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Joerg Colberg to curate Visa Pour L’image

duckrabbit — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 21:48:03 +0000

Everybody knows (and behind his back everybody says) that one of the problems with the Visa, Festival of Shanty Towns, is that it only has one curator, and as time ticks on more and more people are turning blue trying to squeeze into the narrowness of that curator’s mind. (that may sound a bit tough,but isn’t it about time someone actually said it?)

I have just finished reading Jörg Colberg’s terrific interview with Ivor Prickett (on Conscientious Extended).

Something struck me.

J F Leroy could really give photographers something to talk about, and the public something different to look at, by inviting Colberg to curate some shows. We might even get introduced to the kind of work that will make you forget all the tedious discussion about the death photojournalism. Work like Ivor’s; a young photographer not dreaming of a warzone.

JC: This might be a stupid question, but maybe there’s something to be gained from being stupid. In this day and age, where photographs are so ubiquitous, and where many people are so cynical about photos, how does one make people care about what’s being shown in photographs? So that, just to make that connection, the photographs will have an impact?

IP: I’m not really sure how other photographers go about doing this, but for me I try to engage viewers by photographing the very ordinary every-day routines that people living in extraordinary circumstances still have to go through in order to survive. By presenting people with situations and emotions that they can relate to I hope to draw them in and allow them to put themselves in my subjects’ shoes, no matter how foreign or exotic their lives may be. So instead of trying to shock someone into caring, I am hoping to communicate people’s stories in a more subtle and engaging way.

DO READ THE FULL INTERVIEW HERE

Thank you and a Halloween treat

duckrabbit — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 18:43:41 +0000

Last month duckrabbit had over 44000 visits.

To top it off I got this email this morning from Kelvin Brown, one of the photographers who recently attended a duckrabbit photofilm workshop.

‘My photo film about Cross Bones has been published on the BBC website. Thanks a stack for your advice on how to improve. And thanks especially for teaching me how to make one of these. It feels like the right tool for me to use to produce the kind of work I am interested in doing.’

I was impressed to see that Kelvin’s photofilm was in the top ten most looked at items on the BBC website this morning! That’s a huge audience running into the hundreds of thousands.

Thanks Kelvin, you made duckrabbit’s day.

Dear Mr Leroy (an open letter)

duckrabbit — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 10:23:18 +0000

Thank you for your response to my post yesterday critisizing the way way certain photo agencies seem content to abuse the rights of indvidual photographers. I am sorry that we misunderstood you. Might that have something to do with upholding a logic that many people find is at odds with your self stated remit of ‘defending professional photographers’?

If you take that remit seriously and if you want others (the one’s who are not desperate to grace the walls of your festival) to take you seriously, doesn’t it make more sense to embrace the digital world in which the vast majority of professional photographers produce their work?

To tell photographers not to use social network sites is a bit like suffering from agoraphobia and then insisting that nobody else in your family leaves your cave for fear the sky will fall on their heads. Let’s briefly look at two things.

The use of the web by photographers
Your attitude towards Morel

Many, many photographers successfully use social network sites and in fact many agencies actively encourage this because they rightly conclude that the danger of another agency stealing and selling their work is far less than having an invisible and therefore worthless product.

Photographers that have used social networks to promote work recently include Kashi, Nachtwey and Bleasdale. David Alan Harvey’s Burn magazine is a social network site. Images can be stolen from it in exactly the same way as Flickr or Twitpic, infact the pictures on Burn are generally of a higher resolution.

How many other cases like Morel’s are you aware of? By putting his pictures on Twitpic he got them out to a huge number of people, at a time when the most important thing to him was that the public was aware of the magnitude of the crisis in Haiti.

Did the fact that he published his photos first on Twitpic stop any of the world’s major news outlets from publishing his photos also? No.

Did it stop any of them from paying for his photos? No.

The only problem is that the money went in the wrong persons pocket and now they want to keep it, for which your comment to Olivier Laurent of BJP was:

‘AFP acted in good faith.’

Mr Leroy if that’s not defending them, then I’m a haricot vert.

Infact the majority of those news outlets who wrongly published Morel’s pictures have now paid him for his work. So actually in many ways his strategy worked. And as stated above it’s a strategy pursued by many of the world’s major agencies.

Take Magnum. Just like Morel everyday they use Twitter to link to their images.

I continue to be perplexed by your unwillingness to accept that there is little difference in protection between publishing a photo on the Visa website and on Twitpic.

In your response to my taking images from the Visa website in the same way AFP took them from Twitpic (to demonstrate the hypocrisy of your comments) you write:

‘The images that are displayed on Visa’s website were licensed for the use on Visa’s website, and, as stated by the universally-recognized copyright sign at the bottom of the front page where you stole the work of others, they are protected by copyright. If you have some kind of viewing impairment that prevented you from seeing this, please accept my apologies.’

