Today we launch a new series of conversations with various Magnum photographers. For our first conversation we invited Jörg M. Colberg, founder and editor of the fine-art photography blog Conscientious and experienced interviewer, to talk to Magnum photographer Miguel Rio Branco about his work and photography. This conversation is cross-published at Jörg's own blog. I hope you enjoy the read and please let us know what you think.
Jörg Colberg: When people hear "Magnum" I think many of them will think of classic b/w photojournalism. With its use of often very vibrant colour, your work clearly doesn't fall into that category. Now colour photography has been widely accepted, but it hasn't always been this way. Was using colour an obvious choice for you? And since you have a background as a director of photography for movies I'm wondering how much that also contributed to your development of your own photographic style?
Miguel Rio Branco: Today it is possible that when people hear Magnum they are not anymore seeing just traditional black and white, since there are already some members using color in an expressive way for some time, and also I see that Magnum is growing into a dynamic creative force with many individual paths and not only in the traditional photojournalistic way.
My own work was never only about color since after painting, in the beginning I did most of the time both, black and white and color, as well as experimental films (New York 1970-72). What happened is that in 1980, while living in São Paulo, my archives burned, and what was left were mostly the color slides that were traveling with me .
And my color, when I look at it now, I see it as not being really very colorful. Most were monocromatic, with some red and sometimes some blues here and there. Never the whole rainbow. One of the things that shows is that there is a dramatic use of color, and this relates a lot to my painting background. But painting is not only the background since I am still painting again since the mid eighties .
The other link is with cinema and music.
I was never really aware of the big names in photography until 1974, and this after already six years of using photography as my main medium. I lived in New York from 1970 to 1972, and never saw one exhibition of photography; my contacts were mostly with artists and movie people. So my influences came definitely from painting and cinema.
The act of editing came from the audiovisuals that I did at the time, the framing from the movie camera, the not cropping afterwards came from that situation as well as the lack of many verticals.
So my photographic style is basically a non-linear style, which depends very much on the construction of the images, the poetic links created with the images, and not with a linear aspect of framing and use of light and color.
The world that I grew up in will be, from today, a poorer place. It is with great sadness I have to write that Philip - a monumental, irrepressible force in photography and in life - and a courageous fighter against the cancer that finally defeated him - passed away early this morning.
Philip's passing is an enormous loss to us all at Magnum, and I am sure to everyone who knew him. It was a privilege to have brushed, even lightly, against his charm, his brilliance and his passion for photojournalism. Those who only know him through his work will have missed his skills as an orator, raconteur, wit and polemicist. He remained the lovely man that he was - graceful and welcoming - especially to young people trying to make a start in photography. He had much to pass on, not just about the importance of "real" photography, but about the art and craft of picture-making.
Philip was born in Rhuddlan, near Rhyl in Wales on 18th February 1936 and it was there, at the age of 16, that he learnt an early lesson about photography - from Henri Cartier-Bresson: "The first picture of his I ever saw was during a lecture at the Rhyl camera club. I was 16 and the speaker was Emrys Jones. He projected the picture upside down. Deliberately, to disregard the subject matter to reveal the composition. It's a lesson I've never forgotten."
It was Philip's consummate skill as a picture maker, carefully able to draw the viewer closer and closer to his subjects through his emotionally-charged compositions that lent such power to his work. Philip was always concerned with individuals - their personal and intimate suffering more than any particular class or ideological struggle. And the strength of his vision, that inspired so many of us, led Henri Cartier-Bresson to write of Philip: "not since Goya has anyone portrayed war like Philip Jones Griffiths."
Philip's iconic work on the Vietnam War, an unprecedented work, published in 1971 under the title 'Vietnam Inc.' is arguably the most articulate and compelling anti-war statement made by any photojournalist ever. Indeed it led Noam Chomsky to comment that: "If anybody in Washington had read that book, we wouldn't have had these wars in Iraq or Afghanistan".
