My work on foreclosed homes in Detroit has actually been a continuation of a project that started in Fort Myers, Florida in September 2008. For me the major concentration of the work is on the houses or what’s left of the houses. I chose to photograph them mostly straight on like my street work in a very blunt fashion. To let the houses speak for themselves.
After going to Florida and continuing in Detroit I realized that foreclosure is one part of a circle. There is homelessness, job loss, economic difficulties, etc, etc, etc. In Detroit the problem is not only a subprime problem it’s a problem of people who lost their jobs. And this has been going on for many years. So it’s a much more serious situation. When I went to Detroit - even though I had known that the city was pretty desolate - I was amazed that a major city in America in 2009 can look like this.
Certain areas look like Berlin after World War II or like Beirut. Something is wrong here. Recently I have read books and articles and watched television shows on the foreclosure problem. How can you have a trillion dollar industry that’s not regulated? This was a scam from the beginning - that’s not to say that some homeowners aren’t at fault also, one of the problems is giving mortages to people who have a history of no credit or of bad credit. A big problem in Detroit was people refinancing their morgages and not being able to keep up with their monthly payments. Something is very wrong with a policy like this. But when I arrived in Detroit I saw a city government that does not take care of its people and a lot of those people have stopped caring. I mean I don’t care what the excuse is - how do you leave so many buildings that are almost totally destroyed standing. Kids can get hurt playing in them, it’s a breeding ground for drugs and prostitution. Property values go down, nobody wants to live in these areas, To me it almost seems like they are left standing so that one day they drive everybody out and grand new subdivisions can be made.
What was really sad for me in Detroit was that many of the destroyed houses were well made and beautiful houses at one time, they were like Grande Dames. Detroit at one time had the highest standard of living for blue collar workers because of the auto industry. It’s all gone. This makes the destruction even sader, it’s not like a dilapidated trailer in ruins. There was an elegance here - the houses were beautiful - it’s so sad. There were serious memories in these houses, people lived there for 50 - 70 years. When these houses were built there was pride in craftsmanship and you saw it in the houses. It’s sad.
On Saturday June 8th, 1968 the body of Robert F Kennedy was carried by a special Funeral Train from Penn Station in New York City to Union Station in Washington DC.
Bobby Kennedy’s last words before he lapsed into unconsciousness after he was shot in Los Angeles on the night of June 5th, 1968 were: “Is everybody alright?”
Oscar winning documentary maker Jon Blair is starting work on a ground-breaking documentary based on the memories of those who watched RFK’s funeral train go by. The film will be focusing on the extraordinary photographs taken from the train by Paul Fusco, combined with interviews with some of the tens of thousands of Americans who lined the tracks.
We recently spoke with Francisca Fuentes, the researcher for the project, to learn more about the film. She had this to say:
I started BURN MAGAZINE just before Christmas 2008. So we have been rocking along now for just over a month. BURN is a spinoff of my 2 year old Road Trips blog which was heavily influenced by both Alec Soth and Martin Fuchs. The very nature of my blog, and the evolving BURN, is a clear educational imperative and so in 2008 I created a $5,000 grant to be given to an emerging photographer who needed financial assistance with a project. Sean Gallagher was the first recipient of the Emerging Photographer Fund grant of $5,000. to continue his environmental series on the "desertification" of China.
For 2009 I have announced a $10,000 grant which comes under the non-profit umbrella of the Magnum Cultural Foundation. The guidelines for submissions can be found on BURN. The deadline for this grant is March 15, 2009. Finalists will be juried by a peer group of 5. Two of which will be from Magnum and the other three will be respected members of the gallery and publishing world. I will NOT be one of the jurors. Why? Because I have "coached" too many to be impartial.
In my role as curator of BURN MAGAZINE, I spend a lot of time reviewing portfolios, editing work, and generally trying to answer the myriad of questions of so many young photographers who are often vexed by the complexities of our craft. The work published on BURN comes primarily from the readers of BURN, but I do plan a series of profiles on various Magnum photographers and talent from other agencies and galleries as well. Right now BURN is just me and my laptop and one super tech helper. Give us just a bit of funding and we will BURN the house down (so to speak!).
My overall goal is to create enough sponsorship so that I can eventually give out several stipends during the year to produce original photography for BURN. Many of the published essays were quite literally originated online with the photographer and me collaborating, much as I would do in one of my own workshops which I have been teaching since I was about 23. I have been teaching almost as long as I have been photographing. The pay back, pay forward ,concept is just in my blood. Of course, I am no good to anyone as a teacher if I am not also deeply engaged in my own work, publishing books, taking assignments, creating exhibitions, and generally being totally immersed in our craft, our art, our life...
With the publishing world changing right before our eyes and a recession hanging over most of us, I do see more opportunities than ever before. It will take a quick wit and some nimble thinking and stealth, but I truly believe that the audience will in effect become the publishers. I do see a time for BURN when the online audience will be sufficient enough to create the sponsorship for not only stipends to finish self started projects, but will lead to an annual print publication as well. Dreaming?? Yes, of course, but how do you think I got into this business in the first place??
One of the things we have talked about at Magnum is creating quite literally "channels" for various photographers off of this website.
Certainly there have not been two better leaders than Alec and Martin. I think together we will literally set the tone for the future. Most importantly, it is not about US. It is about YOU. We might be able to guide a bit, but you will be the stars of the show.
So, hang out here on the Magnum Blog. I plan to be more active here as well. Join us also on BURN. One way or another we will try to keep you informed and enlightened and you will do the same for us.
The 3,6 ha of land where once thrived the Dey Krohom community is now empty... The 3-year long struggle of its 1400 residents with repeated and often violent intimidations by 7NG, a development company which plans to build high rises and a shopping mall, has come to a brutal end. In the night of January 24th, at 2:00 am, police blocked access to the site. At 6:00 am, in a well planned move some 200 police using tear gas and 400 hired workers with axes and crowbars, backed-up by bulldozers and fire trucks, violently and thoroughly flattened every single building, burying people's belonging -motorcycles, refrigerators, clothes, family pictures, everything- underneath rubble and torn tin sheeting. Neutral observers of Human Rights organizations and press photographers were intimidated, pushed and beaten.
