Recently I spoke at a conference about the American conflict in Vietnam. This was the first time I had presented a paper at a conference and it was interesting to receive responses after the talk. Some people were really excited by what I had said, some people wanted to argue with me, some people wanted to quiz me, and one guy said this:

“Do you think you are kind of ruining the photo by analysing it so much? I mean, these are iconic images, and you’ve got the photographers talking about them, talking about the moment they took them; don’t you think that you’re reading more into it than is really there?”

It’s a familiar cry. As someone whose passion for photography is born out of questioning, analysing and reading the images, it’s not a sentiment I share. However, I am grateful for the question because it’s got me thinking about why it is important to analyse images, why it’s especially important to analyse the image beyond what the photographer has to say about it, and why I do not consider myself – nor anyone else whose analyses I’ve found engaging – to be ‘over-reading’ the image. So, I would like to revisit the old issue of the need for new analysis.  I don’t want to polarise the already divided camps of those who consider themselves ‘common sense’ photographers and the ‘high-minded’ critics. I do believe in a fluid and supportive exchange between those who take photographs and those who analyse photographs. And hey, you know what, sometimes analysts are photographers and vice versa – which is pretty lovely.  So, avoiding all the ‘them and us’ rhetoric, here is why I do not think I am ‘over-analysing’ or ‘ruining’ the photograph by talking about it so much:

        First of all, I think it’s impossible for any analysis to ‘ruin’ the image. Even if it refutes what has gone before it, I think the key is to see the analysis as adding to the chain of conversation about the image. It’s not my idea vs. the photographer’s idea. It’s my idea plus the photographer’s idea. In fact, there can be many ideas about an image and they can all be valid. Yes, in the spirit of good debate we must pit analyses against one another, but the debate is a kind of playground where these things get thrown about – it doesn’t have to be a battleground for the life or death of an idea.The arguments can co-exist. They jostle for attention, they flow and become entangled with one another, but whatever the tension, a good argument still contains meaning. Two good arguments that pull in opposite directions both still contain meaning. So, yes, at the conference, Don McCullin had said some very sincere and interesting things about the circumstances of some of his ‘iconic’ images, but that doesn’t mean someone – anyone – can’t add to the meaning of that photo any more. It’s only democratic after all. Images change over time – they gather connotations, narratives diverge, they are used in new contexts which invert meanings. This is a brilliant thing. This keeps images current, complex and engaging. This is not the ruination of a purity. This is the celebration and growth of a piece of culture. Let’s not make actual ‘icons’ of images or photographers – they have much to give, but they are only the beginning of the life of an image. When I analyse, I don’t expect to defeat all the definitions that have gone before mine, and I don’t seek to. I hope to add to this pot of meaning, to stir it up a bit. It’s not an act of combat.

As an example of how meaning grows, rather than kills parts of itself off, we could look at a couple of images that I was in fact talking about during the conference. The first had its own cultural and political life before the second came along, and the second inverted and completed a narrative when it appeared. One changed the other, but both still exist with discreet meanings.  The first is the ‘iconic’ image of a small girl, running down a road, screaming in pain from the napalm that is burning her skin:

Nick Ut: 1972

It is an image that defined the morally reprehensible status of America’s war in Vietnam. It became the symbol for all that was wrong with the conflict: when young girls are fleeing napalm attacks, what hope for the liberation of the Southern Vietnamese? What hope for the Americans to be saviours rather than aggressors? It is also, just to keep things complex, a still from a video, which somewhat changes its status. As a still image, it is an icon, but as something taken from moving footage, it also pertains to a different kind of document with a different impact.

Then in 1995, this portrait was made of the ‘napalm girl’, Kim Phuc, who was now grown up and living in Canada:

Anne Bayin: 1995, 'Kim Phuc and Thomas'.

This photo alters the status of the first. Twenty-three years later, a ‘happy ending’ is wilfully added to the first image. My argument was that this Madonna-esque depiciton of Phuc, the damage of her scars weighed against the new life of her baby son’s perfect skin, figured perfectly the kind of healing that the American public needed after the failure of the war. She had gone from suffering Christ child to an Oriental Mary offering rebirth, redemption and forgiveness. This is further illustrated by her speech at the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial in 1996 where she spoke of forgiveness and a truly peaceful world (1). Her words and her body end up acting as a symbol for the power of the human spirit to overcome. In my opinion, this was perfect for wider American discourses – which largely seek out a Christian framework within which to understand suffering – as it gave the American public, veterans or otherwise, a suffering which had meaning. The chaos and trauma of the first image became a necessary precursor to the ‘overcome’ of the second image. This implies that the suffering was necessary for Phuc and the American nation in order for them to gain an insight into the true [Christian] value of life: love, peace, forgiveness. (2)

I find this morally troubling to say the least. It is not that Phuc’s own agency is overridden by such a narrative: she herself is a Christian and makes a good job of speaking at private and public events about her experience and her ethics. My anxiety lies in the fact that the second image gives a meaning to the first that allows it to be reconciled into the narrative of America’s Goodness and Righteousness. Despite it’s mistakes, America comes out as an agent of ‘the bigger plan’; suffering as route to redemption. Through the addition of the second image to the first, America, despite its downfall post-Vietnam, was able to reclaim the Godly position. A much needed narrative twist for the psyche of the nation, and a deeply disturbing reversion to the kind of thinking that caused the tragedy in Vietnam in the first place.

Whether you agree with my reading or not,  it is clear that the second image changed and exists alongside the meaning of the first image. It’s a kind of fractured co-existence of narratives that, in the end, collapse into one another, but also can be said to remain separate and original.

               As for ‘reading too much into it’. Well, I’ve got to say the first time I heard that was when I was in an English Literature class at secondary school. I’ve also heard it from my own English Lit. students when I try to draw their opinions on a poem: “But, would the poet have actually thought about all this? Like, really? Wouldn’t they just have like, er, written the poem? Come on, they didn’t think of all this stuff we’re talking about!” To this I usually say: First of all, yes, I assure you they did think about a lot of this stuff. Secondly, it doesn’t matter if they did or didn’t think of all this stuff because WE get to say what the poem means, how it’s working – not them.  I remember feeling this way myself; wondering if we were kind of over-doing it in English class, and then I remember the brilliant moment when the meaning of something opens up to you. Suddenly, you get to play with it, explore it. Rather than seeing the poem (or photo) as this one little, tight, solid object that’s just simply there; something you can’t interact with, you suddenly become part of it. You get to have a conversation with it.

