You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Opinion’ category.
Ryan Lobo talked about three of his projects at a recent TED conference. The first story Lobo told stopped me in my tracks.
Lobo photographed Joshua, a man formerly known as General Buttnaked, who had committed heinous crimes against humanity during Liberia’s civil war. Joshua is now a baptised evangelist and as he entered villages across Liberia again, he did so not to destroy them but to ask for forgiveness.
The level of forgiveness that he asks for is galling to the Western mind. 10,000 lives. The ask itself is cruel.
During the war Joshua fought naked (hence the name). He murdered, raped and tortured thousands of Liberians. He corrupted hundreds of youngsters inducting them into war, enforcing his command over the boy-soldiers with unspeakable brutality. They are now destitute; many addicted to drugs. Heroin is commonly abused.
Joshua spoke from a soap box to crowds often including his victims. Lobo admits he thought Joshua would be killed by the mob in a short time after beginning the tour.
But Joshua was not killed.
How do we tally this story of redemption (if that term is not obnoxious in this instance) and this version of restorative engagement between perpetrator and victim with our Western codes of justice?
And as Lobo asks, does forgiveness replace justice?
I have no answers.
Larry Sultan is gone. When someone is gone I try to identify a piece of wisdom that should not go with them. (Go straight to the bottom of this post for Sultan’s wisdom without my preface.)
Six years ago, my partner and I stood in front of one of his large Valley prints at SAM’s Baja to Vancouver exhibition. During the early months of our relationship, we’d picked apart topics of passive violence, misogyny and late capitalism as a matter of course. Sultan’s photograph spurred debate on, again, and in novel directions.
Sultan’s photographic series are all deliberate, different and exemplary. He identified something that needed to be done (differently) and worked his way to a solution. This was his genius.
Evidence shifted thinking not only the fine art world and the academy but also in popular culture. It preempted a widening reverence for the tangible image – a trend that dominates our post-film nostalgia for found and vernacular photography. Joerg’s recent musings about curator and editor can predate self-publishing online technologies and hark back to Sultan and Mandel ferreting about government archives.
The Valley is iconic. Although, it is interesting to hear Sultan describe a project that I thought stripped (pun intended) the porn industry to its boring facts. Not so:
“The sex industry can be such a tired, worn out subject but when it’s imported into kitchens and dining rooms of a middle class suburban home something new opens up. At least for me it did.”
Pictures from Home goes alongside Toledano’s Days with My Father for the privilege of emotional inclusion it gives the audience.
And, finally, Homeland is a beautiful reconciliation of Sultan’s new Bay Area living:
“Light’s too hard where I live, it’s hard to work in it. The character of light means a lot to me. It’s how I begin to photograph, it’s usually with the light. So it’s a bit problematic. L.A. light, that kind of foggy, smoggy, soft light—I miss that. It’s the light of my childhood. There are certain sounds, feelings of the air, and all of that which you can’t photograph but you can find the equivalent of, in light. But who knows, maybe I can find a new version of that in Northern California.”
The marshes of Corte Madera and fog of Marin County provided Sultan his respite from direct San Francisco sunshine.
Sultan died at 63. Relatively young. Yet, the inquisitive spirit of his work means he got more than enough done before his early departure. A oeuvre by which one is humbled.
Sultan’s interview with Ben Sloat featured on American Suburb X yesterday originally appeared on Big, Red and Shiny in April, 2008.
The stand-out quote is simultaneously a lament AND a call for rigorous photographic practice:
Which accumulated representations are you battling with? What do you need to stop doing because its been done before?
… it is a Journal.
That wasn’t always the case. Two days ago, I’d have said I was a blogger .. and all the time before that.
But describing yourself as a blogger is a lot like describing yourself as a tax-payer – regardless of one’s contribution, induction into either role is without obstruction; neither role describes the contribution but merely acknowledges sign-up to the system; and, if either role is entered into with ambivalence the reality of the commitment is soon apparent.
Blogging is a much maligned activity … and rightly so. There’s too much noise. Several types survive in the blogging ecosystem. The truly inventive and readable bloggers sit top of the tree – it is they in whom we invest energies and time .. and they are a rarer breed. That group is outnumbered by other types – the martyr, the sycophant, the gossip, the marketer, the angry, the bored, the pedant, the populist, the rich and the wasteful.
I am not in the first bunch and I want to stay clear of the second.
And, one wants to be defined by more than the [blogging] tool that one uses, right?
On Monday, a buddy said rather nicely, “I like what you’re up to. That journal you keep about prisons and photography is cool. You know, like in the tradition of poets or theorists or madmen who don’t really know where they’re headed but are just exploring a theme to see where it takes them. Because they’re compelled.” Right on.
