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In 1979, after over a decade of struggle, the socialist Sandinista movement in Nicaragua overthrew the famously corrupt dictator, Anastasio Somoza. The Sandinistas quickly began the work of applying their social and ideological values in the hopes of creating a better Nicaragua. Amid the rhetoric of the cold war, the US had different ideas – it mobilised the Contras, a CIA financed, armed and trained clandestine rebel insurgency against the fledgling government.
Kevin Kunishi has just won the 2011 Blue Earth Alliance Award for his series Los Restos de la Revolución.
“This series consists of portraits of Sandinistas and their opposing Contra veterans, as well as artifacts and landscapes significant to that volatile era. Although these two sides held polarized political philosophies, both in their foundation and practice, their survivors are united by the burden of a war-torn history,” says Kunishi.
Powerful stuff.
Comstock, NY State Prison. © Stephen Tourlentes
Tom Griggs, the man at the helm at Fototazo has just published an interview with Stephen Tourlentes.
Aware of two earlier interviews with Tourlentes by Jess T. Dugan and myself, Griggs proposed he stitch information from those together with new questions and answers to fill the gaps and bring the reader up to date. The result is a very comprehensive, crowdsourced Q&A about Tourlentes’ photography and politics.
“[We must] find better ways to deal with poverty, education and human rights. The prison system in the US has grown at the expense of funding education, public health and investing long term in sustainable community initiatives that combat crime.”
“In my view we have an extremely complicated history in the US. Contradictions abound. Along with brilliant success and economic power we have built a prison system that holds 24% of the world prison population even though the US represents only 5% of the worlds population. In a country that holds it’s constitutional freedoms so dear we are the best in the world at locking people up.”
FOTOTAZO
Fototazo is a new philanthropic venture on the block. It raises funds to purchase equipment for young, emerging photographers from economically disadvantaged backgrounds from around the globe.
Fototazo will snag your interest with in-depth interviews and portfolios of new work by selected contemporary photographers. Hopefully, you’ll reciprocate with some spare change for the grants, the monies of which go to those building careers in photography and whose development is limited by an inability to purchase necessary equipment.
© Natalia Lopera
WTO Protests, Seattle, November 1999. © Dean Wong. Wong is featured in Susan Noyes Platt’s Art and Politics Now
Susan Noyes Platt is perhaps not the best person to quote on issues of online (media) activism, as her primary interest is politically engaged artforms, direct action and the perfected combination of both. However, I feel her reservations about blogging may be fairly representative of many people.
I just attended the opening of Noyes Platt’s curated show, Cultural Activism in a Time of Crisis at Seattle Central Community College. The art was electrifying and, based on the first chapter, so is her book Art and Politics Now.*
Already Art and Politics Now has touched upon Alfredo Jaar, Trevor Paglen, Walid Ra’ad and the WTO protests in Seattle. Details enlivening to read and ideas that are bliss to connect with.
Noyes Platt:
“Cyberspace is not a joyous collection of people who come together in the street.”
A truism if I ever heard one, but she goes on:
“That physical event, collective street action, is an aesthetic act, the embodying of the act of resistance. The body of a political march is a creative body. It is a seething, joyful, and celebratory act of collective communal resistance. Cyberspace is an individual experience limited to a demographic and economic elite that creates invaluable networks, even as it atomizes them. Blogging for example, provides collective information, but it also can simply keep people at home, well informed, but hovering over a screen, alone.”
I quote this because for all the importance, thought [1, 2, and 3] and energy I put into blogging, it ain’t worth zip if I’m not connecting and being with people who are acting in the physical world to stake their political claim.
There are good arguments against the hegemony of the biggest social networks and yet some studies have shown internet users are more socially engaged. What to think? Firstly, Facebook’s degree of evil is yet to be determined. Secondly, correlation is not causation and perhaps it’s just that active people are bouncing through both cyber and real spaces? Ultimately, responsibility for use of blogs and other social media rests upon individuals’ personal (life) balance: screentime vs. playtime.
My basic message remains … HIT THE STREETS!
* It took a blog post by Jim Johnson for the tip off on Susan’s amazing academic activism right here in my own city of Seattle.
Born: November 27, 1932; Philadelphia; Arrested July 30, 1961; Train station, Jackson; Then: Student, Santa Monica City College; Since then: Arts administrator, now retired; Then and Now: Marrried to Robert Singleton; Photographed: August 24, 2005; Los Angeles. © Eric Etheridge
I’ve been meaning to write about Eric Etheridge’s project Breach of Peace for too long. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Riders and their key 1961 victory for civil rights.
