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Familiar and Distant: An Exhibition by Jason Hindley

Theprintspace has announced an exhibition of 100 images of Japan taken over a period of 13 years by award-winning photographer Jason Hindley All proceeds from the print sales will go to the British Red Cross Japan Tsunami Appeal.

Familiar and Distant opens at theprintspace gallery at 74 Kingsland Road, London E2 8DL on Thursday, 19th May from 7pm-9.30pm with drinks provided.  The exhibition then continues from 20th May-3rd June, Monday-Friday 9am-7pm.  Admission is free.  More information is here.

Photograph by Jason Hindley.

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Ankle Deep in the Big Muddy

Lest we forget, U.S. troops invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to capture Osama bin Laden and to neutralize the safe haven from which Al Qaeda might operate.  It is now ten years later.  Osama bin Laden is dead.  Al Qaeda’s always small presence in Afghanistan remains small, largely unaffected by a war that has cost 1.2 trillion dollars and the lives of more than 4,600 U.S. troops—with casualties on the rise.  And so we might assume that the presidential promise of a substantial troop drawdown in the summer of 2011 would be impending.  But apparently not.

The U.S. currently has 94,000 troops in Afghanistan.  The WSJ reports that the Pentagon is about to propose bringing 5,000 troops home in July and possibly another 5,000 troops by the end of the year.  That would make for a 10.5% reduction in troops, hardly what one might imagine as a significant withdrawal.  But it gets better, with other reports indicating that the total number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan is expected to peak at about 98,000 later in the year as the surge of 30,000 troops promised in January are deployed.  So a 10.5% reduction actually turns out to be a 1% increase.

In this context, the photograph above reminded me of Pete Seeger’s “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy.”  The song, often taken as a parable for U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, tells the story of a platoon Captain in 1941 who marched his men into a Louisiana river—the Big Muddy—which continues to get deeper and deeper until the entire patrol is up to its neck in water.  Despite warnings from the Sergeant that the men will not be able to swim, the Captain responds by noting “All we need is a little determination.”  And the refrain intones, “And the big fool said to push on.”  Eventually the Captain drowns after getting mired in quicksand.  And the narrator concludes:

Now I’m not going to point to any moral—
I’ll leave that for yourself.
Maybe you’re still walking, you’re still talking
You’d like to keep your health.
But every time I read the papers, that old feeling comes on,
We’re waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.

In the photograph above the soldier walking through a combat outpost in the Kandahar Province is only ankle deep in the flood waters.  And so one would like to think that there is still hope for him—and the 94,000 troops he currently represents.  But then there is this photograph that appeared in the same slideshow and what it shows surely must give us pause to wonder.

It is a group portrait of the 234th Infantry Division being deployed from Fort Riley, Kansas to Afghanistan on April 15th.  And apparently there will be more before year’s end.

“And the big fool said to push on ….”

Photo Credit:  Bob Strong/Reuters; Vyaceslav Oseledko/AFT/Getty Images.

Cross-posted at BAGnewsNotes.

 

 

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Floods and Federalism

A flood is a general thing.  Tornadoes are idiosyncratic, fires depend on their fuel, mudslides are site-specific, and so it goes.  Sure, not everyone is in the flood plain and the other natural disasters can cause a lot of damage, but somehow a flood seems the most comprehensive of them all.  Noah wasn’t asked to build a firebreak, and even today a flood can look as though it might cover the earth.

This photograph from a farm within reach of the Mississippi River shows how a flood brings everything under the singular dominion of water.  It’s not as if nothing is left, but everything is inundated, either covered or cut off and then suspended in the same elemental medium.  As you can see here, the structures may remain intact (for awhile, anyway), but everything else is swept away or drowned.

