Over the past few weeks Midwestern states including Iowa, Wisconsin, and my home state of Indiana have experienced monstrous storms and heavy flooding with homes being ripped off of their foundations and entire towns and cities being submerged for days on end.  If the damage and devastation is not quite at the level of Hurricane Katrina it is nonetheless tragic enough and it will take years for many of these communities to recover—if recover they can.

Local photojournalists have done an excellent job of documenting the storms and their effects, but as with any such “event” there is a fairly conventional litany of photographs that seem to recur: aerial views of the flood waters (which of course distance the viewer from the event in something like a God’s eye view); shots of the incredible damage effected by natural forces gone out of control—including both long shots that invite a sense of magnitude and then extreme close-ups (often of personal possessions) that encourage a sense of viewer identification;  forlorn victims (there but for the grace of God …); people—neighbors and/or strangers, it is often hard to know which, and the ambiguity itself is telling—helping and/or comforting one another; officials either surveying the damage or lending assistance; children easily and inventively adapting to the changed circumstances as they find ways to convert the damaged world into a new kind of playground; and so on. Taken as a whole, and repeated over and again in different newspapers, magazines, websites, and television broadcasts, such images constitute a visual narrative with strong normative implications for communal living.

In the days immediately following the floods in central Indiana much attention was dedicated to families who seemed to have lost everything—homes, vehicles, furniture, clothing, etc.  I was thus initially surprised to find a series of photographs in the Indianapolis Star that focused attention on people who had dedicated their attention to salvaging and preserving family photographs.  

Here a granddaughter and grandmother “sort through family photographs to help clear off the mud and the preserve them” in Columbus, Indiana, one of the towns hardest hit in the southern-central part of the state.  As I studied this photograph and several others like it I recalled Nancy West’s wonderful book Kodak and the Lens of Nostalgia, a cultural history of the snapshot that examines the ways in which for generations Kodak has “taught” us how to take and display photographs—generally of children playing; special events that mark the passing of time such as holidays, anniversaries, graduations, etc.; prized possessions such as homes and cars; and, of course, family vacations—and in the process to produce a nostalgic sense of family history as representing something of a happy and ideal past.

That last point is something that students often resist until I require them to bring their family photo albums to class (and the “family photo album” is a social practice that seems to transcend class, race, and most other demographic categories), but it doesn’t take a great deal of reflection to realize that even if pictures of “unhappy” moments in the family history were taken they rarely if ever make it into the family archive of visual memory.  And that we value such memories is underscored by the photograph above.  Surely, one might imagine, given the magnitude of the destruction wreaked by the floods, that these women have more pressing tasks confronting them, but here they take precious time to “sort through” their past—two women crossing the divide of family generations working together to “preserve” a particular sense of family memory.

A second photograph from the same community—but not of the two women above—effects a shift from long view to close-up and in so doing accents the practice of snapshot preservation as cultural (and maybe even universal) rather than idiosyncratic. 

The disembodied hands make the point:  This could be anyone.   Of course, the hands are gendered, and so there is a sense in which such preservation is cast as “woman’s work”—a stereotype displayed in the longer shot above—but there is a different point to be made.  Notice how the hands work carefully and gently to wipe away traces of the flood, and in so doing it also erases part of the history of the image, seeking to preserve the millisecond captured by the camera in its original condition, unaffected by the passage of time. It only makes sense, of course, but it also should call our attention to how the photograph itself and its preservation in a frame or an album or an old shoe box is always already an erasure of the past in the interest of a nostalgic recollection of happier, less troublesome times.

And the reason for all of this, it seems, is clear, for the power of memory and the emotional connection to something larger than ourselves is palpable and no less essential to social sustenance than food and water is to the physical sustenance of the body. It is a point, you may recall, imaginatively developed in Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner, a movie of a not-too-distant society where androids otherwise indistinguishable from human beings nevertheless lack the experience ordinarily accumulated across the life cycle and necessary for the management of the rawest human emotions.  The solution, it turns out, was to implant a past that they could believe in, and for these androids the “reality” of their memory implants was manifest in the family photographs that they treasured and carried with them.   It didn’t matter that they were real or true; what mattered was that they were realistic and valued.