Today, the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther Kings 1968 assassination, is an appropriate moment.
Firstly, a brief history of the Freedom Riders, as told by Etheridge:
In the spring and summer of 1961, several hundred Americans — blacks and whites, men and women — entered Southern bus and train stations to challenge the segregated waiting rooms, lunch counters and bathrooms. The Supreme Court had ruled that such segregation was illegal, and the Riders were trying to force the federal government to enforce that decision.
Though there were Freedom Rides across the South, Jackson soon became the campaign’s primary focus. More than 300 Riders were arrested there and quickly convicted of breach of peace — a law many Southern states and cities had put on the books for just such an occasion. The Riders then compounded their protest by refusing bail. “Flll the jails!” was their cry, and they soon did. Mississippi responded by transferring them to Parchman, the state’s infamous Delta prison farm, for the remainder of their time behind bars, usually about six weeks.
A few days after the last group of Riders were arrested in Jackson, on September 13, the Interstate Commerce Commission issued new regulations, mandating an end to segregation in all bus and train stations.
Etheridge’s book Breach of Peace: Portraits of the 1961 Mississippi Freedom Riders features his new portraits of 80 Riders and the mug shots of all 328 Riders arrested in Jackson that year, along with excerpts of interviews with the featured Riders. (See the Breach of Peace archives here)
The Mississippi Museum of Art is showing the mugshots of all 329 Riders arrested in Jackson as a giant, 54′ long mural, along with 20 of Etheridge’s portraits (March 19 – June 12). Free to the public.
Breach of Peace: Portraits of the 1961 Freedom Riders installation, Mississippi Museum of Art, March 2011
Etheridge’s work is a continuing multi-year effort. Through interviews and his camera, Etheridge gives his subject the opportunity to return to their political heroics. For those alive in the sixties, Etheridge’s work is an antidote to historical amnesia and for those who weren’t it’s an education.
KING’S GIFT TO HISTORY; A POLITICAL PHILOSOSPHY NOT TO BE FORGOTTEN, ALWAYS TO BE ACTED UPON
And so to King, whose politics are as relevant today as they were 43 years ago. As Jim Johnson reminds us, at the time of his assassination, King was in Memphis in solidarity with sanitation workers, who were striking the city not just for decent pay and working conditions but for recognition of their right to form a union. In light of the concerted, ongoing campaign by Republicans to subvert unions, it surely is plausible to wonder how far we remain from the promised land.
History is very important. Despite their self-label, progressives look back in time as readily as conservatives to pinpoint historical moments to justify their politics. Progressives look to the golden era of people power and the Peace Movement, conservatives hark back to the space-race and Reaganomics.
When history is at our backs, we must choose to leave it behind or let it propel us forward. In the case of the Civil Rights movement, its lessons should be forever in America’s conscience. The work toward social and economic equality is not yet complete, not by a long distance.
We have choices to make and a society to shape.
Which brings me to this potent image of the back of James Earl Ray, who was Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassin.
While hundreds of thousands were marching on the streets and millions across America swelled the turning political tides, James Earl Ray choose a different worldview.
Regardless of colour or creed, Martin Luther King’s promised land was for all … and for a better America. No doubt James Earl Ray was a troubled man but his rejection of America’s sea-change thrust him only in the direction of a dead-end.
James Earl Ray facing the wall at Shelby County Jail. Photo by Gil Michael/Shelby County Sheriff’s Office
As Etheridge explains this is not an act of defiance. Shoved into a Shelby County Jail cell, Ray faces the reality upon him; the physical finality of confinement with nowhere to go. As he abandoned history, so history moved on without him.
TO END ON A GOOD NOTE
REMEMBER.
INSPIRATION, LOVE AND GOOD HEARTS ARE NOT FORGOTTEN BY HISTORY
Bob Gumpert‘s Locked and Found portraits are on show at HOST Gallery for the next month (April 7th – May 7th).
On the 13th April, there’s a panel discussion on three different projects made in, around and about jails and prisons, with Bob, Edmund Clark and Guardian writer Erwin James.
HOST’s blurb:
Robert Gumpert has been documenting the criminal justice system in San Francisco since 1994. We are delighted to bring his matchless archive of convicts, cops and courthouses to HOST gallery, where it will be exhibited for the first time in the UK.
Gumpert’s project began with an idea to photograph a homicide detective, but quickly expanded to cover numerous other aspects of the criminal justice system. After he exhibited the work in San Francisco in 2000, he thought that was the end of it, until he received a call from the sheriff’s office. California’s oldest jail was about to close, and for Gumpert, whose photographic roots were planted in the social activism of the 70s, this was a piece of history he felt compelled to document.