I started to work on the Bassac area in 2000 as part of my Quest for Land project (download a PDF on the project here).
It seems it will never end. After Sambok Chap (1300 families) and Dey Krohom (about 400 families), next in line will be Group 78 (88 families), and then it will be the inhabitants of "The Building", an iconic building conceived in the 60's by architect Vann Molyvann.
After that it will be Boeung Kak lake (4225 families)... All destroyed in the name of development.
So finally, after more than 8 years in Cambodia, I have been confronted with censorship. The French Cultural Center asked the main local news media and me, as a member of Ka-set.info (yes, Ka-set.info:"http://cambodia.ka-set.info/", the website a few journalists and myself have set up has become one of the reference media here in Penh and is now also available in English), to provide a 12 minute slideshow of pictures of events of the year to be featured for their 'Night of the Year'. It would have been shown together with other slideshows from major agencies or newspapers from around the world, during the first international photography festival in Phnom Penh. A great opportunity for the Khmer public to see the events they know about dragged into the flow of world events on 12 giant screens in a big garden. A great opportunity for Ka-set.info to reach out to a public it would otherwise not get in touch with. Great...But not so great, because this Cambodia remember?...
In late September I made my latest visit to Poland, to finally bring some closure to 'The Sound of Two Songs', which began way back in 2004. These are some of those recent pictures.
But what does it mean to bring a project to an end? Why stop now? After all, there are none of the usual reasons: I'm not bored; I don't think I'm repeating myself (much); I don't yet have a publisher, nor do I have an exhibition looming on the horizon.
I used to worry that I wasn't portraying Poland fairly, but I now realise this is surely impossible… I can only ever represent my own experience. Yet I still felt there were gaps in what I already had which needed filling. I wanted a picture of the huge advertisement hoardings that are a feature of any Polish urban conurbation (cross the border into Germany, where advertising is regulated, to notice the difference!). I wanted a picture from the Baltic coast and I'm happy with the one you see here; the poster stuck high on the rusty pier selling apartments in sunny Dubai is a bonus. I wanted more 'modern' buildings: the discovery of an old block of flats wrapped in a computer-generated photograph of the new one was a gift. And the woman (she's there, in the car) selling forest mushrooms and home-made honey has parked beneath a towering digital thermometer, presumably bought with European Union funding which is filtering through to rural communities at last. Other pictures might be the link I need to bring oddments from previous trips back into the fray.
When a project is finished I usually feel a kind of emptiness inside, along with a sense of panic (since I'm unclear what I'll do next) and that dreadful feeling of anti-climax many will recognise. This project has, after all, been a big part of my life for the past four years. But I now have more than 2000 negatives, and because of the sheer cost of working in large format I rarely take more than one of anything. So it's time, finally, to look at what I have and try to make some sense of it. This is the difficult bit.
Too much work. That's the best reason I can offer for why this latest visit will also be my last. At least, that is, until I start my next Polish project...
January last year I travelled to a remote part of Greece called Arcadia. To the ancient Greeks Arcadia was a rural utopian idyll where rustics lazed happily in the countryside, in a land of plenty. Returning 5000 years later to the same region of Greece was quite a different experience. Instead of a bucolic green landscape, I found one devastated by the relentless hunt for fossil fuels. 60% of Greece’s electricity is derived from lignite (brown coal). This involves stripping away whole landscapes – fields, villages, whatever, to get at the stuff to feed the nearby power station. What I found in Megalopolis was Greece’s second largest lignite mine, where the village of Anthohori was simply wiped off the map by bulldozers digging ever further into the earth to feed coal to the fire.
All that remained when I got to village was the church of Santa Maria fifteen feet up on a pedestal of earth after the rest of the village was demolished. Why was it there? Because the mining teams were too superstitious to knock it down in case God’s wrath enflamed them. God’s wrath is an interesting concept when considering climate change and such matters. Before the 19th century (even today in some places) any severe storm or earthquake was blamed on God’s anger at the people. Luckily science stepped in and recognized there may be other reasons for hurricanes – such as climate cycles maybe exacerbated by our own irresponsible use of fossil fuels. But not in time to save Arcadia...
In 2005, I started work on The Places We Live, a project about urban poverty and slums. For three years, I visited dozens of families in four slums around the world.
The Places We Live was not a search for finding the absolute extremes of urban poverty—I wasn't looking for the dirties spot, the poorest hovels or the most crime-ridden street corner. My task was to find how people normalize these dire situations. How they build dignity and daily lives in the midst of very challenging living conditions.
In the project, I asked someone from each family to "tell me about life around here". Since I do not speak either Spanish, Swahili, Indonesian, Hindi or Marathi, I had one rule-of-thumb during the recordings: As long as the subject talked, I didn't interrupt to get translations of what they were saying. Only when I got transcripts of the recordings months later did I see the wide spectrum of stories told. For me, the process was a sort of protection from projecting too much of my own preconceptions of what slum life involves—and meant the project had to be interactive and collaborative.
Earlier this summer, The Places We Livebook was published, and an exhibition installation launched in Oslo. Now, we've made a Magnum-in-Motion that gives a sample of some of the work.
Oddly, I feel like it is a very different thing putting these stories up on the web, as opposed to the book, magazine articles or exhibition. I had the blessings of all the people in the project to use the material for everything I wanted—I really only used homes where the people were quite eager to tell their stories. But still I somehow can't shake the nagging sensation that putting their homes and lives on the web is somehow different from the other mediums.
Is it that the viewing experience of the book, magazine or exhibition is a more private experience than on the web? Or vice versa? Am I alone to have this feeling, or do others feel the same?
I'll be tuning into the blog for some days here and will happily respond to any questions or comments any of you might have.
