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The World in Miniature

Guest post by Aric Mayer

A page on the AP photo website, where a search for “Obama” yields 20,652 publishable images, or 1,033 pages just like this one.

A former colleague of mine is a photo editor at a weekly magazine. In the normal course of her job she edits a section that requires her to review up to 18,000 images a week to publish fewer than 20. Most of this editing takes place over the course of two days. As she goes through these images that are coming in off of the open wire, she knows that her competitors are looking at the same images as well. If she misses one great image that is picked up by another magazine, there is going to be some answering to do. Talk about pressure. There is a kind of marathon quality to the performance. I’m not even sure the human brain has evolved yet to handle this much volume in visual stimuli.

The technical way that almost all photo editing gets done these days is through editing programs that allow hundreds and thousands of images to be searched for by keywords and then browsed through as thumbnails. See something you like, double click on it and you get the full size preview. And here is the limiting factor. Almost any image going through this system must have some appeal as a thumbnail or it is almost sure to be overlooked. In other words, if your image doesn’t look good at one or two inches on a computer screen, it isn’t likely to make it through the editing process at all.

Due to the volume that editors are handling under tight deadlines, this is a necessary evolution. It also is a great limiting factor on the kind of work that gets published. Loud, colorful, graphically dramatic work tends to win the day. Quieter, more complex work has a tough time competing on this level because it doesn’t work at that size and in that format. We can look to another related medium, painting, to see more clearly how this works.

An early lesson that a beginning painter must learn is that scale and format really do matter. Before a painting begins, the shape and size of the surface have to be determined, and those decisions will influence the effect of the painting right through to its completion. The next lesson is that painting a larger painting is not at all like making a small painting. Increasing scale changes everything.

On the larger scale, detail at the surface level is the same only there is a lot more of it, and to make an integrated piece the detail must be related to the entire piece. Which is to say that making an 8 foot by 10 foot painting requires approximately 144 times the attention to detail than an 8 inch by 10 inch painting, since the larger painting has that much more surface area.

But, making the larger painting is not like making 144 of the smaller ones, because the entire surface must come together to make a whole. All the ingredients, including the scale, must be necessary for it to work.

What does this mean for photography? Making a bigger photograph is very different than making a smaller one. Scale matters, but the ingredients in the photograph must require that scale in order for it to be necessary. There must be sufficient detail, resolution, and interest in the photograph to hold up at scale. Since venues for larger images are shrinking while smaller images get into distribution easily on the web, the aesthetic of the thumbnail is winning the day.

Consider also the tonality of the image. Printing photographs on paper is a master craft, as is making color separations for CMYK printing in magazines. In each case, the final viewing experience is largely under the control of the printer. Not so on the web.

A few years ago I went to the opening of a gallery show exhibiting some recent photojournalism. Many of the images were familiar from their appearance in popular magazines. What was surprising to me was that the images, printed at 30×40 inches, in many cases appeared to have less impact at that size than they did at full page and double truck sizes in the magazines. On the wall they started to fall apart. The scale wasn’t necessary for the final object.

Years of working in 8.5×11 or 11×17 as maximum scale had made those photographers maximally effective in that format. With one notable exception–all work shot with a Leica on black and white negative. The grain just got sexier as it went up in size. The compositions were tight and the teeth of the film carried through. Digital images blown up past their prime need real help to make it. They tend to lose surface appeal.

The web is one of the easiest ways to distribute photography and it is one of most limiting ways to view it. Almost all of the problems I have detailed above play out over the web. Images have to be small to be viewed properly. There is significantly less detail in most computer monitors than there is in a finely made print. Each step of the way something is thrown out. By the time the image reaches you on the other end of this computer exchange, it is but a shadow of its real self– the final, beautiful, nearly perfect print.