“‘Old Bruno’ was built in 1934 as an example of progressive incarceration, but it had become a toxic dump of a place where deputies and prisoners where expelled. Over the years the courts had ordered its closure and finally in August of 2006 everyone moved to the adjacent new Bruno. I documented the old jail, its closing and the opening of the new one,” says Gumpert, who then sought and received permission to continue his photographic quest across six county jails.
As his work progressed, so too did his attitude towards his subjects, the majority of whom were incarcerated men (he also photographed police officers and prison guards). From an ‘us and them’ relationship, his modus operandi evolved to one of participation, as Gumpert conducted audio interviews with everyone he photographed, in a kind of reciprocal exchange: a picture for a story.
Robert Gumpert has been working as a photographer since 1974, when he documented the coal miners’ strike in Harlan County, Kentucky. Since then he has worked on a series of long-term projects, including studies of the US criminal justice system and emergency health care in the United States.
For more information contact Anna Pfab on anna [at] foto8.com or 020 7253 2770.
HOST Gallery, 1-5 Honduras Street, EC1Y 0TH, London,UK
Paraphrasing the introduction to Domestic Slavery: The cold and stark photographs of ordinary-looking buildings in and around Paris by Raphael Dallaporta are combined with Ondine Millot’s texts to become chilling portraits of hidden agony. The texts describe what went on in these photographed buildings, confronting the viewer with stories of abuse and cruelty, forcing us to consider the idea that behind the façade of the ordinary can lie a discomforting reality. […] Domestic Slavery bears witness to the banality of everyday inhumanity.
Some of the stories in Domestic Slavery are harrowing, and in some cases not least because the abusers are women, or a collection of individuals from the same extended family. These are tales of evil made normal.
From Domestic Slavery:
“For four years Violette slept without a mattress on the tiled kitchen floor of an apartment in the 13th arrondissement in Paris. Her work timetable was carefully planned. In the morning, she got up at 4am to prepare breakfast for Sahondra, her employer, and her son; afterwards, she travelled into central Paris where, at 6am, she began work for a cleaning company run by Sahondra’s brother-in- law; at 10am she returned to Sahondra’s apartment where she did the housework and prepared lunch and dinner; at 4pm, she travelled to Massy-Palaiseau – about 20kms from Paris – where she cleaned the apartment of Mamy, Sahondra’s brother. When she returned to the 13th arrondissement around 10pm each day, there was more work: a pile of washing-up or ironing kept her busy until midnight, either at Sahondra’s or in her sister’s next-door apartment. For four years, during which time she was hardly fed, Violette worked 18 to 20 hours a day. She had left Madagascar aged 22 in the hope of earning enough money to feed her child, who she left behind. During the whole ordeal her four employers paid her nothing.”
“With the aid of the CCEM, the Committee Against Modern Slavery, she took her employers to court. Her case was heard in 1999 in Paris and it became the first-ever case of modern slavery dealt with in France under penal law. Her employers were ordered to pay Violette €22,900 in damages and interest; they were also fined and given suspended prison sentences.”
PHOTOGRAPHING SCENES OF UNLAWFUL ACTS
The type of sorrowful external view (long after the matter) employed by Dallaporta brought to mind Angela Strassheim‘s stake-out street shots of former crime-scenes for her series Evidence, of which I have written about previously. The two leave me feeling so differently however, I’d like to explore the reasons.
Both Dallaporta and Strassheim found their building-subjects due to information on public record following judicial process/trial. Neither photographer makes effort to show the architectures as extraordinary – because they are not. Yet, Dallaporta’s photography leaves me morose and confused about the human condition. I think it has something to do with closure – or lack of – in each of the projects.
Strassheim’s work leads the viewer through the crime. In the titles, she lists the weapons used. Strassheim shows us the traces of metals, that are traces of DNA, that are traces of blood, not only by being their but by using specialist forensic techniques. She literally reveals the marks of homicides.
Strassheim’s effort is two-fold in showing us the evidence but more crucially the conclusion of violence. It was bloody murder, but it was brief and it is over. Dallaporta’s works on the other hand don’t offer me an out. I am not mollified by the idea that this was a collection of one-off final acts. Often the buildings are only one of multiple sites of abuse.
I have no idea about the prevalence of domestic slavery in France, but I presume it is no different to other Western nations. If I need homicide figures I can find them, but if I want figures on illegal imprisonment and servitude I’m at a dead-end. Dallaporta’s work is an attack on our complacency.