My mate Wikipedia says, “Strong psychological effects may arise from having an audience for one’s self-expression, even if the journal one writes in is only read by oneself.”
I guess I am happy with the thought experiment alone as justification for this journal.
I’ve always answered people’s inquiries about Prison Photography by describing my various interests and the fact I couldn’t describe (or really expect) an audience for them in one package. Also, that I don’t know if there’s a product or how ‘product’ is quantified.
But, then, who among this company of distinguished diarists knew their audience?
My rather nice buddy is also now a published photographer:
Somebody Wrote “Shit” on a Sign Advertising Condominiums, Seattle. (2009).
From the ‘Mobile Phone, Arm, Car, Sidewalk’ series. © Maia Ipp.
Of course, everyone in the photobooks debate had their own preface and a necessary confirmation bias to bolster. Andy and Miki unleashed a monster. Great stuff.
IT’S THE EYE OF THE BURGER, IT’S THE CREAM OF THE FIGHT …
Hamburger Eyes has my mostest respect so far. HE is rightly confident in the book as a medium; HE doesn’t uphold a naive belief in the internet or technologies to deliver ALL the goods; and they make a call for real life.
Photos and photographers should “get into some shit” away from the web.
Hamburger says:
I was asked to write my thoughts on this subject as part of a forum in the form a blog, meaning FLAK PHOTO and LIVEBOOKS are writing about the subject and inviting others to join in by writing something, linking it, then they re-link it up for an ultimate future post of all of it together in one blog? I don’t know I’m confused too. Blogs eat blogs, and they never be not hungry.
Blogging is a good segway into my thoughts about the future of photo books. I’m thinking the internet is turning into a library or more like jail for your photos. Yes, libraries are way awesome and yes we are all photo nerds forever learning, but how long can you stay in there. It’s like detention for your photos. Saturday school. Your photos need to get out, go on dates, and get into some shit.
What happens next is what’s already happening now. Photogs are deleting their flickr and their blogs and crewing up with only the hardest realist ninjas. It’s hyper attack mode. Photogs are scrambling because their agency just cut them and their editors got laid off. Not to mention, “Oh, you shot this or that, someone else caught it before you on their cell phone and New York Times already spent their budget on those.”
HERE’S WHAT I SAY
I wrote a huge treatise not only on the future of books, but on the future of the image and the future of our existence based upon our surrender to the image. We will soon all be docile slaves.
I shelved the piece. I’ll need to chew on it for a while until the next photoblog debate about the future of photography/contracts/journalism/print/distribution/consumption comes along. My main points will still apply:
– E-books is an oxymoron. Hopefully, all digital text will be referred to as E-words.
– Actual books will be fewer in quantity and higher in quality.
– Open source will dominate, because ownership of any digital matter will become useless.
– Micropayments are bogus. In the future if a creator unleashes it on the web, they will hold no claim to it
– Every household will have access to rapidly improving printing technology; any available online material will be printable to spec.
– Handhelds will have instance access to every non-proprietary file on the internet.
– People will have self-facilitated projections to the sides of buildings as a legitimate alternative to books when experiencing images.
– We will become detached from one another. Those who question the mediation of technology – even moderately – will be ostracised. In this regard, book ownership will become a slightly perverse political act.
One glaring omission from Prison Photography is ICE detention centres and the prisons specifically designed for immigrants. Apart from the public stunts of Sheriff Arpaio (here and here) I have not featured any photography of immigrant detention or prisons.
This is partly because immigration policy and deportation infrastructures aren’t an area I know much about, but mainly because immigrant jails and prisons are the most invisible of all prisons in America. The media simply cannot get access like they can into state and county sites of incarceration.
As a course of policy, ICE detention sites are kept hidden. Allow me to push back against that a little:
Map courtesy of Global Detention Project.
More resources at the Detention Watch Network
In an attempt to redress this dearth of immigration coverage on Prison Photography, I point you in the direction of Tom Barry’s interview on Fresh Air yesterday. Thanks to Bob for the tip-off.
Here’s some things I learnt:
– Over the past five years immigrant imprisonment has increased 400%
– The policy of immediate deportation for illegal immigrants was replaced by imprisonment and deportation; a deliberate tactic intended to punish and deter future attempts to cross the US border illegally.
– Legal definitions of crime have broadened since 1996. Couple this with a syncopation of agency databases means constant threats of stop, search, detention and deportation of immigrants (both legal and illegal) now exist that did not 5 years ago.