I attended the plenary session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe debate, under urgent procedure, on the consequences of the war between Georgia and Russia. As I crossed the debating chamber I realized that the verbal battle was going to be less photogenic than a cannon battle, I took a seat, placed my Canon onto my lap, put on the simultaneous translation headphones and started to listen to the debate. The mouths moved out of line with the words being heard in my ears - the debate enthralled me. My concentration was broken by a security guard, who informed me that I was sitting in a place reserved for a delegate and the area for photographers was opposite. A man of arms, he could not hide his interest in my "cannon", I passed it to him and he examined it with childish curiosity. I gave him permission to fire the first shot at the assembly with it, which he did without thinking of the consequences. That haphazard photo was the key to my understanding of the contretemps needed to photograph anything in the building. Within this Babylonian tower of Europe I made ambiguous images corresponding to the essence of the debate, unsynchronized swimming in murky waters. The politicians spoke with the authority of high mammals and whilst they slept the Canon smoked.
In November 2004, our first son Jem was born.
At the time my partner Narelle and I lived in a small, two-bedroom apartment in Sydney.
Apart from two years living in a tent, I had spent the last 15 years of my life living in apartment blocks.
In October 2006 our second son Dash was born.
Our small two-bedroom apartment became even smaller.
Things had to change. Wanting more space, family support and a change of scenery we moved to the city of Adelaide, Narelle's place of birth.
On arriving in Adelaide, with our life in storage, we bunkered down with Narelle's folks while we tried to find a place to live.
Like my parents in Newcastle, they live in the suburbs.
One afternoon I decided to venture to the local mega mall, specifically to the hairdresser. After removing all of my very long hair the very young hairdresser said 'There you go, a new hair cut for a new start'.
I thought, that's nice and what a great thing it was to be able to see again.
On returning to the in-laws that evening I started to feel very odd and a little queasy.
As day turned to night I lay down on the freshly mown back lawn and watched
clouds drift past a nearly full moon. I expected to hear a dog howl or a cat wail.
I started vomiting, violently, and uncontrollably.
I grabbed the nearest thing I could throw up into.
Narelle and her parents, Laurie and Ann were sitting in the back room watching the TV.
'Narelle' I yelled out, again throwing up.
'What' she said, 'You want me to come out and photograph you?'.
'Yeah' I yelled back.
'Ohh you've got to be joking' Laurie gasped, as he rose from his chair.
Narelle came out and climbed on to a table. The sudden blast of the flash lit up what I could smell, but couldn't see.
Bright, brilliant, red.
Ann joined the crowd gathering to see the show.
Another flash. Bright, brilliant, red.
Ann yells, 'Ohhh Laurie he's vomiting into the Christmas tree bucket!'
Another flash.
And it was there, while staring into that bright red bucket, vomiting every hour on the hour, for fifteen hours straight, that I started to think how strange, families, suburbia, life, vomit and in particular, Christmas…. really was.
Trent Parkes new exhibition "The Christmas Tree Bucket - Trent Parkes family album" will be shown at the Australian Centre for Photography from 21st November 2008 to 21 January 2009.
"Nature", wrote Raymond Williams, "is perhaps the most complicated word in the English language". Nature photography, however, is simple - or at least unchallenging. The wonder of the natural world is the usual refrain, gasped between shots of galloping zebras, prowling snow leopards or displays of exotic snakes, birds, insects and so forth.
Photography inherited many of its genres from painting - portraiture, nudes, still life, and a particular kind of un-peopled landscape which has become attached to "nature". By abstraction, nature photography obscures our view of what's really going on in tropical forests or the African savannah. Nature photography commodifies the environment for its own ends.
Tourism promoters use nature photography to mask the fact that other people also live in the destinations they wish to market. Look at any holiday brochure advertising the Galapagos Islands. You won't spot any of the twenty thousand inhabitants, or their homes, or their economic activity. In safari brochures it's more or less the same, although some exotic tribespeople are included, almost as another natural feature.
Although the boundaries are not always obvious, environmental photography differs from nature photography in its approach. By attending to the human presence as a part of, and impacting upon, the natural world it sets out to present a more realistic view of Planet Earth dominated, as it is, by us.
Nothing much happening in the Middle East? No major earthquake around? Paris Hilton is flying below the radar? The Olympics have not started yet? THIS is the right time then!!! On July 15th, two weeks before parliamentary elections in Cambodia, Thai soldiers show up at Preah Vihear, an 11th century temple, listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site a few days before, and located smack on a disputed border. Friction, soldiers, guns, an incredibly spectacular setting, historic tensions flaring up to extremes and possibly degenerating into a full-scale war. A conjunction of history, nationalism and interior politics looking for the outside enemy: the perfect scenario to wake up dozing news freaks and give them something to stay alert during their holidays. The eyes of the world will focus on Cambodia, on my backyard. An opportunity not to be missed...
Right... It takes between ten and 12 hours by various taxis and motorbikes to cover the 250 km or so from Phnom Penh, which says a lot about how to get fresh troops up there (there is a neatly drawn tarmac road on the thai side of the border)... Once at the temple the situation looks like anything but a potential battlefield: for sure there are lots of guns and close to 2000 military around, but Thai and Khmer soldiers are just meters apart, talking or just staring at each other. Because they know each other since a long time. 70% of the cambodian soldiers there are former Khmer Rouge who protected Ta Mok in this same area until ten years ago, before being integrated in the RCAF (Royal Cambodian Armed Forces), and they had many contacts with the thai border units which today have set up camp in the bushes around the temple. Many of the thai soldiers are Khmer Surin and speak cambodian.
