Photographing Fabienne: Part Fourteen – Interview with Alon Skuy

April 8, 2010 in Interview, Photography: Non-Prison, Photojournalism | Tags: , , , | by | 1 comment

PART FOURTEEN IN A SERIES OF POSTS DISCUSSING PHOTOGRAPHERS’ ACTIONS AND RESPONSES TO THE KILLING OF FABIENNE CHERISMA IN PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI ON THE 19TH JANUARY 2010.

Alon Skuy, photographer for The Times in South Africa, was in Haiti from 17th – 22nd January.

Fabienne was shot at approximately 4pm. What had you photographed earlier that day?
General looting and destruction in the downtown area of Port-Au-Prince.

How many other photographers did you see at the scene? Do you know the photographers’ names?
Contrary to another article on this site, there were three South African Photographers on the scene: myself, Felix Dlangamandla and James Oatway.

How was the atmosphere? How did others behave?
The atmosphere was very tense and thick with emotion. It was quite a chaotic scene. Photographers were jostling for images. On the whole, I feel that the photographers behaved
respectfully on the scene.

Did you discuss the tragedy with other photographers?
Yes, briefly on the scene with the two other South African photographers, we were all aware of each others presence.

How long was it until her family and father arrived to carry away Fabienne’s corpse?
About 30 minutes.

How long did you follow the group as they carried her away?
For about three kilometers down the main road.

Where was their destination? How far away was that?
Their destination seemed to be a market where Fabienne’s mother, as well as other relatives may have been.

Amante Kelcy, Fabienne's Mother (in white) mourns the death of her daughter © Alon Skuy

How does Fabienne’s death fit in with the visual narratives of Haiti’s earthquake aftermath?
An important event to cover, imperative to show the desperation due to lack of aid getting through, and the inhumane fashion in which the law enforcement behaved at times. The family were obviously really distraught.

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Both images © Alon Skuy. From top, Osam Cherisma mourns the death of his daughter Fabienne; Amante Kelcy, Fabienne’s mother (in white), mourns the loss of her daughter.

– – –

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 Fifteen: Conclusions

Photographing Fabienne: Rory Carroll Clarifies the Details

April 7, 2010 in Photography: Non-Prison | Tags: , , , | by | 1 comment

PART THIRTEENTH INSTALLMENT IN A SERIES OF POSTS DISCUSSING JOURNALISTS ACTIONS AND RESPONSES TO THE KILLING OF FABIENNE CHERISMA IN PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI ON THE 19TH JANUARY 2010.

The world only knew of Fabienne Cherisma’s life in the aftermath of her death.

15-year-old Fabienne Cherisma lies dead after being shot in the head in Port-au-Prince. Photograph: Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters

Carlos Garcia Rawlins’ photograph was used for Rory Carroll’s Guardian article, He had not picked her up since she was a toddler. Last week he carried her home (Tuesday 26th January). The article is succinct and dignified; Rory Carroll details Fabienne’s simple life and bold aspirations. For me, it remains the best news piece I have read about Fabienne and her family.

Thus, I went to the source and asked Rory to clear up some basic facts about Fabienne’s story.

PP: When did you meet with the Cherisma family?

RC: I met them on Friday 22nd January. I interviewed the parents and sister, Amanda, at their market-stall, and accompanied them to their home where we finished the interview.

PP: Who exactly, makes up Fabienne’s immediate family? I have seen many different spellings – can you verify their names?

RC: Father Osam, mother Amante Kerly, sister Amanda, brothers Ruben, Jeff, Jimmy and Biterly (not sure about spelling of latter, nor if brother or sister). (In all the photographs of the Cherismas the only brother known to us is Jeff (below). Many news outlets – including this blog – have had Amanda incorrectly referred to as Samantha)

PP: When was Fabienne buried in Zorange? What date?

RC: Wednesday 20th, the day after she was killed. (This answer is interesting as it means that Nick Kozak and the Cherismas chanced upon one another on the same day she was buried – I presume before the Cherismas left for Zorange.)

Photo: Nick Kozak, January 20, 2010

PP: What did the Cherismas intend to do.

RC: [They planned to] continue as before, working at the stall, with no plans to sue or prosecute.