– In this new era distinctions between legal and illegal immigrants have shrunk.
– Legal immigrants are subject to “a separate penal system”.
– 30% of deportees to Mexico don’t speak Spanish.
– The 11 border prisons are intentionally remote and located in economically depressed towns along the US/Mexico border.
– Immigrant prisons have a structure of financing and ownership that is unique. Tom Barry calls it “The Public/Private Prison Complex”, in which tax dollars and private corporations mix and match the funding. In many instances, administrators could not actually state who owned the facilities. This results in diluted accountability.
– The Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the Geo group are the two largest private prison companies involved in immigrant detention.
– Privatised prisons were once a rarity in America. CCA and Geo got their start under Reagan winning contracts to house immigrants.
– CCA and Geo have enjoyed record profits over the past 8 years. 45% of their income derives from from state and federal contracts outsourcing immigrant detention.
– The perversely named ‘Operation Reservation Guaranteed’ means that detainees will always be sent to a bed/cell even if it is on the other side of the country. The transportation costs are met by the tax-payer.
– Wackenhut, an arm of Geo group, is the sub-contractor for these long, expensive and unnecessary transportations.
– It is common that detainees are moved without warning or reason. It is common that detainees cannot be located by the private prison companies for long periods.
– And much, much more. Listen, I highly recommend.
Tom Barry covers border security and immigration issues as the Senior Policy Analyst at the Center for International Policy. He has written several books, including The Great Divide and Zapata’s Revenge.
Tom just published A Death in Texas a piece for the Boston Review about a riot at an ICE prison in Texas. The riot was an “act of solidarity” by the detained population following the death of a young prisoner.
Tom maintains the Border Lines blog for the TransBorder Project is a project of the Americas Policy Program in Mexico City and the Center for International Policy in Washington, DC..
Let me be clear, I don’t like private prisons. The need for profit to satisfy shareholders allows for cost cutting that can deprive a system (and its inmates) much-needed resources and possibly rehabilitative opportunities.
This is a general opposition but I currently see nothing to suggest the mandate of private prisons is anything more than that to securely hold its wards.
Andrew Leigh, an Australian economist is suggesting a third way which conjoins market incentives with successful reentry practices. He wants to see prisons with the lowest recidivism rates among its released inmates to reap financial award.
This comes from an article “Shock, An Economist Has a Good Idea!” While I’d temper such enthusiasm, I would like to see the idea investigated a little more. It could lead to private prisons committed to aggressive Research and Development in practices that lower recidivism.
My only worry would be that they’d compete for a finite amount of money and merely create a static ecosystem of excelling, well-funded prisons vs. forsaken, poor-funded prisons.
Michigan Central Station. Disused since 1988. Pic by Romain Meffre
Darulaman Palace, Kabul. Pic by SirFin at Panoramio.
Over the past nine months I’ve enjoyed Jamblichus‘ persistent and meta-disciplined research and writing. Alas, Jamblichus is taking an extended holiday until the new year. He explains, “Terra Firma is going to have to take precedence, for it is a demanding place …”
I want to mark Jamblichus’ sabbatical with a big hat-tip. Fortunately for you he has kindly listed his most treasured works from 2009.
Be absolutely certain to read A Tale of Two Cities: Detroit and Kabul.
The piece goes from to Motor City’s 29% unemployment to Paul Simon’s ‘air of carbon and monoxide’; from poppy fields to the ‘Daisy-cutter’ ordinance “designed to kill your wife and your kids”; from Detroit’s new casinos and wild dogs to the hippie trail of the sixties experienced from vans “likely built in Detroit”; from the first Marks & Spencer in Central Asia (Kabul, 1960) to the necessary down-sizing of America’s failed urban expansions … and of course there’s the decay.
It is the best of opinion writing, replete with links that make your head spin and a fecund smattering of profanity.
The first Spaniard to discover the island was Juan Manuel de Ayala in 1775, who charted San Francisco Bay and named the island “La Isla de los Alcatraces,” which translates as “The Island of the Pelicans,” from the archaic Spanish alcatraz, “pelican”, a word which was borrowed originally from Arabic: al-qaṭrās, meaning sea eagle.
Source
Last Friday, I posted a well received interview with Ilka Hartmann, a photographer of the Indian Occupation of Alcatraz. In a quick follow up I wanted to share with you two things:
1. The above photo because I think it is wonderful.
2. CNN’s feature in which Adam Fortunate Eagle talks of the effect the Occupation – the most important event in Native American history since the 1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn – had for establishing and progressing the Native American’s call for awareness, rights and reparation.
Prison Photography 