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The Ghost in the Machine During Fashion Week

Fashion Week never ceases to teach me something.  And now that the week lasts most of the year as the shows blossom one after another around the globe, there is much to learn.  Not least about photography.

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This image is from the New York Show last September.  Fashion isn’t timeless, but the photographer’s artifice has captured something about photography itself.  Perhaps the over-the-top artifice of the shows gave the photographer more artistic license than usual, for most would not intentionally overexpose the model that supposedly is the focal point of the event.  By focusing on the audience, however, the image both brings them out of the darkness while turning her into a creature of light.  Which she always was, of course.

But which is stranger: to see an all-white silhouette, or to see the act of spectatorship offered to view?  One answer is that both are strange, with the emphasis depending on where you want to go philosophically.  By focusing on the model, images of haunting come to mind, and one might recall how images of ghosts, fairies, spirit worlds, and other premonitions of life beyond death were a prominent part of the early history of photography.  Ultimately (but not completely), realism trumped that exercise in imagination, but photography has remained a medium in several senses of the word ever since.  As the bare outline of the model suggests, the camera is only capturing traces of what is there, with the rest to be supplied by the imagination.  Likewise, one can imagine how images are already within the camera, waiting to be released, and also floating unseen through the air, waiting to be captured.  Haunting is omnidirectional, I imagine.

But is there one ghost or many?  As the members of the audience are brought out of the shadows, we are reminded how they also haunt the camera: always there unseen and often unbidden, waiting for the image to appear.  Without the audience, there is no need for the image, so in one sense they have to always be there, unseen, as the potential force that allows the camera to flash.

They are more like us than any of us are like the model.  They double our viewing, as we do theirs.  I find the experience of seeing them seeing to be a bit troubling.  (If you want to get a good dose of the experience, sit through the scene in the film Amour when the concert audience is waiting for the performance to begin.)  We might ask why that is, but I don’t have time to consider that question today.  I’ll close instead by noting how much there is to see about seeing.

The gazes in the audience shown above are by turns appraising, calculating, desiring, distracted, bored, and more.  Some are extended into taking photographs, thus also doubling the act of taking this photo.  Photography is a study in plurality, extended further by its own reproduction, and ultimately about itself only when it is showing what it means to see and be seen.

Or perhaps I should have said, to see what often goes unseen, even during Fashion Week.

Photograph from the J. Mendel Spring/Summer Show, New York, September 12, 2012, by Andrew Burton/ Reuters.

Cross-posted at BAGnewsNotes.

 

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Aleppo University and the Banality of Good

I supposed I’m biased: a university professor would be expected to take a university bombing seriously.  Likewise the journalists, who use their university educations every day, and so the 80 people killed in the attack on Aleppo University yesterday might be receiving more than the usual amount of attention.  What is 80 more in a civil war that has claimed 60,000 dead and driven ten times that number into refugee camps?  Civil wars aren’t civil, so why should a university expect to be spared?

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One answer can be taken from this photo of some of the physical damage from the blast.  There is nothing exceptional about the photo–it’s just another entry in the ever expanding archive of rubble world–and there is nothing exceptional about the building.  And that’s the point: what you see is in fact thoroughly ordinary, mundane, routine, to be expected.  Square rooms, identical radiators, standardized fittings and furniture–just another block of rooms designed for low-impact activities such as reading, talking, writing, or sleeping.  It may have been a dorm or perhaps a set of faculty offices, but the purpose in any case was civil.  No one was there for the amenities, but no one had to worry–it seemed–about being killed.

The blast brings to light the building’s routinized design and construction practices.  Instead of asking “Is this your room” or “Is this your office,” viewers are led to ponder the sameness of things: same square spaces, same concrete and metal materials, same bomb, same indiscriminate carnage.  Once the building was up, most of the people using it never had to think about how it was built, where the pipes ran through the walls, or how long some of the maintenance could be deferred.  They had better things to do, and the point of the university was to created a space where those things could be done.  The higher learning benefited from other forms of thoughtlessness, a kind of peace that had been acquired by drawing on many of civilization’s arts, including architecture, engineering, and management.  Because others had been thinking professionally, one could be free to learn those skills and many others, not least the arts that can improve civic association.