PP: You said at the end of your report, “The one photo of her, in which she smiles, is lost. So is her birth certificate. The family thinks the hospital which recorded her birth was destroyed. There is no police investigation and the death is not registered. Officially, it is as if the teenager never was.” Do you think this will always be the case?

RC: Maybe not. Hopefully not – given the media attention paid to the story.

– – –

Time and time again through my investigation I have found that few, if any, options exist for the Cherismas to launch an inquiry and insist upon an accountability for Fabienne’s death. The idea that they’ll “continue as before” – as if the expectation of public awareness and criminal prosecution is unreasonable – is a travesty.

– – –

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)

Part Fourteen: Interview with Alon Skuy
Part Fifteen: Conclusions

War, PTSD, Soldiers and Prisons

April 6, 2010 in Photojournalism, Press | Tags: , , , , , , , | by | Leave a comment

WAR

In many ways I am surprised it has taken so long for a reel of film to make such an immediate impact on American audiences. The wikileaked military footage Collateral Murder shows us exactly what war is; war is the erasure of doubt, benefit of doubt in the face of procedure. The procedure of war is to kill.

Photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen runs for his life in the midst of a US 30mm machine-gun assault

Following the helicopter gunman’s requests to engage, the wait for the permission is one of the most haunting silences I’ve heard. And then, murder. Is it any wonder PTSD follows such carnage?

PRISONS

Ever since Change.org published With 140,000 Veterans in Prison, We Can Do Better last Veteran’s Day I have been aware of stories about the links between violence and suffering abroad with violence and suffering within US communities.

This week two stories surfaced – one from either side of the Atlantic – which illustrate two common scenarios for returning service men and women. The first is clinical depression in the from of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and the second is clinical depression in the form of addiction and aggressive behaviours.

At the Mid-Orange Correctional Facility in Warwick, N.Y., service dogs share a room with the prisoners who help train them. Photo: Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

PTSD

Stephen Crowley visited Mid-Orange Correctional Facility in Warwick, N.Y. to document the Puppies Behind Bars program. (I have mentioned this initiative before at a NY womens prison).

The program at Mid-Orange serves as rehabilitation in the form of responsibility, “softening up” and purpose in the direct service to outside communities. One of the growing communities to benefit from personally trained service dogs are America’s war veterans.

Staff Sgt. Aaron Ellis, suffering from PTSD had not been to the supermarket in three years until his prison-trained service dog gave him the confidence to step into the stimulating environment.

Watch the New York Times’ slideshow A Canine Treatment for PTSD.

CRIME

The Times Newspaper (UK) published From Hero to Zero reporting the fortunes of three ex-soldiers who’ve done time. Their addiction and aggression is often the result of either undiagnosed or untreated PTSD. The Times:

There is a widespread belief that post-traumatic stress disorder, occasioned by Britain’s engagement in two brutal wars, is behind the large numbers of veterans who offend. The truth is muddier. PTSD normally takes several years after the traumatic event to set in.

The Howard League for Penal Reform has launched an independent inquiry to bring this to public attention in the UK.

Former UK soldier, Michael Clohessy sleeps with a sword under his pillow. Photo TIMES Newspaper, UK

One of the biggest stumbling blocks for understanding and working to improve the prospects of the veteran/prisoner population is that the exact figures are not known and estimates vary wildly. The Times:

We send too many ex-servicemen to prison. How many, nobody is sure. A recent study by the National Association of Probation Officers (Napo) estimated that there may be as many as 8,500 ex-servicemen in prison out of a total prison population of 92,000. Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of the organisation, believes that around 8% of Britons in jail are from the forces. The vast majority of these offenders are from the army, and a large majority of the ex-army are from the infantry. But other groups have taken issue with Napo’s findings. The Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Defence conducted their own survey, which they published in January, concluding that only 3% of the prison population were former members of the military — around 2,500 veterans in total.

I think the title of the Times piece suggests it all – From Hero to Zero.We freely project the character of a man based upon our knowledge of his or her publicly performed actions. This is okay, but it mustn’t be only form part of our assessment. Heroes are never heroes, and zeroes are never zeroes; they are stereotypes. Stereotypes are often benign but sometimes damaging and paralysing to good judgement.

WHAT TO THINK?

