A short conversation with the new Magnum nominees Olivia Arthur and Peter van Agtmael

Many congratulations to Olivia and Peter, very well deserved. Olivia and Peter, would you mind telling me when you started to take photographs. Thank you!

Comment posted by Hannes Zerdik on July 7, 2008

Excellent choice, two wonderful photographers.

Comment posted by Len Kowitz on July 7, 2008

About the first photographer she is truly a talented woman with a deep sense of humour combined with nice and well balanced forms which means an analogous deep sense of form.These are qualities that fit to really great artists.A most perfect choice.!/As far as the second photographer is concerned he is a totally indifferent photographic personality who happens to be in places of some journalistic interest.Still wondering about the meaning of such a choice.

Comment posted by Nikos Roccos on July 7, 2008

De gusto non disputandum est... : )

Comment posted by fabian unternährer on July 7, 2008

@fabian.This is not strictly a matter of some subjective taste.There must be some kind of a minimum of objective criteria otherwise everyone could be a magnum photographer.I try to detect the application of these criteria in the case of the second photographer but in vain!

Comment posted by Nikos Roccos on July 7, 2008

Hey ya'll,

Thanks for the feedback.

Hannes- I've been photographing seriously for five years now, and working professionally for 3 1/2 years.

Fabian- That's pretty much how I feel. Everyone has their own approach, and there are few universals in this world.

Nikos- I'm not quite sure I understand your criticism of me as an 'indifferent personality.' Comes as a surprise, as my main critique in the past has been that I'm 'too close' to my subjects! Anyhow, by all means elaborate on your comments if you feel so inclined. Magnum's decisions are of course nebulous to many (including myself) and I'd be happy to help clarify my intentions and working methods to anyone who is interested. I don't come from an art or photography background, so perhaps my approach is strange to some... Thanks for your interest regardless. It's always valuable to start a dialogue on these questions. Take care, all.

Comment posted by Peter van Agtmael on July 8, 2008

@nikos.
photography to me is nothing else than a point of view. which again may be positive, constructive, direct, creativ, honest, openminded, deep, hearttouching, philosophical and finally even talkin about the oldest truths held in wisdom..
so the hardest thing about tellin st is to stay simple; once achieved to stay humble with it..
pictures may be well balanced; as truth.. and so on..

so; diplomaticly said; i, as well as you, have my doubts about the choice..
but not only with the one; even the two.. !

those photos of war are most likely selling well as warm little breds..
they look quite superficial, non-balanced and i`am even going that far..
there is some "subjectivism" - a disease of those days; often seen in journalism..
where the "photo" is so much more important than the "graphism"..
the person behind..

that`s why i wrote; why we may not argue about "taste"..
peace..

Comment posted by fabian unternährer on July 8, 2008

Thank's Hannes, Len, Nikos and Fabian for your comments. As always they are well appreciated. And thank's Peter for picking up the comments and trying to clarify a few things.

Fabian, you wrote that "those photos of war are most likely selling well as warm breds." I read the excellent interview with Peter over on Joerg Colberg's blog Conscientious. In that interview he for exaple says things like "While there has been a lot of phenomenal and revealing coverage of the war, especially by The New York Times, my main experience with censorship has come from the media, not the military." And he writes "In 2007 I won a World Press Photo award for a series of twelve photographs on night raids. I received a lot of publicity, and the pictures were published all over, but to my knowledge there hasn't been a single picture from that series that ran in the U.S. To fund my trips, I did assignments. One was to photograph a USO show, another was to photograph a soldier training for the Boston marathon, and still another was to photograph the Marsh Arabs in southern Iraq. They were enjoyable, but in seven months of embedding I only received one assignment to photograph combat operations, and that story was never published."

To me that doesn't sound like selling photographs such as warm bread. But guys, why don't you just ask Peter directly about what you want to know or ask him to reply to certain thoughts. This is a chance to not only ramble on between us but also to directly talk to the photographer in question.