To all those who fear the ‘over-read’ or who think the photographer has more to say about his/her image than anyone else, I want to say to you: argue with those who you admire and follow. Completely, utterly disagree with your leaders. If you respect them, opposition is the least you owe them. Work on reading images, work on backing up your readings, don’t shut down the image, don’t shut yourself off to the world that the image creates. Don’t let the image be that solid, impenetrable box. Get inside there, shuffle things around a bit, chuck some furniture out of the window, redecorate etc. etc.

Overworked house related metaphors aside, there’s so much to be done by questioning an image and none of it ‘ruins’ the image – all of it adds to the life of the image. Don’t believe in idols, don’t make photographs or photographers sacred. I see photographs more like bodies – shifting, corruptible, seductive, emotional and volatile. Photographs are not pieces of lifeless stone to worship; they are dancing partners.

(1) See this article in The Moderate Voice for some of what Phuc said at the memorial and a good demonstration about how she was ‘read’ by American commentators.

(2) For this argument I owe a great debt to Nancy K.Miller and if you want an interesting read about the figure of Kim Phuc and these portraits of her you should read her essay ‘The Girl in the Photograph: The Vietnam War and the Making of National Memory‘.

Related posts:

1. Just another beautiful photo on MSF’s photo blog for World Aids Day
2. BP wants Twitter to shut down a fake account mocking the oil company. Twitter wants BP to shut down the oil leak that’s ruining the ocean.

Presenting poverty is difficult, as is presenting suffering in general. To expose someone to the lens, and then to the wider world, in a moment of struggle or pain or fear, must be justified by some purpose, some greater act of goodness. Otherwise it is simply a kind of voyeurism – a static piece of rubber-necking. I think this is a well-recognised problem that all photojournalist with any claim to integrity must struggle with – so I don’t expect to break any ground by bringing it up right here. No, this piece is simply to offer a neat little example – a coincidental chain of images – which made me think about the problems of showing poverty and which also throws up some other knotty little issues that turn out to be pretty big fat major issues that run within the practise and concept of documentary photography.

Don McCullin, Jean, Whitechapel, London, c 1980

Last week I went to see Don McCullin’s retrospective at Tate Britain. It’s a muted and interesting display occupying only one room (I’m told the McCullin exhibit at the Imperial War Museum is more impressive). I found myself struggling with McCullin’s images of homeless people and remarked to my friends that I believed these portraits had to be viewed with some nod towards historical context. By this I meant that I suspected these portraits were something more remarkable at the time of their production (60s – 80s) than in 2012. To be clear, I mean the fact of their existence was more remarkable, rather than the aesthetic of the image. The aesthetic is still incredible: eyes stare or defer, skin is rendered in smoky greys, coats and shadows are as heavy and black as charcoal on a canvas. But treating the dispossessed with a painter’s reverence must’ve been a bigger statement then than it might be now. I’m not saying it’s right that social issues should be reduced to fighting out whether or not their image has become cliché – but I am saying that it does, sadly, happen.  The fact that a pressing social issue can become ‘cliché’ is a disturbing problem and one which artists interested in social change must inevitably grapple with and seek out new strategies against.

Don McCullin, Homeless Irishman, Spitalfields, London 1969

I think the cliché is probably born of three sets of circumstance: that of the socially concerned photographer, that of the homeless person, and the bitter fact that homelessness is a problem that is ongoing and needs ever renewed address. The photographer’s desire to deal with the issues of poverty in his/her vicinity coupled with the accessibility of people who have nowhere else to go and who therefore continually offer their image, seems to make it quite likely that ‘the homeless’ will become a subject for the concerned photographer. Throw in the draw of some loose change being handed over in return for a snap and the potential for the image to be made is even greater. It is the economic imbalance, the fact that one person has private space and can protect his/her visibility and that the other has very limited access to private space and protection of his/her visibility, that worries me and makes me think that deeper problems might sometimes underlie the small social event of photographer photographing homeless person.

The other thing that made me uncomfortable was that these photos made feel useless. I did not understand why I was being asked to consume them as objects on a gallery wall. Were these art objects or a campaign? Both? Or maybe, evidence of a past campaign that now takes on the form of art? Or perhaps, evidence of McCullin himself, of his actions within the world, of his type of photography? The narrative these pictures propose are troubling to me – am I learning about McCullin (who afterall, is the subject of the exhibition), am I learning about these homeless people (who may be long dead, or totally altered from the image on the wall), am I learning about homelessness in general?  In any case, what can I hope to achieve as witness to their suffering? Suffering which is at least thirty years out of date. It’s a funny bind because the fact that these images figure a past makes me think that this suffering is ancient and unchangeable. This encourages one to turn the images into an art object, a piece of imagery. But that suffering is still there, however old, and to dislocate the art of the image from the suffering of the person shown seems usurious and inhumane.  Indeed it comes down to this: Am I witnessing a social problem or am I consuming an image? And how reconcilable are these two cases?

All these questions and feelings resurfaced again a few days later when I saw this spread in The Guardian’s Weekend Magazine (of the 21^st of January):

A number of things struck me – first of all the attractiveness of the grid layout and the density of portraits across the two pages. I find this layout intriguing, it makes me want to study each image and draw comparisons between them.  The highly detailed and dense quality of each image is interesting as well, if a bit over-glossed – creases, eyelashes and scratches are all rendered with a metallic precision.  Then, I noticed that there were no captions, no stories for any or each of these faces. At first this intrigued me even more – I began to ask questions of the faces, I began to worry about their histories, I began to notice the difference between them. But then I also began to wonder where the stories were and whether it was fair to present these faces, especially in such an aesthetically pleasing way, if the complex issues that lay behind each person’s predicament were excluded.