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Virtual Leaders at the Republican National Convention

Something strange is going on at the Republican National Convention. It started a few weeks ago as the list of official no shows started to unfold and grow longer by the day. The list grew longer still as hurricane Gustav acquired force in the Gulf. As the winds roared toward New Orleans, the GOP went into full theatrical mobilization to show the world that, this time, they had leaders who were READY to LEAD. Of course, those same leaders had nothing to do and a lot of air time to fill. The result was to gear up for a virtual convention. A map of the Gulf Coast became a giant screen saver in the convention hall, and Bush and McCain appeared around the edges like pop-up videos.

Here workers in St. Paul are joined by President Bush from the FEMA center in Washington. His briefing on the hurricane preparations included the news that he would not be attending the convention. Too much to do, you know. Then a funny thing happened on the way to the coast. Hurricane Gustav missed New Orleans. Crisis over. Everything under control. Local authorities just need some time to tidy up the place before letting everyone back in.

And so Bush would come to the convention after all, right? Wrong. As I’m writing this, he just gave his speech on the big screen, from the White House, in Washington. Huh? Maybe FEMA is still such a mess that the president has to help them calm down from the near miss, or maybe there is something to earlier rumors about the strategic value in having a little distance between Bush and McCain. I have no doubt that this question will be the subject of deep thought in media commentary this week. I’d like to take a different tack, however.

One of the characteristics of the digital age is that we are surrounded with screens. The multiple arrays and chance encounters with screens of all sizes create a distinctive aesthetic, one still in the making. Some of the time photojournalism is picking up on the digital environment and channeling that aesthetic. For example, there are many photographs from the primary campaign of candidates caught on screens of camcorders, cameras, cellphones, showroom TVs, airplane videos, you name it. What may be merely artistic innovation becomes particularly interesting when it captures something deeper: some current of change or unrecognized need or latent possibility. Or perhaps a hidden betrayal.

The truth captured by these vignettes of politics in a digital age is that the leadership of the Republican Party is there but not there, reporting for duty but actually somewhere else, ready to speak to their fellow citizens but only at a distance. They are virtual leaders, projecting concern while hiding behind whatever photo-op, publicity stunt, surprise announcement, or shopworn excuse they can use to avoid facing the people. Where a leader might have stood, ready to engage the American people on those issues that will test and define the nation, we see instead only an image. Indeed, today I heard a convention speaker extolling John McCain’s face. Really. The face that you see on your TV, for example. Right there, on the screen. The virtual leader.

Photographs by Brendan Smialowski/New York Times.

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Labor Day 2008

Graphic from The Big Picture.

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The Other Woman

One result of Hillary Clinton’s speech at the Democratic convention has been another round of stories about her supporters who still harbor resentment over having to yet again watch a male grab the nomination. For awhile, the Angry White Woman voter will loom large, much like the Rural White Male who is such a problem for the Democrats except when giving Hillary her biggest primary victories. But if you look around the convention you can see another group of women who are having, if not the perfect day, a convention for the ages. I’m referring to the black women who are doubly benefiting from the Obama nomination.

You can see lots of images like this one in the slide shows or on the tube. From the look of things, these women realize that the Obama nomination is a truly historic moment, one that will empower many people, male and female, who have been waiting too long for their share of the American Dream. Equally important, they probably understand that Michelle Obama may be as important as her husband for redefining America’s image of itself.

No Hillary supporter should deride those who would expect to benefit from standing beside a president. To be fair, however, the anger many women feel is too deep to be taken lightly. Susan Faludi’s editorial yesterday provides an historical account of how little came of the passage of the 19th Amendment 100 years ago, and how much has been lost recently. She could have gone back to the passage of the 15th Amendment, when the suffrage movement was told, after working for the abolition of slavery, that the woman’s hour had not yet come. For educated white women who know they have been passed over before, this story must be getting old.

