NO CAPTION NEEDED

One of the attractions of the beach is that so many distinctions seem to melt away into the broad expanses of  sun, sea, and sand.  Nature offers the same three elements to whoever is there, and there seems to be room enough for everyone, and–for the day, anyway–what more does anyone really need?  But, of course, even when life’s a beach, it is a life lived one way rather than another.  This image from the Hamptons is one example of what I mean.

I had to stare at this image initially to make sure that it was a photograph.  The pictorial values are evocative of the seaside reveries that were a favorite subject for painters around 1900.  (For one example having a tone similar to this scene, see Calm Morning (1904) by Frank Weston Benson.)  But if life is following art at the Hamptons, the closer source might be a J. Crew catalog.  The causal wealth on display here reflects that narrow niche of class and ethnicity, starting with the gorgeous blue and white beach towels.  The rest of the scene is more subdued, but the pattern continues: her pink and white shirt, the white breaker of the emerald wave,  white umbrellas on orange or yellow poles, the green chair between sand and sea foam.  Somehow this world is both colorful and very white.

The blue and white towels create a space of privileged intimacy within the scene, one mirrored by the second couple as well.  One member of each pair is eating and listening, savoring, as if there is no hurry, no need to worry about running out of time or anything else.  We see them from behind, while standing at a respectful distance, as if servants waiting to be summoned.  The photo depicts a summer idyll and also the image of an ideal life, but only for the few.

It should not be surprising that people of wealth can seem so at home in an image that appears to be an oil painting.  The photographer’s achievement has been to capture a representative moment in a social stratum by evoking the appropriate pictorial tone from another art and time, albeit while also channeling the commercial iconography that defines that way of life the present.  There is more than one beach, however, and more than one way to use a camera.

The caption in the Times (the source for both photos) read, “An early arrival at Orchard Beach in the Bronx staked out his territory on Saturday.  Estimates put the crowd at 59,000 by 5 p.m.”  I think this shot is hilarious.  It might as well be Rodney Dangerfield taking a break from Caddyshack.  The guy is a scandal according to the social and aesthetic values of the other photo: damn near naked, exposed to the world, but not before drawing a line in the sand that serves as a big “Keep Out” sign.  He looks like a beached whale with attitude, and instead of being huddled in luxury he’s stripped the day down to its essentials: bike, just enough clothing to be decent, a towel just big enough for his body, and a poor man’s moat to keep the 59,000 other people out of his face.

This slice of life on the other side of the cabana is presented courtesy of another photographic perspective. Instead of the faux intimacy of the painting, we have a documentary angle, seeing the subject from the side and set in context, as if a subject for sociological study.  And yet the distance is still respectful, allowing him the sovereignty of his temporary kingdom.  Unlike the Hamptons photograph, there is no implicit invitation via the fashion code to wish–or buy–our way into the scene.

One photo is from the beginning of summer and the other comes much closer to the end, but that is the least of their differences.  The question, however, is not which is the better way of life.  I’m not sure there even need be a question.  May you find your beach in what little summer remains.

Photographs by Jemal Countess/WireImage and Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times.

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The national health care debate has received an enormous amount of attention over the past few weeks, but for the most part the focus has had less to do with the state of health care and more with the incivility of protestors. As President Obama put it, “TV loves a ruckus.” Apparently so too does the print media where most of the photographic record has featured groups of protestors and reformers holding signs and/or shouting at one another, town hall meetings seemingly out of control, and the president addressing audiences in what appears to be stump speech fashion. What we have seen very little of has been any visual evidence that might help us to reflect on the actual problem of the health care system itself.

The difficulty is figuring out how to show a systemic crisis. We can display photographs of individuals in need of some, more, or better health care, but in the very process such images typically individuate the problem in ways that minimize its magnitude (we only see one person or family at a time) and mask its bureaucratic complexities (systems, by their nature, are abstract and multifaceted processes that are rarely evident in the individual case). The photograph below wrestles with these problems.

At first glance it might be hard to know what one is looking at. The photograph is shot from above and at some distance, rather like the way in which we often photograph scenes in which too close proximity to an event might put the photographer at risk of bodily harm. As we will see, the photographer’s well being is not at risk here, and so there must be some other function being served by the photographic aesthetic. The key point to note, however, is that the distance from the scene of action is accentuated by the fact that we get a fairly wide field of vision that frames the image as a landscape: it invites us to take in a wide vista, to see the whole rather than to focus on any individual part—to see the forest rather than the trees. And truth to tell, no individual is recognizable as such; indeed, in most instances it is difficult to identify even typical demographic markers as race and gender with any accuracy. There are individuals here, to be sure, but the significance of their individuality is visually minimized in the face of some larger communal or collective quality—whatever it is that they are doing or whatever it is that has brought them all together.