Comment posted by Martin Fuchs on July 8, 2008

it seems to be a diffrent kind of approach in the graphic aspect; but nevertheless it is founded on a strong humanitarian guide-line and should therefore be supported as much as possible as in the right way.

actually i feel a lot of respect for the breaveness and good-will of peter; wishing him all best!

so my question; do you think that in concentrating on violance as other horrible things than in good things; will it make this world a better?

Comment posted by fabian unternährer on July 8, 2008

Congratulations to both of you! Olivia, I really like your womens project. What I would really like to know is how you manage to get access to your subjects. I suppose this was the hardest part about it. Is that right?

Comment posted by Lea Kast on July 8, 2008

Peter, please don't misunderstand this comment but there are a few things I am really interested in:
What do you think differs your Iraq images from many other Iraq photographers such as Ashley Gilbertsons or Geert Van Kesterens (who was Magnum nominee himself) for example? Nowadays I generally find it hard to really find differences. In times where many good photographers have very similar kind of access lot's of images seem to be very similar visually and in terms of content. How do you see that?
And then I noticed many images on your website with extremely visible digital noise. Is that on purpose and a stylistic element?

Thank you very much for your answers,
Best,
Jamie

Comment posted by Jamie Guzman on July 8, 2008

"the circle of Magnum Photographers"? As in "the knights of the roundtable"?.. Gives it a kind of secret-society feel don't you think?

I really don't understand why the choices seem surprising or "nebulous" to anyone, it could actually be a good thing if they were but it's rather predictable. I mean Inge Morath Award, WPP, war photography......

Jacob Aue Sobol was surprising. More of the same Magnum and WPP recipe is not surprising I'm afraid.

So as to my question (to both nominees),

When you set out into a new photographic project, what are your premises?

Comment posted by tomé on July 8, 2008

My comments were basicaly addressed to Magnum agency rather than to (espesially the negative ones) the photographers themselves.First of all i have to clear up some misunderstanding on the part of Peter.I spoke of indifferent p-h-o-t-o-g-r-p-h-i-c personality,which means photographically indifferent.I know this is a rather sad and ungraceful process to have opposite you a creator of images whom u just have doubted.But the critical question-i repeat-is addressed towards those of the Magnum agency who decided this way.I need to know their criteria,if those criteria are well grounded on what perceptions.I really doubt about it.I really feel sorry speaking this way but when i consider the cases of let's say HCB or Elliot Erwitt or the new nominee Olivia Athur and comparing to the case of Peter i'm truly feel confused.I see no formal or content affinities between these two ways of photographic thinking and acting.There is an abyss and a chasm between these two concepts of photography.The first is meditative(mostly because of its formal qualities,but not only for this,there is also strong but calm humanism in its content,i mean no sentimentalism and the like)the second is rather flat,you can't feel the sense of the really photographic event,which is not just the historic event just taking place but the mixture of formal and moral elements.I mean not just war but also spirituality in the whole way the picture is conceived.Back to bare essentials.Simple and robust form on the one hand,and a serene,calm even cool conception of the history.The way HCB did it.No more fireworks of grandangular,grainy and bloody photoshoots.No more cheap sentimentalism and suspicious activism which distracts the attention from the real photographic event which is thinking synthetically,combining many parameters of doing the simplest of the things which may be proved the hardest at the same time:taking photos.

Comment posted by Nikos Roccos on July 8, 2008

@nikos: you're speaking out of my heart; i'am amazed - thanks for addin' those facts & questions!

Comment posted by fabian unternaehrer on July 8, 2008

Hi everyone, and thanks for all your comments. I will try and answer some of your questions...

Hannes: I started taking photographs properly while I was at university (studying maths actually...). I began working for the student newspaper, taking pictures and as picture editor. It was mostly quite boring jobs but I got really into it and ended up doing far more of that than the maths. When I finished the degree I decided to give it a go as a career and did a short course in photojournalism in London before starting out as a freelance in India.