"While Fashion Magazine has a single photographer-author, it's still a magazine, not a book. So it doesn't follow my usual mode of slow, solitary production. It's collaboration. The ideas for the collaboration were formulated very quickly. I was approached by the folks at the Paris office of Magnum to work on this issue late last year. I immediately said yes. I was a huge fan of the previous two editions (by Martin Parr and Bruce Gilden) and was looking for an excuse to play with fashion . I often say that when I am making a portrait, I'm not "capturing" the other person. If the photograph documents anything, it is the space between the subject and myself. Something similar is at work with Fashion Magazine. I'm not really comfortable saying I know anything about Paris or its fashion world. And I suspect that most fashionable Parisians know just as little about Minnesota. What is interesting is the space between us. My favorite example of this involves Chanel. In Paris, I photographed Karl Lagerfeld at the Grand Palais. In Minnesota, I photographed a girl with a Chanel shopping bag in front of Sally's Beauty Shop. With this magazine, I'm trying to explore the distance between those two places." Alec Soth
I'm sorry if I missed out on last month's rendez-vous but first of all I was not in Cambodia and second, one of the paradoxes of Digital Divide made access to the Internet more difficult in Belgium than in Cambodia... In Cambodia connections are (very) expensive and slow but there are Internet cafés on many streetcorners. In Belgium connections are fast (and expensive also) but there are few Internet cafés.
Now that I'm back in Phnom Penh I'll catch up on events here. But as a follow-up on the previous issue of the Khmer Chronicles I'd rather have had something else to talk about than this...
Khem Sambo, 47 yrs, a journalist at the pro-opposition daily Moneaksekar Khmer (Khmer Conscience), was killed, together with his 21 yr old son, by five bullets fired in the middle of a busy street by a lone gunner on a motorbike near the Olympic Stadium in Phnom Penh on July 11th.
The reasons for this killing are not clear yet, and considering the previous murders of journalists (12 since 1993), they will probably remain obscure. It is too early and one can only speculate. Has it to do with the elections (we are two weeks away from the polling date)? Did Sambo know things he shouldn't have known about government involvement in casino gambling? But for sure Sambo's director, Dam Seth, who happens to be on the Sam Rainsy Party list (opposition) for the coming elections, is involved in a legal struggle with Foreign Minister Hor Namhong on issues about the Minister's alleged participation as a cadre in the Boeung Trabek reeducation camp during the Khmer Rouge regime. So was it to intimidate his boss that a good journalist and his innocent son were killed in cold blood on a busy street?
Whatever the reason, a journalist's assassination is always a serious matter. Especially so in a country where separations of the powers are not yet fully perceived by all as being essential to a workable democracy. Once the watchdogs will have stopped barking there will be few limits for abuse...
I bear with the suffering of Khem Sambo's family.
I bear with my Cambodian colleagues and hope they will not give in to fear.
For 25 years, AIDS has ravaged the lives and livelihoods of millions of people. Since the early 1980s, nearly 30 million people have died from AIDS. But over the past few years, a quiet global revolution has enabled millions of people infected by HIV to live healthy lives.
In the early 1990s, when antiretroviral drugs became available, AIDS was transformed from a certain death sentence to a manageable chronic disease–but only for some. The expense of the drugs and their distribution prevented 95 percent of those living with HIV from getting access to them. International outrage that millions were dying because of economic disparity helped reduce drug prices and to create the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in 2002. Doctors and healthcare workers around the world have adapted procedures to settings where people often could not access even the most basic care. Already, millions of lives which otherwise might have been lost are being saved.
In Access to Life, eight Magnum photographers portray people in nine countries around the world before and four months after they began antiretroviral treatment for AIDS. Paolo Pellegrin in Mali, Alex Majoli in Russia, Larry Towell in Swaziland and South Africa, Jim Goldberg in India, Gilles Peress in Rwanda, Jonas Bendiksen in Haiti, Steve McCurry in Vietnam and Eli Reed in Peru. Here are faces, voices, and stories representing those millions of people who by now would be dead if not for access to free antiretroviral drugs–people who are living with HIV, working, caring for their children, and experiencing the joys and struggles of being alive. But there are also the stories of those for whom treatment came too late or where tuberculosis or other diseases brought their lives to an end – showing how the fight to bring access to AIDS treatment is a difficult one, often filled with setbacks as well as success.
Please visit the Access To Life website to view and listen to all stories. We very much hope you'll find this presentation interesting as well as insightful. Please help to spread the word by telling your friends about it, e-mailing them the link to the Access To Life website or by using one of our press images together with a link to the site on your website or blog.
And as always, your feedback and thoughts are very much appreciated!
There was a time when Cambodia was not even listed on Transparency International's Corruption Perception index.
But Cambodia is more and more part of the world... In 2007 it was listed nr 162 out of 179 (the last position being shared by Somalia and Myanmar). In 2006 it was in 151st place with 163 countries listed (Haiti was last). In 2005 Cambodia was 130th out of 158 countries. In 2004 it wasn't listed (which doesn't mean there was no corruption). So I guess one can say that the situation is not really brilliant on the corruption front in Faraway Kingdom.
One of the first things a cambodian child learns at school is corruption: every day the kids have to give 500 or 1000 Riel (0,25$) to their teacher to attend class (in a school system where education officially is for free), and supplementary private lessons are mandatory to pass examinations at the end of the year. But a teacher's salary is between 40 and 60 dollars a month. This could explain that. Should it?
If there is corruption at the lowest level there must be higher up? Sure, but the higher you go the more difficult and risky it gets to prove. And if as a journalist you find something juicy, does the amount of press freedom available allow you to expose the scheme? Well not necessarily, and that's the trouble with countries where corruption is institutionalised: usually press freedom can be bought as well. If silence can't be bought with some, thugs can be bought to put physical pressure on the journalist. If the journalist escapes the thugs (although 9 journalists died since 1993) there are ways to bring him to court. Etc.. That beast eats you from within... It's all over the place: journalists get a free meal and an envelope with "compensation money" at press conferences or have to pay money to get an interview. Or journalists blackmail people they have sensitive information about.
Larry Towell is a photojournalist who travels reluctantly and only when the subject really matters. But if he travels he does so to really follow his subjects around for a long time, he tells a story from a very humanistic point of view adding his own unique perspective. From 1993 to 2006 he photographed in Israel and Palestine, producing an immense body of work. Two amazing books, "Then Palestine" and "No Man's Land", arose out of this work.