On one hand, I welcomed this as a new strategy: it got me interested; it got me asking myself questions. On the other hand that line of questioning ended in me wondering what the purpose or intended effect of putting these images in a weekend magazine without their stories was. There is a hint of idealisation about it, of romantic storytelling: “…they are also beautiful. A woman with exquisite cheekbones; an elderly man who resembles a medieval sage…”. I find too much romanticism unhelpful to social causes.  Once we enter a romantic narrative we also broach the reasons and feelings that motivate us to continue writing the narrative.  It was this sentence especially that I found most excluding and difficult: “…their weathered skin and intense gazes tell of the hardship of life on the streets perhaps better than the subjects could themselves.”. The face becomes a visual object to tell a tale, rather than the first presentation of a whole and complex human being with a whole and complex story. I think these faces do tell us a lot, but is it enough for a project that seeks to develop an intimacy with homeless people and to break down the everyday barriers that allow us to walk on by, to then reduce that story only to the face? I might be closer to the face of another than I have been before, but I’m also being asked to take that image, and that person, at ‘face-value’ and this erects a new kind of barrier.

Coda

My thoughts here were very much developed in response to The Guardian’s presentation of the images. It is interesting to see Time’s presentation of the same images on their LightBox site:http://lightbox.time.com/2012/01/26/portraits-of-the-homeless-by-lee-jeffries/#1

In fact, on LightBox, some of my worries and questions were answered. The explanation of Jeffries’ practice and the fact that he has used his work to raise funds for the homeless helps to make the status of these images a bit more clear. Also, the photographs on LightBox have captions – only location and date – but it makes a big difference to the meaning of the image. It makes this person locatable and historical thereby giving them a context which illustrates their situation in social terms. Jeffries says: “I’m stepping into their world. Everyone else walks by like the homeless are invisible. I’m stepping through the fear, in the hope that people will realize these people are just like me and you.” Of course, art cannot always be measured by what the artist claims it to be, however this does reaffirm my initial feeling towards the images – that they attempt a kind of intimacy that subverts the non-homeless person’s average interaction with the homeless person.

Well, this goes to show how much an editorial can construct, construe and influence meaning.

- Madeleine Corcoran.

This post was originally published on my own blog here.

Related posts:

1. Hotel Poverty
2. Picture This: We Can End Poverty…
3. Why is poverty black and wealth white?

Remember Bibi Aisha, the Afghan woman whose Jodie Bieber portrait was put on the front of Time Magazine along with a controversial jingoistic strapline?

Well, the whys and wherefores about how other people’s words are used to contextualise photographers’ images will be considered at a World Press Photo discussion later this month.

Anyway, here is the blurb:

Tickets are free of charge but there are only about 150 places so you need to book at this link 

Related posts:

1. Remember Bibi Aisha…?
2. An Album’s Worth 1,000 (Bad) Words – Jimi Hendrix
3. ‘I was very concerned about the exploitation of that personal family tragedy in order to make a case for keeping American troops in Afghanistan and continuing this war, in which so many Afghans have suffered’

It’s funny to watch how photojournalism and advertising are merging. Pushed by the likes of World Press and Visa Festival of Shanty Towns, photojournalism is more and more judged as an aesthetic pursuit, bringing it closer and closer to (high end) advertising.

The holy grail of advertising on the other hand is authenticity, which used to be the strength of photojournalism, until the people at World Press started giving out awards to staged stories.

Whores and tramps have always been Magnum favorites, but did their photographers ever make them look so good as in this little bit of advertising trash?

Maybe Banksy was on to something …

Related posts:

1. To shoot or not shoot…video
2. War photographer: a dangerous idolatry
3. Do you know the difference between a large pizza and a photographer?

close today.

Last year they awarded the major grant to Stefano De Luigi for a project title T.I.A, ‘This Is Africa’. If you get to the end of this (extended) post you’ll be able to read what a group of Kenyan photographers think of the judges choice but for those who don’t stay the distance here’s a glimpse:

‘Absolutely horrendous to say the least, i find it shocking that collective idiocy on the part of the judges who are apparently ill informed about our beautiful continent and the cradle of civilization’

‘I think the greatest crime that Stafano committed was to title the particular group of pictures in question as “This Is Africa”. That title is downright wrong and derogatory; maybe even silly.’

‘Why did they give this guy a grant again? The first thing that struck me about his work is the extreme negativity that his work portrays of a continent that is not all darkness and dredgery. It seemed to me to only be a means of propogating an ill-formed opinion he has made of the region and lacks originality in that its nothing we have not already seen in the papers or iCNN. ‘

Sometime back I wrote on Nieman Storyboard about how Luigi and VII were selling a story on their website which stated that it had not rained in Kenya for several years. Although there was a very serious drought the notion that it had not rained was absurd as it was factually incorrect.

I was genuinely amazed that this inaccuracy was able to run off the front of the VII website for several months unchecked.  It was a reminder of how few of the photography crowd are aware of the facts behind the images.

If the work looks great, then it is great, right?

Aesthetics seem to be much more important then facts, because it’s aesthetic brilliance that get you noticed.

More and more photographers work is presented without any real text. All sorts of visual tricks are used to create the story they want the audience to see, but often it is far removed from reality.  A recent exchange with the Kenyan based photographer Sarah Elliot demonstrates this.

I was interested to know why her photographs of survivors of sexual violence in the Congo were presented in black and white when color is so important to the identity of those women? This was her response:

‘While spending time with these women, interviewing them and photographing them, their pain was evident, their innocence and dignity taken, some stated they no longer felt like a woman, black and white conveyed their sense of despair, their broken bodies and souls, and their enveloping anguish. Black and white stripped away elements that got in the way of trying to convey the sense of the very identity that they had lost, that had been brutally taken from them.’

Here’s a difficult question.  Do the women of the Congo who are survivors of sexual violence feel the way Elliot describes them, or is this how she/we want to see them?