This is the copyright sign that you are referring to:

But you are mistaken. It refers to the website but not to any of the uncredited images that I copied from your website because Visa is not the copyright holder of those images, the photographers are. Infact your use of copyright is almost identical to the sign at the bottom of the Twitpic page, the site that you call Morel an ‘amateur’ for posting his pictures on.

However if you want to be seen to really care about the rights of photographers you may want to take a lesson from Twitpic who add the following text to their website under terms and conditions: Given the fact that your own website offers less explicit protection then Twitpic’s isn’t this a case of two standards, your own being lower than the website and the photographer you seek to denigrate? That brings me to issue two, your attitude towards Morel and your bizarre analogy with car insurance. Let’s go along with the analogy for the sake of argument.

You are driving your car and an earthquake strikes. That earthquake destroys much of the city and kills tens of thousands of people. Within minutes this is the scene you are photographing (Morel’s words published in the New York Times and 100eyes magazine):

Destruction. Horror. Black. This place was hit by — I don’t know — hundreds of cruise missiles at the same time. I never saw anything like that. People, dead bodies were all over the place. And in minutes, I would say like 10 minutes, the street was full — full of dead bodies. Everybody was panicked. Sobbing and dazed —people crying for help. Buildings collapsed—the Cathedral of St. Trinity, the Cathedral, the Iron Market, the Presidential Palace, the Palace of Justice, my father’s bakery. The principal manifestations, institutions, and symbols of my Haitian childhood were destroyed in less than a minute. There were aftershocks every 15 to 20 minutes which lasted from three to five seconds.”

And whilst you are doing the job of a photographer someone comes and steals your car, which they then sell through their showroom. When you write to them to try and get compensation they write back to you saying that if you come near the showroom they will run you over.

Infact it was the first evening of the earthquake that Morel, after having just lived through the scene above, had a friend’s daughter help him upload the photos to Twitpic over a dodgy internet connection on the roof of a hotel. Both of them will have been in a state of shock.

I have to tell you honestly Mr Leroy many people are wondering in these horrific circumstances what kind of person who claims to represent photographers (or otherwise) goes right out of his way to beat up on the guy for leaving his keys in the car rather than expressing outrage at the people who took his car and sold it?

Here’s a possible answer that to question. Take a look at this screengrab from your website:

Three questions for you to answer:

Isn’t it true that Visa has a business relationship with Getty, one of the companies who distributed Morel’s photographs and are now refusing to compensate him?
Do you yourself derive benefit from that relationship?
Given that Getty are one of the key sponsors of Visa is it possible that some of the money Getty received from the sale of Morel’s photographs could benefit Visa?

If the answer to any of those questions is yes there is an obvious conflict of interest. Nothing wrong with that. Conflicts of interest are a part of life. But it does mean that given your readiness to lay into Morel people will question your impartiality and ultimately your commitment to photographers, to journalism and to storytelling. That’s a shame considering how much of your life you have given to these things.

I’ll end with an extract from a comment one of our readers made in response to your attack on Morel:

‘If you left your keys in your expensive car, I would take the keys out and give them to you.’

Me too.

Yours Sincerely

Benjamin Chesterton (aka duckrabbit)

Intimate audio

Adam Westbrook — Sun, 02 May 2010 19:55:04 +0000

Have you checked out the daily blog Someone Once Told Me?

It’s a collection of photographs where the subjects are holding up a phrase someone once told them, that has somehow affected their life. I included it in this list of collaborative photography projects, and was in it last year too (warning, rude words).

Well here is today’s SOTM, by a girl in Los Angeles. The picture doesn’t say too much. But click on the image, and have a listen to the audio which accompanies it.

I still maintain good quality, intimate, close up audio grabs you like nothing else. Her pauses, hesitations, umms and errs, add such emotional weight to her admission and tell us much more about who she is than a picture can do.

No-one ever pulled up in their driveway and stayed in the car to look at a really good photograph, but they’ll do it if there’s something amazing on the radio.

Still, arresting audio is harder to come across than a virgin in Los Angeles. But why? It sounds to me like the girl in the above picture recorded her story on an iPhone. Apps like Audioboo mean we can all start recording our own audio stories and sharing them with the world.

Mary Hamilton‘s a journalist, who has just started recording a daily AudioBoo on her way home from work. Nothing in particular, no real theme, just what’s on her mind as she potters home after work. Lovely idea.

Imagine if we all started recorded our own audio diaries? How many great stories would emerge from the ether?

ADAM WESTBROOK

Bombay Flying Club’s Streetlights: a last for Flash?

