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Two photographers featured in the awards at Visa pour l’Image Perpignan for their work in Haiti. One of them photographed the aftermath of Fabienne Cherisma’s shooting.
DAMON
From Lens Blog:
“Damon Winter, a New York Times staff photographer, won the Visa d’Or news award for his photographs of Haiti. “Prayers in the Dark,” Jan. 15, 2010; “Where Is the Help?” Jan. 17, 2010; “Prison Break,” Jan. 19, 2010; and “Vignettes,” Feb. 3, 2010.”
Church Service, Haiti. © Damon Winter/The New York Times
Damon deserves the award. He succeeded where almost all other photojournalists failed and that was to dispatch thoughtful, emotionally affected work. He avoided some, not all, but some of the tropes of disaster photography.
Whether it was his or the New York Times’ decision to get him on the phone I don’t know, but the mix of audio and images was heartfelt. Michele McNally, director of photography at the Times backs this up.
Damon’s coverage of the broken Haiti prison was a story I followed (here, here and here). I interviewed Damon last year and I am sure he’ll take the honor with all the humility it demands.
Damon Winter was not witness to Fabienne’s death or its aftermath.
FABIENNE & FREDERIC
As many of you may know, I spent a lot of time looking at one particular incident in Haiti – the death of Fabienne Cherisma and the photographic activity about it.
Fabienne’s Father, Osama, and Fabienne’s sister mourn over the dead body of Fabienne Cherisma. Port-au-Prince, Haiti, January 19th, 2010
Frederic Sautereau, who was one of the last of the fifteen photographers I identified at Fabienne’s side.
Sautereau won the Visa d’Or daily press award for his work in Gaza for the French newspaper La Croix. He was also nominated this year for the Visa d’Or news award for his photos of Haiti after the earthquake.
In his Haiti portfolio, Sautereau has 7 or 8 images from around the time of Fabienne’s death. I am quite ambivalent about the work. Some of the images are as bloody as the ones I’ve chosen not to show previously on this blog.
ME
I must be wary of solipsism here. This isn’t about me. I want to convince you it shouldn’t be about Winter or Sautereau either. I want to bend your arm behind your back and tell you its all about Fabienne.
But, really, don’t I only care because I noted the story in January? And, despite all my efforts, I feel like I explained the circumstances of her death without actually improving her lot (in terms of justice) nor the lot of her family (in terms of healing or moving on or however you might measure that).
I guess I would just like to have handed out hard-copies of my inquiry and a CD of images to the Perpignan judges so that at least the possibility for remembrance could have carried with the awards.
Photo: Chris Mottalini
Quilting as a form of rehabilitation for prisoners may seem unorthodox, even beyond the pale, but really it doesn’t surprise me. It’s been put in place at Jefferson City Correctional Center, Missouri.
I was intrigued impressed by how the practice was described by this UTNE Reader article:
Restorative justice, which focuses on the victims needs, is potentially the sharp-end of a positive trend that deals with the emotional repercussions of crime, beyond simple notions of retribution … and its widespread implementation might just drive down US prison populations.
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Photographer, Chris Mottalini‘s other work can be viewed at http://www.mottalini.com/
Lance Duncan picks okra during a harvest session Friday, August 20, 2010 at the organic garden created by inmates and staff at the Travis County Crorrectional Complex in Del Valle. Duncan was enthusiastic about the garden and said he has been involved with organic vegetable gardening for a couple of years and plans to grow an organic vegetable garden after his release.
Photo by Larry Kolvoord. AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Organic gardens, indeed gardens of any sort, are not uncommon now in prisons of every state. They are, however, used sparingly at only the lowest security facilities. Rikers Island has a program, as do prisons in Washington State. Keep your eye out for more.
Before this post by The Austin American Statesman, I wasn’t aware of the program at Travis County Jail, Texas. Incidentally, Travis County also welcomed Billy Bragg and the JAIL GUITAR DOORS initiative at this years SXSW, which donates guitars to correctional facilities.
Kyodo/Reuters
The Japanese government opened up its execution chambers to the public for the first time on Friday, taking journalists on a tour of Tokyo’s main gallows. The insides were stark: a trapdoor, a Buddha statue and a ring for the noose.