You can’t tell a person has been raped by looking at them, and if a photographer is working without accompanying text they will feel the need to impose on the photography some sense of the aftermath of rape. That can lead to very staged photography that relies heavily on a visual style to carry meaning. But what if the photographers vision is inaccurate, misleading or damaging to how we perceive the people in the photos?

Elliot states that the innocence and the dignity of the women she photographed had been taken from them. This is something that she strived to capture.

I  recently interviewed, sat with and was laughed at by  a group of women in the same part of the DR Congo, a number of whom were also survivors of sexual violence.

I would argue strongly that when a man rapes a woman it is his dignity that is lost and not the woman’s.

I would also argue that the women who have grown up under the shadow of war are far less innocent then Elliot presents them. Many of these women are inspirational figures. That’s how Sam Perkins, a midwife who works in this field with MSF, described them to me. That as group the majority are not wracked by despair, neither their souls nor their bodies broken.

That is not to try and diminish the lingering effects of rape, which are of course profound, but different for everyone. What I am arguing is that the photographers response often tells us more about how they feel they might be affected by an event then the people in the pictures. The more dramatic, the darker, the more brutal, the better. But then we are moving into the realms of theatre.

When we serve people up as victims, ripe for our pity, without real context, without story, to make a point which is often lost anyway, then I believe somewhere along the line it is a little of our own dignity that is lost.

What has this to do with Getty Good For A Laugh?

The tagline for their award is YOUR VISION. REALIZED.

Its an open admission that it’s no longer enough to document, to tell peoples stories; we must forge our vision, however distorted, however incomplete, onto those whom were seemingly born for the pity of the lens. And if you look at who the judges are (Stephen Frailey, Jean-Francois Leroy, Eugene Richards, Kathy Ryan, Jamie Wellford) then it doesn’t take a genius to work out that the photography we often see published says more about the way they think about photography, then the way the people in the photos actually feel.

In the end documentary photography served up this way has eaten itself. It’s become consumed with the pursuit of the perfect frame based on the opinions of a tiny group of influential editors, as opposed to the pursuit of storytelling that will educate, entertain and inform a larger audience.

No-one could have illustrated this better than Stefano De Luigi in his winning submission to Getty last year titled, with no hint of irony, ‘This Is Africa’. You can read it below, and then following that the response of a group of Kenyans who belong to a photography club in Nairobi, and a more considered response by the South African photo editor Thato Mogotsi.

Project Title: “TIA – This is Africa”

“Through me you pass into the city of woe:
Through me you pass into eternal pain:
Through me among the people lost for aye.

Justice the founder of my fabric mov’d:
To rear me was the task of power divine,
Supremest wisdom, and primeval love.

Before me things create were none, save things
Eternal, and eternal I endure.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.”
- Dante Alighieri, Divine Comedy, Inferno

She’s like a descent to netherworld, a series of circles that follow one after the other, alternating and overlapping. Every human tragedy here is well represented. Internal fights, as well as religious and tribal conflicts, frauds and prostitution, hunger and water shortage, betrayal and any kind of affection’s relativity. And yet, as the Phoenix, life always prevails, revives and goes on.

I’ve chosen Africa, not as a single story but through different tales, several years and many travels. I want to describe part of the mysterious, darken and multi-form puzzle that this continent is. It’s often impossible not to hate her, and yet she goes straight into your heart, red cells and soul like one of the incurable and fulminating viruses that are typical of these lands. Africa blues like malaria.

My project has already covered issues in several countries and regions in Africa. I have documented the devastating effects from the worst drought in the last decade in Kenya and Burkina Fasco, Ethiopia’s current food crisis and the famine that killed over one million people in Southern Somalia. I’ve covered the aftermath of an 18 year civil war and the emerging community of former children soldiers in Liberia. I have also documented the increasing child prostitution problem in Ivory Coast and the remains of the Kimberley diamond mines in South Africa.

Additional chapters of my project are due to be done. The Getty Images Grant for Editorial Photography will enable me to take next steps which will include Sudan, Chad and Darfur. I will document refugees’ lives in one of the worst civil wars of the whole continent and to document the birth (hopefully) of a new modern state. Next year in southern Sudan a referendum of this zone’s independence will be held and it will reflect the consequences of radical religion the country’s life. Tragic and gorgeous events, vicissitudes standing at the humanity’s border, in which humanity really represent the keystone.

T.I.A. This is Africa.

The following are responses from a photography group based in Nairobi:

‘I think the greatest crime that Stafano committed was to title the particular group of pictures in question as “This Is Africa”. That title is downright wrong and derogatory; maybe even silly.’

‘Hello Everybody,

It is not a crime to depict and portray ugliness and horror (and Africa like ALL continents s rich of those), but it is indeed dishonest if not a crime to continue indulging always and only in negative aspects. What I see as a crime though is to disinform the viewers and the audience with a title such as This Is Africa. This Is Offensive indeed. Then the idea of telling different stories, different tales under one only umbrella called “Africa” is also absurd. It seems after that old colonialists that divided the continent setting artificial borders are now followed by new colonialists eager to reunite it under a uniqueness that it doesn’t exist if not in the stereotyped perspective of the viewer, be him or her a photographer, a writer, a film maker etc..

I always find extremely irritating sentences like This Is…..whatever it is supposed to be, because nothing, not even an individual is only one thing. We always are a rough summary of a chaotic multiplicity. But reducing an entire continent to only one image, or only one story is really outrageous. Both if the story were a negative or a positive one.

Going back to the award, what is clear though by this particular awarding is that the negative stereotype about Africa is still alive and kicking, but honestly, what shocks me is that those photos were even nothing special at all. Stereotyped shots of a stereotyped view. This Is Sad indeed.’

What I find disturbing is not so much that he chose to highlight our negativity (I think it is up to us as Africans to show the world our beauty) but that his shots have stripped the subject of all their dignity.

For example,iImage 13 of the tribes-people…look like they were tossed into a pit like a mass grave except of living people.‘

‘Absolutely horrendous to say the least, i find it shocking that collective idiocy on the part of the judges who are apparently ill informed about our beautiful continent and the cradle of civilization…that`s all i can say for now, but i find it very annoying that he won the grant…’

‘Why did they give this guy a grant again? The first thing that struck me about his work is the extreme negativity that his work portrays of a continent that is not all darkness and dredgery. It seemed to me to only be a means of propogating an ill-formed opinion he has made of the region and lacks originality in that its nothing we have not already seen in the papers or iCNN.

