Archive for the ‘Photojournalism’ Category
Anthropocene
Please ‘like’ my article Dreamscapes: The Fantastical Photographs of Lieko Shiga published on TIME Magazine’s LightBox Blog.
David Thomas Smith, Three Gorges Dam, Sandouping, Yiling, People’s Republic of China, 2010-2011
David Thomas Smith’s photographic series ‘Anthropocene’ was recently exhibited at The Copper House Gallery in Dublin. The photographs are digitally assembled from a large number of Google Earth images which depict some of the world’s most recognizable manmade structures and urban landscapes. The satellite images are then both vertically and horizontally mirrored to create a visually striking tapestry effect. The similarity to a tapestry is reinforced by the large scale of the work and also by the inherent ‘flatness’ of satellite images of the Earth.
David Thomas Smith, Three Mile Island Generation Station, Middletown, Pennsylvania, United States of America, 2010-2011
David Thomas Smith, Beijing International Airport, Beijing, People’s Republic of China, 2009-10
Crucially, each location alludes to specific environmental concerns: ‘Three Mile Island’ relates to the threat of a nuclear meltdown, ‘Beijing’ perhaps points to a rise in pollution while the opulence of ‘Las Vegas’ questions our relationship with consumption. Other images equally refer to social problems specific to a place: the urban displacement caused by the Three Gorges Dam or the exploitation of cheap labour in Dubai. These references are produced not necessarily by the image as such, but by an understanding of the place that these images represent.
David Thomas Smith, Las Vegas, Nevada, United States of America, 2009-10
David Thomas Smith, Burj Dubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, 2009-10
The title of the project ‘Anthropocene’ is a geological term that describes how human activities have had a significant impact on the Earth’s ecosystems. The images similarly allude to the ecological and social impact of vast manmade structures. As a whole, the project questions man’s ability to create a better and more sustainable world at the cost of dwindling natural resources. Andreas Gursky – in his photograph ‘Beelitz’, 2007 for instance – might be exploring a similar agenda in his vast photographic depictions of landscapes affected by consumption and excess.
Andreas Gurksy, Beelitz, 2007
Inasmuch as the project relates to ecological and social tensions that rise in parallel to globalization, the mirroring of satellite images also relates to ideological, political and economic power. In the first instance, the project alludes to the power of representation. Satellite imaging and mapping is dominated by Google. To a large extent, our understanding of how the world looks may not be controlled by Google, but it is certainly dominated by the ever-growing economic might by the corporation.
In the second instance, the symmetrical structure of the images divided into quarters also relates to ideological power.
An overhead view as guest arrive at Margaret Thatcher’s funeral, St. Paul’s Cathedral, 2013
Governments and religious institutions have historically tapped into the persuasive powers of symmetry in their architecture. Churches are usually divided into four distinct parts, while dominant symmetrical structures are used to reinforce the ideological authority of the state. An overhead view of Margaret Thatcher’s funeral at St. Paul’s Cathedral recently published in the Guardian vividly illustrates the coming together of visual symmetry and aesthetics, on one hand, with political and religious structures, on the other hand.
David Thomas Smith, Las Norias de Daza, Almeria, Spain, 2009-10
This reading of Smith’s work is promoted through images that are neither didactic nor patronizing. The work could be enjoyed for purely aesthetic purposes. Yet it could also be seen to relate to some of he most pressing ecological and social issues of our time. III Originally published on photomonitor.co.uk
Please ‘like’ my article Dreamscapes: The Fantastical Photographs of Lieko Shiga published on TIME Magazine’s LightBox Blog.
Review of the Format Photography Festival
Darek Fortas, from the series ‘Coal Story’, 2011
The overriding theme of this year’s international photography festival Format, currently on display at various locations in Derby and beyond, is Factory – a purposefully broad term that has vast economic, social and political implications in a globalized world. The very first location of the festival, a former chocolate factory on the outskirts of the city, thus cunningly relates to the very subject exhibited in many of the photographs. Darek Fortas’ melancholic and equally aesthetic portrait of a coal mining community in Poland captures an outdated industry in decline. These images are however smartly juxtaposed with Ian Teh’s work which depicts a booming (and potentially threatening) coal mining industry in rural China.