As the Kodak slogan used to say, “We capture your memories forever.”  

Photo Credit:  Matt Detrich/Indianapolis Star; In addition to Nancy West’s Kodak and the Lens of Nostalgia be sure to see also Marianne Hirsch’s Family Frames: Photography, Narrative, and Postmemory.

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One of the more successful cases of symbol capture in my lifetime is the Republican Party’s wrapping itself in the flag. Of course, the Left gave it away and then had to seethe in frustration while watching it used to set records in hypocrisy. But what credibility did they have when it came to the flag itself? That monopoly is fading however, down to Fox News and MSNBC sputtering about whether Barack Obama is wearing a flag pin. (He is. Feel better?) This decline in faux patriotism may be another side-effect of the Bush years, not that they have caught on:

There are thousands of these shots, but this one seems particularly offensive. This is the guy who had “other priorities” than serving in the Vietnam War but no qualms about sending other young men to die in the sequel of his own making. The arrogant sneer seems just right, a moment of truth revealing this administration’s cynical use of the flag–and the troops–as props. They are props in two senses of the word: devices for staging a show, and supports for something that would collapse of its own bad weight otherwise.

The image caught my attention because it demonstrates a principle of symbolic action. The basic idea is that when you see excessive display, it often is compensating for some lack. When we raise our voice, it often is not because we have the better argument. Excessive make-up can be a response to a lack of skill in a preteen or a lack of self-esteem at any age. If we go on too long, it may be because we have so little to say. Getting back to the photograph, if the administration displays not one flag but seven (and counting), it may be not because they have a surplus of patriotism and demonstrated commitment to the common good, but because there is so little evidence of those civic virtues in their policies.

For a sense of contrast, consider this image:

This flag is flying near Belle Fourche, South Dakota. The town has the distinction of being the geographical center of the nation. We see one flag, not seven, and it is a worn flag, not the imperial banners behind Cheney. Most important, it wasn’t put up there to prop up anyone. Think of it more as an act of homage, something done because it felt right, not because it would play well. The frayed edges tell us that it’s been there awhile, taking a beating from the wind but still standing as someone’s testament to their love of country. And so the principle works in both directions: when an act of display shows signs of being ragged and worn, it can be a sign of some larger fullness. What looks like a simple gesture in an all but empty place may be something much bigger. Not just the center, but the heart of the nation.

FYI to our readers: I posted on Belle Fourche recently, and this second post is something of an atonement for a mistake made at that time. If you read to comments to that post, you’ll see what I mean. Thus, this second post is another demonstration of the relationship between excess and deficiency, a dynamic that endlessly fuels language and culture.

Photographs by Seth Wenig/Associated Press and Angel Franco/New York Times.

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We almost never write about sport at this blog, yet I’m putting two posts up this week on the run-up to the Olympics. Maybe it’s because the war in Iraq is all but won–based on recent coverage, anyway–so I need something new to talk about. More likely the increase in coverage is producing a fresh crop of images. Here’s another one that caught my eye:

The New York Times story featured China’s heavy investment in rowing as part of its push to win the medals competition. The enormous investment is very real, but the whole idea seems quaint–just the thing you’d expect from a somewhat socially backward newcomer. Does anyone really care if medal total goes to China, the US, or the USSR–whoops! I mean Russia? The whole game is a relic of the Cold War. Aren’t such symbolic measures meaningless next to the real competition for oil, markets, and global economic dominance?

The short answer is yes, and the photo above illustrates just how the game is changing. Two things immediately define the image: the athlete’s magnificent physique and the high-end modernist decor. He is a superbly trained athlete walking through the functionally designed training facility. Both have all the marks of smart and lavish investment. Any difference between his individual person and the impersonal setting is covered over by their uniform simplicity and shared engineering.