I personally found it insulting being anAfrican who has seen some of these atrocities in so called ‘developed countries’.If he were highlighting the plight of the refugee or some other point of interest it would be more clear what his mission is but as it stands, he just wants to highlight the ‘ugliness’ of the continent…..

I’ve chosen Africa, not as a single story but through different tales, several years and many travels. I want to describe part of the mysterious, darken and multi-form puzzle that this continent is. It’s often impossible not to hate her, and yet she goes straight into your heart, red cells and soul like one of the incurable and fulminating viruses that are typical of these lands. Africa blues like malaria.

Some of his pictures I must say, are beautifully composed, but his mission is wanting…nd his attitude a complete put-off. The images he has taken cannot and should not be summed up as “THIS IS AFRICA!!!!”‘

‘Wow!

With statement like “and yet she goes straight into your heart, red cells and soul like one of the incurable and fulminating viruses that are typical of these lands. Africa blues like malaria.”

I think he’s playing for words aiming for being poetic about ‘Africa’ only with the end result emphasizing the cliche, TIA. Because although he says his next work will include “Tragic and gorgeous events, vicissitudes standing at the humanity’s border, in which humanity really represent the keystone.” His proposal doesn’t bring in to fore some of those gorgeous events.

Well one will argue that the things he writes about happen in Africa and they’d be right but there are many Africans… infact a very big percentage who’ve never witnessed a war of any kind, seen people die of hunger or ever suffered “the incurable and fulminating viruses that are typical of these lands”. Except for through media. So what he ends up doing by mocking the phrase “This Is Africa” is just validating it by the examples he chooses.

The things he mentions, happen in Africa but it would be misleading to imply they represent Africa. But hey Africa can do with all the ‘saviors’ it can get.’

‘My greatest contestation with Stefan de Luigi’s winning proposal would obviously be his reference to an extract from Dante Alighieri’s fourteenth-century epic poem Divine Comedy.

His particular choice of quotation from the first part of the Italian poet’s theological literature, Inferno, ironically speaks volumes of the photographer’s intentions in documenting his chosen subject – the continent of Africa.

Given the theological context of Dante’s canonized writings, juxtaposed so boldly beside De Luigi’s scenes of nameless, faceless, sickly human figures in generic landscapes, it’s easy for one to assume that the photographer might suffer delusions of grandeur when it comes his role as documenter.

While Dante’s Inferno tells of the poet’s journey through a medieval, allegorical concept of Hell, in his introduction the photographer chooses to use a disjointed key of language to create comparisons between his own relationship with his subject and the poet’s exalted role in his tale of divine justice in the eyes of a punishing God. De Luigi goes on to audaciously describe Africa as a “mysterious, darken and multi-form puzzle.”

How the esteemed judges failed to consider this interplay is perplexing. How it is assumed that any sharp reader may not pick up on it is simply astounding. Is it really the role of an editorial photographer to brand his subject in such a superfluous manner? I direct this question specifically to the judges, whose final decision cannot even begin to be justified by the images produced by the grant candidate.

But then again, I am reading de Luigi’s proposal from my perspective as an African – a position I’m starting to believe is one of privilege rather than despair.

I also concede that as a result of my background in newsroom photo-editorship and my current work as a picture researcher with a well-known South African photography school, I am likely to find most Western depictions of people who look like me to be moot rather than offensive.

So it is in my, arguably cynical, view that de Luigi’s chosen title fails to redeem any agency – from either photographer or subject – that he may argue in his proposal for the Getty Images grant. He’s statement is simply: ‘This is Africa.’

T.I.A. How very catchy. It might as well be a tagline for a designer sports clothing label advertisement

Who does not know of the suffering Africa? Who has not seen it in mainstream media broadcast across the world?

De Luigi’s images all have one dire characteristic in common; they show the anonymous representation of the people and communities he encountered on his ‘many travels’ through Africa.

I recognize in de Luigi’s images a movement toward a globally accepted notion of a generic Africa. One country. One we can all easily recognize because we all fear to scrutinize it. © Thato Mogotsi’

More Reading/Thinking:

John Edwin Mason: How to Photograph Africa, a Satire by Getty Images & Stefano de Luigi

David Campbell: Looking for agents not victims in the Congo

Aric Mayer: Photography And Sexual Violence

Besieged

Related posts:

1. AFP, CNN, Getty, ABC, V Morel, why this case matters to all professional photographers or why Getty could be selling your photos without you even knowing …
2. Why AFP, Getty, Jean-Francois Leroy, CNN, ABC, CBS love photographs but have no time for photographers, or ‘it wasn’t rape your honor because she was in the room and I was horny’
3. Good news for Getty contributors!!

Has Steve McCurry proved himself to be a godlike *******, Nachtwey style? According to the ever brilliant APHOTOEDITOR

Sod the intern job (could it possibly be a hoax?), for just over $10000 you can take an eleven day workshop in Myanmar with Steve and 13 others, (flights not included) where according to one past workshop particpant you can learn how to make kids cry.

‘Perhaps a seasoned photographer has met so many people that for him, the photograph is the only thing that matters while for me, the humanity of the moment does as well. Steve for me is a genius with what he does but he does it with a sadistic side that I don’t understand or want. I watched on a few occasions where he intentionally made children cry to watch the transition from happiness to sadness and for me, it was something that I would not like to do or want to have done to me. Another participant commented that Steve uses people like “tables and chairs” and that perhaps the look of the Afghan Girl was one of disdain.’

Answers on a postcard and send them to Magnum.