Here the photograph becomes harder to decipher. And so we need a caption to direct our attention: “Thousands Line Up for Free Health Care.” What we are looking at is not an overhead shot of a flea market or a trade show but a makeshift medical clinic set up inside of The Forum in Inglewood, California by Remote Area Medical, a nonprofit agency that provides free medical and dental care to people living in “remote” parts of the United States and throughout the world. One might not ordinarily think of Los Angeles County as “remote,” but therein lies at least one dimension of the systemic problem of health care in the U.S., for many—by some accounts the number is as high as 46 million citizens or 15% of the population—the issue of access is not a function of geographical proximity to medical care facilities but rather a function of the inability to pay for medical services. And in this instance thousands of people stood in line over night—many for more than one day—in order to “take a number” that would allow them access to medical services that their lack of health insurance would otherwise have made prohibitive. What the story fails to note is that when the numbers ran out many were simply turned away.

Much of the current debate over health care has emphasized the question of choice: will health care or health insurance reform effect the private, individual choice of medical services and practices. And no doubt this is a decisive issue for many people. But as this photograph suggests, if we step back to look at the entire health care system rather than the desires of private individuals, we might recognize that a considerable portion of the national community have no real choices at all.

Its all a matter of what we are able—or willing— to see.

Photo Credit: Ruth Fremson/New York Times

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Photographs can show us not only what was in front of the camera but also ways of seeing.  Two recent photos from Afghanistan each present a scene and at least two different perspectives on what is seen.  Although not representative of all the images being taken there, they can illustrate a dilemma confounding attempts to understand that distant country.

The caption at the New York Times stated that “An Afghan police officer stood guard Thursday in Kabul during a campaign stop by Ashraf Ghani, a presidential candidate.”  But is it the policeman or his silhouette?  Are we seeing his shadow cast on a wall, or is it him with everything but his outline obscured by the intense contrast between darkness and light?  One can’t be sure whether we are seeing reality or a mirage.

This illegibility that comes from casting the Afghanis in darkness can be taken in at least two ways.  We may be seeing the continuing projection, as if a movie on the wall, of a colonial world.  The local (client) militia are there in our stead, complete with colonial cap and weapons supplied by the West, but they remain shadows rather than people, much less a force to be reckoned with.  Dark, ephermeral, and mere cutouts of the Western military they are imitating, they represent only the outline of civilization against a barren backdrop close to the state of nature.  Their culture is likewise located in darkness, signified here only by the enigmatic figure in traditional garb on the right–is he being guarded or merely a spectator?  Mystery and danger are mingled together in the darkness that hides those who, for whatever reason, avoid the light–and enlightenment.

The darkness will be cooler than the sun-blasted street, however, and the photographer could be showing us not only what was there but also how little we can know about it at a glance.  (The image will have been selected for its visual distinctiveness, of course, but that doesn’t solve the interpretive problem.)  In fact, the silhouettes (whether actual or apparent) present a more accurate corollary to the caption: we are seeing exactly that–an officer standing guard–and nothing more.  For the rest, you have to not only see more but know more.  Stated otherwise, you know almost nothing about “Ashraf Ghani, a presidential candidate” from this photo, or about anything else of the event it depicts.  Thus, the photograph does the neat trick of not only documenting what is there–which may include traces of colonial relationships still present today–but also highlighting our ignorance about what we are seeing.

In sum, the photograph presents one scene but two mentalities: Someone can see it through the lens of orientalism, where the exotic other is not quite real and so a blend of fact and fiction, mystery and danger, an object of fear or desire but never an equal; or one can see it with an awareness of the ignorance that comes from not being there, not knowing the language, and having to depend on this small fragment of an image to add to what meager knowledge we might have.  Nor does one have to choose which interpretation is most real–that would be like trying to determine whether one is seeing a person or his silhouette.   And, of course, if you have to ask. . . .

With that tension in mind, take a look at this photograph:

The Times caption identifies these figures as Afghans at a cemetary in Kabul.  And so they are.  And, as above, the adults (those wholly socialized into their culture) are black figures, unidentifiable save as types.  Like the seated figure above, they have their backs to the viewer.  Are they shrouded in their culture and still oriented toward the past, or are we being reminded of how little we know about this place and the people who love, grieve, live, and die there?

Photographs by Tyler Hicks/New York Times and Massoud Hossaini/Agence France-Presse—Getty Images.

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