Charles Moore - Powerful Days

One of my favorites from the old guard of photojournalism passed away on Thursday. Charles Moore, whose name you might know but whose photos you’ve definitely seen, created a striking and complete visual history of the American Civil Rights movement of the 1960s through his work with Life magazine and other publications. John Kaplan (as part of a 1998 project for his Ohio University Masters of Science Degree in Journalism) has written a great history of Moore’s Civil Rights work that is not to be missed. Represented by Black Star throughout his career, Matt and I both got a chance to work with Moore’s negatives while interning at the agency a few years back. Seeing those negatives firsthand was a visual education like no other. His Civil Rights work was eventually collected in the 1991 book Powerful Days, still available on Amazon for a reasonable price.

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December 19, 2007. Charlotte, NC. The body of Cpl. Joshua C. Blaney was returned to his family in Charlotte, NC. Cpl. Blaney died from injuries sustained when an IED exploded near his vehicle in Afghanistan. He was 25.

July 3, 2008. Washington, NC. The funeral of Spc. Joel A. Taylor, assigned to the 1st Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, Fort Hood, Texas; died June 25 in Mosul, Iraq, of wounds sustained when his vehicle encountered an improvised explosive device on June 24, 2008. He was 20. Hundreds of local people lined the 14 mile route to the Taylor family cemetery. The short trip took almost an hour as the procession slowed to honor the people who showed up to support the family.

Saturday, August 8, Aberdeen, NC. A memorial service was held for Brent Gray, a former special forces soldier and private contractor killed in Iraq on August 18, 2006, at Bethesda Cemetery. After the cemetery, the memorial was continued at a favorite bar of Mr. Gray in nearby Southern Pines. Jill Jernigan, left, a childhood friend of Mr. Gray and Courtney Gray, Mr. Gray's widow, console each other at the memorial event.

April 16, 2009. Pope Air Force Base, NC. Members of the North Carolina National Guard's 30th Brigade Heavy Combat Team leave Pope Air Force Base for a 12 month tour in Iraq. In all, approximately 4,000 soldiers from the 30th HBCT are deploying and this will be the Brigade's 2nd deployment since 2003. Several soldiers passed the time before departure playing spades.

March 19, 2008. Chapel Hill, NC. Joe Gill, an Iraq war veteran and member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, served two years in the Army, including six months in Iraq. He now lectures and speaks out against the war.

March 17, 2008. Fayettevile, NC. Family of members of the 1st and 2nd Brigade Combat Teams of the 82nd Airborne, based at Ft. Bragg, wait for their loved ones to return home after a 15 month deployment in Iraq.

October 14, 2008. Camp LeJeune, North Carolina.The Wounded Warrior Battalion East, at Camp LeJeune Marine Base in Jacksonville, NC. The battalion was set up to provide a place for wounded Marines to recover as they work through the issues of their injuries and wade through the paperwork involved with possible discharge or reassignment within the Marine Corps. With little to do and at times heavily medicated, many of the Marines spend much of the days at the Battalion sleeping.

August 26, 2007. Kinston, NC. Spc. Steven R. Jewell was killed in a helicopter crash near the Iraqi city of Fallujah on August 14, 2007. Cindy Wisener, Spc. Jewell's mother, cries over her son's coffin. She is comforted by her husband, Jack Wisener.

Wednesday, July 11, Jacksonville, North Carolina. April Ponce De Leon, 22, a Marine corporal on active duty based at Camp Lejune in Jacksonville, NC. She is being deployed to Iraq in 2 weeks. After previously supporting the humanitarian aspect of the war, she now calls it an "occupation" and no longer supports the war effort.

I first met Jeremy M. Lange at a lecture we were both attending at ICP in 2006. We’d corresponded by email before, and he somehow recognized me in the crowd. I left New York later that year, and shared my last meal in the city with him. He continued freelancing in the city for a while before moving to North Carolina, producing along the way a strong and varied body of work, ranging from (legal) kidnappers for hire to Mexican presidential politics to barbershops to religious faith. His recent project, “The War At Home” is a wide-ranging piece covering the Iraq and Afghanistan wars from the perspective of those in the US. Do yourself a favor, and spend some time on his site. I asked Lange if he’d be willing to share his perspective on “The War at Home” over email. The discussion is below:

dvafoto: First, for our readers who might not be familiar with your work, where are you based and what publication do you work for? What sort of time on the job do you have to work on personal projects? How open is your publication to your story pitches?

