CAMERA, CAMERA – Trailer from malcolm murray on Vimeo.

Malcolm Murray’s documentary, “Camera, Camera,” fascinates and disturbs me. The film explores the increasing phenomenon of travelers with cameras invading remote areas or cultural events. I’ve seen the situation hundreds of times, and been part of it more often than I’d like to say. Those times, the only thing to do is put down the camera and go drink a cup of tea.

This project also reminds me of Jörg Brüggemann’s “Same Same But Different,” which we wrote about previously.

The film is currently on the festival circuit, but hopefully it’ll be coming to a theater or dvd player near you soon.

(via NYT Lens blog a while back, but I’ve just gotten to watch it.)

Determining the date of historical photos

All the shadows in the picture-those of Mr. Top-Hat-and-Tails, his dead horse, the buildings, and the man with his dog-stretch directly across the street. Since S. 8th St. (then Griffith St.) runs north-south, the shadows point almost exactly east-west. There are only two days in the year when this occurs, the Spring Equinox (March 19-20) and the Fall Equinox (September 22-23). On these two occasions, the night and day are of equal length everywhere on earth, as the sun rises due east and sets due west. On other dates, the sun rises either north or south of east and sets either north or south of west, as the days become longer or shorter and the seasons change. Considering a top hat and tails are not the appropriate attire for Sheboygan in March when the average temperature is about 32°F, the date the picture must have been September 22-23.

I don’t know how I found this document a few years ago, but the previous post jogged my memory. Historical analysis of photography fascinates me. Errol Morris’ recent investigative blogging about photography for the New York Times is a prime example. In A Dead Horse of a Different Color by Colleen Fitzpatrick and Andrew Yeiser (PDF), we get a similar walkthrough of the process of determining the facts behind a photograph, in this case, the exact time and date of a photo from 1871. By analyzing shadows and investigating the history of photographic lenses and cameras and researching the history of railroads in Wisconsin, the researchers determined that the photo was likely taken September 24, 1871 at 4:30 pm by either Wolfgang Morganeier or his two apprentices, George and Edward Groh.

And if you’re into this sort of thing, there are weekly photo quizzes at Forensic Genealogy.

(I linked to this in the previous post, but felt it should be a post of its own…)

The Photography Post

Sort of an Arts and Letters Daily for the photography set, the Photography Post aims to “bring you interviews, columns, [and] a visual aggregate that’s updated every 15 minutes,” all about what’s going on in photography. With Rachel Hulin as an editor, you know it’ll be good, and the rest of the team (Danielle Franca Swift, Kate Steciw, and Henry Tam) seem determined to keep the world abreast of current discussion in photography of all sorts. For a taste of what the site does, check out the weekly top ten, or this post on the Dutch masters, or Go Here! Do This!, or What does being a PDN 30 mean?, or their Museum of Online Photography Collections. I could get lost for days.

Duwei, drummer for the Nanjing-based punk band Overdose, rests in a park with friends before a gig at the small YuYinTang rock club in Shanghai, China.

I’m excited to announce that one of my prints, above, is on the block in Daniel Cooney’s iGavel Emerging Artists Auction. The reserve is US$200. The auction began Jan. 14, and will continue until Feb. 4.

The rest of the auction is worth a look, too. Among the photography, I particularly like the photos by Jody Ake, Ina Jang, Shane Lavalette, Wayne Lawrence, Nicole Lloyd, Michael Marcelle, Kelli Pennington, Irina Rozovksky, Jake Stangel, and Lyndsy Welgos. If you’ve got some spare wall space (and some cash burning a hole through your pocket), make a bid.

Tyler Hicks - A Scrapbook From the Tribal Areas - NYT At War Blog

The New York Times’ blogs keep getting better and better. Everyone knows Lens, but perhaps At War isn’t as well known. Formed out of the now defunct Baghdad Bureau blog, At War is “a reported blog from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and other areas of conflict in the post-9/11 era.” There’s always something interesting to read or see, from the above seized pictures from Pakistan’s restive Waziristan to Franco Pagetti’s grandmother’s gnocchi recipe as served to Ashley Gilbertson for a birthday to a translator’s perspective on speaking with a would-be suicide bomber to downtime on patrol with Afghan and American soldiers.