The signage on his shirt and the wall also are part of the image. CHINA marks him as member of the national team, but this is not the flag-waving patriotism of a public ceremony. That shirt could just as well say NIKE or any other logo–you are looking at the new international style, another iteration of the high modernist culture of scientific training, standardized competition, and expert performance that links the top-tier athletes across the globe. By contrast, the Olympic rings and number on the wall look like crafts project from the local school–clearly a temporary addition. Cute, but hardly essential. After all, the Olympics are only the next event in an unending push for optimization.

In short, we can see the nation-state becoming a platform for economic and organizational power. This arrangement has enormous productive capacity and clearly can benefit some individuals. As it happens, however, much of what used to distinguish both the nation and interaction across national borders is changing, perhaps withering away. The contrast is even more evident when looking at another photo:

A boxer is being wrapped in a Brazilian flag prior to a qualifying bout for the Olympics. Boxing, which had a good run in the twentieth century as one of the premier sports nationally and internationally, is all but extinct. The setting in this photo does not suggest strong financial support. The flag is the only lavish thing there–colorful, rich material with plenty of drape to cover his body. Needless to say, it will come off very soon. The image is touching, really: this poor kid about to get beat on is putting on the national flag to become something larger than himself. It will be done to get the crowd on his side and intimidate his opponent, but not only for that. He wants to look good in that flag, and he’s proud to wear it. And that flag probably is about the extent of the support he will get from the state. Brazil has a lot going for it, but it’s still content to be a collective, not a platform.

That boxer probably could do a lot with Chinese training. But don’t feel sorry for him, for there is one more thing to see. It’s a coincidental effect in each case, but nonetheless food for thought. Standing amidst not much of nothing, the boxer is looking up, head held high. His face already looks cut, but he is unbowed. Now look again at the Chinese athlete. He is strong, perhaps thoughtful–going over the training routine one more time–but his head is down, as if habitually, submissively so. As if accustomed to the yoke. He is beautiful, but he is not free. Whether due to the state or the discipline, he is not free.

Photographs by Doug Kanter/New York Times and Rodrigo Abd/Associated Press.

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Wow!

Photo Credit:  Doug Mill/NYT

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The New York Times ran a story yesterday entitled “In the Middle of Nowhere, a Nation’s Center.” The subject was the geographical center of the U.S., which is a windswept prairie in Butte County, South Dakota.

There is a monument, of course, but it’s in the nearby town of Belle Fourche. Most visitors–yes, there are visitors–are content to take their pictures there rather than trek out to the actual spot. The reporter’s sense of irony is light, in keeping with his respectful attitude toward the folks actually living there. The story even includes a feel-good ending. “But then, in this remote, still place, there comes a strange sense of reassurance: that in this time of uncertain war and near-certain recession, of home foreclosures and gas at $4 a gallon, at least somewhere in this nation a center holds.”

But does it hold? Or, more to the point, why would it not hold when no one wants a piece of it? And isn’t the scene pathetic? The abandoned landscape reduced to flee market status by the hand-scrawled sign? The Times story provides an inadvertent chronicle of how rural America, once vying for its place in the nation’s prosperity, has been bypassed for roads leading elsewhere. And let me add that $4 a gallon gas hurts them a lot more than it hurts you. But you already are accustomed to not seeing them, and there are no pictures of people in the slide show accompanying the story. All you have to do to complete efface the unpleasant fact that people still live there is remove the sign.

This is another photo from the slide show, and the last of the set. Now we have a classic shot of America the Beautiful, the mythic landscape of the American West and its message of endless possibility. That image was already in the first photo, but there it sets up the irony of the ragged sign, which in turn changes the magnificent vista into a desolate “moonscape.” Ironically, the sign declaring a center highlights its emptiness. When that emptiness is not marked by the visual excess of a verbal text obviously added to the scene, a tawdry bit of culture marring nature’s grandeur, then one can see fullness, a richly symbolic affirmation of national potential. Like the wind, endless, waiting to be harvested.