Jeremy M. Lange: I am based in Durham, North Carolina, my hometown, which I returned to in 2007 after 3 years of school, 6 months in Mexico, and 3.5 years in New York City. I have a slightly odd arrangement in that I am a staff, or contract photographer, for the Independent Weekly, an alt weekly that covers the Research Triangle area of NC. I work 6 months a year guaranteed for them, one month on, one month off, and freelance the other 6, but I am able to take freelance jobs for all 12 months of the year, provided that I have all my responsibilities taken care of for the paper on the months I am on. The Indy is great in many ways, but especially in that me and the other photographer have almost complete artistic freedom in how we shoot the stories we are assigned and we get a little more time to invest in denser stories because it is a weekly. Deadlines do build up, but we have the ability to work our schedules out as we please as long as everything is done on time. Also, we can pitch stories at will and with a good argument, they tend to run them, as long as the story fits into the general guidelines of the paper, news, social justice, culture, it is pretty broad. Personal projects are much more easily blended into the paper than in others I have heard of. It can still be hard to find the time, and money, for personal projects, but that is always the case it seems. I think it falls more on you to make that time than anything else.

As a freelancer, I work a lot for the New York Times, who I have been working with since I lived in NYC and ran around for the Metro section, RIP, several days a week. They were the first real paper I worked for and have been great to me over the last few years. Thanks.

Other than that, I fill out my schedule with other editorial jobs, band shoots, portraits, whatever comes down the pipe. I think in smaller markets we are all forced to generalize a bit, but it is fun in that I learn new things from shooting different types of stories all the time. My background is in news and documentary, but I really enjoy shooting just about anything, with a few exceptions. Challenges keep you on your toes and I like the idea of photographing James Taylor one day and Christmas tree farms the next.

What got you started on “War at Home”? When did you know you were on to a bigger story with so many different threads to follow?

I met a soldier named Kristian Hofeller when I lived in Bushwick, Brooklyn in 2006. A package was misdelivered to my apartment and I rode up the street to drop it off at the right house and while speaking to the lady who answered the door, she mentioned that her son had just gotten back from Iraq. I asked if he might want to talk to me about it and take some photos, and I gave her my number and he called me couple of days later. We met at his house and drank some coffee and talked a little but he seemed sort of uncomfortable in his mom’s house so we went out to his truck and he basically broke down the last 5 years of his life to me. 1st responder to the WTC, off to Afghanistan, got in some trouble there, back home, marital problems, divorce, back to Iraq, back home… it blew my mind. He must have talked for over an hour with me just sitting in his truck listening and saying nothing really, I mean what the hell did I know about that? He got in some legal trouble while back in the US and therefore could not get a job, or at least a decent one, so he was considering going back to the military fulltime, he was on Reserve, or with a private contractor. They, the contractors, were offering him big money, he came from a blue collar family, but he did not really want to go. He had lost his wife and friends because of the war, but he really had no other options. We smoked and sat in the truck and he talked and then I went home, saying we would get together soon and shoot some photos. I had no idea what to do with what he told me, so I wrote down as much as I could remember, this is why an art degree can be a disadvantage, I should have taken notes, but I got it down for the most part, I like to listen.

We met again a couple of weeks later and went all the way out in Long Island to shoot some guns with an Army buddy and an older guy from his neighborhood. He would not really let me make any photos of him, but I got a shot of an Osama bin Laden target in a sand pit that has stuck around through all the edits, as well as one of his truck with a backwards “American Hero” emblem in the windshield. So I shot some really cool guns and we talked a lot, Kristian, me and his Army buddy, and then they took me home. We never talked again, he did not return my calls after that, not sure why, but I heard he went back to Iraq not long after. It stuck with me but I was trying to hustle in NYC and that was it for a while.