Put another way, by providing a not too emotionally charged photo of a damaged building, the photograph asks us to consider how damage extends beyond the personal tragedies of death and maiming to include the structure of society as a whole.  Because the building is placed in the middle distance, our position as viewers is placed in a corresponding spot: neither completely distant from nor intimately involved in the scene, we are invited to understand but left too far away to directly participate.  In short, we are put in a civic relationship with those in the wreckage: they are neither wholly foreign nor familiar, but inhabiting a common social structure that extends from their space into ours.   A structure that, like the building, can be both taken for granted and deliberately damaged.

Hannah Arendt, who cared a great deal about civic life, is known in part for developing the concept of “the banality of evil.”  This somewhat counter-intuitive phrase should not be summarized lightly, but it is fair enough for the moment to say that she was focusing on how evil benefits from a certain form of thoughtlessness.  That was how Adolf Eichmann and other Nazi executioners could sleep at night, by thinking about only their technical responsibilities while accepting unthinkingly the false beliefs and hideous values that made genocide seem normal.  Much has been said for and against Arendt’s argument, both in respect to the particular case and the problem of evil more generally.  I want to add a small emendation that is brought to mind by the photo of a ruined buiilding in Aleppo.

The point is offered by the deep asymmetry in the image between the routinized, taken-for-granted infrastructure and the unexpected but intentional act of destruction.  In this case, thoughtlessness was largely in the service of the good.  Indeed, that’s why the university was so vulnerable.  By not having to think about security, and by having a temporary reprieve from the throat-tightening anxieties of the war, people were able to think–and probably to think as Arendt would have wanted, that is, by questioning and improving the basic assumptions of the society to combat the banality of evil.

A student at the university remarked that,”with all the brutality, no one could imagine [the government] shelling a university.” The LA Times story goes on: “The woman, who crosses multiple rebel and government checkpoints to reach school each day, had been determined to pursue her education despite the violence. But now she is rattled. ‘This is not the way schools are supposed to be,’ she said.”

Not thinking about material infrastructure is not the same as not thinking about violence. but my point stands: a well functioning civil society is one in which you don’t have to worry about civil war.  The university represented the last space where that was possible, and now that has been lost as well.

The thoughtfulness desperately needed in Syria, the Middle East, and everywhere else around the globe requires its own forms of thoughtlessness.  Ignoring ethical ideas leads to the banality of evil, but there is another kind of inattention that one might call the banality of good.  How do we know?  Because in Syria we can see it exposed to view, as it is being destroyed.

Photograph by the Syrian Official News Agency.

Cross-posted at BAGnewsNotes.

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Best Photographs of 2012

Aurrora Borealis, Zoltan Kenwell

The Monroe Gallery has put up the mother of all best photo lists, which you can see here.

One list you won’t see there is this one by Mikko Takkunen, whose blog Photojournalismlinks is a great resource for anyone who wants to appreciate the range of work being done in the field.

And the photo above?  Not a winner, as far as I know, but it was an entry at the National Geographic Photo Contest, and it seemed a good way to represent photography as an energy field enveloping the planet.  Others might fear the Matrix or see the Illuminati or worry about government control of the radiation belts, but let them.

Photography is not about winners or losers, or about reality and fantasy, but something broader, richer, democratic, radiant.  A plenitude, like the world it represents, and a screen for projections, like the mind that sees.  Pulsing, patterning, appearing and disappearing again, things seen to remind us of forces unseen.  Happy New Year.

Photograph of the Aurora Borealis, Lamont, Alberta, Canada by Zoltan Kenwell.