Or, like the sign, symbolic in another sense. With his assurance that “at least somewhere in this nation a center holds” the reporter offers a refutation of W.B. Yeat’s famous indictment of modernity in “The Second Coming.” But the center in question is not holding, not in South Dakota, anyway. Agribusiness, agricultural policies, transportation policies, and other very real historical forces are draining the land of people, soil, water, you name it. America has invested heavily in centrifugal processes, and seems to have little time to be centered, much less balanced, reflective, or attentive to its own.

Photographs by Angel Franco/New York Times. For another perspective on the Great Plains and what one can learn there about being centered, see the wonderful book Dakota: A Spiritual Geography by Kathleen Norris.

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No one talks about building character when covering Olympic level gymnastics. If anything, the intensive training regimens that start soon after infancy are likely to stunt development of everything not necessary for athletic achievement. Denial is the order of the day, however, so the coverage is very soft focus when dealing with the production side of modern sport. What we do see are the intended results:

Unbelievable, isn’t it? Astonishing, amazing, incredible–and she’s barely past childhood. Nor is this a trick of the camera: look at her musculature, and the sure control of her limbs, and the arch of the neck as she keeps her eyes focused on the landing. She is flying through the air as the rest of us will never do, a moment of perfect freedom achieved only through extreme discipline.

The photograph presents a double image that supplies the soft focus background for her achievement. The athlete of the moment performs against an image of her type. Life and art are perfectly coordinated: the larger image in the background provides a sense of aesthetic tradition that frames and guides the live performance. The background image could be the performer herself at a slightly younger age, already radiating the innocence of a young girl perfectly composed, or the sport as it represents both excellence and aspiration. The athlete in the foreground reveals how innocence becomes transformed by the drive train of competition. She is entrained with the standard against which she will be measured, and yet upside down–everything she might have aspired to do, but at a higher level of difficulty.

Nor is she merely a study in form; the image is explosive, as if she has been launched from some modern catapult. Surely this is one sign of the incredible technological power of modern civilization–not least its capacity for complete optimization of human skill and energy toward a specific, highly defined task.

That relationship between the individual and social order might well be the subject of this photograph:

Like the photo above, this image features a world-class athlete at a warm-up event for the summer Olympics. The diver also is entrained with her background–each are studies in rectilinear form. Black and white or black and grey, squares become diamonds as they are pointed toward the water below. Oddly, she is placed off to the side, as if the building were the subject of interest; as if she were but an ornament hanging there to complete the architect’s design. The immensity of the horizontal space may imply an equally deep vertical drop, but the effect is not one of action or risk but rather of order, of individual and structure in perfect equipoise.

The images differ in their sense of time. The first implies a world of artistic continuity via ascending achievements. The girl of the past will be replaced by the girl of the present, who one day will be the background for even greater feats of skill and daring. Likewise, we know that she will retire at the ripe old age of 17 and still have the rest of her life ahead of her. Time enough to catch up on what she missed while settling into the lower world with the rest of us. In the second photograph, time has been stopped but for an instant–time enough to reveal that the individual athlete will drop from sight. She is suspended for a brief moment of glory, and then disappears. Another will appear in her place, and another, but always as iterations of the same. The dives may differ, but the fall and much else is constant. The individual flies through the air, but the structure remains.

Photographs by Grigory Dukor/Reuters and Leon Neal/AFP-Getty Images.

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There would seem to be very little in Scott McLellan’s recent exposé of the Bush White House that very many of us would consider to be “news.”  Much of it is, however, a poignant reminder of how consistently and extensively incompetent and irresponsible the current administration has been on issues large and small.  Its response to Hurricane Katrina is a prime example, as  McLellan notes that following Katrina, “the White House spent most of the first week in a state of denial.”  The first week, it turns out, was simply the tragic rehearsal for what would become (and continues to be) a farcical government policy of profound neglect and indifference.