Faludi also reports that 25% of Clinton voters favored “the clear insanity of voicing their feminist protest by voting for John McCain.” If otherwise intelligent, politically engaged people feel pushed to that extreme, they must be hurting. More to the point, such deep anger reflects a genuine sense of injustice, one that should not be forgotten amidst the glare and good vibe of an Obama nomination. Nor should otherwise progressive commentators turn women against one another; that old trick will get enough play on the right this fall.

So, let’s give Hillary her moment in the sun, but let’s not forget who remains in the shadows. Obama’s nomination means many things, and one result is greater empowerment for those who have had to endured discrimination due to both race and gender. Indeed, as I’ve suggested before, Obama is where he is not because he is speaking about an ideal future, but because he is speaking to an America that is already changing for the better. The photograph above is one more example of how the future evoked by the Democratic candidate is already present among us.

Black women are an important part of that picture. Today, however, they are likely to be invisible–again. Let’s hope that doesn’t last. It shouldn’t: all we have to do is look around the room.

Photograph by Joe Amon/The Denver Post.

Update: I wrote this post before hearing Hillary Clinton’s speech last night, so I want to add that if the pro-Clinton resistance to Obama continues, you can’t blame her. Hillary reaffirmed her commitment to those who have been invisible to their government, and she drew her concluding inspiration from the African-American abolitionist and suffragist Harriet Tubman. The reference apparently was lost on some. The television network I was watching seemed to think that Chelsey Clinton was the face of the speech, and news coverage today was back on the Angry White Woman. Different pictures from different media, all of them partial, but I’ll bet that photojournalism is providing the best account of the demographic reality of the convention.

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Picturing America, Past and Present

Recently Laura Bush was in New Orleans in tandem with the Picturing America project sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The project involves reproductions of 40 works of art that are available for use in the classroom. Freedom, equality, and similar civic virtues are featured as themes for the collection, which includes works from a range of periods and media. Many will be familiar to adults and none of them are likely to offend the protectors of public morality. Indeed, the lack of a critical edge is all too predictable, which is why this photograph has added value.

Dorthea Lange’s Migrant Mother is one of the 40 art works, but here it has become a part of work number 41. This photo of the two students raises many of the questions that could but perhaps would not arise during discussion of the iconic image. The fact that they are placed in equivalent positions to the two children in the Lange photo makes the point sharply: These are now the children at risk, and they are here, in real time and living color, waiting to see if their government will respond as it did during the crisis of the 1930s.

There has been no New Deal for New Orleans, of course, of for anyone else below the million dollar line during the seven years of the Bush administration. Another difference between the two photos provides some consolation, as the two students look attentive and capable rather than wholly dependent. Progress has been made in spite of everything, but that should be no excuse for not having good schools, levees, health care, banks, and all the other little things that once were understood to be the obligations of a good society.

Photograph by Bill Haber/Associated Press.

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Peace in Iraq

In one of the early posts on this blog I asked, what does peace look like? One answer, I suggested, was that peace appears when you start seeing soldiers as kids rather than as warriors. Let me be clear: I don’t mean that you would see grown men and women as if they were small children, only that you would see that many of the soldiers are still very young. Young adults, perhaps, but young. Like this:

This photograph was taken in Baghdad about a month ago. You can’t predict the future from a photo, but this was the first time that I thought real change for the better might be occurring on the ground. The American has let his guard down so much, the Iraqi is so comfortable in his presence, the photographer is able to capture the moment–all of this bodes well as an indication of a sense of security in ordinary life.

Of course, the soldier still is intruding into someone’s home–something protested in the Declaration of Independence–and both the floor and the view through the doorway suggest that war has turned a nice place into a fixer-upper. More generally, the troop levels, expenses, bases, and everything else being negotiated in the draw-down agreement all portend a protracted and costly transition and then continued military engagement in a client state for decades to come.

But still, what a photograph. The American looks like he should be sitting in a classroom waiting for the bell to ring. The pairing with the civilian boy next to him marks his youth, which is accentuated further by being encased in his military carapace. Obviously, they both should be dressed like the boy on the right; everything else is an unnecessary addition there only to serve the interests of an alien machine far larger than either of them.