Lea: You are right, access is the most important part of doing this work, and its also the hardest. When i started off on the project I had one contact in Istanbul (Ozge, you'll see her in one of my photos). I spoke to her on the phone and she sounded really enthusiastic about the project and so I just set off... She introduced me to lots of people and it carried on from there. Obviously though meeting people is not the whole part, they have to trust me and be happy to let me hang around with them for a while. This is really helped by the fact that i am also a young woman and so i can spend time with the women I meet as friends. my best pictures have come from situations like that, though sometimes there isn't the opportunity for that kind of interaction, and it becomes the usual combination of a bit of luck and knowing what to do when it works in your favour. I should also point out that I was in the lucky situation of having a lot of time to do this work, so i was able to wait for the interesting situations and relationships to unfold. I also spent a lot of time in situations that ended up not being interesting, or where i wasnt able to make the picture I wanted. And i spent a lot of time chasing up leads that didn;t go anywhere... basically time was the key (and drinking lots of cups of tea, explaining my project over and over and showing people the pictures i had taken so far).

Tome: I'm not really sure how to answer your question! its too broad, can you be more specific? each project varies, (and you have to remember we are both quite young and don't necessarily ave a fixed way of doing things yet...)
Basically, I don't tend to have a specific agenda of what I want my work to be like... its more like an idea or a starting point and what follows is an investigation. with the middle-distance project, i had become fascinated by different cultural attitudes towards women (as a result of living in india) and wanted to try and understand it better, the pictures are the result of that search.

Hope that explains things a bit...

Comment posted by Olivia Arthur on July 9, 2008

Hi all,
congratulations to both of you, Olivia and Peter! and to all at Magnum.
I've started to understand and admire the way Magnum choose its members: often stylistically different, very personal, but most importantly 'on the road'.
I do feel closer to Olivia's work, possibly because of women's issue she covered and the Istanbul connection (where I was at a workshop with Nikos Economopoulos).
Of Peter, I like the immediacy of his shots.
Enjoy your journey with Magnum.
manuela

Comment posted by manuela dei grandi on July 9, 2008

Congratulation to both. I really appreciate that Olivia and Peter are under 30 years old. It is really a nice thing to give some space to young, and good photographer.

Comment posted by Vittore Fotografo on July 13, 2008

Beautiful work!

Comment posted by ANDREAS. on July 13, 2008

Hey folks,

Thanks for the questions. I’m sorry it took so long to get back to ya’ll. Things are hectic on this end.

Fabian- What’s truth? In my experience, everyone has their own version of the truth. One universal truth, perhaps, is that humanity as a species is defined by its contradictions. War puts that notion in stark relief, as ‘good’ people do terrible things, and my work is meant to reflect that troubling reality. In the end though, I’m just trying to be authentic to what I’ve felt and witnessed.

I was surprised by the ‘photo’ vs. ‘graphism’ comment. If you have the chance, please take a look at the whole work on my website, www.petervanagtmael.com and read the stories that are accessible by clicking the ‘info’ box on each thumbnail. I’m close to many of the people in the pictures, and I’ve been following several of their stories back in the U.S., with more to come. As for style, I try to react to my gut and thoughts in a straightforward, content-based way. I’m trying to replicate my own experiences as closely is possible, which accounts for the style of composing. That approach feels appropriate as a method of mass-communication, which is my intention as a photojournalist.

Martin, thanks for posting that quote.

Fabian, unfortunately, it has been a huge struggle to get the meaningful pictures published in the U.S.. I have to hustle for work from a lot of different sources to keep going. Traditional media in the U.S. is in crisis, and photos of war rarely sell. I helped organize an exhibition of the work of two-dozen photographers covering Iraq and Afghanistan, and was stunned by the depth of the work, most of it unpublished in America.