[…]
“Apart from Japan and the United States, the other countries in the world that carry out capital punishment are those accused of other grave human rights violations,” said Kanae Doi, a lawyer who heads Human Rights Watch Japan. “Japan should be ashamed to be on that list.”
The US should be ashamed too.
Photograph: Benjamin Sklar for the Guardian
It’s just a brief account of his time in solitary and his time since the overturning of his conviction. 29 years in 24/7 lock-down is a long time for anyone, is it worse for someones who’s innocent?
“I didn’t realise how permanently the experience of solitary would mark me. Even now my sight is impaired. I find it very difficult to judge long distances – a result of living in such a small space.”
Photo: Chip Litherland
I spent all day looking at photography and this was the last thing through my RSS. Exhausted but pissed off, I have to post.
Chip Litherland (@chiplitherland) was on assignment for this story in the New York Times, and shared a few images on his blog. I simply copy & paste the comment I left with Chip here:
The red hues, the spot light (recalling war photography), the drama in general but most of all the solemnity of Jones who poses between the ultimate Hollywood myth and a shooting target – it reeks of a man who’s more obsessed with theatrics & violence than he ever will be with reality.
I expect this was one time you wanted to put down your objective journalist persona and tell him straight he’s a liar, a nutter and a danger to those fooled by his hate.
More of Chip’s images here.
Fair Warning: This will probably be the only post I do about the Islamophobia gripping the vocal minority in America. There’s no point talking about it; it’s hate and those spewing it are dangerous simpletons. My only worry is that TV will continue to bombard people with heady graphics, drastic statement and “passive wonderment” (as Jon Stewart has best described it). At this point, Fox News conjures the wildest conspiracy theories in America.
Ernest Morgan, an inmate since 1987, holds his prison-approved CD player. Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
My friend and colleague Matt Shechmeister at Wired’s Raw File just published Life on Lockdown: See-Through Gadgets, DIY Media, No Internet, an article and gallery on idiosyncratic prison technologies.
Matt went to San Quentin Prison with photographer Jon Snyder (@jonsnyder) to tour cells and music studios to report on the see-through typewriters, prison-sanctioned music selections and contracted companies all shaping the security-minded tech-culture at San Quentin.
Not an angle seen or read very often. Well worth checking out.
I have not and will not ever go through 90,000 pages of wikileaked documents covering US military operations (January 2004-December2009). But, if the Guardian tells me its legitimate and important, I’ll begin with that understanding.
What then, when Mother Jones – more precisely Adam Weinstein – comes along and tells me not to believe Assange’s hype?
Adam Weinstein at Mother Jones dismisses the import of the Afghan War Logs on wikileaks:
“In truth, there’s not much there. I know, because I’ve seen many of these reports before – at least, thousands of similar ones from Iraq, when I was a contractor there last year. I haven’t been through everything yet, but most of what you see on WikiLeaks are military SIGACTS (significant activity reports). These are theoretically accessible by anyone in Iraq, Afghanistan, or the Tampa, Florida-based US Central Command—soldiers and contractors—who have access to the military’s most basic intranet for sensitive data, the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet). Literally thousands of people in hundreds of locations could read them, and any one of them could be the source for WikiLeaks’ data.”
My question: Just because it is easy for service personnel or contractors to view the material doesn’t change the significance this leak has for the general public in its capacity to form a view of the war based on new material, does it? Weinstein counters again, “By and large, like most of the stunts pulled by Assange, this one’s long on light and short on heat, nothing we didn’t already know if you were paying attention to our wars.”
Weinstein does make the valid point that the lives of Afghan collaborators are now at risk, as their names are not redacted from the material.
Ultimately though, I fear the coverage of the leak may develop into a character dissection of Assange and “discussion” of the relative merits of new-journalism; the former will dominate and the latter could be fruitful but will probably miss the point.
I am in support of wikileaks, but mainly because I am opposed to the war. I don’t feel our media does a good enough job at getting to the realities of war for the American news consumer. We saw just last week that the mainstream media ceased using the word torture for water-boarding almost overnight. That linguistic culture shift suggests to me that the mainstream media are as subject to political pressures as any individual … so, why shouldn’t we have wikileaks mix it up? And why shouldn’t we think about the flows of information: or the definition of free media: or tactics are served when information is kept classified, hidden?
Prison Photography 