Our prisons are filled with a wide variety of people with a wide variety of faults, competencies, potential and histories. For the most part, the authorities are aware of this, but I am not always convinced the public is.

Is it in our interest to think of these diverse populations in prison? Does this affect how we consider prisons and prison reform?

What do we need to see (photography?) – as well as read – to think of prisons in more reflexive ways?

Guantanamo: The Architecture of Stupidity

April 5, 2010 in Opinion, Press | Tags: , , | by | Leave a comment

Last week, I said that photographs from Guantanamo now teach us nothing. I should qualify that statement; photographs will tell us nothing new of the military operations, procedures and especially not future plans for the site.

It does not mean, however, that photographs are useless. Visual sources can be presented to refine existing positions of that illegal and politically foolish site.

Looking at the same set of photographs by Tim Dirven, Robert Hariman of NO CAPTION NEEDED has drafted a position that describes the growing and inevitable non-utility of Guantanamo as it relates to the discredited policy that originally led to its construction and use.

“An architecture of stupidity begins to emerge.  For example, the extreme functionality of the space that actually inhibits any reasonable use, much less any use that might lead to resolution of the larger conflict. Also perhaps the over-design of the security apparatus: tables bolted to the floor within a cage will have their rationale, but there is something so excessive here that it has to be a sign of arbitrary rules, endless procedures, and near-complete inattention to anything else but the literal replication of the machinery of power.  Nor is that a dynamic process, but one that depends on stasis, on the inactivity, boredom, and habitual resignation to routine evident in the guards’ postures.”

“[Guantanamo] prison is a monument to stupidity.  It is not enough to reform the prison, however.  My point is that the national security state produces stupidity because it depends upon stupidity.  The national interest of a democratic people may be served well by reason, but the modern state, to the extent that it is a regime of coercive control, will rely on another mentality: stupidité d’état.”

(My bolding)

Typologies of Prison Tools

April 4, 2010 in Amateur, Documentary, Fine Art, Institutional | Tags: , , , , , , , , | by | Leave a comment

It was either Beierle or Kei­jser (one of the Mrs. Deane halflings) who emailed and pointed out Simon Menner‘s photographic series Objects – 2010.

FAKE HEAD. Pillow, hat, paper, piece of Tetra Pak, hairs from a broom. @ Simon Menner

Typology is a trendy term that gets banded about easily these day but I have no better term for the straight photography of objects as these. Menner is the latest photographer in an ever-increasing line of prison tool and prison weapon typologists.

In 2005, Marc Steinmetz photographed the manufactured items of Santa Fu, Celle, Wolfenbuttel and Ludwigsburg prisons in Germany. (Featured on PP, July 2009)

Brett Yasko produced the independent book Shiv that features eleven prisoner-made weapons from the collection of Chris Kasabach and Vanessa Sica. The shivs were confiscated in the 1980s at Rahway – now known as East Jersey State Prison. Yasko’s photographs were presented in Design Observer’s feature Art of the Shiv.

Prior to 2008, Toño Vega Macotela was visiting Santa Martha Acatitla Prison, Mexico regularly and his photographs were showcased by Toxicocultura recently (via James).

Cooking Grill No.2 © Toño Vega Macotela

Pages of Brett Yasko's book 'Shiv'. © Brett Yasko

Multibladed Shiv. Image © Brett Yasko

Radio Receiver within Encyclopedia. © Marc Steinmetz, 2002

RADIO. Book, electronics (the title of the book translates “The Reputable Merchant”) © Simon Menner

The usual commentary for these types of typology is to admire the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the inmate. Notably, all four photographers have given “backstories” or contexts for the production and/or confiscation of the objects they’ve photographed. For example, Menner explains, “The objects presented here have all been seized in prison cells of the Berlin Tegel prison.” Menner also thanks the staff for allowing access. These extra details are essential if we are to avoid wonder and mere image-consumption.

These typological studies run the risk of serving politiicised positions; of becoming metaphors for human creativity or resistance.

(Worse still, the item and/or photograph is reduced to an objet d’Art.)

THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THINGS

Menner himself is concerned with how images and stories may or may not attach themselves, “What fascinates me here is the very old question of how much of the final object is already “inscribed” in its parts, even before its creation. And by asking this question I also ask a basic question on the nature of images. How much of a story is visible in the images, even before the story itself is unveiled?”