Not long after I got back to NC I shot a NYT story about a private contractor killed in Iraq, Brent Gray. We went to the grave with his wife and sister and some friends and then to a bar where we met some other guys who had served with him. I was so interested in what they were talking about and how little I knew about it. This is 5 or 6 years after we invaded Afghanistan and 3 after Iraq and I knew next to nothing about what people here were going through. I am not from a military family, but I have always been interested in it, the guns, the adventure and was about one stamp away from Marine basic training after high school. So I started looking around to find stories related to returning soldiers and other aspects of the war’s affects on the country and realized I had a huge pile of ideas.

Your “War at Home” project is pretty far-reaching. What ties it all together? What’s it about?
Read on »

Obama’s Burden from Christopher Morris on Vimeo.

You probably already know Christopher Morris‘ work. One of the founding members of VII, his conflict photography is unparalleled and his recent work on American politics, including the book “My America,” has redefined visual coverage of the White House. You might not know that Morris has been making videos in addition to his still coverage of American politics. Emotionally resonant and forceful, these videos look like none others produced in the 5DMarkII-fueled push toward moving images in photojournalism. The videos resemble Morris’ still work, but their use of music, black and white imagery, and tone make them something altogether different.  He’s released four videos, all worth watching:

Christopher Morris recently started a thread on lightstalkers to discuss his videos, and the response was varied. Make sure to read through that thread. The discussion there is interesting and touched on many aspects of Morris’ video work not covered in this interview (if you don’t have a lightstalkers account, email me), and I thought Morris’ videos would be a great subject for one of our periodic interviews here at dvafoto. I was delighted when Morris agreed to the interview. The discussion, conducted over email, is below. Our questions are in bold, followed by Morris’ full responses. If you’re reading on the front page, be sure to click through to the post to see the full interview.

dvafoto: What are you showing us with the videos? When “Dear Leader” first came out, the title (equating Bush with Kim Jong Il) and the tone and the video itself suggested to me a critical portrayal of the previous administration. Now seeing a similar tone in the Obama videos, it strikes me that you aren’t focusing directly on the man in the office, but the office itself and its theater and cultural baggage.

Christopher Morris: I’m showing you what I feel. Each one of these has a very distinct clear meaning for me. As for the viewer? That’s something I’m not quite sure of. This is the beauty of this whole process. They are whatever you want them to be.

I seem to remember you speaking or writing about what would become “My America” as appealing both to the Bush administration’s supporters and detractors. From the same photos, one side saw images of patriotism and strong leadership, while the other saw demagogy, jingoism, and blind, wrong-headed faith in a politician. Have you gotten the same reaction from your videos? From your coverage of Obama? How do you feel about this emotional ambiguity? is it your goal?

Each one of these short films has a distinct meaning for me. I know exactly what I’m trying to convey, what mood and emotion I’m trying to bring out of the viewer in each one of these… The exciting thing about the whole process though… is the emotion that I may want to convey… will actually with some, be the complete opposite or even something that I’ve never even thought of.

Your lightstalkers thread called your videos “experiments,” why are they experiments? Will they become more than an experiment for you? What got you started shooting video? How do you fit in the video shooting with the stills and deadlines? What influenced the style of your videos?

Here I’ll give a short synopsis of each of the Obama works and how they really came about. The first one I did was “The New Leader“. I didn’t wake up and think oh I’m going to make a statement about the Presidency today. It really started as I was sitting in the balcony of Capitol Hill while the President was about to step out to address the Nation on his Health Care Reform. I had been loaned one of the new Canon 7d’ cameras to test the day before. So literally 5 minutes before he came out, I decided to attempt to shoot some video of him at the start. Still images from a balcony 100 feet away of someone walking down the center aisle really do not make for great photography. So why now shoot video instead.. Later the next day when I put the clips into my laptop. I was stunned, with the whole quality and the mood of the images. In the next few day’s the President left for Wall Street to make an address on the Economy in New York. Basically here is a man that is trying to sell the nation on Health Care, the Economy, the War. The urgency of everything. This is what I’ve attempted to convey in “The New Leader” short.