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Small Arts and Great Crimes

This photo was front page above the fold at the New York Times, and for good reason: it’s a work of public art.

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Two works, actually: an effigy of Syrian president Assad and the photograph framing it with an apartment building gashed in two by bombing.  The building is in the war zone formerly known as the city of Aleppo.

The effigy might have been made by an artist or by some kids on the street, and the photograph might have been taken by an old pro or a young stringer.  Doesn’t matter.  Both are skillful and work in the same direction, while the photograph relays and adds something to the stuffed figure to bring out its full artistic potential.

And what a statement that is.  Comically askew helmet and uniform on a ruler who takes no risks while having others do his killing for him; photographed face on a dummy’s body for a man who hides behind an authoritarian screen of authority; a hunched, wary, remorseless attitude that allows his society to be torn apart as he turns his back on the suffering. . . . the vernacular artist has eloquently captured this vicious martinet’s lack of flexibility, legitimacy, empathy, and shame.

The photograph adds to the composition by making the connection between the tyrants’ personality and the damage done to the nation.  We can easily imagine that Assad might some day stand over a country in which every building has been razed, only to say, “but I’m still in power.”  And that is what photography is supposed to do: extend the imagination.  Photojournalism in particular is there in part to extend the political imagination, allowing us to see how the future might be already evident in the present.  Evident, for example, in the character of the leader, and in the suffering, knowledge, skill, and resolve of the people.

Art works by allusion as well, in this case to the Chaplinesque figure of the Great Dictator, who was really a little dictator.  And so it is in Syria: the great man is really very small, and 60,000 people are dead because he doesn’t have a larger heart or mind.  But there is another point to be made here as well, which is that this distortion in magnitude is one that is best captured by small arts.  Arts like the effigy and the photograph, for example.

Great leaders, like great moments in history, may require more panoramic media to be adequately represented.  But when a petty despot is leading his people into the slaughter pen, the grand painting or sweeping film won’t do.  Leadership is one thing, criminality another.  Fortunately for modern times, we have the arts we need.

Photograph by Agence France-Presse/Getty Images.
The photo accompanied this story at the Times.

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After Newtown: Tokenism or Culture Change?

This is one photo that probably wasn’t included in the slide shows at the major papers this week.

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And why not, some might say, isn’t one memorial to the victims in Newtown as good as another?  Well, no, not really, but the show must go on in pro sports, and so perhaps this is the best that Kevin Durant could do, all things considered.  If you look closely, you can see that he has written “Newtown CT” on the shoe that he wore for the Friday night game.  Nor was he alone: players and teams around the NBA and NFL put names on shoes and gloves, pasted decals on helmets, observed moments of silence, and otherwise had token observances across their scoreboards, end zones, and assorted other media.

And the New England Patriots even went to far as to donate $25,000 for the families of the victims.  Really.  And if you don’t believe it, just tune in to ESPN, which is making darn sure that everyone knows just how much the sports world cares, really cares, about the tragedy.

It’s hard, very hard, not to be cynical about these token gestures.  Indeed, I think the photo above neatly captures just how small and temporary they are: compared to the gleaming arena floor, polished like the finest glass, and the Nike swoosh, which represents a lucrative shoe contract for a global market, the small, black lettering is sure to be discarded soon, which will hardly matter as no one without a telephoto lens could see it anyway.  Ditto the tiny helmet decals, the player Tweets, and any other efforts to laminate compassion onto celebrity.

But that’s too easy.  Just about every candle, teddy bear, classroom letter, and prayer chain is also but a gesture.  And if the better memorial would have been to cancel the game, well, how many of you refused to go to work on Friday or Monday because you thought doing so would dishonor the dead?  The truth is, there is very little that anyone can do in response to such senseless slaughter, and that applies not only for distant strangers but also for close friends and family of the bereaved.  And however mixed the motives might be in the business of sports, one shouldn’t be too quick to assume that nothing is sincere.  (I’m told that Kevin Durant is a fine human being.)  So, token gestures become part of the story of how a nation deals with social rupture.