Indeed, it was Philip's passion for peace that led to greatness in his later work. In 2005 he published "Viet Nam at Peace" a 25 year study exploring the long term consequences of the war. The first Westerner to travel by road from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City after the war, and later the Ho Chi Minh trail, he amassed an unparalleled photographic record of the post-war transformation of this country.
Thoroughly industrious and tenacious to the end, Philip had just completed a new book of his less known studies of British life in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, entitled 'Recollections', and in the last few weeks before his death, Philip became thoroughly engaged in compiling his life's work documenting Cambodia.
Philip enriched all our lives with his courage, his empathy, his passion, his wit and his wisdom; and for many he gave to photojournalism its moral soul. He died as he wanted so passionately that we should live - in peace. In his last days he was together with his loving family and friends at his side.
He leaves behind his loving family, Fanny Ferrato, Katherine Holden, Donna Ferrato and Heather Holden.
Magnum In Motion's new format with it's inaugural series WARS
Magnum In Motion has set a new format, as a series of four essays where photographers' imagery, experiences, and commentary come together to explore a given theme.
WARS, the inaugural series will launch on the Magnum In Motion home page, March 19, five years after the war in Iraq began. It will be published on Slate as four episodes.
The point of departure was a quote extracted from Magnum photographer Philip Jones Griffiths from a 2006 interview conducted in London by Magnum In Motion.
The British photographer, and author of the book Vietnam Inc. (1971), said with tongue in cheek: "Photographers are either mud people or sand people. I'm a mud person."
Three photographers covering conflicts today were asked to react to this quote with their own experiences of documenting wars.
Christopher Anderson "It’s not actually the dead that I have seen in the Middle East, the physical destruction, that takes the toll: It’s this sense of this endless cycle. It’s hard to go and watch the similar sort of circumstances play themselves out over and over again."
Paolo Pellegrin "While covering the war in Lebanon in 2006, bombs and missiles were exploding around us—but you never saw who was launching them. It was different from
all the wars I had covered before, where you always had a sense of front lines and space and your presence within that space. This might be the way future wars look."
Thomas Dworzak "I’m embedded with the Americans in Iraq. As a Westerner, there is no more access to the insurgent’s side. I don’t claim to have any overview. History
made my choice—it’s fine!"
Please let us know what you think, we will appreciate all feedback a lot!
I am going to talk about the Khmer Rouge Tribunal again. Sorry... But I believe important questions were raised recently. At the end of february the ECCC organised two days of on site investigations with Duch, one of the five former Khmer Rouge leaders under custody of the tribunal, at the Chhoeung Ek killing fields and at Tuol Sleng museum, the ex S21 KhmerRouge interrogation center.
Obviously and for confidentiality reasons the press was banned from this judicial investigation, a common and quite understandable procedure. No big deal: it's all taken care of in the internal rules of the court (rule 35/1/a, rule 35/2/a & c).
The police forces around Tuol Sleng were numerous and the inhabitants from the area were warned not to allow journalists peeking over the former school's walls from their rooftops. The photographers were told they would be blacklisted from the ECCC if they took pictures of Duch. One journalist in a house opposite the museum was held by police for a couple of hours and all her pictures were erased from her cards.
Ok, so there was not much left to take photographs of: some policemen blocking the road, the bench they were sitting on and the white car carrying Duch back to his prison flashing by... That was a fairly boring day for sure... But the Law is the Law: no pictures of the investigation, be it of historic value or not...
Well, think twice... The Law has rabbits in its hat (rule 56/2/b): it can "jointly grant access to the judicial investigation to the media or other non-parties in exceptional circumstances". And yes indeed: it soon leaked out that there was a camera team present at the on site investigation. Questions were asked as to who these people were of course. They are Jean Reynaud, a lawyer taking a sabbatical to make a movie on the investigation, and Rémi Lainé, a well known documentary filmmaker. They work under very specific conditions to make a "broader documentary project to describe the technical aspects of the investigation". The 3/03/2008 ECCC press release (download "OCIJ Statement on Reconstruction Recordings") about this issue boils down to:
Usually the Magnum Blog shouldn't be about shameless self promotion, it should offer an added value to our readers. Today however, I chose to use our blog for self promotion. Not shameless because I'd like to offer an added value or two.