All of this was really just an experiment to test out the 7D. There were and still are many parts that should be edited out. This is why on returning to DC in November, my initial plan was to attempt to record some more clips of the President to re-edit into the film. Then on Veterans Day, Obama was to visit Arlington National Cemetery and deliver a speech. This time using the Canon 5D, I basically shot non-stop from the moment the motorcade left the White House until it returned. Right away during the drive I could sense how visually stunning the motorcade footage was, with the added historical importance of the President’s visit, and that this couldn’t be edited into my earlier video. It would stand on its own ["Obama's Burden"]. What struck me is that roughly 10 cars in front of me is the President in his limousine looking out at the constant and never ending tombstones of our war dead.

And then in December, Obama was to fly to West Point to address the nation on his decision regarding Afghanistan. Hence, “Obama’s War.” The choice of the music here is really interesting. What I do, is while playing one of the clips, I will cycle through some songs to see if anything fits the mood I’m attempting to convey. Having already downloaded some music files from pumpaudio.com, I had something in mind. By mistake I inadvertently played this Russian folklore song called Jolly Talk, by DrevA. For me it was perfect, here was this Russian voice taunting us with her simple words. Taunting us, for now it was our turn to send our young cadets to Afghanistan. The same thing Russian cadets were doing 30 years before. As for the images of the C5A cargo plane, they were shot the same night at an Air Force base near West Point. They are from the window of the helicopter as we taxied for take-off. For me they represented the planes that would carry the young cadets to war. They had almost this coffin like quality to them.
Read on »

Great to see a newspaper fighting for its rights, especially when so many news organizations are just fighting for their survival.  John Tully, a photographer for the Midland Daily News in Midland, Michigan, USA, was standing on a public roadway while covering a breaking fire at a Dow Corning (wiki) plant when he was approached first by Dow Corning security personnel and then by Midland Police officers at the end of October, 2009.  Tully refused to comply with orders to show his pictures to the security guards, who cited “homeland security” issues in their request.  Midland Police informed Tully that his camera gear could be confiscated for refusing to comply.  The Midland Daily News has a longer description of what happened and why the paper decided to fight the issue in a Nov. 1, 2009 editorial, Our view: Security vs. Freedom of the Press.

In the initial editorial, the paper called on U.S. Representative Dave Camp, R-Midland, to look into the issue and clarify “homeland security” issues as they apply to Dow Corning and the media’s ability to cover breaking news. Camp did just that, the Midland Daily News writes, and told the paper

“Like many other individuals that commented on this story, I too was concerned with the manner in which this situation was handled. In response, I contacted the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to inquire about their policies for confiscating property, specifically cameras, for evidence. I was informed that DHS does not explicitly give companies or state and local police departments the authority to confiscate property.”

-US Rep. Dave Camp, R-Midland, quoted in the Midland Daily News

Count this as a win in the press freedom column in an era where photographers are frequently harassed while taking pictures of publicly-visible buildings, landmarks, and news. Be sure to check out the work of John Tully, the photographer in question, and his blog, while you’re at it.

(via APAD)

In early 2009, the think tank POLIS together with Oxfam published a report warning that international coverage is likely to decrease under the new public service broadcasting regime being worked out in the U.K. And in 2008, the U.K. tabloid the Daily Mirror said as part of the latest round of job cuts they were abolishing the post of foreign editor altogether. Meanwhile, citizen journalists and NGOs have been rushing to fill the gap. The mainstream media, getting free filmed reports and words, often sees this as a win-win situation. This raises three key issues:

• Do these new entrants to humanitarian reporting mean that we are seeing more diverse stories being told and more diverse voices being heard? Does the fundamental logic of reporting change?
• Are viewers/readers aware of the potential blurring of the lines between aid agencies and the media when NGOs act as reporters?
• How are aid agencies being affected by citizen journalists acting increasingly as watchdogs?

-Glenda Cooper in When lines between NGO and news organization blur

The Nieman Journalism Lab has recently been publishing an intriguing series of articles exploring the relationship between the media, NGOs, and journalists, especially as more and more international and investigative journalism is produced, funded, and distributed initially or in cooperation with NGOs and charities. There’s much to read here, and I’ve only just started, but it’s a necessary conversation to have as news organizations drop foreign and investigative bureaus and turn to advocacy organizations for reporting. Be sure to check out all the articles:

