I am in a taxi, stuck in a big traffic jam. I am on my way to Auto China, 2008, and we are edging our way along ring road 3, about to join the airport expressway going to the newly opened China International Exhibition Centre, where this event is held. There are six ring roads in Beijing, and except for ring road 1, which is a track round the Forbidden City, they are all four lane motorways.
Most of the time you are as likely to be stationary, rather than moving.
When you consider that private ownership of cars was only sanctioned in 1980, Beijing has now joined that super league of gridlocked cities such as Dubai, Sao Paulo and Bangkok, in record time. Beijing could soon become the city with more cars than any other on the planet. This year alone the auto industry expects to sell nine million cars in China, so you can start to understand why this event is taken very seriously indeed, by sellers and buyers in equal measure.
While car sales in the West are currently suppressed there is only one word for the Chinese car market, growth. This is currently running at around 25%. When you consider that 90% of families in the West own a car and in China it is a mere 6%, you will understand why the motor industry thinks that China will rescue it from a down turn.
The Chinese do not just love cars, they worship them. In the section where luxury brands display their latest models, the stands are mobbed. In this section you are not allowed to come up to the cars unless you look like a potential customer. But everyone gawps and takes photos, happy to have seen a real Rolls Royce or a Porsche.
Almost everything we buy in the West is now made in China, with the big exception of cars. But the Chinese are trying to catch up. There were over twenty Chinese car manufacturers at the show, Chery being the top of the league. This firm exports more cars than any other Chinese company. However, their main export markets are the ex Russian countries of Eastern Europe, and South America. They do not sell in Europe or the USA, probably because they would not meet the safety regulations.
Chery also make the cheapest car in China, the QQ. Sadly this was not on display because, as I was told " everyone knows it." This sells for roughly $4,000.
Taking photographs of the cars is the way in which the Chinese define their visit to the show. This process is all helped along by a lavish sprinkling of car girls. Such is the importance of the girls' contribution, there are competitions for the best girl in each show hall. Car brochures abound, and are picked up enthusiastically. Sometimes a queue will form for these, which will make the queue escalate; no-one wants to be outdone.
As a British citizen I took particular delight in encountering the Roewe stand. Roewe is the name given to the newly-launched Rover group that was bought by the Chinese a few years back. They took the brand, brought all the equipment over from Longbridge and have re-jigged the car for the Chinese market. The marketing is re-assuringly British. Britain now has no major car manufacturer at all. Such is the dynamic of the new world order, which like so much of life is defined by our love of cars.
Magnum’s reputation is not just based on extraordinary photography. What distinguishes the members of the photoagency, which was founded in 1947, is character. The legendary Magnum photographers Elliott Erwitt and Burt Glinn talk about moments of opportunity, courage, independence – and humor. This interview was conducted by Pia Frankenberg in December 2006 and was first published in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in January 2007.
Pia Frankenberg: Since when do you two know each other?
Burt Glinn: We first met in 1952 or ´53 I guess.
Elliott Erwitt: In the morning, I think.
BG: We got introduced and I said to somebody "what's so good about Erwitt?" (grins) I am actually still asking myself that.
PF: When did you join Magnum?
BG: Roughly around the same time, I guess.
EE: ´53
BG: Magnum wasn't a very large organization then. It was... - (turns to Elliott) Oh, by the way, Marc Riboud called the other day and said he'd come across a treasure trove of letters from Henri (Cartier-Bresson, Magnum founding member) to him that he is going to edit and maybe make a book of it.
EE: Really?
BG: He said he didn't know if certain photogaphers would like to have Henri's opinion on record and I said it's okay with me (grins).
Anyway ... I came to New York in ´53 because the Queen was going on a world tour. I don't know whether Elliott did anything on that but I know Eve Arnold did Bermuda or Jamaica and I did one of the Caribbean Islands, too, and that's when I got to know some of the older Magnum people. And then, when Bob and Werner were killed (Robert Capa, Magnum founding member, was killed by a landmine in Indochina and Werner Bischof, a member since 1949, died nine days earlier in a car accident in Peru) we all sort of got together a lot in New York. For one of the most painful funeral services that I ever attended. Do you remember that? For Bob?
EE: Yeah. 1954. May 25th. I remember that because it was my fathers's birthday.
BG: That's when I met Chim (David Seymour, Magnum founding member) for the first time.
Elena Glinn: I think Burt was talking about ´52 before. The queen was covered in ´52.
BG: That's right.
PF: Do you mean the boat "The Queen" or the Queen?
EG: The Queen.
EE: There's only one queen.
BG: Oh, I don't know!
EE: There's only one queen and, huh, what's his name... it's ...
BG: Elton John.
EE:.... he did "My fair Lady". He did the costumes for that.
BG: Oh... Cecil Beaton.
EE: Cecil Beaton! That's the queen.
PF: Do you remember any assignments that you worked on together?