Initially he wished to document the birth of a nation, following the Oslo-Agreement. Instead he ended up documenting what he would later refer to as "the World's largest open-air prison". In 2001 he was given a small video camera and began to maintain a video diary while working in Israel and Palestine. In his 40 minute documentary "Indecisive Moments" - which won the "Achievement in Filmmaking for a Documentary" award at the 2007 New York International Independent Film and Video Festival, also known as "the voice of indie film" - Larry Towell documents events and perspectives of those caught up in violence. The result is a highly personal documentary from the perspective of one of the world’s most acclaimed photojournalists. "Indecisive Moments" bridges the gap between artist and reporter bringing the viewer inside Towell's highly stylized world.
Ordering Discount
We are offering a 10% discount on the DVD's price from the Magnum Store for the first ten readers who order the DVD. With this discount you only pay $ 27 instead of $ 30 plus shipping. If you are in New York you could even pick up your copy of the DVD after ordering at the Magnum office and you'd save the shipping cost.
If you want to order and would like to take advantage of the discount please send me an e-mail. If you are one of the first ten 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.
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?'
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:
Nuon Chea, Brother Nr 2 under the Khmer Rouge regime, had his first hearing at the pre trial chambers of the ECCC to examine his appeal for his provisional detention. The press officers of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, just to keep things orderly, and on request of the judges who felt that a mob of camera wielding journalists was intimidating for the elderly accused, decided to allow only 5 photographers, working for a pool, and two cameramen to take pictures inside the courtroom during 5 minutes, just before and during the entrance of the judges.
I was lucky, together with my khmer colleagues Tang Chhin Sothy, Chor Sokunthea, Mak Remissa and Heng Sinith, representing AFP, Reuters, EPA, AP, to be allowed in (was it because my permanent accreditation to the Chambers bears the number 001?). We know each other, have had each others elbows in our ribs on numerous occasions, bumped our lenses often and get along pretty well. Partly because we do help each other once in a while and partly because they know that Magnum is no real competition for them. Having their picture on the screen of the redactions one minute before the other agencies is vital whereas Magnum chugs along several hours later anyhow...
So what can one do to stand out? What difference can you make (in 5 minutes and with a 35mm only)? Well not much really... Especially because you're in a pool, so you HAVE to deliver or you will not be selected next time. The photographers outside are waiting to pick their choice in what's going to be available on the ECCC computer and they'd be more than willing to take your place.
Basically I start by making sure there is at least ONE usable picture. No risk taking... Autofocus, straight flash, no fancy composition, the accused smack in the middle of the frame, 5 or six shots. That's it... Switch to the M8, ambient light (the last firmware update finally delivers acceptable white balance results), 320 ISO (too much noise higher up), 2.8, 30th/ second and MOVE, change position, go to the back of the pack, slide to the right, push back into the pack again, move back and go to the left where the judges are, go straight back towards the accused, frame, focus and... finished. It's over. The 5 minutes are gone. We're politely asked by the security guards to leave the room... Hoping we didn't screw up and that there is something a little different to show. There are about 60 frames on my cards, 40 of which are really useless.
Why did you go to Haiti initially?
I went to Haiti because I wanted to do something to supplement my New York work. It wasn't far, it's three and a half hours direct flight from New York City. They have a Mardi Gras in February so that means people are on the street.
A very important factor is that historically Haitians weren't against being photographed. Whereas if you go to some other Caribbean countries, it would be much tougher to photograph. In other words, you'd put your life really in danger. Like Jamaica, if you don't have an 'entre' it's a tough place and they don't take to being photographed as well. If you're going to the areas I go into, you'll lose your camera or you lose your life.
But I should say, none of the pictures that I had seen of Haiti really knocked me out. There wasn't something that I saw, where I said "Wow, I love that picture so much, Haiti must be great for photographs."
What did you feel was lacking from the photographs you'd seen?
A photo either works or it doesn't. And if it doesn't it could be really horrible or it could be mediocre. That's a dialog that for me doesn't even need to be discussed because you see that it's good or it isn't. I'm not saying that everyone has my vision or my eye, but I'm pretty versed in what makes a good image.
What were looking for, visually and in terms of content?
I just go see what I get. I always work in my style but in every country that I go to I always find something a little different. I can sit there and say, "This is what I'm going to photograph" but then you get there and it's all fantasy because it's not what you thought it was.
I started, I think, in '85 during Mardi Gras and I was with my ex wife. We had a rental car and we were driving it from the airport to the hotel - the airport isn't far from downtown Port-au-Prince, lovely Port-au-Prince - and it was a Sunday night. I remember all these people were running to a soccer match in front of the car. I said to my ex wife, "Where have I been all my life?" because I just knew. It was because of all the people and all the activity and it was just great.
So with this photograph…. To me, Haiti has all the things that should make it a great country having a nice climate, being an island. But it's the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. I think if you work in a factory there, you get 3 dollars a day. That doesn't go very far.
It has been seven years now that the area along the Bassac river in Phnom Penh has been under intense pressure from real estate developers. Seven years that I document the mutations of a territory where thousands of people were scraping a living thanks to the proximity of the center of town. They all have small jobs. They all have precarious living conditions. They make a couple of dollars a day collecting tin cans or scrap metal, selling shells, sugar cane or their virginity.
During rainy season the place is flooded, muddy. The people sleep with rats feeding on the pile of garbage thrown from the upper floors of the "Building", built by architect Vann Molyvann and once a showcase for modernity. But it is also the area where Kong Nay, the famous "chappey" player, the bluesman of the Mekong, is living.
E'Phutang, former heavyweight khmer boxing world champion, had his gym there, and most of the pictures in my book "Poids Mouche" were made there. Despite their resistance they all will have to move, clear the area, go and live 20 or 30km from the center of town to relocation sites designated by the authorities.
If they are lucky they get some kind of a compensation like a 3mx6m brick compartment (not really a house) or a few thousand dollars. That's today. A few years ago the whole slum would burn down in a couple of hours. How the fire started nobody would know for sure. Or people would be dumped in an empty rice field without sanitation, water, school, market, leaving NGO's to cope with the mess. My estimate is that over 15000 people will have been kicked out to allow the construction of what will become the new Phnom Penh, trying to catch up with Singapore, Hong Kong or Bangkok in terms of high rises...