• NGOs as newsmakers: A new series on the evolving news ecosystem
• Kimberly Abbott: Working together, NGOs and journalists can create stronger international reporting
• Simon Cottle and David Nolan: How the media’s codes and rules influence the ways NGOs work
• Natalie Fenton: Has the Internet changed how NGOs work with established media? Not enough
• Saving us from noise that kills: NGOs as news coordinators in a networked public sphere
• Bringing NGO news into the mainstream: The case of OneWorld.net and Yahoo News
• Glenda Cooper: When lines between NGO and news organization blur

This is a touchy subject, because of the moral ambiguities inherent in partnerships between NGOs (which generally advocate particular agendas/causes) and journalists or journalism organizations (which strive for editorial independence and objectivity). In the past few years mainstream NGOs have been producing some stellar work. Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) has been producing strong photography, for instance, and VII recently partnered with the International Committee of the Red Cross for a compelling global documentary effort. A Developing Story chronicles more journalism produced by NGOs. Ultimately, I think the responsibility for journalistically-sound reporting funded by NGOs will rest on the shoulders of the journalists working with the NGOs, who must make sure that their reporting is a truthful representation of the subject being reported according to long-established rules of journalism ethics.

Consequences by Noor

The website had just been a teaser for the Dec. 7 premiere of Consequences by Noor, a multi-faceted essay “on the devastating effects of climate change around the globe.” Released to coincide with the Copenhagen climate change talks currently going on, Noor has scheduled a number of exhibitions and events in Copenhagen. The work is now available online: Nina Berman’s “Pine Beetles,” Kadir van Lohuizen’s “Brazil’s Range War: Assault on the Amazon,” Jan Grarup’s “And then there was silence,” Stanley Greene’s “Shadows of Change,” Jon Lowenstein’s “In the Oil Sands,” Philip Blenkinsop’s “The Fires Within: The Burning Coalfields of Jharia, India,” Francesco Zizola’s “A Paradise in Peril,” Yuri Kozyrev’s “Karabash and the Yamal Peninsula,” and Pep Bonet’s “Poland’s Coal Industry.” Additionally, if you happen to be in Copenhagen, there are 50,000 copies of a special English-language newspaper devoted to Consequences, produced by Danish newspaper Information. The sidebar of the site also says that Consequences will be on tour in 2010. Hopefully I’ll get to see it in person.

Beyond the fantastic work by each of the photographers involved in Consequences, I’m particularly interested in the distribution model for the work. Rather than focus on getting the photojournalism out to a wide audience in the traditional publishing model, Consequences’ goal seems to be getting the work seen first by people in power to make a change. I think it’s a valuable strategy. While there is a strong role for these essays to play in informing the general public about specific effects of global climate change, the public may well have reached a point of saturation for these sorts of stories. A strategic shift in intended audience, from mass public to people with influence and power, could have momentous results. Colin Powell famously cited the influence of Platon’s photos in his endorsement of Obama. More to the point, Nick Nichol’s photos of the forests of Gabon helped persuade the country’s president to create a nature preserve comprising 1/10th of the Gabon’s land. I’m sure the Copenhagen summit attendees have been staring at spreadsheets and white papers for months leading up to this summit, heads dizzy with hard data and statistical models. The photos in Consequences will put a face on the abstract issues of global climate change for those most able to make a difference in the international environmental agenda. The photographers’ work will likely have great effect during these first few days.

Benjamin Lowy / VII - Lit by a single ray of early morning sunlight, Afghan addicts smoke, freebase, and inject heroin in a basement room of the infamous Russian Cultural Center, home to over 200 drug addicts.

I’m usually wary of photo essays about poverty and drugs. Eugene Richards has unleashed a torrent of imitators, and the results are often voyeuristic and exploitative–unless there’s an underlying story, photos of depraved debasement do little more than serve as a vehicle for gawking at the unmentionables, grotesques without empathy. Benjamin Lowy’s “The Afghan High” does the opposite.

The essay presents Afghanistan’s drug culture and the government’s futile fight against the opium growers as facets of a complex international political issue with both compassion and journalistic distance. The portrait at the top of this post, for instance, portrays the man not just as a token drug user but instead as a thinking, emotive, whole agent caught in the middle of a bad situation. If the essay stopped with the drug users, though, its value and interest would have been lost. By including images of the government’s meager efforts to fight poppy growers, the essay becomes a powerful statement on the entirety of Afghanistan’s relationship with drugs. The last photo, especially, (sorry I can’t link to it) evokes an idea of just how ingrained drug culture is in Afghan culture: the poppy fields, which are the focus of strategic international maneuvering and the fate of which may determine the outcome of America’s military efforts, are a place where children play. Lowy’s control of light throughout the essay is breathtaking, as well.

