Review: Robert Capa: The Definitive Collection

Following on from Linfield’s review of Robert Capa’s work in Cruel Radiance, I was fortunate to find this tome of a text in the university library, nearly 1000 images in 600 pages covering Capa’s entire 22 year career.  Presented thus it seems so slight.  It helps to recall that photography was not always a near instant process of shoot, edit in camera, and upload.  It might have taken weeks before images were processed and published.  Sometimes they might not have been seen at all.  Two examples worth noting from Capa’s life are shots from Omaha Beach, the US Army landing in Normandy in which Capa participated at great risk to his own life.  All but 11 images of the landing were destroyed by a careless lab worker in London, while images of US soldiers abusing German captives were prohibited from being published by US military censors.

Review: Linfield, Susie (2010). The Cruel Radiance: Photography and Political Violence. Chicago University Press. Ch 7-9

 Chapters 7:  Robert Capa: The Optimist

This last third of the text is the most challenging.  Linfield profiles three photographers (Capa, Natchwey, and Peress) to highlight different approaches to the problems raised in the previous sections.  She quotes quite extensively, describing numerous photos, but showing very few.  In the absence of pictures, or an appreciation of the work based on extensive viewing, it is impossible to appreciate her reading of how these image makers deal with issues of suffering and truth.

Capa was one of the first great war photographers, winner of numerous awards, and highly respected by peers and public alike.  He was, as she points out, never described as a voyeur or a pornographer.  While ostensibly known as a war photographer, he specialized in work depicting life behind the lines.  He did not point his camera at brutality.  He in fact declined to shoot the liberated extermination camps of Europe.  This she finds more telling of the times and the state of politics, war, and violence before midcentury.

Review: Linfield, Susie (2010). The Cruel Radiance: Photography and Political Violence. Chicago University Press. Ch 3-6

A Jewish woman walks toward the gas chambers with three young children after going through the selection process on the ramp at Aushwitz-Birkenau. May 1944. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Yad Vashem.

Chapter Three:  Warsaw, Lodz, Auschwitz: In the Waiting Room of Death

With Chapter Three Linfield begins an exploration of Place and Event, including the Nazi extermination camps, China’s Cultural Revolution, Sierra Leone’s civil war, and images from the wars of the Middle East.

Beginning with the Holocaust she examines the arguments surrounding the very powerful images of suffering and cruelty, specifically those produced by the Nazis themselves.  She observes that such images are some of the most morally vexing as they depict people soon to be murdered.  They demonstrate quite clearly that photographs in themselves have no moral power or authority. (And in a footnote - p72 - that such images published in wartime generally did not provoke the hoped for responses.) What does it mean, then, to look at such photos?  Should we look?  If so, how?

Review: Linfield, Susie (2010). The Cruel Radiance: Photography and Political Violence. Chicago University Press. Ch 1 & 2

From the copyright page (iv):  SUSIE LINFIELD is director of the cultural reporting and criticism program at New York University, where she is an associate professor of journalism. Her articles and essays have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Bookforum, the Boston Review, Dissent, and other publications. She was formerly an editor at American Film, the Washington Post, and the Village Voice.”

Chapter 1:  A Little History of Photography Criticism; or, Why Do Photography Critics Hate Photography?

There is much in the chapter to be reviewed and of the writers she discusses I have read only bits of Sontag and Barthes, two seminal writers in photographic theory who have an unfortunate disregard for the reader.  Linfield asserts that while these two have done much to shape a negative opinion of photos and photography, their suspicion and distrust can be traced back to Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin and, through him, Bertolt Brecht, who she holds primarily responsible for having first articulated a mistrust of the the photograph based on mistrust of emotions.  She argues that modern critics fail to particularize, to take account of Brecht’s situation and concerns in interwar Germany.

The unreal

The BJP ran an article on the Hamdan International Photography Awards, a Dubai-based competition sponsored by the prince of Dubai, Sheikh Hamden.  I couldn't help but notice that while all of the winning images might be considered documentary in style, they don't feel like documents of reality.  Were you standing in these scenes, it's hard to image they would appear to your eye as they appear in the photos.  The color is too vivid, the light too dramatic, the detail too exact.  In fact it is the overwhelming amount of detail that makes you feel these images are something more than minimally or mildly filtered reality.  (All photography, of course, being a form of reality filtering.)  The abundance of detail makes the images seem flat.  Nothing stands out among all the other details.  Everything calls for your attention. The only photo where this is not true is that of the boats. Your eye can rest on the boats because the background of fog and misty mountains gives them relief and allows them to stand out.  The image of the pair of men and boys is less busy than the two school images, but even here the shadows have been over-developed.  There is too much definition and consequently there is no definition of any one thing or group of things within the image.