BG: In the early days we both worked a lot for Holiday Magazine. We worked together on an issue on Rome. We were a very strange group of photographers there. Henri and Elliott and Slim Arons and Arnold Newman...
EE: Actually the ususal suspects.
BG: ... and I remember, the government of Italy was so pleased to have a special issue on Rome that they gave what was the Italian equivalent of the Legion of Honor to the editors of Holiday Magazine. I guess we also worked together on the Krushchev tour of America.
First the rats: I wish you all a very happy New Year. A Khmer New Year that is... We're leaving the year of the pig for the year of the rat. I am a rat. 5th cycle. With some luck I 'll work my way through two more. It is one nice thing about Cambodia: if you forgot to celebrate Christian New Year, there is always the Chinese and the Khmer New Year to remind you that time passes by...
Now the squashed dogs. The French newspapers have a term for the 'Man Bites Dog' stories which reads: 'la rubrique des chiens écrasés' (the 'squashed dogs section'). These stories are always considered with some contempt by 'serious' news readers. Because well, according to the 'serious' news readers they are not important stories compared to the 'big' stories. You know the 'big' stories: the events you can see simultaneously on 80% of the television screens worldwide and towards which hundreds of journalist are flocking. Yes... But what is big for who? And who decides what is big? Is big 'big' because the majority says it is big? Or is big 'big' because the major media tell the majority what is big? Or is it a minority telling the media what is big?
There are many moments when an individual doesn't care about the 'big' events. For example the owner of the dog squashed by a runaway truck is convinced that the big story of the moment is his dead dog. He doesn't care if the Dalai Lama will have a discussion about Tibet with China. He cares about the disappearance of his dog. So do his children, his wife. The neighbours also think it is big news because they won't be disturbed by the barking at night. Another example are the 200 families who lost all their belongings in a fire this week in Phnom Penh. Hardly an event which will draw a crowd of foreign correspondents... Cambodia is far away.
And yet: about 1000 people who were living on the edge are now facing even harder times. If it isn't big news for Poughkeepsie (NY), for Fox News or the BBC, it is for them, their family, their friends (and for the real estate speculators).
That was it for the rats and the squashed dogs. Now you should ask: 'What has the getting published to do with squashed dogs and rats?'
Beloved Magnum photographer, Burt Glinn, passed away early on the morning of April 9th.
Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Burt Glinn served in the United States Army between 1943 and 1946, before studying literature at Harvard University, where he edited and photographed for the Harvard Crimson college newspaper. From 1949 to 1950, Glinn worked for Life magazine before becoming a freelancer.
Glinn became an associate member of Magnum in 1951, along with Eve Arnold and Dennis Stock - the first Americans to join the young photo agency - and a full member in 1954. He made his mark with spectacular color series on the South Seas, Japan, Russia, Mexico and California. In 1959 he received the Mathew Brady Award for Magazine Photographer of the Year from the University of Missouri.
In collaboration with the writer Laurens van der Post, Glinn published A Portrait of All the Russias and A Portrait of Japan. His reportages have appeared in Esquire, Geo, Travel and Leisure, Fortune, Life and Paris-Match. He has covered the Sinai War, the US Marine invasion of Lebanon, and Fidel Castro's takeover of Cuba. In the 1990s he completed an extensive photo essay on the topic of medical science.
Versatile and technically brilliant, Glinn was one of Magnum's great corporate and advertising photographers. He had received numerous awards for his editorial and commercial photography, including the Best Book of Photographic Reporting from Abroad from the Overseas Press Club and the Best Print Ad of the Year from the Art Directors Club of New York. Glinn has served as president of the American Society of Media Photographers. He was president of Magnum between 1972 and 1975, and was re-elected to the post in 1987.
On April 4th, 1968 Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot while he stood on the balcony of a Memphis motel. Despite the fact that James Earl Ray had plead guilty to the murder, he spent the rest of his life trying to reverse his plea. Many theories exist which claim that Ray was not the shooter or that he was just one of many who were involved.
More than 300,000 people attended Dr. King's memorial service. Among them was Attorney General and Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy, a strong supporter of the Civil Rights Movement who would also be assassinated two months later. Following King's death, riots broke out in more than one hundred US cities. The Vietnam War, the assassinations, US presidential elections and revolutions abroad would make 1968 one of the most painful years of the century.
After this tragic year the Civil Rights movement continued on though it had lost it's shining star. Though Dr. King was gone, the messages of this Nobel Prize winning humanitarian continues to be taught and practiced throughout the world.
First the rats: I wish you all a very happy New Year. A Khmer New Year that is... We're leaving the year of the pig for the year of the rat. I am a rat. 5th cycle. With some luck I 'll work my way through two more. It is one nice thing about Cambodia: if you forgot to celebrate Christian New Year, there is always the Chinese and the Khmer New Year to remind you that time passes by...