I think it will always be impossible to assess the effects of taking photographs of this sort, but I deeply believe in its importance. The media has often played a positive role in past conflicts, and as an American of the same generation fighting the wars, I feel a responsibility to be involved. As it is, most of the horrible deeds of war occur anonymously.

Jamie- No problem, you should ask whatever you like. It’s true that embed pictures tend to look similar after you’ve seen enough of them, but in the end there is a certain homogeneity to the American experience in Iraq and Afghanistan. Still, I think it’s important for as many photographers as possible to keep working in these places. With maybe 3-5 photographers in Iraq at any given time, the war is still left largely uncovered. Afghanistan is maybe a little more active, but what we record is only a tiny drop in the bucket compared to the vastness of meaningful moments that occur constantly. Really, it’s almost maddening how small we are. We certainly all focus a lot on the violence, because what we see is often deeply moving and upsetting, and it feels critical to try to relay some of that emotion. Of course, photography can never be a substitute for experience, but we try our best and hope that the cumulative effect will make a difference in histories unpredictable path. I believe it will.

As for the digital noise question. That was a practical rather than a stylistic consideration. I wanted to shoot natural light in very dim circumstances that were also fast moving. I had to jack up my ISO nearly all the way for the images to come out. I’ve tried some noise reduction programs but haven’t been thrilled with the results.

Tome- I research a fair amount first so I have an idea where to begin to focus my eyes and thoughts, but generally I just try to experience as much as possible while also creating time and space for reflection. The reflection guides the evolution of the story.

Nikos- I can relate to many of your points, and I have a deep admiration and respect for more formal approaches to photography. I am certainly working towards improving my own craftsmanship. I am self-taught and I’m trying to evolve a lot of ideas in my head simultaneously with the craft. Also, I haven’t been shooting long, and am wary of a more dogmatic approach while there is still so much to learn. I know that now is a time to elevate things across the board, and I’m excited to see what the next few years will bring. What always attracted me to Magnum is that it embraces a wide range of sensibilities. Photography is as complex as the human condition, and in the end I need to do what feels right to me.

Comment posted by Peter van Agtmael on July 13, 2008

Simply agree with fabian ;)

When I watched the websites, I realised, that on the blog, you see some "best of".
There was nothing more to explore which could draw my attention for longer.

Even worse, I drowned in some political correctness.

regards, dietmar

Comment posted by Dietmar on July 14, 2008

Olivia&Peter:

(indeed we are young and don't have a fixed way of doing things - hope to continue like that, certainty of knowledge is bad stuff. wouldn't even bother didn't i recognize certain qualities...)

I wouldn't be too sure of what to answer to my own question too, but I try to have an idea, an intuition at least, and believe it is the most revealing and challenging question there is to oneself. Very few if any know how to answer and in the end it demands a lot of self consciousness and self critique.

I think both your answers refer to a way to reach your premises and a result of them at the same time - but they are not the premises. Risking over-simplification, I'd say the premise of Peter Benjamin Parker is getting a scoop and paying the rent and Spiderman's is fighting evil and saving the world.

The documentary photographer is during the day a regular guy with a demanding girlfriend (or bf) and lots of bills to pay. During the night he gains spider-like powers such as super-strength, phenomenal jumping skills and the ability to climb walls. Ironically, he ends up selling pictures to the editor that vilifies his own character.

The risk with documentary photography is it romanticizes evil and injustice. Not only does a photograph never represent the sheer (avoiding the word "true") terror of the abyss as its presence in the still sanitized western media convey a sense of we the viewers having already done our part - there are witnesses, we already know about it, it is somehow being taken care of... It's like believing we have healthy democracies just because we mock on Bush.

Realizing this should question one's premises for depicting arcadia.

Comment posted by tomé on July 14, 2008

just write "great pictures again" then everybody is happy ;)

Comment posted by Stefan Rohner on July 19, 2008

This is very intresting article!
You have a very interesting life!

Comment posted by Cytaty on July 30, 2008