First of all I'd like to introduce a book to you that was already published in 2001. Many books got lost in the deepness of a publishers warehouse and were recently found again. Secondly I'd like to offer a 25% discount on the books price in the Magnum Store to the first three blog readers who order a signed copy of it. But more on that later.
About two years ago I was lucky to be part of the process when an outstanding multimedia essay about Paul Fusco's body of work "Chernobyl Legacy" was produced at Magnum In Motion. In my humble opinion it's still one of the best, if not the best, Magnum In Motion essay that was produced. A powerful and subtle story, shown by mixing photographs, the photographers voice and diagrams and charts to transport factual information.
The essay was published right in time for the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster and was picked up by a huge number of websites and blogs. Within the first week about a million people saw the essay. Tons of e-mails started to come in expressing deep sympathy with the people shown in the story, e-mails of people who wanted to donate. One of the e-mails that haunt me until today came from a mother who offered to donate all her son's birthday presents to send them off to Belarus. Her son's birthday however was only to come up in about two weeks time...
Screenshot from the Magnum In Motion essay "Chernobyl Legacy" by Paul Fusco
If you haven't watched Paul Fusco's Chernobyl Legacy essay you should do so right away, and if you watched it already go ahead and watch it again. It's a moving and sensitive documentation of history. Certainly not suited for the fainthearted but therefore even more important to understand what happened and what's still happening.
The Book
"Chernobyl Legacy" is a 228 pages book published by the New York based multidisciplinary design firm de.Mo in 2001 and was designed by Giorgio Baravalle. The book is an amazing testimonial, a book showing extraordinary photography, incredibly well designed, it's a storytelling book.
Former Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, wrote in the book's foreword "The most vulnerable victims of Chernobyl were, in fact, young children or unborn babies at the moment when the reactor exploded. Their adulthood - now fast approaching - is likely to be blighted by that moment, as their childhood has been. Many will die prematurely. Are we to let them live, and die, believing the world indifferent to their plight?
We must not, and that is why this book, which movingly illustrates the Chernobyl Legacy, is so important."
Actor Michael Douglas writes "Chernobyl Legacy gives voice. Its content moves, educates and shows us why we must all become responsible to insure that what happened to Chernobyl never happens again."
I couldn't agree more with both of them. This book is one of my most favourite photography books. It's definetly not a book that you'll have fun looking at, it's not a book to quickly flip through and it's not a book to amuse your friends with. But it's a book about an important event of history, it's a deeply human book and a book that will and should start discussions. A book by a photographer that I always experienced as an extremely generous, mindful, open and helpful man. Thank you Paul Fusco!
The Discount
And as promised in the beginning we are offering a 25% discount on the books price from the Magnum Store for the first three readers who order the book. With the discount you only pay $ 112,50 instead of $ 150 plus shipping for a signed copy of "Chernobyl Legacy" by Paul Fusco. If you want to order and hope for the discount please send me an e-mail. If you are one of the first three you'll get a coupon code from us that you need to use in order to receive the discount. If you do not use this code we can not give a discount anymore once the ordering process is completed.
If you are not one of the first three to order don't worry, we'll have similar special offers for signed books again in the future.
I have just updated our blog's links page once again. I added a couple of photography related blogs and a couple of journalism and photography related websites. As always, feel free to send your suggestions for inclusion in the list.
Other than that stay tuned for exciting new blog features and stories that we are currently working on and please let me know what you would really love to see here.
Continue reading 'A conversation with Miguel Rio Branco'
I am going to talk about the Khmer Rouge Tribunal again. Sorry... But I believe important questions were raised recently. At the end of february the ECCC organised two days of on site investigations with Duch, one of the five former Khmer Rouge leaders under custody of the tribunal, at the Chhoeung Ek killing fields and at Tuol Sleng museum, the ex S21 KhmerRouge interrogation center.
Usually the Magnum Blog shouldn't be about shameless self promotion, it should offer an added value to our readers. Today however, I chose to use our blog for self promotion. Not shameless because I'd like to offer an added value or two.