It seems as if the lessons learned during all the social struggles over the last two centuries have still to penetrate the minds of Cambodians, those with power that is. Cambodia went straight from colonialism to a war, with a short intermission of prosperity, and then to plain horror. Today it is finally learning about development but also about 19th century paternalism...
I have just spent an hour and a half with a saw and many plastic rubbish bags clearing up the family Christmas tree at home in London. Not my favorite job, as my children, safely out of the way at school, think we have same tree, called "Charlie", each year. "Charlie" gets collected after Christmas and sent to Scotland to be re planted, so each year it has to come back bigger, and this year, at three metres plus, it was almost impossible to transport it up the stairs!
It is also at this time of year that the area I live in in London is dotted with abandoned trees simply dumped on the street to be collected and re-cycled by the local council. In 2005 I made a short collection of pictures of this phenomenon, which is I am sure repeated all over the world.
I hope my children don't read the Magnum Blog!
It has been a busy month in Cambodia. Things around and at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal itself have taken an accelerated pace with the arrests of Ieng Sary and his wife Ieng Thirith, of Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea and probably others in the pipeline. But most of all the first public hearings took place regarding the appeal against his detention of Kang Guek Eav, alias Duch, in charge of the S21 interrogation center during the Pol Pot regime.
It is the first time Duch appeared in public since over 8 years, and there was a long line of people at the entrance of the courtroom. They filled the hall where two big screens showed what happened in the crammed pretrial chambers nearby. Press photographers and cameramen were alllowed five minutes at the beginning of two hearings. The first time we were about sixty and inevitably there was some pushing and shoving. Luckily it was in my back... The second time, before the judges would tell Duch he would stay in prison, things were better organised and only five photographers were allowed in, pooling for those who had to stay outside. The light in the pretrial chamber was kind of gloomy neon. It was a weird impression to stand two or three meters from someone who is tried for crimes against humanity and who is accused of being responsible for the death of some 15000 people. It is weird because he is just an old man, with glassy eyes looking at us, late at standing up when the judges come in, but seemingly healthier looking than eight years ago. It is as if the monster has disappeared with the system which created it...
Now that this tome has hit the streets, I thought it would be worthwhile to give some details to the background of this project. All Magnum group projects have to gain board or membership approval, and so it was at the 2006 AGM in London we were discussing Thames and Hudson's interest in doing a book to celebrate our 60th anniversary for 2007.I came up with an idea that the photographers select each other as being a potentially interesting way to get a fresher selection, and to benefit from inside knowledge within the agency.
As most people are aware Magnum is the only agency where the photographers vote on any potential new member, so it would be quite logical that we select each others' work for this book. Peer group knowledge can also be quite illuminating as we know our fellow photographers' work pretty well. This idea then started to get legs and it was clear that the only person capable of orchestrating such an undertaking was Brigitte Lardinois who had worked in the London Magnum cultural department for 12 years. Not only was she liked by all the photographers, she would know all our quirks, foibles and was also very charming and persuasive, a vital ingredient to make this work. One month was allotted to the task of making up the pairings, but in fact this eventually turned into 3 months. Some photographers would have to select more than one, because of the estates, but it soon became obvious this was no easy task. Jane Cutter, an editor at Thames and Hudson likened this process to organising a teenage camping trip. You had to find out who did not want to share a tent with x, who did not mind sharing with anybody, and who was determined to sleep on their own. She also had the problem that some photographers were very popular and were over subscribed with potential selectors, and horror of horrors, some had no suitors.
After 3 months, 4,000 e-mails and hours on the phone it all worked out like a huge jigsaw. A couple of photographers such as Dennis Stock insisted on self selection. Some photographers such as Bruce Davidson insisted that he was selected by Chien-Chi, and that he selected Chien-Chi, who he regards as the most underrated photographer within Magnum. Brigitte then had the task of getting the introductory text out of the photographers, and this too was a daunting task. This process was all the more difficult as the photographers would disappear as the were on assignments or doing personal work in all the corners of the globe.
The texts do display real insights, much affection and respect for their colleague photographers.
So far, so good. At the AGM in 2007 when I was debriefing the member photographers about progress on this project, there was much concern voiced about the procedure for signing off the proofs and of course the quality of the printing. Some photographers demanded to personally sign off their proofs, and this meant sending them to summer retreats, and catching the restless Josef Koudelka at one of his rare times in the Magnum Paris office or other rather complicated arrangements. I agreed to take on the responsibility of checking all the proofs. These finally caught up with me in a hotel in Tokyo and meant getting up at 4am, so they could be returned immediately, as by now the project was on a very tight schedule to come out now for the run up to Xmas.
So finally the book is out and weighing 6.5kg and with 414 photographs it is an epic item. I calculate that at £95 in the UK, this means it works out at £14.62 per kilo, about the same price as cod, so you do get a lot of book for your money.
It has also been published in 7 language editions around the globe.
Surprisingly this is the only recent Magnum group project that included every photographer and estate, a rare achievement, as there is usually a photographer who declines to participate, for various reasons.
My congratulations to Brigitte and the London Magnum office staff who supported her sterling work. I think she could be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.
In 2002, Alec Soth traveled with his wife to Bogotá, Colombia to adopt a baby girl. The baby's birth mother gave the new parents a book filled with letters, pictures and poems for their new daughter. 'I hope that the hardness of the world will not hurt your sensitivity,' she wrote. 'When I think about you I hope that your life is full of beautiful things.'
During the two months that the Colombian courts processed their adoption paperwork, Soth set about making his own book for his daughter. Soth recently completed this book, Dog Days Bogotá. On November 9th, an exhibition of this work will debut at Weinstein Gallery in Soth's hometown of Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Soth discusses Dog Days Bogotá with his intern, Carrie Thompson, a photography student at the College of Visual Arts in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Carrie Thompson: You made this book for your daughter, why did you decide to make it for the public?