Related posts:

1. Content Fill on Photoshop CS5
2. STEVE McCURRY IS NOT AN ARSEHOLE.
3. That the word Dadaab is not synonymous with shame

(amended title because Joerg’s was MUCH better)

Take a look at this picture by Damon Winter, as featured on the (excellent) New York Times, Lens Blog, and part of a series featured in the newspaper:

The photographs have been taken using an iPhone that automatically applies heavy processing with an iPhone app. On James Estrin’s (LENS Editor) Facebook page Nina Berman had this to say:

In his introduction to the photos James makes the point,

‘Does it really matter what camera Damon Winter used to make these beautifully composed images? I don’t think so. It’s the images that are important.’

But I disagree.

Not that the photos aren’t ‘beautifully composed’, nor that there isn’t a skill in taking them. However to me the camera and the processing applied to the images is fundamental to how we respond to them. That’s why so many people are buying these Apps because as one website comment about the Hipstamatic iPhone App puts it:

I *love* the photos that come out of this app, it makes just about anything look amazing.

Even, it seems, the Afghan war.

Once again we are talking about how ‘beautiful’ the photos are, or what a great device the iPhone is, but not about the war in Afghanistan (although many people do comment that the photos bring them close to the lives of the soldiers). Would we really be talking about these pictures if they hadn’t been processed by an app on the iPhone?

Realistically we can only be debating the use of an iPhone because we are so detached from the reality on the ground for the many suffering Afghanis, despite the photography (or lack of it beyond American and British soldiers). Journalistically that must be viewed as a failure. It’s also a failure of democracy, the very thing we are trying to import into Afghanistan, because there is so little debate about the billions of dollars of taxpayers money that have been used to wage a war that we are only just starting to admit we can never win.

Not to mention the well documented torture and murder of Afghan citizens in detention by American soldiers.

In the meantime a lot of people have got very rich, some people have better lives, many have died and the photo community are rushing out to buy iPhone apps. Fair enough, I saw the pictures and want one too.

Maybe the New York Times can do an experiment, to help us understand how post processing affects the way we are manipulated by an image and wether these photos mean, as Nina Berman points out, that the ‘doors have been blown open.’ After all if an editorial standard is to be dumped there should be some kind of rational explanation.

Present the same images both with and without the additional processing (the camera’s standard JPEG)  and measure the response.

It seems to me that if you take editorial integrity seriously, as some kind of objective process (not that I believe in such a myth), this would be a simple way of gaugeing just how much our response is being manipulated by the skill of the photographer or the skill of the computer and where that line should lie?

(Please note I have no problems with manipulation, staging or otherwise, just as long as you don’t try and hide it from me)

UPDATE:

Tom White who writes the EXCELLENT Photography Lot already posted on this story and wrote the following comment:

I worry about this – as I said to my students when they brought it up; it sends out mixed messages. The AP guidelines on retouching (in a typically vague manner) state that anything above basic colour correction and toning should be labeled clearly as a photo illustration. I think these fall into that category. On the other hand, is using the hipstamatic app really so different than choosing to shoot with a holga or load your camera with high speed black and white film because of the effect it gives? At what point are these things unethical? When do they become culturally acceptable as standard journalistic practice? I do know that if I took raw files from my SLR and hipstamaticised them in photoshop I would be in trouble. Wouldn’t I?

http://photographylot.blogspot.com/2010/11/shooting-from-hipster.html

The problem is that photography is both a science and an art and as such contains an inherent contradiction in the form of the objective/subjective process. With photo manipulation and retouching, there is a huge grey area between definitely acceptable and horrifically unethical. This debate has been going on since the invention of the medium and will no doubt continue without ever getting properly resolved. I could pull up examples of manipulation that have been held up as unethical while at the same time find similar (and more extreme) examples that no one seems to have batted an eyelid at.

My personal view is that when you are presenting work in a documentary and journalistic context and viewers are looking at the style and the process to the detriment of the content then you have failed. I actually do find some of these photos have a great intimacy to them that in cultural terms is enhanced by the use of the iphone app and may perhaps bring the daily lives of the soldiers into the barhopping world of the iphone wielding hipster, stopping them for a second to make them think about the war. However, ultimately I doubt it. Especially as I imagine the more common response is ‘wow, cool app’.

I wish I had a penny for every time I heard someone who I am photographing ask me if I was going to ‘make them look good in photoshop’. This to me is the really worrying thing. If people assume that photos are manipulated then how can they trust what they are seeing? For a journalist, where trust and believability are essential aspects of the work, this is a problem.

In any case, while he’s over there, perhaps Damon could use his iphone to get the same intimate view from the afghan side….

Related posts:

1. iPhone 5 camera is square format.
2. This is going to hurt. The truth does.
3. Just another set of limb chopped Africans by a famous photographer

Tonight I have received a copy of the transcript of the court proceeding in the case of AFP, Getty, CNN and ABC against Daniel Morel (for the background to this case read here).

You can download the  proceedings here: AFP v Morel

It’s no exaggeration to say that the arguments presented in court mean that this case, if it goes AFP’s way, could affect all photographers who use the web.

AFP have argued that when they originally distributed Morel’s photographs they thought they belonged to another man by the name of Suero. It is true that Suero stole Morel’s pictures and re-posted then on his Twitpic page.  This led to AFP taking them and selling them on. Infact as you can see from this screengrab I have taken from Newsweek’s website there are still many places on the web where Suero/AFP and Getty are wrongly identified as owning the image:

What came out in court was that before contacting Suero AFP tried to contact Morel. AFP saw the pictures on Morel’s Twitpic page but they ignored the strong probability that he was the photographer, instead publishing the photographs under Suero, the thief’s, name.

As a news agency they put profit before accuracy. If that’s the kind of action that is considered damaging to the credibility of a news outlet, what they did next takes the story to a whole different level.

Morel swiftly contacted AFP requesting that they stop selling his images. In response, according to the court transcript, six hours later AFP recredited the pictures to Morel, but maintained their right to continue to distribute and profit from the images. The photos were now appearing on websites with the following credit:

So what argument are the photo agencies presenting in court which gives them the ‘right’ to continue to distribute and profit from these photographs without the photographers consent?

They presented two in court:

1. The terms and condition of Twitter (yes I know the photos were published on TWITPIC and so did the judge) allow photo agencies a license to take and profit from the photos.
2. That unless photographs have copyright embedded into them in written form then agencies have the right to distribute those photos for profit.