Asim Rafiqui’s “The Spinning Head” blog remains one of my favorite places for analysis of contemporary photojournalism. One of his latest pieces, “Offering Silence To The Oppressed Or How Photography Can Become A Weapon Of Repression,” offers up an important counterpoint to the praise lately heaped on the recently opened London exhibition of Israeli and Palestinian photographers, Beware the Cost of War (more at 100eyes). The exhibition presents images of conflict without captions or credits. Rafiqui’s central points, buoyed by John Barger’s visual-philosophical framework, are that:

• The exhibition removes context, so that we never know who is the occupier, and who the occupied…
• The exhibition removes chronology, so that we never know whether the act occurred this year…
• The exhibition removes history, so that we never know what it is that violence represents…
• The exhibition removes the ugliest of constant and material facts…

Well worth a read.

Edit: To be clear, both 100eyes and Lens’ presentations of the work include captions of the pictures. The captions remain separate from the pictures, but exist nonetheless. Also, Conscientious Redux continues the conversation.

There have been two prevailing attitudes toward the proposed conference/symposium dealing with issues of race and diversity in photography:

a) That it is absolutely necessary & b) It is a terrifying prospect.

The first point speaks for itself, and the second point becomes clear when one considers the kerfuffles, misunderstanding and (dare I say it) vitriol that has accompanied much online discussion.” -Prison Photography

Following up on earlier talk of a conference on race and photography, Pete Brook has spearheaded the effort to create an online symposium covering the subject, and the momentum is building. A great mix of potential contributors have already responded positively to the idea, and the work behind the scenes is moving quickly. Read about what we have up our sleeves over at Prison Photography. And get involved!

Pieter Hugo - Escort Kama. Enugu, Nigeria, 2008

Prison Photography’s started a great conversation on the possibility of holding a conference on the subject of race and photography. I think Pete may be on to something. We’ve had no shortage of discussion on the issue in the past, and it’s flaring up again as the conversation erupts around Pieter Hugo’s work. Prison Photography brings up a problem I have with this critical response to Hugo’s portrayals of Africans. I understand the concerns, made quite clear in Sebastien Boncy’s treatment of the pictures on Amy Stein’s blog. However, I am fanatically interested in these pictures. They have shown me something, an aspect of culture, that I didn’t know existed. So long as the photos are not completely contrived, and Nollywood and other works might be completely contrived, I have learned from these pictures.

Sebastien Boncy’s central concern with Hugo’s imagery is that its purpose is to allow white people to look at “weird, highly stylized, meticulously crafted images of crazy looking niggers doing crazy looking shit.” Toning down the accusation, he accuses Hugo of “othering” black Africans. That, I can see, and it isn’t a good thing. But I’m not convinced that the opposite is any better. Would Boncy have us look only at pictures of subjects with which we are familiar? Photography is at it’s best when it forces the viewer to confront and understand (or start to understand) the unfamiliar. Perhaps that’s where Hugo’s work is most deficient. The viewer confronts the strangeness, but has no invitation to understand those differences. The importance of diversity lays not solely in the concomitance of disparate cultures or ideas, but in what teases out from their mingling. But in their concurrence, differences must be preserved and celebrated, if cultural diversity is to provide any value. Only pointing a finger at those differences, as in Hugo’s work, does little to achieve that goal.

The discussion surrounding his work, though, is of real importance.

A conference might do well to provide structure and gravity to the debate. A conference on the subject may be ambitious at first, so perhaps the organizers of the New York Photo Festival or PhotoNola or the next Look, could integrate a panel discussion on the subject. Invite curators to create an exhibition addressing notions of race in contemporary and historic photography (both from the developed world looking to the developing world and from the developing world looking to the developed). Involve influential photographers, editors, and curators, from varying genres of photography; photojournalism has much to discuss, but so does commercial photography and fashion photography (especially after Vogue’s blackface…) and art photography.