The dunning uniformity of a flood’s destructiveness is depicted perfectly by this photograph.  One result is that it becomes easy to see the disaster as a general problem, something that affects the whole community and is defined by collective action such as building dikes.  That’s not the full story, of course.  In fact, you are also looking at a personal disaster: this farmer is effectively wiped out for the year or worse.  House, place of business, equipment, everything has been ruined, and don’t even think about getting the crop planted in time.  Likewise, the waters that look so uniform from a distance will be a silent maelstrom of cross currents, fish, other animals, and debris, and the waters will reshape the land this way and that before they recede.  The particulars are not the story, however, nor should be.  The flood, both materially and symbolically, is one way that nature reminds us of how things that seem separate can share a common fate.

Which is why disaster relief will flow like waters from the federal government to the states.  Of course, it flows regardless: after the tornadoes that ripped through the South last month, and after the hurricanes and every other natural disaster.  The federal largess is particularly interesting this year, since–as often is the case–most of the damage is in so-called Red States.  That’s right, in the states where majorities pride themselves on their commitments to small government, low taxes, and deficit reduction.  And so the photograph above needs to be paired with the pictures that you won’t see: (1) Red State governors not applying for or accepting federal aid.  (2) Red State governors, senators, and representatives saying that they don’t want any aid if it would increase the deficit.  (3) The same crew saying that they will be willing to raise taxes or increase deficits to cover their own disaster needs, much less others’.  (4)  Anyone realizing that low taxes and deficit refusals are automatically denying aid to those who are experiencing disaster elsewhere–including economic disasters and social disasters such as bad schools and unsafe neighborhoods.  (6) Any suggestion that we should ask those citizens with low state taxes to rely on their tax savings to cover the costs of the disaster.  (7) Any suggestion that we should rely on market solutions: say, in line with health care revisionism, that the afflicted states should bid for the aid, with the lowest bidder winning while the other states are free to apply for help from other countries.

Hypocrisy is a necessary part of democratic politics, but there ought to be limits.  Unfortunately, the Red State politicians will ask for every penny that might be available and scream if they don’t get it, and do so without a thought to changing their relentless assault on federalism.  They should be helped, of course, but they also learn the lessons that disasters have to teach: lessons of reciprocity and other forms of cooperation on behalf of the general welfare.  That’s how human beings have been able to survive.  If you look at the photograph above, you might begin to understand how cooperation is the way that we can match nature’s comprehensiveness.

Photograph by David Carson/St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

 

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Sight Gag: The Bottom Line

Credit: Adam Zyglis, Buffalo News

Sight Gags” is our weekly nod to the ironic, satiric, parodic, and carnivalesque performances that are an important part of a vibrant democratic public culture.  These “gags” may not always be funny or represent a familiar point of view, but they attempt to cut through the lies, hypocrisy, shamelessness, stupidity, complacency, and other vices of democratic life.  We typically will not comment beyond offering an identifying label, leaving the images to “speak” for themselves as much as possible.  Of course, we invite you to comment … and to send us images that you think might deserve a laugh or at least a wry and rueful look.

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Exhibition: Antiphotojournalism

Classically, photojournalism has been governed by a number of tropes: the heroic figure of the photographer, the economy of access to the event (getting “close enough,” as Capa famously said), the iconic image, the value of ‘the real’ and its faithful representation in the picture, the mission of reporting the truth and conveying it to a faraway public, and often a commitment to a sort of advocacy or at least a bearing witness to terrible events.

Antiphotojournalism names a systematic critique of these cliches, and a complex set of counter-proposals. It names a profound and passionate fidelity to the image, too, an image unleashed from the demands of this tradition and freed to ask other questions, make other claims, tell other stories. Sometimes the gesture is reflective, self-reflective — what are we photographers doing here, what do we assume, how do we work, what do we expect and what is expected of us? Sometimes the desire is evidentiary — not in the old sense of simply offering the ‘evidence’ of images to an assumedly homogenous public opinion, but in much more precise way: photographs have become evidence in war crimes tribunals. Sometimes the innovation is technological, whether it involves working with the hi-tech resources of advanced satellite imagery or the low-tech crowd-sourcing of participatory protest imaging. Sometimes the practices are archival, even bordering on the fetishistic.

And sometimes the question is simply whether we even need images at all.”