Of course, nothing said above should excuse pro sports for some of its excesses.  Individual players perhaps should get a pass, but the organizations may indeed need to consider that the better response really is to do nothing–or, if they really want to help the people in their own backyard, to do it right.  (Certain prominent figures on the religious right might want to take a hard look into that same mirror.)  But, again, the matter at hand is about more than pro sports or any other single institution.  The hope that many of us have this week–the one we hold on to against the shock and grief and dismay–is that this time the carnage might really bring the country to its senses about its culture of violence.  And although the resistance will be extensive, there are signs that change could be happening already.

One of the interesting things about American democracy is that it can be stalemated for so long and then seemingly transform itself in a few years.  Think of what happened after Pearl Harbor, or what has happened in the past few years regarding the acceptance of homosexuality (even the word now sounds antique).  The strength of the political culture is that it’s not just a political culture–that is, a subculture defined solely by a political class, although there is some of that–but instead richly intertwined with all the rest of society.  Think of the importance of integrating pro sports for civil rights, not just then but continuously, and look at how so many different people and organizations respond in kind to disasters such as hurricanes, floods, earthquakes–and shootings.  In those situations, what otherwise would be tokenism can become something else: a small but visible commitment to real change.

Guns are not unknown among pro athletes, so hypocrisy may yet prove to be the norm there and elsewhere as well.  But I hope that something else could be in the works, there and especially elsewhere.  In any case, the change requires silent, personal, private resolve to think differently–and not least to move beyond the political habits that were part of the prior stalemate.  Thinking differently is easier to do, however, if it can be done in small ways that can be shared with others who might want to do the same.  And to be shared with other citizens, there is nothing like doing something that can be seen.  So this week I’m giving token gestures of solidarity a pass, and in the hope that this time the nation can raise its game to a higher level of play.

Photograph by Jerome Maron/USA Today Sports.

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You Say Icon, I say Instagram

Ryan Gerhardt reports that the Lowe Cape Town advertising agency has been running a campaign for The Cape Times that features iconic photos as if they had been self-portraits taken on the fly, as with a camera phone.

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In place of the dead hand of history, a renewed sense of presence and immediacy, right?  You Are There, or They Are Here.  OK, something may have have been lost in the style category–this is definitely NOT a photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt–but you can imagine the iconic moment in real time as opposed to the faded newsprint of its original publication.

But, of course, it is the Eisenstaedt photo, in part, and the manipulations can only make the photo more contemporary because it already is here and has that effect.  Indeed, the transfer of meaning also works in reverse: the iconic image is imparting significance to the new visual media and their vernacular practices.  And in any case, past and present are being sutured together no matter which way the joke runs.

Not all public cultures have iconic photographs (as a genre, anyway), but South Africa apparently does.  And with that comes parody and other forms of playfulness, and for a variety of uses including advertising.  It may be the newpaper’s last gasp–and all too revealing of how the iconic photo and print journalism were tied together in a particular era–but it also may be an example of how iconic images and journalism more broadly are making the transition into the new media environment.

Time will tell.  If I had to bet, however, I’d say that self-portraits are not going to become great public art.  Or perhaps that is more of a wish.

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Sebastião Salgado on the Winter Planet

The Best of 2012 photography collections are ablaze with color, and the above average temperatures and continuing drought keep talk of global warming in the air, so what should a documentary photographer do?  Take us to Siberia, of course.

One species follows another across the frozen landscape.  The reindeer know the way, as the Nenets people have been moving them between summer and winter pastures for centuries.  Sebastiao Salgado’s photograph might as well be from some ice planet in an outer galaxy, the barren field of snow and sky is so uniformly stark, harsh, and endless.  And yet you can almost feel the body heat of the herd, its precious calories being expended in the empty abstraction of the arctic air, and then of the few people and dogs trailing behind them.  The photo at once stretches life almost to the breaking point, as if the herd were a single strand of genetic material in some petri dish, but at the same time makes you yearn to be closer.  And while the two species are clearly separate, and the human train obviously smaller and more precarious, they are intimately joined in their symbiotic journey.  As David Levi Strauss has observed, “Salgado’s subjects are seen only and always in relation” (Between the Eyes, p. 44).