Alec Soth: Wow, you're starting with the hardest question - you should be a journalist! Unfortunately I don't have a great answer. This work was produced five years ago. After Sleeping by the Mississippi was published, it didn't feel right to do this book. So I just kept it in my back pocket. After Niagara, I guess I was ready.
CT: Tell me about the dogs, how did they become so important?
AS: I was aware of the street kids in Bogotá. I mean, it is a hard thing to ignore, but I was especially attuned to it because of the adoption experience. But I was uncomfortable photographing these kids. So I photographed street-dogs instead. I guess they were a stand-in for the kids.
CT: So do the dogs have different types of personalities in your eyes - like young street children?
AS: Great question. In a way, this gets at why I was uncomfortable photographing the kids. I mean, I wasn't seeing them as individuals; I was generalizing them as a group. I don't like doing that. The dogs are all a little different, but I'm using them largely as an idea.
CT: It seems like you are searching for something in these images, was there something you were looking for?
AS: In the dog pictures or the book as a whole?
CT: All of the photos, the book.
AS: Yeah, I feel like I was looking for something...I'm just not sure what it was. But, of course, it all has to do with my daughter. Since we weren't given too much information about her background, the whole city became charged with her presence. I guess I was looking for signs of her and her background.
CT: Imagine your daughter looking at this book in five years, what do you want to see in her birthplace?
AS: I guess I want it to be a real place for her. I mean, we are already showing her the pictures (we only tore one page out of the book). We talk about Colombia a lot with her. As a five year old, it is just a mythical place. But over time, I want her to absorb it as a real place and as a real part of her history. I suspect that in five years she would be ready to take a trip there.
At 5:30 am on 12/11/2007 special police units and representatives of the ECCC arrested KIM Trang, alias Ieng Sary, and his wife Ieng Thirith at their home on street 21 in Phnom Penh and transferred them to the Khmer Rouge tribunal's prison in Kambol in execution of an arrest warrant for Crimes against Humanity.
Ieng Sary, born in 1925 in Kampuchea Krom (a vietnamese province wich once belonged to Cambodia) studies in France in the 50ties, comes back to Cambodia in 57 and in 63, by then a member of the PTK and brother-in law of SALOTH Sar, alias POL Pot, he joins the maquis. He is deputy prime minister during the Khmer Rouge regime from 75 to 79 and flees to Thailand after the vietnamese invasion. He receives the death penalty in absentia during a trial set up by the PRK. After the Paris Peace Accords of 91 he settles in Pailin and in 96 is instrumental in the surrender of the Khmer Rouge controlled area which triggered the subsequent surrender of the other KR areas. King Norodom Sihanouk gratifies him with a Royal Pardon for that fatal blow to the Khmer Rouge movement.
Ieng Sary's house happens to be in my street, so at least I didn't have to get up too early. Unfortunately for us, security was very tight and all the 5 journalists who were present at that time were pushed back 200 meters near a garbage dump by the Anti-Terrorist squad who was in charge. We waited there until 8:30am, trying to spot any movement near the cars parked in front of the house, speculating which road they would leave through, chatting with the policemen or the defence lawyers who were blocked by the police just like us, and chasing away the flies buzzing on the garbage. By then the number of journalists had increased by at least 20 and the big telelenses were readied. My poor 135mm certainly was no match but in fact it didn't really matter because the car going to carry the former Khmer Rouge leaders was driven inside the courtyard, so at 9:00 it became certain we would not see the faces of those being arrested. It also became clear that they would leave through the other street, so most of us rushed over there, mingling with the people from the densely populated street. Many of them did not have a clue of who Ieng Sary is. Around 9:30 the motorcade cut through the little crowd and left some dust behind. None of us journalists has had even a glimpse of Brother Nr 3...
This is the third and final part of a multi-part article series on the work of Magnum's multimedia department. The first part of this series was entitled "The philosophy behind the story", the second part "The importance of sound". Bjarke Myrthu, the executive editor of Magnum In Motion, grants us a view behind the scenes and shows us how the Magnum In Motion team brings life to static photographs on the web.
After a month and a half of hard work we are at last screening the final edit of "Libera Me", the latest Magnum In Motion essay. Everything is received well by Alex Majoli and the rest of the people that watch it. However having a movie that plays merrily on the computer is not the same as having a finalized online piece. Some hard work still lies ahead. We need to make the movie run smoothly online, making it viewable on a reasonable fast internet connection without loosing too much quality, and we need to add the extra features and chapters that make this story different from an offline video.
Naturally the most important thing is the content and the story. But the online platform holds certain technical limitations that inadvertently influence the stories. However having certain technical boundaries is nothing new to storytellers. The old day moviemakers had to stay within twenty-minute sections, because this was all a camera reel could hold, which, newspaper and broadcast journalists have time and space limitations and so on. The important thing is how you play with the creativity and use these limits to form your storytelling.
The challenge online is that the better and bigger the visuals look, and the better the audio sounds, the more data has to be pushed through the internet pipeline, which often means that the viewer in the other end will experience a jagged and slow playback. To be sure that the story plays well it has to be compressed, but then the images risk becoming small and pixilated and the audio will sound canny and chopped. One of the ways to avoid this has been to chop the story into smaller elements, giving the end user less to load through the internet.
Screenshot from the Magnum In Motion essay "Revolution" by Burt Glinn
This fragmented way of telling stories can, however, work nicely if you either use it to give the viewer control of the navigation, or you trick the viewer into thinking it is one long story, because certain parts are loaded while the others are being watched. A story like "Revolution" is actually build from small pieces of photos, graphics and audio, but they load in a sequence that makes it look like one long movie. In "Libera Me" we choose to chop the story into several different chapters. This gives the viewer a better overview and leaves a choice to watch certain parts of the story separately, which I think makes sense in this story (other stories are more suited to be kept as one entire piece), but technically it also ensures a better playback.
It seems there is not a day when something of Cambodia's past is up for grabs and available to the one with the highest bid. Lately, the land owned by the government on which was built the Suramarit theater was sold for an undisclosed amount and for an undisclosed period of time as a concession to a private company who doesn't seem to have precise plans. It is difficult to be less transparent with public property...