The exhibition is curated by Thomas Keenan and  Carles Guerra (see him talk about antiphotojournalism on You Tube here) and  incorporates the work of an array of Magnum photographers including Broomberg & Chanarin, Mauro Andrizzi, Jonathan Cavender, Robbie Wright, Shane McDonald, Hito Steyerl, Ariella Azoulay, Paul Lowe, Goran Galic & Gian-Reto Gredig, Laura Kurgan, Renzo Martens, Kadir van Lohuizen, Allan Sekula, Phil Collins, Walid Raad/The Atlas Group, Paul Fusco, Gilles Peress and Susan Meiselas. Compilations by Sohrab Mohebbi, Eyal Weizman, with Yazan Khalili and Tony Chakar.

It is on display from April 1 to June 8, 2011 at the Foam_Fotografiemuseum, Keizersgracht 609, 1017 DS Amsterdam.

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“… and a Haughty Spirit before a Fall”

Let me begin by making it clear that I did not lose a wink of sleep on Sunday evening after learning of the death of Osama bin Laden.  On the other hand, I have been deeply troubled by the numerous slide shows (e.g., here, here, and here) that have emphasized the celebration of the assassination of America’s number one “public enemy” as a matter of national pride on par with winning an Olympic sporting event (replete in television reports with video representations of ritualistic chants of “USA, USA”).  The Agon has done a pretty good job of calling out the problematic relationship between nationalism and sport as it relates to this particular event—not least the absurdity of most of those doing the celebrating as if they were the Navy Seals who actually did the job, rather like fans who claim membership in “Yankee Nation” or “Red Sox Nation” and then take the credit for their team’s good fortunes as if they actually played the game themselves.  And others have made the point that there is something problematic in celebrating the death of any individual, for as the poet put it, “every man’s death diminishes me.”  Both points are well taken, and yet there is still a different point to be made.

The photograph above moderates the announcement of victory so boldy asserted in most of the celebratory photographs by casting it in the present continuous tense: the USA is “winning.”  The ambiguity here is pronounced, for while it could be taken to mean that victory is all but inevitable, notice too that it also implies that the contest is not yet over.  That should give us pause, for as the philosopher Yogi Berra put, “it ain’t over till its over.”  But even that begs the much bigger question:  what has been won or what do we stand to win?

For some, no doubt, Osama bin Laden has been brought to justice.  And that is no small thing.  But what exactly does it mean to count that as a marker of “winning”?  In the nearly ten years since 9/11 we have sacrificed numerous civil liberties, both for ourselves and for others.  Citizens can no longer board an airplane without the risk of being “patted down” by TSA officials as if they were common criminals, and that is perhaps the least of the inconveniences we now experience as a matter of course when we travel.  Our leaders have endorsed the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” as a way of skirting the Geneva Conventions, and with it we have sacrificed a part of our humanity.  We have initiated two wars of occupation that have not only cost us the lives of nearly six thousand American troops, but countless others as well.  The financial cost (1.2 trillion dollars and counting) of these wars is primarily (if not singularly) responsible for the debt burden that our government now carries and will be passed on to future generations.  And there is no real end in sight, the death of Osama bin Laden to the contrary notwithstanding.  One can make an argument to justify each and everyone of these responses to attacks made against our nation, but in the end it is hard to imagine the result as anything but a Pyrrhic victory, let alone as a moment for haughty celebration.

Yes, Osama bin Laden is dead.  Justice has been served.  But one really has to wonder who the real winner is.

Photo Credit: Eric Thayer/Reuters.

Cross-posted at BAGnewsNotes.

 

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Visual Ambiguity and Human Rights

It’s not the royal wedding or Obama’s birth certificate, but the recent disclosure of The Guantanamo Files obtained by the New York Times is important news nonetheless.  In a better world, the release of classified documents detailing the detentions in the military prison at Guantanamo Bay would not have to compete for attention with fluff and idiocy, but we don’t live in that world.  For a mainline journalist, this distortion of values might seem both demeaning and surreal.  Perhaps that sense of things helped put this photograph front page above the fold as the leading image for the story.