The first point is clearly nonsense, because Twitter doesn’t host photos.  AFP argued that Twitter’s terms and conditions were applicable to TWITPIC because of the way the two sites are linked.  It’s pretty obvious from the transcript that the judge was having none of it. It’s the second point that matters.

What AFP are arguing is that any picture on the web that doesn’t have the name of the photographer actually on the photograph is fair game for them to take and sell. The irony is that if this was true there would be nothing to stop me from stealing the photographs off  Reportage By Getty Images (the photos are niether watermarked, nor have the name of the photographer printed on the image) and then selling them on.

Why does this matter?

Duckrabbit made a big mistake in his analysis of this case by giving the photo agencies too much credit.  In my naiveté  I thought that this was probably a rare occasion, but now I am starting to suspect it’s the tip of the iceburg.

If AFP/GETTY win this case then no photograph is safe on the web unless it is watermarked. Why?  Because as I demonstrated in an earlier post anyone can take a photograph from one place on the web and re-post it  somewhere else on the web, removing the photographer’s credit. That would be an act of theft. Despite that photo agencies would then be free to take that stolen image and sell it with impunity because the name of the photographer had been removed by somebody else. In effect they would be free to repeat what they did to Daniel Morel.

What remains a mystery  is why Morel has received so little support from other photograpers?  Infact publicly he’s actually been given a good kicking by JF Leroy, (Director of the Visa Pour L’Image photofestival) for behaving like an ‘amateur’ ‘activist’!

Surely he is a hero because right now he is the one person standing between your on-line photographs potentially being flogged legally without your knowledge or permission by photo agencies. If this happens to you, and Getty decide to ignore you, are you going to be in a position sue them?

If Daniel Morel loses, you lose too.

(please note in an earlier version of this post there was a complaint by the photographer Jack Atley about how his photographs had appeared in Getty’s archive without his knowledge. It seems that Bloomberg, who he had been working for, have licensed their image library to Getty. Jack has written several times asking for all his comments to be removed.  We can only conclude from this that his complaint against Bloomberg was without grounds.  The lesson is PLEASE check the terms and conditions when you sign a contract. You may be signing away more than you think)

Related posts:

1. Morel Won The Case
2. Is Getty wearing Leroy’s trousers?
3. John Harrington V Daniel Morel

Some of you will have been following the debate about why JF Leroy (Director of the Visa Pour L’Image Festival) has gone to such lengths to give the Haitian photographer Daniel Morel a kicking for uploading 15 of his pictures to Twitpic on the night of the Haitian earthquake.

I recommend that you read the posts in order.

Two days ago I put these questions to Mr Leroy:

This is the response (printed in full)

I’m not a fan of slanderous implications. And I will not answer them, other than say that I haven’t personally profited from the infringement, through Getty (AFP is not a sponsor) or otherwise, in any substantial way that I can think of. My income is none of your business, and the funding of my festival is none of your business. But the independence of my festival is mine. It also happens that at the time of my comment to the BJP, I didn’t know that Getty was involved, because I was two months out of getting 27 shows (3 of which by Getty photographers) and over 100 projections (7 by Getty photographers) ready to welcome almost 3000 accredited attendees, something that leaves no time for browsing around looking for the last scandal. Knowledge of Getty’s involvement would not, and has not, changed my opinion of the matter. If you’re unconvinced, there’s a 22-year record of independence and advocacy for photographer’s rights to prove you wrong.A part of the “facts” that was used to attack me also slandered all of the photographers that were shown at Visa this year, by implying that their work was shown not because it was good, but because I was bribed to show it. I am not anyone’s whore, and neither are they. Anyone who came to Visa this year, or has the intellectual honesty of fact-checking what they publish would have seen a very simple thing : out of 27 shows this year, 3 were by Getty photographers. Out of the more than a hundred projections, 7 were by Getty photographers. It is elementary to realize that this is a consequence of Getty’s position in the industry, both in terms of volume of production and quality of this production, and not the result of a conspiracy.

If people have concrete ideas as to how to make anything at Visa or around Visa better, more engaging, more relevant, or more interesting, they should get in touch with us. Think the work we show is bad ? Send us your own, better work. Think Visa is irrelevant ? Come and make it relevant. Think Visa sucks ? Come and make it good. We don’t care who distributes your images, and we won’t show your work because it was published in a prestigious magazine, even if that magazine is our sponsor. We won’t show it because it wasn’t published in a prestigious magazine, either. We will show it because we think it is good, and that others will, too.

It’s that simple. We’re a small team, and we have limited ressources. But we’re listening. And we also have next year’s festival to prepare, so I’m sure you’ll all understand if I have better things to do than respond to often anonymous, slanderous, and unsubstantiated accusations in the meantime.

In his response below JF Leroy does not deny that he may (inadvertently) profited from ‘the infringement’, but what he does say vehemently is that he didn’t profit in any ‘substantial‘ way.

Mr Leroy complains that duckrabbit has ‘slandered‘ both himself and the photographers who appeared at the festival.  Of course technically it’s not possible to ‘slander’ Mr Leroy because slander is spoken, not written, but I think we can all get his point.   You can be the judge of whether this debate was worth having and whether, given the evidence and opinion presented both by duckrabbit and Mr Leroy, our response to the attack on Morel was justified.

Journalism is dependent on asking questions.  It was not duckrabbit but William Klein who suggested  that  Visa resembles ‘a festival of shanty towns without context.’

I would not be the only one who believes that often what is missing from photojournalism is the ‘journalism’ part. The industry is unsurprisingly fixated with awards and festivals that celebrate aesthetic and style over all else.  In the end the result is sadly that more often than not it is the  ’poor black’ people featured in many of the photographs that are ‘slandered‘

The photographer Stuart Freedman recently nailed this idea in a blog post:

‘I see so many photographers making work that purports to show an explanation of a subject but actually is little more than graphic cliche of a situation. That, at a time of crisis for visual journalism, isn’t enough. It isn’t enough to simply point a camera at someone and say ‘how terrible’. It says much that everybody has a camera and thinks that they have a right to call themselves a journalist by photographing the nearest horror without context or understanding. We earn a dubious and tenuous ‘right’ to report the world to itself by entering into a dialogue with it: an impossible covenant with a subject that tries not to perpetuate stereotype, easy answers or sloppy conclusions. It isn’t enough to go and photograph beggars on the streets of India for example to further our own purposes under the cover of journalism. We had better have a damn good reason to invade people’s spaces and lives.’