Ian Teh, from the series ‘Dark Clouds’, 2012
Janet Delaney, from the series ‘I Am Your Address Of Happiness’, 2012
Many of the works appear to focus on the relationship between labour and class. Rather than representing the working class as anonymous mass however, the photographers selected for this exhibition appear keen on representing how social conditions affect the individual in a quickly shifting global economy. Janet Delaney’s project, for instance, vividly captures security personnel guarding houses of the wealthy in Delhi. The economic disparity between the rich and poor is referenced by the security guards’ little huts providing just enough space for one man. Confirming the Marxist undertone apparent throughout the festival, here, the worker has – quite literally – become alienated.
Sebastian Liste, from the series ‘Urban Quilombo’, 2010
As a consequence of the division of labour, classes, too, are divided and separated. Economic segregation and even ghettoization is brutally captured in Sebastian Liste’s portrayal of a community living in a former chocolate factory in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil. Liste’s work, reminiscent of the aesthetics in contemporary Danish photojournalism, depicts a tense, desperately unequal and unforgiving social environment in perpetual decline. In spite of this, Liste makes surprising discoveries of beauty, desire and perhaps even hope. Inasmuch as Liste’s monochromatic prints cover the full gamut from black to white, the exhibition as a whole covers a wide variety of emotions and subsequent interpretations.
David Chancellor, from the series ‘Pelepele’, 2010
David Chancellor’s project Pelepele focuses on KwaZulu-Natal women who work in the tree farming industry in the greater Eastern Cape area of South Africa. The beauty of the lone figures in the vast landscape clearly evokes the trope of the farm worker commonly found in Dutch and Flemish landscape painting. Yet in Chancellor’s project, the focus shifts from the labourer to the product of her labour – in this case timber. The photographs allude to the dynamics of an increasingly globalized world in which the prices of commodities rise and fall in line with global demand. Similarly, in this economic exchange, the labourer too becomes an exchangeable commodity.
Maria Kapajeva, from the series ‘I Am Usual Woman’, 2012
The commodification of the worker, or more specifically, the commodification of the body in a globalized economy is most directly explored in the digitally altered photographs of Russian ‘mail-order-brides’ by Maria Kapajeva. In these ‘found’ boudoir photographs, Kapajeva protected the identity of her subjects by digitally covering their half-naked bodies with textured elements that appear in the original image – wallpaper or curtains for instance. Yet these visually very effective alterations of the original image do not disguise the fact that the women crudely objectify themselves in the photographs. The subjects’ vicinity to the bed quite directly implies a promise of sexual gratification for those who wish to place an ‘order’.
Freya Najade, from the series ‘Strawberries in Winter’, 2012
The University of Derby (Markeaton Street Campus) is another major exhibition site for the festival. Here, the focus appears to be a more overt reference to the dynamics of globalization. Freya Najade’s project ‘Strawberries in Winter’ documents vast greenhouses that grow fruit and vegetables destined for the European market. As the lack of human presence indicates, the production of food as a commodity is almost entirely computerized and artificial. Wolfgang Müller on the other hand photographs so-called ‘mingong’, Chinese migrant workers, who provide factories with a constant flow of cheap and easily exchangeable labour. In contrast to the shiny surfaces of products destined for the West, the images vividly indicate that the social condition of the migrant worker is characterized by exploitation, alienation and claustrophobia.
Andrew Emond, from the series ‘Objects of Consequence’, 2012
Andrew Emond’s oblique images of abandoned factories and workplaces in the UK confirms the downfall of once thriving industries – a fact that is all too apparent in Derby which is located in the former industrial heartland of England. Joanne Betty Conlon’s photographs of British office workers alludes to what is left once production has shifted to the Far East: meaningless and mind-numbing jobs in the service industry. Conlon emphasizes the banality of her subjects’ condition by photographing them as reflections in the office window. The result is a visually and conceptually loaded double image of an outside and an inside world. The workers appear trapped, longing to be elsewhere, outside.
Joanne Betty Conlon, from the series ‘Office Reflections’, 2012
The reoccurring motif of the closed-down factory as a signifier for the economic shifts of globalization is revisited at the Quad Gallery in the city centre which is also the main location for the festival. Patricia van de Camp’s surprisingly surreal photographs show wildlife traversing abandoned factories. The series constitutes a form of poetic justice as the animal kingdom is portrayed as repossessing a land that was once theirs. Dionysis Kouris on the other hand photographs migrants who have made their temporary home in a former Columbia record studio in Athens. The vast studio complex functions as a social microcosm with its own laws and rules for about 200 migrants waiting to move on.