A number of photographers currently contribute or have contributed to the blog (that list isn’t up to date), and the archives are worth a look: Peter Van Agtmael, Tyler Hicks, Christoph Bangert, Michael Kamber, Johann Spanner, Ashley Gilbertson, and Joao Silva

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.

Jörg Brüggemann / Same Same But Different

Within the last decade backpacking has literally become a global youth movement. Every year millions of young people from first world countries travel the planet taking with them nothing more then their backpacks. They are hoping to find freedom, cultural exchanges and a lot of fun. It has become a tourist industry on its own that has developed its very own touristic infrastructure. In some places like Ko Pha-Ngan in Thailand, Arambol in Goa or Vang Vieng in Laos individual or alternative travel is no longer existing. It has been transfered into a different kind of packaged tour.”

              -Jörg Brüggemann / Same Same But Different

Jörg Brüggemann’s “Same Same But Different” tackles a subject I’ve never seen photographed before. Sure, Martin Parr’s covered tourism and others have covered the effects of travel in local communities, but this treatment of backpacking and its many idiosyncrasies feels like new ground. The viewer is presented with a world not in its natural state, but instead created, produced, for consumption by wealthy, overwhelmingly white travelers looking to experience the third world or The Orient. Phrases such as “third world” and “The Orient” seem particularly apt, both because of the baggage they entail and the sense of separation they impart. Truly, the travelers in these pictures are entirely out of place, and yet they’re surrounded by all the comforts of home. The “foreign” has been rendered familiar. A guest house in India might as well be one in Thailand or Laos; the experience remains the same.

I won’t lie and say these pictures don’t hit close to home. As an American transplanted to China, the scenes in Brüggemann’s essay are all too familiar. I’d hesitate to condemn the travelers as much as The Spinning Head, or perhaps even Brüggemann, but I understand the queasiness. Travel by itself isn’t necessarily suspect. If it were, there’d be moral concerns with leaving our apartments or houses. Confronting the unfamiliar is a necessary and vital component of daily life, and travel is an extension of that. But, the complete destruction of communities and traditions in order to cater to such a widespread phenomenon of travel as backpacking is deserving of criticism and investigation (especially as most backpackers espouse some variant of a wish for spiritual discovery when traipsing around foreign climes).

A great story confronting difficult questions.

(via Asim Rafiqui)

(And my bet is that the title comes from a particularly common piece of so-called “Tinglish,” which I’ve heard, despite having never been to Thailand.)

100eyes: Breaking Ships Broken Men / Saiful Huq Omi

Andy Levin continues to one-up himself with each issue of 100eyes, which is now one of the leading publishers of photojournalism online. Take, for instance, the recent issue featuring exclusively Bangladeshi photographers. We all know Munem Wasif by now, but so many of the photographers presented here, with eye-opening documentary photography, need a wider audience. Remember all that hubbub a while back about cultural diversity in the photography industry? This is one of the answers.

From the introduction:

This issue of 100eyes shows a country as seen through the eyes of its own photographers. There is nothing remarkable about that, except in this case the country is one of the poorest nations in the world, known for being a subject for photojournalism rather than as a provider of photojournalists. Photographers flew into Bangadesh from New York, Paris, or London, that is, when they weren’t headed for nearby India. Photographers will still be flying to Bangladesh, including myself hopefully, but we won’t be alone.”

My RSS reader has been full to the brim with photographer interviews of late.  Here’s a few worth checking out to fill a lazy Sunday afternoon:

• Dodge and Burn talks to World Press Photo spot news winner Walter Astrada about his career and goals.
• Foto8 talks to Andreas Gursky about, among other topics, the evolution of his work.
• Voices of San Diego talks to Matt Mallams about his plans for the summer and his style.
• The Fader talks to Andrea Diefenbach about her excellent work documenting AIDS in the Ukraine.
• The New York Photo Festival talks with Jacob Holdt about his process and thoughts about photography (scroll down a bit) (via 2point8)
• Camera Obscura talks with Mehrdad Naraghi about, among other things, how he publishes and shows his photos in Iran. (via Asian Photography Blog)
• Conscientious and Bomblog talk with Will Steacy about the process and intentions behind his recent project “Down These Mean Streets.” (second link via Rachel Hulin)
• +1 Magazine talks with Boogie (in a pdf; here’s Boogie’s site, too.).
• 100Eyes Magazine talks with Brenda Ann Kenneally about her own history and how her life has intertwined with her photographic subjects.