Sekula :Dismantling modernism, reinventing documentary (notes on the politics of representation)

  Here are my notes, with quotes, on the allan sekula essay "Dismantling modernism, reinventing documentary (notes on the politics of representation) " taken from the book "

Dismal Science, Photo works 1972-1996".

 Although I may not have completely understood everything Sekula has talked about, and I may even be missing the whole point of the essay, there are many sections from it which I have found interesting and useful to a discussion about the progression and state of documentary photography, as well as finding a few interesting pieces of work along the way.

 “The rhetorical strength of documentary is imagined to reside in the unequivocal character of the cameras evidence, in an essential realism.... the camera serves to ideologically naturalize the eye of the observer. Photography, according to this belief, reproduces the visible world: the camera is an engine of fact... photographs, always the product of socially-specific encounters between human-and-human or human-and-nature, become repositories of dead facts, reified objects torn from their social origins.” (pg121)

 Sekula raises an interesting notion of the camera as a replicator of facts, of reality. Sekula also discusses notions of truth and accuracy through the camera.

“The same picture can convey a variety of messages under differing presentational circumstances. Consider the evidence offered by bank hold up cameras... unpolluted by sensibility... (If) these cameras have an aesthetic, it is one of raw, technological instrumentality... but a court room is a battleground of fictions. What is it that a photograph points to?.. The outcome, based on the “true “reading of the evidence, is a function less of “objectivity “than of political manoeuvring. Reproduced in mass media, this picture might attest to the omniscience of the state within a glamorized and mystifying spectacle of revolution and counter-revolution.” (pg121)

 The importance of presentation, and how it can affect the reading of an image. This is something Susan Meiselas discussed with her mediations exhibition (Roth,P(2008)

“Documentary photography has amassed mountains of evidence. And yet, in this pictorial presentation of scientific and legalistic “fact” the genre has simultaneously contributed much to spectacle, to retinal excitation to voyeurism, to terror, envy and nostalgia, and only a little to the critical understanding of social world” (pg122)

 Although the camera and photography provides plenty of “evidence”, it is still actually quite useless. Which is contradictory to the term, evidence.

“A truly critical social documentary will frame the crime, the trial, and the system of justice and its official myths. Artist working toward this end may or may not produce images that are theatrical and overtly contrived; they may or may not present texts that read like fiction. Social truth is something other than a matter of convincing style.” (Pg122)

 Being truly critical in documentary means exploring the whole situation and contexts, and creating a large body of work which reflects this, and creates a more truthful and accurate account of a situation being documented.

“The culture journalist’s myth of Diane Arbus is interesting in this regard. Most readings of her work careen along an axis between opposing poles of realism and expressionism. On the one hand, her portraits are seen as transparent...vehicles for the social or psychological truth of her subjects.... at the other extreme is a metaphoric projection. The work is thought to express her tragic vision (a vision confirmed by her suicide) each image is nothing so much as a contribution to the artists self portrait” (pg123)

Identical Twins, Roselle New Jersey, 1967. Diane Arbus.

 Sekula states that there are two contrasting, almost contradicting readings for Diane Arbus’ work, yet they are both valid and justifiable.

“..Their work begins with the recognition that photography is operative at every level of our culture. That is, they insist on treating photographs not as privileged objects but as common cultural artefacts” (pg 124)

 Photographs as artefacts. On every level, not just high art. Common artificacts, which ties in to Thomas Sauvin's work, using family photographs as artefacts.

 He also refers to Martha Rosler in his essay, another writer who is critical of the documentary genre. A humorous term I found was the “find-a-bum school of concerned photography.”

 Perhaps a reference to Rosler's criticism, where so called documentary photography is mere “concerned” photography (Cottingham, L. 1993).  There is not too much social struggle on show, or on part of the photographer. And if there is, it is used to elevate the photographer. The term find-a-bum links to this; find a person in a more lowly position than you, photograph them, and be celebrated for displaying the images.

"Lonidiers “evidence” consists of twenty or so case studies of individual workers, each displayed on large panels laid out in a rather photojournalistic fashion. The reference to photojournalism is deliberate, I think, because the work refuses to deliver any of the empathic goodies that we are accustomed to in photo essays. Conventional “human interest” is absent” pg131

“Unlike Smith, Lonidier takes the same photographs that a doctor might. When the evidence is hidden within the body, Lonidier borrows and copies x ray films. These pictures have a brute, clinical effect. Each workers story is reduced to a rather schematic account of injury, disease, hospitalization, and endless bureaucratic run-around...” pg131

 Sekula criticises the work of W. Eugene smith, like Rosler did also. His Minamata work is what the often refer to, and shall also be writing a post on it.

 he then talks of the work of Lonidier, praising it for being a true documentary for its use of evidence as imagery. For purpose, as evident. W.Eugene Smiths work is more emotionally charged and dramatic than documents.

JAPAN. Minamata. Takak ISAYAMA, a 12 year old fetal (congenital) victim of the Minamata Disease, with her mother. 1971.
© W. Eugene Smith/Magnum Photos

“...both films reveal the importance of oral history and song for maintain working-class traditions, both emerge from the filmmaker’s partisan commitment to long term work from within particular struggles. Neither of these films qualifies as the standard “neutral” airplane-ticket-in-the-back-pocket sort of documentary” pg 132

 Sekula talks about how creating work as an insider to a culture is important and more valuable than the work of an outsider.

Airplane-ticket... reference to large amount of photojournalists, possibly agency based, sent to a faraway place to investigate some social problem or news story, create some emotionally charged images and fly home to be celebrated as a great photographer, and people can pretend to care for an hour. Similar to the “find-a-bum” school, but on a global level.

References

•    Sekula, A. (1999). Dismantling Modernism, Reinventing Documentary. In: Dismal Science, Photo works 1972-1996. Illinois: Illinois State University. pg117-138. 
•  The Uneasy Documentary Vision of Susan Meiselas, the nation, available at http://www.thenation.com/article/uneasy-documentary-vision-susan-meiselas last accessed 1st april 2013
• Cottingham, L. (1993). Crossing Borders, Martha Rosler. Available: http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/crossing_borders/. Last accessed 1st April 2013.