The flowers on the wall complete the domestic tableau. Everything fits except the uniform and the gun, which is propped uselessly against his leg, barrel down in the dirt. The boy on the left seems to be thinking about what comes next: that when the break ends he’ll have to pick up his gear and walk out of there. The posture and look of the boy on the right say all that and more. He clearly is waiting for the American to leave. After all, it is his house.

More soldiers and more civilians will die before its over, but maybe, just maybe, scenes like this can become more commonplace and more representative of present and future alike. We’ve seen heroes and victims enough; now it is time to see people as they are. After years of war, that might be what peace looks like.

Photograph by Maya Alleguzzo/Associated Press.

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Two Views of China and the West

You are likely to have seen many photographs from China recently, but probably not this one:

Here models and student designers stand side by side during a fashion show at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. I’ll let you guess which ones are the models. Of course, the drastic contrast between female models and designers who look like ordinary people occurs at any fashion show, but here that difference is accentuated by ethic polarization.

This post is not about the Olympics, except that this week everything is about the Olympics. Despite smug predictions in the Western press, the Chinese are pulling it off. The events are going smoothly, the bad news is not happening or quickly forgotten, and you have to admit that the place looks great. (I’d like to see a marathon course in any US city look half as nice as the one I saw Saturday night.) It looks like Beijing will achieve its objective–again. One result is likely to be a more widely held realization that China has become highly modernized. And so the question arises: On what terms are we likely to imagine Chinese assimilation into modernity?

The photograph above provides the conventional idea: the West is obviously higher, more sophisticated, and literally the model to be imitated. Likewise, modernity is thoroughly raced: the ideal is Aryan, and one acquires all the benefits of modernization by forming oneself along those lines. If there happen to be obvious disadvantages, well, just be patient and they will be overcome in time–the shorter women in the photo are not going to get any taller, but their children could surpass them. And even though fashion is all about hybridity some of the time, here it is clear that the transmission of culture is entirely one-way.

Even so, the image also contains another story as well. The Western women are there only to be draped and displayed, while the brain work is being done entirely by Asians. The West is a model, but passively so, and rendered passive by its own sophistication. If you had to pick three women to take to the moon, or the office, or the future, I don’t think there is any doubt which three should be given the job.

If a conventional image of catching up to the West contains its own internal caveat, that still falls short of more robust ideas of cultural change. Nor do we have to go too far down the road to get a glimpse of what that might involve:

This is a portrait of Li Shurui, a contemporary Chinese artist whom the New York Times says is “quietly emerging” as a talent within the male-dominated Chinese art world. Although the mask could double as a muzzle, there is nothing quiet about Li Shurui in this photograph. The story emphasizes gender equalization–currently, something featured as a sign of the West’s continued lead in the modernity Olympics–but Li is a study in conflated binaries: She is both male and female, Asian and Western, and organic and mechanical. As a cyborg she performs an important moment in modern feminism; with slanted eyes and blond hair she is actively hybrid, and her intensely focused look makes it damn clear that there is nothing passive about this woman.

Most important, perhaps, is that she can represent an alternative model of Chinese modernization–one that includes key elements of Western society and culture without being mere imitation and gradualist assimilation toward a homogeneous ideal. This is likely to be the real China. Nor should anyone be surprised–it also is the likely to be the real West.

Photographs by Alex Hofford/European Pressphoto Agency and Natalie Behring/New York Times.

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Downsizing the Chain Store Near You

“Several national restaurant chains were shuttered last Tuesday, possibly offering a early taste of what’s in store this year for businesses that depend on free-spending consumers whose budgets are now being squeezed.” Clever puns aside, this lead-in to a New York Times report says a lot. So does this photograph that accompanied the story.