In describing the bare details of each abuse, Dallaporta and Millot succeed in positioning domestic slavery as anywhere and everywhere; they present it as a national issue and as everyone’s problem. Domestic Slavery might just be the harshest indictment of absent community in our societies. Dallaporta’s work certainly plays on the unknown.
Inside of me, Domestic Slavery induces fear of the unknown. I can understand murder – it has been explained to me since I was a young child – but I do not understand modern slavery. Dallaporta’s work brings that to bear and, for me, that it is what makes Domestic Slavery so successful.
I was recently asked to propose a blogging workshop for photography students. It pushed me to think why blogs should be written and why they should be read.
Blogging tools have developed concurrently with the social media platforms that have permitted our shared glut of imagery. Writers in general have provided context to images for a long time, but I reason bloggers are a new front line in the expanded process.
Here are my thoughts.
VISUAL OVERLOAD
The flow of images through our daily lives increases at exponential speeds. Social media, photo-sharing sites with essentially unlimited storage and mobile hardware have created this sprawling (and it could be said, suffocating) visual superstructure.
At 60 billion photos, Facebook has a larger photo collection than any other site on the web. By comparison, Photobucket hosts 8 billion, Picasa 7 billion and Flickr 5 billion. Facebook’s photo data as an infographic.
VIEWING PHOTOGRAPHY IN A POLITICALLY MINDFUL MANNER
What to make of this slew of imagery is something both Fred Ritchin and Joerg Colberg have addressed in the evergreen debate about ‘What’s Next? (for photography)’ now being pressed by FOAM Magazine.
Colberg asks us to think about the meaning of our own digital archives and impress upon them a meaning, perhaps even a strategy. Ritchin urges us to think about making sense of the world through all the images available to us. Both are concerned with us being actors in the real world, and knowing that the photograph plays a part in social/political action and decision.
Ritchin:
Colberg:
Beyond our status as subjects within – and/or impulsive producers and passive consumers of – imagery, we are also to a very modest extent curators and distributors. In these last two roles, we can add most meaning and most weight. And it can be done through thoughtful and engaged blogging.
I have gone on record as saying the best bloggers writing about photography are those who can be relied upon to filter content meaningfully.
A good blog has a clearly stated goal and delivers accordingly. That’s how I judge success. Some blogs may cast a wide net, others focus on a niche, but in either case a consistent voice will secure the interest of readers. One hundred committed readers are more valuable than hundreds of thousands of browsers and “stumble-upons.” People need to be told why they should look at a picture just as much as they should be told in a lede why they should read a story past the first paragraph.
THE IMPORTANCE OF TEXT
The iconic photograph – that is to say the stand alone image which communicates and resonates – is a rare and, for most photographers, an unattainable thing.
Understood within this context, writing about photography can be of paramount importance. And it can be an act of conscience.
Fine art photographers may argue explanatory text demeans a photograph; Robert Adams insisted that auxiliary captioning proved the image had failed in describing all it need to. But Adams’ is an out-dated philosophy. In current times, when photographs have diminished reliability, they require justification for looking.
During their role as World Press Photo jurors, Broomberg and Chanarin considered a photo of drawing of a battle plan from Darfur sketched into the sand on the floor of a hut, and noted:
Blog posts can be considered extended captions, highlighting the meaning and purpose of photographs. As such, bloggers’ choices on their subject matter are significant. And political.
“I was have always paid attention to how artists worked in the world, especially with the form known as the Artist Talk where the artist is invited to present his/her works. This form remains intriguing to me. It always seems to involve the following elements: A podium or table; A slide or video projector; Table with glass or bottle of water; A (most of time) inadequate introduction followed by a lecture which is inevitably interrupted by some technical problem that may or may not be resolved; End of lecture; Enthusiastic, polite, or no applause; Someone announces that the artist is willing to answer questions from the audience; Moment of silence; Artists fear and wishes that no questions are forthcoming; Audiences fears and wishes that no questions are forthcoming; Some daring soul inevitably raises his/her hand to ask a good or bad question; artists give good or bad answers; Someone mentions that time has run out; Audience leave while a few people approach the artist to ask him/her more questions; Everyone is escorted out; Artists is invited for a drink or dinner where a polite conversation takes place; Email coordinates are exchanged; Artist is dropped off at a mediocre hotel with an equally mediocre and expensive internet connection.” (Source)
Walid Ra’ad is the recipient of the 2011 Hasselblad Award and founder of the Atlas Group.
Prison Photography 