Adam Westbrook — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 13:25:23 +0000

Multimedia producers the Bombay Flying Club have just published their latest piece, shot in Ethiopia.

At 11 minutes, Streetlight is a little on the long side for most armchair viewers, and the Flying Club’s trademark use of rich black and white photographs, while stunning, perhaps steals something from the overall piece. Their use of audio is wonderful, and they do what all audio slideshow producers should do (but rarely do) and match their pictures to their sound.

In Streetlights we hear a game of table tennis in mid flow – and that’s what the picture then shows us.

What’s interesting is a line buried at the bottom of the Bombay Flying Club’s post announcing the new story:

Streetlight is presented in full screen Flash and it requires a decent broad band connection in order to run smoothly. A low res version has been made for the NGO partnerships in Ethiopia.

This might be the last Flash documentary produced by BFC. In the future we will be working closely together with professional programmers in order to keep pushing the limits for online visual storytelling.

It is good to see multimedia producers looking beyond Flash for their work. While easy to use, Apple’s refusal to include it in some of its big products recently limits its potential. Meanwhile Javascript, J-query and eventually HTML5 promise the ability to create stunning interactive graphics with little or no big installations.

ADAM WESTBROOK

Wootton Bassett..the town that honours

David White — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:32:15 +0000

Sent to the duck by Ian Forsyth, this multimedia piece looks at the repatriation of soldiers killed on operations whilst in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the thoughts of the residents of Wootton Bassett..a town through which many bodies of these men pass. His piece is an MOD produced handout, maybe the first of its kind for them.
I’d like to thank Ian for passing it along to us for your viewing.
Also, check out Ian and Matt Kirwan‘s other multimedia here.

I see and yet I cannot find (Asim Rafiqui)

Ciara — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 08:28:59 +0000

I feel off-balance, and unable to keep up with the pace of the life unfolding in front of me. There are a million obvious images, but none that feel right to a frame. I see and yet I cannot find. I struggle to look, but yet I sense that I am not looking in the right places. Or I just miss….

Is it proper for a professional to admit that he is constantly burdened by a sense that even after nine years as a professional he continues to have moments that don’t even lift him beyond an amateur or hobbyist, or the dilettante?

…an interviewer once asked me why I loved photography and I responded that it wasn’t photography that I loved, but the act of searching for and making an image. After that I was largely indifferent to the rest of it. And so I remind myself that like all great loves, like all obsessions, the struggle is what makes it so compelling and not the goal itself.

National Geographic photographer Asim Rafiqui was given the 2009 Aftermath Grant for his project The Idea of India. He’s also a fantastic writer. I highly recommend you check out his blog, which is one of my favourites and is about much more than photography.

Drawing the dead (audio slideshow)

Adam Westbrook — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 17:07:26 +0000

It’s not often the BBC’s small audio slideshow team really nail it on the head, but they’ve put together something special today.

Portraits of the Fallen tells the story of a Vietnam veteran who gets up at 4am every morning to draw pictures of service men and women killed in Iraq.

As well as excellent use of music and natural sound, this slideshow stands out because of the wonderful use of split screens to tell the story. The narrative itself is very simple, with the artist, Michael Reagan,telling three stories of killed soldiers he has drawn.

Well worth the 3:14 it’ll take to watch.

ADAM WESTBROOK

Faces of the uninsured – Evan Vucci, you have inspired duckrabbit

duckrabbit — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 01:15:14 +0000

“Our original mission was to provide airborn medical relief in the developing world but since 1992 we’ve been heavily involved in providing care here in the United States.”

Stan Brock, founder Remote Area Medical

Please do check out AP photographer Evan Vucci’s stunning multimedia feature about a charity providing medical care in the USA. This is one one of the best, most coherent pieces of visual journalism I’ve ever seen. There is NOTHING detracting from the story.

No crappy voiceover.

No dodgy graphics.

No arty photography.

No reams of text.

No unnecessary music.

And damn doesn’t it make you stop and think.

Now if we could only export Evan’s approach to the way we communicate about people in the developing world then visual journalism might start actually helping to achieve some of the changes needed to make the world a fairer place.

Comment from Stan Banos …

duckrabbit — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 16:29:39 +0000

Because someone has to state the bleeding obvious to all these photographers who want to save the world by taking wonky black and white photos and getting them up in galleries …

If you’re devoted to making it in the art world, you’re not exactly dedicated to making social change…

Which reminds me of something I read on John Levy’s (Foto8′s) excellent highs and lows of the last year (much better than all these really annoying top ten lists). Lows:

Edward Burtynsky for suggesting we pay him $25,000 for a HOST gallery talk on Oil. Well if we make a packed house then I’m sure everyone will wish to contribute $340 towards that! (not)

More outspokenness for 2010 please John.