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February 27, 2007 Inhouse reviews
February 26, 2007 Don't cry for meI am now back home in the UK, after completing my tour of South America, where I have been shooting the beaches for a project that documents the four biggest beach resorts. My final destination was Argentina where I went to Mar del Plata, which is by far its biggest resort. What a remarkable place. We all know those scenes of post-war Coney Island, with crammed beaches. Well this is just like that, but still going strong 50 years later. The place is packed.
Unlike the Chileans, the beach is crowded by mid-morning, where virtually everything under the planet is brought around and sold. There are wagons loaded with swim wear, various Argentine snacks and of course the usual trays of cheap jewellery sold by black Africans. These guys are the only people who give you grief when you pick up a camera within their vicinity. Otherwise it is wonderful to photograph in Argentina, people are friendly and not at all suspicious of photographers as the public has become in the West.
February 23, 2007 "A faked portrait of my generation"Last week, Martin Parr wrote about the hostility he encountered when photographing in Brazil in his post "Who's the lucky one?" Many of our readers left comments, including one referencing a legal case in Quebec which concerns the right to publish photographs without a subject's consent.
Julie Gauthier, who left the comment on Martin Parr's post, wrote that if people stopped photographing on the street, there would only be left "a faked portrait of my generation." The core issue in Aubry v. Vice Versa was the right of a photographed subject to control how he or she is represented. The case went on for years until the Quebec Supreme Court ruled in favor of the portrayed subject, in essence indicating that it is illegal to publish a photograph of someone without written consent. These laws differ from country to country. It's an old case, concluded in 1998, but for anyone interested in street photography, the debate it provoked is still pertinent. For Canadian photographers reading this, what's happened since then? Please add comments at the end of this post.
February 21, 2007 Buying historyThe boundaries between photo-reportage and art photography are ever more blurred as collectors increasingly seek out the work of photojournalists. Artprice.com, a French company that monitors the international art market using a database of 21 million prices at auction, summarizes some examples of the trend and explain which photos sell and why.
Collective memory and photography For many years, photojournalism was considered a secondary form of art, much like scientific or ethnographic photography, because photojournalism's original goal is to disseminate information. Since the 1950s, however, photojournalism has built a reputation on its aesthetics and techniques as well as on its testimonial values partly thanks to World Press Photo with its annual contest celebrating the year's best journalistic photographs, and due to a number of exhibitions in museums underlining the news photo's dual role as documentary testimony and aesthetic artifact.
February 16, 2007 What in fact DO you want to say?With my new book Tokyo Love Hello being launched, I thought it might be interesting to some of you out there to get an idea of what sort of issues, problems and questions have gone through my mind during the process of making this book. How, as a photographer, do you try to put out your work in such a way as to make the most sense to you and, hopefully, to your audience? What in fact DO you want to say?
Should you do a book, a magazine story, an exhibition, a slide show, a podcast, a Magnum In Motion-style web piece, a combination of these things; all of them? How will this affect the work? An exhibition will create a different response to a book. With a web piece you can use sound, in a magazine you might reach an audience of millions. If you do an exhibition is it like doing the book on the wall? If you do a book is it an exhibition between covers?
February 12, 2007 Who's the lucky one?I am currently staying in the Cap Ducal Hotel in Vina del Mar in Chile. This is probably the most memorable hotel I have ever stayed in. As their literature says, "We are not so much by the sea, but ON the sea." Built in 1936, it is an Art Deco-style, concrete-based liner with spectacular views from all the rooms and the restaurant that stretches over three floors. In the morning you can watch the resident seal while you sip your cafe con leche. The hotel is delightfully run down and, as you can imagine, has a loyal and interesting clientèle. I am here because I am doing a tour of South American beach resorts in the height of summer. Two days earlier, I met a group of Chilean photographers organised by a photographer called Luis Weinstein. He circumnavigates the tricky problem of earning a living in Chile as a photographer by being a TV weather man. He works three hours a day, half the week, and is home to watch himself do the weather after the main TV news. At this most pleasant encounter, I learnt that the main gripe from the photographers is that there is no market for photography, little interest in buying prints, and the magazines are terrible. Sound familiar?
February 8, 2007 In the machineOn a tightly restricted press tour around the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Magnum’s Paolo Pellegrin photographed, as best he could, the detention center for terrorism suspects. Here he talks of how the limitations affected his work.
Immediately as you set your foot on the ground, you start going through the bureaucracy of the place. This military person welcomes you, you go through the X-ray machines, there’s a press person that is assigned to a particular journalist or a team, as we were, [Pellegrin was on a New York Times Magazine assignment with writer Tim Golden] that’s there to greet us. So you’re immediately in the machine. It’s not particularly difficult to go to Guantanamo, very many journalists do, the problem is that the tour, the press tour as it’s called, is extremely controlled, obviously, by the military. So you go through the motions of this staged mechanism which normally lasts 2-3 days and basically you are shown what they want to show you. There’s pretty strict instructions especially in a situation or place where you’re close to detainees. You’re absolutely not allowed to talk to them and obviously not hand over anything. There has to be a complete distance….
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