It certainly caught my eye, and also was strangely disturbing.  Perhaps it suggests that the experience of being detained in the prison is both demeaning and surreal.  It’s easy to imagine such disorientation in any prison and certainly for prisoners moved there from half a world away.  But I don’t think that is what still bothers me about the photo.

This blog periodically features photographs that are cropped to feature only hands or feet.  John and I believe that this is a generally unnoticed and increasingly prevalent technique in contemporary photojournalism.  We have discussed its use across a range of topics–war, protests, leadership, etc.  We have suggested how it has been used productively to focus attention, evoke empathy, provoke critical thought, and otherwise do the work that photojournalism should do.  We even have suggested an explanation in terms of an “elocutionary function” that visual imagery can bring to print discourse.  And generally we have not been critical of the technique.  But now I’m not so sure about that.

A standard criticism of photojournalism is that it fragments representation–the image is a discrete slice of reality without obvious narration or argument to maintain a larger conception of the whole.  That fragmentation then allows inventive recombination, as Photoshop has made all too obvious; Susan Sontag went to far as to accuse photography of fostering a pervasive surrealism.  Sontag perfected the art of being simultaneously right and wrong, and the claim about surrealism is no exception, but she might be helpful in understanding the use of this particular image.

The problem is not the image itself but its relation to context: specifically, the Times coverage of the incarceration practices at the prison, which have for the most part been violations of law and decency.  Had the Times, when breaking the story, been paying as much attention to the hundreds of mistaken detentions as to the few prisoners who very likely are dangerous enemies of the US, then the photograph would be suitably representative: The image suggests someone could be a security risk, but who also could be an ordinary person wearing flip-flops.  The one foot idly pulled out of the sandal suggests someone who is both habituated and bored, killing time in his pajamas while having been there long enough for anyone to have built a case against him if there is a case to be made.  And shackles and chains exemplify the excessive security measures that are the essence of the whole sorry Guantanamo story.  Maximum security for an anonymous prisoner who may well not deserve detention–that seems about right, right?

But that wasn’t the context, and the photograph also can reflect precisely the biases, paranoia, and dehumanization that is also at the core of Guantanamo’s role in the war on terror.  The photograph cuts the man off well below the knees–he is incapacitated by the photo as well as the chains.  More to the point, he is not visible as a full person.  Were we to see even his face and upper body, it would be much, much easier to see him as an individual–that is, as a specific person with a history, culture, family, friends, occupation, aspirations, and so forth.  We could readily assume that he might have many possible reasons for being in the world, rather than simply being a terrorist.  Most important, we could see him as a person having human rights.  Instead, we see only his shackled feet, as if he were inherently dangerous and likely to escape at any moment. Worse yet, the shadow under the table darkens his skin. What more do you need to know?

Of course, the photograph is a fragment that doesn’t have a fixed meaning.  The fault, if there is one, lies not in the image but in its use.  In this case, however, I find the ambiguity troubling.  The good news is that the Times coverage has become more balanced over the past few days, as you can see at the link above, and so the photograph (which still is the leading image for the story) need not be damning.  The fact remains, however, that the Guantanamo Bay prison has been part of a larger erosion of the rule of law, a displacement of due process by routinized security procedures that may be relatively humane but stand too close to and, via practices such as rendition, often in collusion with authoritarian regimes.  It then becomes all the more important to hold the line wherever one can, including in conventions of reportage.  It may not be possible to see the whole process of justice, but it certainly is possible to become complicit with moral blindness.

Photograph by Brennan Linsley/Associated Press.

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Sight Gag: And if you don’t want the decorative plate, . . .

Sight Gags” is our weekly nod to the ironic, satiric, parodic, and carnivalesque performances that are an important part of a vibrant democratic public culture.  These “gags” may not always be funny or represent a familiar point of view, but they attempt to cut through the lies, hypocrisy, shamelessness, stupidity, complacency, and other vices of democratic life.  We typically will not comment beyond offering an identifying label, leaving the images to “speak” for themselves as much as possible.  Of course, we invite you to comment … and to send us images that you think might deserve a laugh or at least a wry and rueful look.

 2 Comments