We know what we are supposed to observe here: ordinary people who are glum. Some may have lost their lunch and others may have lost their jobs, but no one can see a ready alternative. The photograph itself reinforces a mildly depressive reaction: it seems a banal, cluttered, diffused shot with the lighting either dull close in or too harshly white in the background. No one of the three figures holds our attention, yet they don’t form a coherent group either as they each are alone, left with their thoughts as they go their separate ways. Arrayed along a line of sight that leads only into the open street where others go about their business, the prospects for a new start close by seem slim.

Other elements of the picture add more to the story. Look at the garish ad for $4.99 burgers. That probably includes fries as well, and in any case it’s a good example of how the US has been awash in cheap food. Look also at the guy’s supersized drink. Or her large bag–the fashion this summer–or the fact that no one in the picture has been going hungry. Even as the restaurant closes, it does so amidst signs of overconsumption. Add the American eagle from the sign in the upper right of the photo, and you’ve got a small allegory. An entire way of life based on cheap food, cheap gas, and constant consumption may be shutting down.

Bennigan’s was the casualty this time, with Steak & Ale to follow and other brands in the “causal dining” category also in jeopardy. In addition, the neighborhood or strip mall typically loses a familiar place that will help anchor the local community or business district, while the space will be hard to rent in the downturn. The sad fact is that the housing crisis, the oil crunch, the commodity price hikes, the devaluation of the dollar, the drain on the national treasury from the trillion dollar war, and similar the big-picture troubles are hardest on the little people. This closing isn’t the first and won’t be the last, and every time it happens more people have to go home and tell someone they love that that things just got worse.

I dream of the day that Main Street Republicans figure out that their interests are not served by the party of Wall Street. Maybe if enough stores close and enough people vote their interests, then local businesses can start up again, this time with health insurance and the economic security that comes from regulation, conservation, and other proven measures for a sustainable society. I’d drink to that–and maybe even go out to eat.

Photograph by Roger Mallison/Star-Telegram via Associated Press.

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Documentary Arts Competition

First Person Impressions

A National competition for Memoir and Documentary Writers, Filmmakers, and Photographers.

Each day countless stories unfold. Take a real life experience of your own and tell it in a way that only you can. Craft your story with words, photos or video. Make the ordinary magical, or the exotic familiar.
Shock us, amaze us, or make us pause to reflect. The only rule is that it’s real.

All entries must be new works that have not previously been published, exhibited, or screened in the US.

Categories
Film: up to 5 minutes
Essay: 1500 words or less
Photography: up to 5 images. Single images are welcome; multiple images must be related, as in a photo essay.

Prizes
The top three winning entries in each category will be presented at the First Person Festival of Memoir and Documentary Art at the Painted Bride Art Center in Philadelphia, November 12-16, 2008.

$500: 1st place category winners
$100: 2nd place category winners
$50: 3rd place category winners

The 1st place writing and photography winners will have their work published in various publications including the Philadelphia City Paper. For a complete listing of publications go to impressions.firstpersonarts.org. The top five entries in each category will be featured on firstpersonarts.org

Judges
Documentary Video
Steven Rea, Film Critic, Philadelphia Inquirer
Samuel Adams, Contributing Editor, Philadelphia City Paper
Ron Kanter, Emmy Award-winning director of New Cops, Acting Out, Life and Death. Dawson, Georgia

Photography
Katherine Ware, curator of Photography, Philadelphia Museum of Art

Short Memoir
Daniel Jones, editor of the Modern Love column in the New York Times
Laurence Kirshbaum, Founder and agent, LJK Literary, former CEO Time Warner Book Group
Amy Salit, Producer, Fresh Air, WHYY FM

Enter at impressions.firstpersonarts.org

Video: http://www.viddler.com/explore/FirstPersonArts/videos/33/

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Perpetual Childhood in America

Social documentary photography can occur almost by accident, especially when the subject is the middle class. This photograph from the Sunday New York Times is a case in point:

The caption reads, “Just before the official start of visiting day, parents try to get their daughters’ attention as they stand on the side, surrounded by numerous gifts that await the campers.” I like the way the photographer captures the parents as they might appear to children. (Animals at the zoo might have a similar experience.) The spectators are put on display, and despite their size they remain distant while signaling more than can be taken in. The dads appear either stern or clueless while the moms seem to be over-the-top emotional. In either case they are likely to be a load, so the gifts had better be good.