The point was driven home for me by the image of a couple who live in a tent in a “homeless encampment under a highway overpass” that was used to anchor a story in the NYT on the persistence of homelessness in New Orleans.

Every city faces the problem of homelessness, but according to HUD, since Katrina the numbers in New Orleans are off the charts, with 4% of the population currently living on the streets (by comparison, the homeless rate in NYC = .59%; Washington, D.C. = .95%; and Atlanta = 1.4%). And the numbers continue to grow!  With FEMA planning on closing down its final six trailer parks this coming week and the city’s plan to eliminate four major public housing developments that consist of 4,500 units, the situation only promises to get worse.  But such numbers, as astronomical as they are, are hard to process.  And in the end they reduce policy considerations to questions of an accountant’s bottom line that is all too easy for governments (or individual citizens) to overlook (especially when it doesn’t effect you directly, like, say, body counts in the War in Iraq).

The above photograph, on the other hand, captures the utter despair of individuals trapped by a system and circumstances that seem to be completely out of their control.  Indeed, the image resonates in many ways with Dorothea Lange’s “Migrant Mother.”  Notice, for example, the blank stare in the man’s eyes and how they avoid making contact with either the camera or the viewer, as well as to how he embraces the woman who clings to him as if a child in need of the protection that he knows he cannot provide; and notice too how she turns her face from the camera in shy resignation of her situation.  Differences between the two photographs  of race, gender, and age abound, to be sure, but they don’t (or at least should not) mitigate the simple fact that these are people in need and that we should be helping them.  There is one other difference, more pronounced and perhaps more significant:  Lange’s “Migrant Mother” helped to animate the social welfare state that assumed the responsibility to care for those in need; the photograph above marks the effects of a neo-conservative political imaginary that began with the father’s appeal to a “thousand points of light” and has achieved its nadir (or is it its zenith) with the son’s utter evisceration of a political culture of care and social accountability. 

Marx had it right, it would seem,  “all facts and personages of great importance in world history occur, as it were twice … the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.”

Photo Credit: Lee Celano/NYT

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Things are not going well in the global street these days. The migrations created by wars, civil wars, failed states, famines, and the sheer anarchy loosed on too much of the world is driving people to the brink–and beyond. Every day the slide shows at the major papers catalog new scenes of deprivation, along with the familiar demonstrations that soon follow. Hands in the air, pushing against the police line, nameless masses call out for justice and for bread. And then the news moves on to the typhoon or the earthquake or the election or the game. What else can it do?

It was against this background of constant yet distant disruption that the photograph below stood out.

The New York Times caption read, “In settlements around Johannesburg, the belongings of fleeing immigrants have been looted, and their dwellings torn apart by mobs. Left, a resident of Ramaphosa used a golf club to demolish a shack.” That’s right, a golf club.

Like Barthes‘ punctum, that club is the detail stabbing through the screen of cautious buffering that I bring to the news. Whereas the other photos became merely instances of familiar categories–the riot, the police response, the official Statement of Concern–this one disrupts deeper assumptions. What is going on? Does he actually golf? His form is pretty good: left foot planted, head down, letting the club follow the strong torque through the hips–this should be a a good rip.

OK, some will say that he probably stole the club. But not to sell it, apparently. Everything else in the scene fits the conventional story of poverty and the breakdown of social order. In that story, people throw rocks and set tires and cars and shanties on fire because, really, what else can they do? And in that story, the world is partitioned into safe zones and “trouble spots” sure to be somewhere else. We can play by the rules, keep score, be civil–“would you like to play through?” They can be left to their spasms of self-destruction.

Except for that damned club, which suggests that the two worlds overlap after all. If there can be golf in shantytown, then there could be riot at the country club. From that perspective, there is reason to pay attention to those behind you.

Photograph by Joao Silva/New York Times.

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