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Brian Haw, Parliament Square, April 2008 © Pete Brook
Sad news this weekend. Global citizen and hero of the anti-war protest movement Brian Haw died aged 62 on the 18th June. His efforts, legacy and importance can be learnt about at http://www.brianhaw.tv/index.php
For nearly a decade, Brian Haw held a permanent presence in Parliament Square outside the UK Houses of Parliament. The only time he left the “camp” was to attend court hearings – many of them involving attempts by authorities to evict him.
While Haw was undergoing treatment for lung cancer in March, London Mayor Boris Johnson won a court ruling to finally evict Haw.
In 2007, Haw was voted ‘Most Inspiring Political Figure’ by the viewers of Channel Four.
That same year, artist Mark Wallinger recreated Haw’s protest inside Tate Britain. Wallinger won the Turner Prize for art a few months later.
Uncompromising and committed beyond the capacities of most others, Haw’s protest was a visual reminder to every single UK member of parliament that Bush had an agenda, Blair was wrong and the war on Iraq was waged on a pack of lies.
Haw actually began his protest in June 2001; against economic sanctions and the effects on civilian populations, particularly children. That’s a full five months prior to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in November 2001. Did he tap the zeitgeist? Did he intuit that the western powers were about to embark upon a decade of imperialist military incursion? Will an activist-commitment such as his – that captures the hearts and attention of a nation – exist again? One hopes so.
R.I.P. Brian.
Brian Haw’s camp, Parliament Square, April 2008 © Pete Brook
Photographer Mark Woods-Nunn and FLACK, a charitable social enterprise which works with homeless people in Cambridge, UK have put together an intriguing project.
Varsity Mag says, “the attachment of beer-cans to assorted lamp-posts is not another example of misguided modern art. A thin sheet of photographic paper was placed in each can, exposed to the world by only a tiny pin-hole, silently and vulnerably capturing an image.”
Good stuff.
Found via British Photographic History Blog.
© Walter Iooss for Sports Illustrated
With over 300 Sports Illustrated covers under his belt, Walter Iooss is no slouch. Check this out! and this.
But still, I had to laugh when I read the last paragraph of his bio, describing his specialisation in SI swimsuit specials later in his career:
“Walter matured with his swimsuit work. Ah, the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issues for which the Iooss lens has born fruit, all the riper for the backgrounds. As in the action shots, the portraits of SI’s swimsuit issues reveal an uncanny graphics sense and Rembrandt-like reverence for light and shadow. He sought and found more control in his swimsuit photographs, especially in the early days traveling light with only cameras and beautiful women, without the interference of art directors.”
More power to him.
BTW, check out the Sports Illustrated Vault Twitter Feed for smile-worthy images of past sportsmen and sportswomen (but mostly sportsmen) doing goofy stuff.
When I met Robbie Kaye at Photolucida last month, she showed me an image she’d made only two weeks prior. This is a live and lively pursuit.
Robbie has a few nice portraits in Beauty and Wisdom. This sentiment from Robbie’s statement really rang true for me:
“Beauty and Wisdom explores the grace and courage in which these women age in a society so heavily focused on the beauty of youth. Ironically, these are the women who opened doors for future generations and now they are part of an overlooked generation.“
The lifeless body of fifteen-year-old Fabienne Cherisma lies on the roof of a fallen building in downtown Port-au-Prince on January 19, 2010. Photo by Lucas Oleniuk / Toronto Star
Canadian photographer Lucas Oleniuk has been awarded a National Newspaper Award in Canada for his image of Fabienne Cherisma dead on a Port-au-Prince roof-top, one week after the Haiti Earthquake.
Eight weeks ago Paul Hansen won a national award in his home country of Sweden. In March, I wrote about Hansen’s and other photographers’ awards for coverage of Fabienne’s death – Brouhaha in Sweden following Award to Paul Hansen for his Image of Fabienne Cherisma.
That’s now five photographers recognised for their images made within the space of an hour on a Tuesday afternoon.
Photo: Nathan Weber
ALSO IN THE ‘PHOTOGRAPHING FABIENNE’ SERIES
Part One: Fabienne Cherisma (Initial inquiries, Jan Grarup, Olivier Laban Mattei)
Part Two: More on Fabienne Cherisma (Carlos Garcia Rawlins)
Part Three: Furthermore on Fabienne Cherisma (Michael Mullady)
Part Four: Yet more on Fabienne Cherisma (Linsmier, Nathan Weber)
Part Five: Interview with Edward Linsmier
Part Six: Interview with Jan Grarup
Part Seven: Interview with Paul Hansen
Part Eight: Interview with Michael Winiarski
Part Nine: Interview with Nathan Weber
Part Ten: Interview with James Oatway
Part Eleven: Interview with Nick Kozak
Part Twelve: Two Months On (Winiarski/Hansen)
Reporter Rory Carroll Clarifies Some Details
Part Fourteen: Interview with Alon Skuy
Part Fifteen: Conclusions (04.08.2010)
Fabienne Cherisma’s Corpse Features at Perpignan (09.07.2010)
Brouhaha in Sweden following Award to Paul Hansen for his Image of Fabienne Cherisma (03.23.2011)
Photo Credit: Nina Berman
Recently, Bryan Formhals pleaded for photographers to write more; Joerg repeated the call.
Nina Berman, a very intelligent photographer, is also a fierce writer with undeviating message. On the 6th May, Berman wrote this:
“The Taliban stone women, we act outraged, spend billions trying to destroy them. And here in the land of the free? We dress girls up, shove shit in their mouths, make them plead for more, smile while they’re being tortured, gang bang them with multiple partners in multiple entry points, infect them, drug them, then dress them up with fake tits and travel them on the convention (prostitution) circuit. Annual US sales $10 billion. Worldwide porn industry sales are more than Apple, Google, Amazon and Microsoft combined.”
Newark, New Jersey, December 2009: A Buthanese refugee is changing his shirt siting on the floor of his room. CREDIT: Gabriele Stabile/CesuraLab
Four years ago, Gabriele Stabile of CesuraLab went out to photograph in the airport hotels of New York, Newark, Chicago, Miami and Los Angeles – the five official US ports of entry for approved asylum seekers. The result The Refugee Hotel (originally The Refugee Motel) has been steadily added to since.
‘The “Refugee Hotels” are today’s Ellis Islands. Places of temporary lodging on refugees’ journeys from where ever “there” was to wherever in America they end up. My intention was to document the moments between two kinds of uncertainty. Refugees come fleeing hunger, they come from forced exile, they come escaping certain death. Some spend years in camps waiting for their ballot to be cast. I spoke to one person who’d waited seven years to talk to me in an anonymous hotel room in Newark, New Jersey. The resettlement process, even with all its difficulties and challenges, must be light years away from the harsh realities of life in a refugee camp. Still, I don´t know what to make of the establishing shot we start their American stories with: standardized hotel chains.’
The Refugee Hotel recently achieved it’s next phase by securing a pre-print agreement with McSweeney’s and raising $6,000 on Kickstarter to publish a book.
This is a fascinating project about immigration because while the lives of the subjects are swept up in global politics, there’s no possibility of them being caught up in the rhetoric of illegal immigration. Quite contrary, these are formerly persecuted people for whom the United States of America hold a real shot at stability.
Perhaps, Stabile’s photographs are of nascent American dreams, or maybe they’re simply the first images of American lives?
Stabile interviews with FADER and Miss Rosen.
Prison Photography 