I can think of no other industry where racial stereotyping is so celebrated, and no other festival more than Visa that has a reputation for celebrating those stereotypes whilst people sit round in squares, drinking red wine and drowning in images of poverty set to music you wouldn’t even put your enemy on hold to. Of course that in itself is a trite stereotype of the festival, taken from a prejudiced position.   It’s just a point of view and there is much great photography out there that struggles with the complexity of the world, Stuart Freedman’s work being a case in point (which has been exhibited at Visa, along with a lot of great work).

I would like to thank Mr Leroy for taking the time to reply. No doubt he has been a greater supporter of photography over the years. No-one but himself can take away from that.

He says that he is listening, which is great.  I’m not sure how he can demonstrate that since Visa is yet to embrace the web and really enter into an open conversation with audiences about the festival. We will start one here. I will put up a post and invite you to put your comments for Mr Leroy to read (and hopefully respond to). The only rule will be that those comments are constructive. Then we can see if Mr Leroy is sincere.

Related posts:

1. Why AFP, Getty, Jean-Francois Leroy, CNN, ABC, CBS love photographs but have no time for photographers, or ‘it wasn’t rape your honor because she was in the room and I was horny’
2. Is Getty wearing Leroy’s trousers?
3. Dear Mr Leroy (an open letter)

The case that opens today according to NPPA:

In a case that could set precedent in online copyright legislation and impact photographers around the world, oral arguments are scheduled to begin Friday in a New York City courtroom in freelance photojournalist Daniel Morel’s claim against Agence France-Presse.

Morel is suing AFP for using, without his permission, his photographs from the January 2010 devastating earthquake in Haiti which Morel posted on TwitPic and Twitter shortly after the disaster struck.

AFP took Morel’s pictures without the photographer’s permission (they thought the photos belonged to somebody else). They then made a lot of money from selling the pictures on. Not exactly a case for the moral maze, right?

Who should then pop up on the BJP website to criticize Morel , none other than JF Leroy, organizer of the yearly Festival of Shanty Town Photography, otherwise known as Visa Pour L’Image.

“Anyone who puts images on Flickr or on Twitter, and then sees them being used, well too bad for him… a photographer should never put his images on a social networking site. If you put your image on Twitter or Flickr and find that it’s been stolen by someone else, well… tough. You can’t ask me to defend you. What I’d like is for all photographers reading this is that they stop putting images on such sites.”

For some reason Leroy missed a website off the list: his own.

The  images at the bottom of this post have  all been taken from the front page of the Visa Pour L’Image . As you can see they are not in any way credited when displayed on the site. At the end of the film that the photos are taken from a number of photographers are mentioned, but again there is no mention of copyright.  Infact whilst the websites that Leroy says you shouldn’t be placing your images DO have explicit policy on copyright I can find no such clearly labeled policy on the Visa Pour L’Image website (of course it could be buried somewhere). You would expect to find such protection under ‘credits’, but it’s simply not there.

No-one has picked up on  the absurdity of Leroy’s position better than Jeremy Nicholl (The Russian Photos Blog), who wrote a cracking post back in June:

If social media sites were really places where any visitor was welcome to plunder whatever they found photographers would indeed be best advised to stay clear. But that simply is not the case. Most social media sites – including those mentioned by Leroy – have terms designed to prevent the third party use of contributors’ material. One could argue that the terms are not well enforced, but that’s very different from claiming the terms don’t exist, or that they mean the opposite of what they clearly state.

Leroy’s rationale – that a certain group of people should avoid particular places because something bad might happen to them if they venture there – turns the world upside down and shifts blame for the crime from the perpetrator to the victim. In 2010 in the real world outside the web few would dare come out with such nonsense. Don’t agree? Then try this on for size:

“Any girl who goes to these clubs, and then gets assaulted, well too bad for her… a girl should never go to a nightclub. If you go to one and get raped, well… tough. You can’t ask me to defend you. What I’d like is for all women reading this is that they stop going to such places.”

Leroy is siding himself with an industry that loves photographs, because you can still make money from them, but it’s also an industry that has no time for individual photographers because:

1. They don’t really need them anymore, certainly not to deal with on an individual basis.
2. They are a pain in the arse when they protest at being screwed over (a la Morel). This gets in the way of making money.

The double standards are mind mashing. If AFP, Getty and JF Leroy are implying its OK to take someone’s images and sell them on, then photography, apart from commissioned shoots, has absolutely no value, because nobody needs to pay for it, except the photographer who self-funds the work.

Actually what they are really implying is that it’s only OK to take someone’s images and sell them for a profit if you are:

1. An already established news org or photo agency
2. You are big enough to afford lawyers who can counter-sue into oblivion the likes of Morel

I’m hoping that some of the photographers featured on the Visa Pour L’image website will get in touch and assert their rights.  I’d think twice before sending this response:

‘If you allow JF Leroy to use your image on his website and then see it being used, too bad for you.  A photographer should never put their images on Visa Pour L’Image. If you gave your image to Leroy and it’s been stolen, well tough. Don’t ask me to feel sorry for you, just stop handing over your images to someone who cares more about the agencies that fund their Festival of Shanty Town Photography than the photographers themselves.’

UPDATE:

Please note duckrabbit has taken down the uncredited pictures that it grabbed from the front page of the Visa Pour l’Image (where they are uncredited).

The reason that we grabbed them is outlined above. We feel that Mr Leroy’s response more than justifies our actions.

Related posts:

1. Dear Mr Leroy (an open letter)
2. Is Getty wearing Leroy’s trousers?
3. JF Leroy, ‘I am listening’