So what do you first think or ask when viewing these images? For me, I want to learn about the institutions, penology and prevailing criminal justice culture in which these inmates functioned:

With regard Yasko’s work – Why were so many shivs made at Rahway? And what led to two collectors acquiring them? With regard Menner and Steinmetz, what uses were dummy pistols and mobile phones put to inside those German prisons?

Fine art representations of these objects mustn’t be the end product in their object biographies. Narratives in the “Social Life of Things” do not end but morph.

The photographs of Yasko, Steinmetz, Macoleta and Menner impose new readings and establish new jumping off points for inquiry.

Device to hide a mobile phone. © Simon Menner

DUMMY PISTOL from blackened cardboard; found on June 23, 1988, in an inmate’s cell in Stammheim prison, Germany, after a fellow prisoner tipped off the jailers. The dummy was hidden in an empty milk pack and was most probably intended to be used for taking hostages in an escape attempt. @ Marc Steinmetz

Sometimes Paintings are Better than Photographs

April 4, 2010 in Amateur, Press | Tags: , , , , | by | 2 comments

It’s only fair to compare Obama’s 2009 outing with the big rabbit with George W. Bush’s 2008 appearance.

But sometimes pigment trumps pixels.

Painting by Dan Lacey

Martin Plaut, Africa Editor for the BBC on Terre’Blance’s Murder

April 4, 2010 in Opinion | Tags: , , | by | Leave a comment

Plaut on racial tensions, sick politics, terrible stats and a worst case scenario:

For most South Africans, Eugene Terre’Blanche was a throwback to another era. But his death is a blow to the country’s image of racial tolerance, fostered so carefully by Nelson Mandela.

Some are likely to believe that the fact that his alleged attackers were arrested so rapidly smacks of a cover-up. Others, on the minority far-right fringe, will see his death as a vindication of their assertion that whites cannot live under black rule.

It is a tragic fact that more than 3,000 white farmers have been murdered since the end of apartheid in 1994. And it is possible that some people may seek retribution.

Mr Terreblanche’s funeral could become a rallying point for such sentiment.

Source: Terre’Blanche death brings Zuma appeal for calm, Sunday, 4 April 2010

Eugene Terre’Blanche is Dead

April 3, 2010 in Documentary | Tags: , , , , , | by | 8 comments

UPDATED: Ben sent over the link for SnagFilm’s page for the full-length documentary The Leader, his Driver, and the Driver’s Wife.

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Terre’Blanche was beaten and hacked to death in his home yesterday. The violence is no less horrific than that meted out by supporters of Terre’Blanche’s A.W.B. Party upon Black South Africans. On one occasion, A.W.B. members confronted Black miners as they surfaced at the pit-head after their shift and attacked them with clubs and machetes.

Terre’Blanche instigated many acts of heinous violence and murder. Terre’Blanche was also a terrorist. The Guardian:

In 1998, Terre’Blanche accepted “political and moral responsibility” before South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission for a bombing campaign to disrupt the 1994 elections in which 21 people were killed and hundreds injured.

Terre’Blanche’s A.W.B. Party was separatist and outside of the political mainstream but that doesn’t mean Terre’Blanche himself was disconnected from the apartheid era government of the 1980s and 90s. The A.W.B. existed for so long (since 1973) because of a constant fringe element willing to embrace white supremacist politics in South Africa

The Leader, his Driver, and the Driver’s Wife

In 1991, my favourite documentary maker Nick Broomfield, made The Leader, his Driver, and the Driver’s Wife. This film is available to UK readers on Channel 4 and for the rest of us on Youtube in seven parts.

Throughout the documentary, Broomfield drops in rumors and reports of sporadic violence by A.W.B. members against Black men, women and children. These matter-of-fact inserts, along with the run around he himself experiences as a working-journalist, is the volatile and irrational world in which Terre’Blanche’s racist rhetoric thrived.

When murdered, Terre’Blanche was 69 years old. The manner in which he antagonised and brutalised other humans about him, it is a wonder he lasted that long.

– – –

Note: I highly recommend Broomfield’s work, particularly Biggie and Tupac.

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