HIPA announces prize winners at grand ceremony
Hamdan International Photography Awards (HIPA) announces the winners of its third competition, Creating the Future, in Dubai
Gemma Padley — 17 March 2014

http://www.bjp-online.com/2014/03/hipa-announces-prize-winners-at-grand-ceremony/

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Update: I see on the BJP Facebook page that others also find these images unphotographic.

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Review: Wells, Photography: A Critical Introduction: Ch 2: Surveyors and Surveyed, 4th ed, 2009, CONTINUED

From the Bolton Worktown project, a part of Mass Observation.   http://boltonworktown.co.uk/

The Construction of Documentary

In this section Price examines documentary as first defined in the 1930s, quoting Stott from 1973 on the primacy of unassailable content, content “inaccessible to critical engagement.”  (p 93) Since the camera was believed to be able to capture and reproduce reality, photographs were irrefutable proof. Price also notes in the succeeding section of this chapter that documentary photographs did not function in and of itself, but most always in support of text, to confirm what was written. Photographs were published largely anonymously.

Price covers three projects in this section, beginning with Mass Observation, an anthropological survey of British life in the 1930s, for which a number of photographers gathered images on the typical behavior of English citizens.  Their brief was to remain aloof, impartial, unobserved, to gather data without interfering with their subjects.  As one photographer is quoted about his approach to this work, “I was somebody from another planet.”  The point was to make what seemed ordinary strange in order to be able to examine underlying assumptions and identify patterns.  Unfortunately, what became of this work and of its conclusions Price does not say.  He does, however, note that much documentary work of the 30’s recorded conditions with the assumption they could be ameliorated, but never challenged the political-economic structures that bred such conditions.

Review: Wells, Photography: A Critical Introduction: Ch 2: Surveyors and Surveyed, 4th ed, 2009

Political rage against Arthur Rothstein's staged image, 1936.  More:  http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/the-case-of-the-inappropriate-alarm-clock-part-1/#more-11487

Documentary and Photojournalism: Issues and Definitions

Chapter author Derrick Price begins by noting that documentary has been described variously as a form, a genre, a tradition, a style, a movement and a practice.  To arrive at some understanding of something so intractable, he finds it necessary to examine the history of documentary practices, products, practitioners, and consumers.

The word documentary was first used in 1926 in relation to cinema and a particular kind of film in opposition to Hollywood fiction.  Solomon-Godeau (1991) has observed that almost all 19th century photography can be described as documentary.  While most academics concede that documentary has no defining style or technique, what sets it apart is its basis in investigation and “a goal beyond the production of a fine print.”  (Ohrn 1980)  In many cases, the photographer’s intention is not only to observe, but in doing so to bring attention that may change the conditions documented.

Review: War Photographer (2001): James Nachtwey

I had heard the name before but knew little about Natchtwey.  What comes to mind is Farah Nosh mentioning him at our Photojournalist workshop as one of the greatest modern documentary photographers.  I found the film online and had downloaded it some months ago before firing it up last night.  I find myself hanging out with the in-laws during the summer holiday and with some hours to spare, a great opportunity for catching up on reading, blogging, and films.

What struck me most about the film was Natchtwey himself.  He reminds me a bit of me, of someone who has spent a good deal of his life living outside his own culture and in doing so learned to modify his behavior in ways that insure his continued acceptance and survival.  He speaks slowly and articulates clearly. There is only a trace of an accent.  His words are careful and deliberate. As someone regularly in high stress situations, he has learned to manage his emotions and doesn't seem like the kind of person quick to anger, nor quick to excite.  His story of waking up one morning and deciding to be a war photographer seems mostly believable. He seems like the kind of person I would like to know.

Photographically, it was interesting to see someone working at the end of the analog age.  Most of the film seems to have been shot in the late 1990s and there are several scenes showing the photogrpaher changing film or labeling canisters.  I was surprised at how closely he gets to grieving subjects.  Just watching him made me feel uncomfortable.

I don't plan on  being a war photographer, but it was inspiring to witness someone giving his life to documenting suffering.  I'm afraid not many of us could do even half as much.

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Clarke, The Photograph, Chapter 8: Documentary Photography, 1997

Arthur Rothstein 1936 Oklahoma Fleeing a Dust Storm

Where Clarke finds portraiture ambiguous, and the nude contentious, documentary is misleading.  Linguistically it is based on a medieval word for a piece of paper providing evidence.   The ability of the camera to reproduce reality led to the idea that the camera never lies, that a photograph is a kind of evidence of past events.  Clarke uses the American FSA project to argue otherwise.  This was a government funded scheme intended to document conditions of the working poor and which fed into Roosevelt's political designs by creating public support for public works projects.  While much of the work is beautiful and produced some of Americas iconic images, it is clear the photographers, and the agency, were not out to document what they found, but to find what they hoped to document.