Strauss’s essay on Salgado captures another feature of this photograph as well, which is its “extraordinary balance of alterity and likeness, of metaphoric and documentary functions” (42). The photo is unquestionably of an experience very few humans have, and yet it is immediately recognizable as an example of organic life forms co-existing, and, if you look closely, of the more organized form of human association, at once more powerful and fragile for that.  Likewise, the photo need be only a photo of reindeer and nomadic herders in Sibera–there aren’t too many other places or species that could qualify–and yet it quickly doubles as a symbol of something else, something more general and fundamental to living with others in a condition of necessity.

But for how long?  What might seem to be a timeless image of natural cycles and sustainable culture is also a witness to change.  Reindeer and Nenets alike are threatened by climate change and the encroachment of civilization–if you want to call it that–as the extraction industries move into the region.  Although the arctic environment seems to be the present threat, in fact it has been home to both species for centuries, and now energy production to heat and power the rest of the world is the real danger.  This is not to say that living on the edge of survival should be romanticized, or that the Nenets don’t need or want to avail themselves of modern goods.  But the photo can challenge complacency and rationalization by revealing another dimension of common life: that all humanity lives close to extinction, and that survival requires learning how to live with sustainable resources rather than simply plunder the earth for profit.

But let’s not forget the need to balance symbolic and documentary functions.  Ironically, another ice age is coming, albeit one that will be delayed a bit while this civilization burns up the oil, gas, and forests.  Some say it will begin in 1500 years, which is not that long: roughly from the fall of Rome until today.  It’s not too hard to imagine that a scene like the one above could become the norm rather than the rare exception.  Survival won’t be a metaphor, but a lived reality.  Something that can be seen today, if one is willing to accept the photographer’s challenge to see humanity in relation to itself, other species, and its future–if it is to have one.

Photograph by Sebastião Salgado/Amazonas/nbpictures.  Additional slides can be viewed here.  (Note that the photo was taken in March, when the herd was being moved north to the summer pastures.)

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International Migrants Day: To the Unknown Migrant

“To the Unknown Migrant”
International Migrants Day, December 18
OPEN CALL
Deadline: Friday, December 7, 2012

The Immigrant Movement International is inviting migrants, artists, academics, activists, and concerned individuals across the globe to commemorate International Migrants Day at 2:00 pm (your local time) by developing monuments (ephemeral, permanent, sculpture, action, sound, visual, performance, dance and other) at sites where the role of migrants in history and society have been ignored, erased, distorted, abused and forgotten. “To the Unknown Migrant” will be a worldwide collective reinterpretation of the politics and history of migration, testifying that the unfair treatment of migrants today will be our dishonor tomorrow.

We invite you to participate and encourage you to spread the word. This open call will accept all submitted projects. The deadline to be included in our website is Friday, December 7, 2012. Please send an email to united@immigrant-movement.us with “To the Unknown Migrant” as the subject line and attach the following:

1 Word document that includes:
Name of participant(s) / Name of the group
Contact Information
Location of project (Specific Site, City, Country)
Project description (250 word max)
Links/URLs for participant websites
1 image that represents your project, if applicable:
File must be in JPG format
72dpi
1000 pixels on the longest side

Following December 18,  please send us the documentation of your “To the Unknown Migrant” monument so that it can be added to the IM International website archive.

Looking forward to your creativity.

Un abrazo,
The Immigrant Movement International Team

(And sorry for the last minute notice at NCN, but we’ll hope late is better than never.)