It might be more revealing yet to look at the parents from the perspective of an adult. From that perspective, doesn’t it seem that most of them look like children? Except for the grouchy old guy in the middle–we’ll get back to him later–these adults are dressed like kids. The t-shirts, shorts, tennis shoes, capri jeans, are not only casual but what kids have worn since at least the 1950s. And the adults are acting like kids, too: the girls emoting excitedly about seeing someone special, the boys waiting in line stoically to hold their place until they can make a run for the prize.

Nor does this happen only at summer camp. Look around you in the grocery store. Fathers’ and sons’ clothing would be interchangeable but for the difference in size, and lots of other people also are dressed like kids. And look at what they’re buying: some basic provisions are there, but more often than not everyone in the family has been shopping like a kid in a candy store. Bottled drinks, chips, and other treats make sure that no one is denied their version of a Popsicle. Look again at the gifts that the parents have brought with them. Like the display of wealth that it displaced, American informality goes hand in hand with a culture of consumer consumption.

I’m wearing ragged shorts and a cheap t-shirt while I’m writing this, and I wouldn’t change to go to the store or just about anywhere else in town. I’m sure that we must look like hell to anyone with any sophistication. That stern looking guy in the middle of the picture, for example. His clothing bears some of the cultural shift evident in those on either side of him, but he’s still dressed more as an adult than a child. And he has the grim expression to prove it. The guy looks like he’d rather be at a board meeting and that he evaluates everything by the standards of corporate efficiency. Visually, he’s providing the contrast needed to feature the exuberance on either side of him. Culturally, he’s a relic.

When I was growing up in the 1950s, it was a big deal for my parents’ generation to be adults. For one thing, they really hadn’t been given a choice. Equally important, adulthood came with a lot of perks: sex, money, alcohol, the vote, and other privileges made it clear that while childhood may have been fun, adulthood brought a major shift in social status. Not surprisingly, one had to look adult, and a lot of effort went into that. Consumption was a part of the deal, but the focus was primarily on being or becoming bourgeois, not on indulging oneself. One also had to act like an adult, and that’s where things started to get complicated. Gender differences became very asymmetrical gender roles; being mature meant making conformity second nature; working hard while still doing without was justified because you were doing it for the kids.

The good news is that the past fifty years have been one of continuous liberalization. The American ideal of equality has been written into law and everyday life for many people in many ways large and small. Personal liberty and American individualism has led to a richly pluralistic society where many inhibitions were overcome in the pursuit of happiness. Informality in clothing and manners became an important part of this sea-change–an enactment of liberty and equality in the performance of everyday life. False impositions of status fell away at the beach and everywhere else. The status of adulthood was one of the casualties. It no longer carried many privileges, so you might as well be comfortable.

One of the interesting side-effects of liberalization on American terms has been the prolongation of childhood. Note that one rationale for having children now is that they make you grow up. I wonder about that. But it does no good to say “grow up” if that means becoming dour or continually calculative or stupidly bourgeois. And in fact childhood is not a time of freedom from work or anxiety these days, if it ever was. When kids are being driven to prepare themselves for a life of competition, being able to act like a kid may be one of the real benefits of adulthood.

Hope has been expressed that Obama’s victory in November will lead to a fashion shift back to the higher standards of the 1940s and 1950s–first with African-American youth, who then set the tone for the rest of us. It will be interesting to see if that happens and how it plays out. Those wanting change have a case, but they also have a lot going against them, not least the belief that happiness means being forever young.

Photograph by Todd Heisler/New York Times. The related story is here.

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