Patricia van de Camp, from the series ‘Urban Wildlife’, 2012
Dionysis Kouris, from the series ‘Transit in Columbia Athens’, 2010
Eric Kessels’ collection of found photography albums has been given the most amount of space at the festival. The headline act, so to speak, is the photograph as material object. Here too, the exhibition purposefully indicates an industry that is in decline: in a digital age the family photo-album is quickly becoming a curious object from the past. Kessels’ work as a collector of photographs is akin to that of an archaeologist digging up visual artifacts from the past: a French couple totally obsessed with taking pictures of their dogs, an Indian couple proudly photographed in a studio setting or a moustache-wearing man’s frequent visits to a belly dancer bar in Istanbul candidly captured in a series of black and white photographs.
The photographs on display at the Format festival provide a challenging and intellectually stimulating representation of globalization from a multitude of perspectives and sources. Reaching across geographic boundaries and photographic methodologies, the beauty of the works can be found in the way that the nearly 100 photographic projects not only relate to the setting that they are displayed in, but also how they relate to each other. It is here that the photographs create new meanings and new ways of interpreting a constantly changing world. III Originally published at photomonitor.co.uk.
Support this blog for more reviews like this.
Olivia Arthur’s Jeddah Diary
Olivia Arthur, Jeddah Diary, 2012
Olivia Arthur’s photobook Jeddah Diary is a fascinating insight into the role of women in Saudi society. Photographed over a period of two years, Arthur reveals aspects of this culture which usually remain hidden from the West and indeed within Saudi Arabia as well. In that regard, the first image immediately sets the tone for the rest of the book. It shows a huge wall built next to a swimming pool of a private property. In the accompanying text Arthur writes: ‘The first thing I saw in Saudi were the big empty roads and houses with impossibly high walls. Everything seemed to be happening somewhere else, out of sight, behind closed doors.’ In the book Arthur thus metaphorically climbed behind this wall to depict lives that would otherwise remain out of sight.
Olivia Arthur, Jeddah Diary, 2012
In the first instance, Arthur photographs women, sometimes by themselves, sometimes in a group with other women who mostly wear variations of the abaya, the black cloth that covers the body, and the hijab which covers the face. In these photographs, their individuality is signified by various fashion accessories that are visible: sunglasses, handbags, or perhaps the shoes. The marginalized role of women is dramatically symbolized in a photograph that shows the packaging of an inflatable swimming pool. The package design, aimed at a Western market, depicts a white middle class couple happily playing with their children. Yet on the shelf of a Saudi store, the woman (bikini-clad one must assume) has been painted over with thick black paint. The recent scandal in which all women featured in an Ikea catalogue were digitally erased is part of this complex discourse.
Olivia Arthur, Jeddah Diary, 2012
A conventional Ikea catalogue on the left and the Saudi version on the right, 2012
Olivia Arthur, Jeddah Diary, 2012
Beneath the veneer of strict laws that seek to socially and physically separate men and women, Arthur equally represents a culture that creatively adapts to these laws. As the accompanying text explains, one photograph shows the digits of a phone number flashing in the window of a car. Whenever the male driver passes a car driven by a woman, the digits light up, encouraging total strangers to call the number and meet up. Behind the tall walls of private properties, Arthur is thus witness to parties and social gatherings were women wear Western-style clothes for a night out, dance and socialize with their friends from both genders. The colourful lights from a disco ball and the bare legs of a woman dancing stand in complete contrast to the mythical conception that these things do not exist in this culture.
Olivia Arthur, Jeddah Diary, 2012
Olivia Arthur, Jeddah Diary, 2012
Arthur’s role as photographer becomes that of an agent: switching between a medium format and a small format camera (depending on the accessibility of the subject), she frequents exclusive parties, girls’ bedrooms, social gatherings or private beaches. Inasmuch as Arthur reveals elements that would otherwise remain hidden, she is extremely careful in protecting people’s identities. While photographing sometimes-spontaneous reactions and perhaps revealing a little too much of a subject’s face, a number of photographs are actually re-photographed at a slight angle.
Olivia Arthur, Jeddah Diary, 2012
Jorma Puranen, Shadows, reflections and all that sort of thing #3, 1997
Similar to Jorma Puranen’s series Shadows and Reflections, the light reflecting on the surface of the re-photographed print neatly disguises the female subject’s face. Yet here the subjects are not hidden or metaphorically painted over, but rather, their physical presence and their individualistic identify constitute the very subject of the photograph. III Originally published on photomonitor.co.uk.
Support this blog to help us keep going, and going, and going …