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China’s Teenage Capitalists

Remember street gangs?  Jets and Sharks on Broadway, “juvenile delinquents” in the newspapers, and earnest discussions in the magazines, schools, and churches about “teenagers”: these were parts of a mid-century public discourse about the social and moral effects of modern development.  Now that gangs are murderous million dollar cartels, the allegory is less appealing close to home, which may be why it can be found in this photo from Shanghai.

Six adolescents stand before a dazzling backdrop of the city aglow in the night.  Of course, they also are in the city, which is showcased by its most highly developed, cosmopolitan urban core of corporate skyscrapers.  But a river separates them from the concentration of wealth, which is set above them a bit like heaven.  Because the image is divided high and low by the distant shoreline, the visual grammar makes the high-end architecture an ideal that is set over the reality below.  Because their heads just break the line, they may be tending toward the bright lights, as is suggested also by the middle-class consumer consumption evident in their clothing and accessories.  Indeed, one implication is that they are destined to become the next generation of adults living within Chinese capitalism.

One might ask, then, “how are they doing?”  They photo suggests several answers.  One is that they are doing fine, because they obviously are sharing in the prosperity that they will one day claim as their own.  The city has already been built while they are being prepared to thrive there, so life is good.  Indeed, one might think that China can skip the anxieties about modernization damaging kids who then damage society; no one is going to cross the street to avoid this group.  A related implication is China has now developed well enough that its children can experience the distinctively modern definition of adolescence, which is considerably elongated for extended education and uniquely susceptible to developing a youth culture dominated by popular entertainment and merchandising.  That may be good news and bad news, but it implies a universality for modern societies that can hide other differences–say, the fact that everyone in the picture very probably is a single child who knows a lot more about loneliness than most children in the West.

Another implication might be that China is now in the adolescent phase of modern capitalist development: growing by leaps and bounds, and my goodness, look at how much carbon that kid eats!  Thus, virtually anything can be excused as “growing pains,” as long as the kid doesn’t pick up a gun or kill someone with the car or get pregnant; so, no military expansion and please be careful about emissions, but otherwise we’ll wait it out.  Such a view is very condescending, of course, but it is sure to have plenty of adherents, perhaps because of that.

I think the photo does better than that, however.  There is another dimension to the image, one suggested by its dark tonality and the kids’ separation from the cityscape.  For example, these qualities push universality further to suggest that China’s children are destined for other uniquely modern experiences as well, and not least the social fragmentation and anomie that are side effects of modern development.  Furthermore, we have to pay attention to the photo’s almost painful depiction of typified social behavior.  As the eyes move from left to right, we see three girls hugging, a girl and a boy close together, and a lone boy.  Thus, in the center, the teen dream of romantic coupling, and on each side (girls on the left, boys on the right), the gender segregation in which young people spend most of their time.  It’s not just a matter of time, however, as the boy on the right seems quite alone and at least pensive or even sad.  If you look closely, you’ll see that the girl on the right side of the threesome also is a bit outside of that grouping gesturally and emotionally.  The intensive social  awareness of adolescence inevitably is accompanied by separation, self-consciousness, and sadness.  Despite their evident prosperity and bright future, life still could be tough.

So it is that I think the photo provides an allegory after all, and one that is not just about China.  One of the major questions of the 21st century is how to live well in a world dominated by modern capitalism.  As China demonstrates, the shopping mall is one answer to that question, and it shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand.  But it is not enough, nor are GDP,  the level of foreign investment, and other macroeconomic variables the full measure of success.   The trick is to bring everyone to a just and sustainable standard of living, and give everyone a chance to thrive and contribute beyond that, and to do so in a manner that balances “creative destruction” with the need to preserve proven social goods and individual dignity.  Stated in terms of the photo above, the immensely powerful superstructure of modern civilization has to be a place where the experience of those not in power still comes first.

Photograph by Bruno Barby/Magnum Photo.  The rest of Barby’s photo essay on Shanghai is here.

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