In Cambodia one often knows what he'll lose but not what he'll get in return. And here the loss is considerable. The theatre is one of architect Vann Molyvann's highest achievements. In the so-called "Golden Era" of the 60's the Cambodian architect has dotted the landscape of his capital Phnom Penh with landmarks of international standards like the School of Foreign Languages, Chaktomuk conference hall or the Olympic stadium. During the 80's the theatre was a point of convergence for the artists scattered by the Khmer Rouge regime. This was the place where one could assess who was left alive among the heirs of centuries old culture. Cambodian film director Rithy Panh has used the theatre as a pivotal point for his film "Le Theatre Brule" which precisely and quite humorously checks where exactly Cambodia stands today on a cultural level.
During its rehabilitation in 1994 the theatre was gutted by a fire and left crippled until today. Crippled but still alive. Some 300 artists, traditional dancers, members of the Royal Ballet, kept using the place for rehearsals, working under collapsing roofs or in the nearby exhibition grounds.
This is the second part of a multi-part article series about the work of Magnum's multimedia department. The first part of this series is entitled "The philosophy behind the story". Bjarke Myrthu, the executive editor of Magnum In Motion, grants us a view behind the scenes and shows us how the Magnum In Motion team brings life to static photographs on the web.
The first question when we decide to make a Magnum In Motion essay is what kind of images we have, and how they could be edited. But right after this we ask ourselves about the sound. While Magnum is all about the images, sound is actually a very important part of what we do at Magnum In Motion. If you are asking yourself why, just try and turn off the volume the next time you are watching a good movie. Even if there is no dialogue, audio plays a huge role in setting the mood and driving the story, even in driving the visuals. Two stories that are identical visually can be completely different if the sound tracks are different. And when I talk about sound I also mean the exclusion of sound. Silence can be just as important as noise can be.
Tools like Soundslides, iView and iPhoto have made it very easy to put together a slideshow of images and add a piece of music or other audio behind the images. While this kind of slideshow does change the experience of the photographic story, it does not really make use of sound as a powerful driver of the story. If you want to create an experience that is a powerful alternative to books, exhibitions and good magazine photography, you have to work on creating an entire soundscape that blends in with the visuals and creates a rhythm between images and sound.
One way to do this is to very literally make the photographs appear and change to the beat of the sound. Thomas Dworzak's story about the medical teams in Iraq is an example of a project where we worked this way. The blend of TV-shots and photographs from the field somehow seemed to work well with an abrupt and very rhythmic edit of sound and visuals.
Another way is to use the sound as a more subtle driver, that sets the mood under the visuals. This can be a very powerful way to increase and decrease the tension in the storyline and drive the viewer through the narrative. This is common knowledge in the world of filmmaking, but somehow we tend to forget it in the world of photography. An example for this would be Larry Towell's "Land and Identity" which was one of the first Magnum In Motion productions.
Screenshot from the Magnum In Motion essay "Libera Me" by Alex Majoli
Using sound as a mood-setter and tension-maker, was how we approached Alex Majoli's "Libera Me" essay, that we recently published. But before we found the final method we went through a lot of experimentation. We started out by interviewing Majoli, which is something we do with a lot of photographers when we help them create an essay. It often make sense, because the Magnum photographers usually create very personal projects, with a personal voice - so what we do is simply to extend this voice and give it an actual form that reaches beyond the photographs. However this also proves a serious challenge, because adding interview or voice over easily ends up taking away from the experience of the images instead of adding something extra to the story. A photograph can be a magic catalyst for feelings and emotions, but if it is explained too much the magic disappears.
This is the first part of a multi-part article series about the work of Magnum's multimedia department. Bjarke Myrthu, the executive editor of Magnum In Motion, grants us a view behind the scenes and shows us how the Magnum In Motion team brings life to static photographs on the web.
"This is not a slideshow, we want to do something more," says photographer Alex Majoli. He is sitting next to me and Adrian who is a producer at Magnum In Motion. We are discussing how to do an online version of "Libera Me", which is a personal story about identity, loss, heaven, and hell that started out as an exhibition in Rome. Alex is expressing exactly the same ambition I have for Magnum In Motion. We want to create a new language for photography. Something that can only be done online and not just a new way of distributing old-fashioned slideshows. Are we reaching our goals? Not to the extent that I would like to, but I think we are moving in the right direction. However, we need to take the storytelling and the use of interactivity to another level, if we really want to live up to our mission and the ambitions I have for Magnum In Motion.
Screenshot from the Magnum In Motion essay "Chernobyl Legacy" by Paul Fusco
When I started doing online storytelling eight years ago, my mission was to create something that could give the same kind of experience as watching a good documentary or reading a nice narrative story - an experience that could speak to the heart and stir emotions, and not only be a factual news story. In my opinion one of the stories where we succeed with is Paul Fusco's "Chernobyl Legacy". This is a solid, factual documentation of an issue, but at the same time a larger story of what happens when humans play too much with nature - all driven by Paul's incredible passion and sensitivity.
Secondly, I wanted to create a new kind of storytelling using interactivity and multimedia - instead of just transferring existing broadcast and print journalism to the online world. It became clear to me that the way to do this was to make the stories very visual and auditory. This seems a bit banal now, but in 1999 a lot of online content was either text, single images, or sound clips.
When I started to work at Magnum in New York it took quite some time before I had my first "real" conversation with David Alan Harvey. Before that I only knew him from saying "Hello" when our paths crossed from time to time in the office. And frankly… I never really knew what to think about this man as a person. He often seemed to be one of the "untouchables" to me, a photographer who seemed to be very self-confident, a man who seemed to be very self-confident.
And because of my prejudices I made up my mind and looked at David as the "cool guy", as somebody who is a bit superficial.
But as I said already, these have been my prejudices and maybe my enviousness. One day David told me about the Hip-Hop story he has been working on for quite some time. He took me out for lunch and continued to tell me about the story. He was very open minded, generous with advice and simply a friendly guy that was good to hang out with.
And my new opinion about David Alan Harvey being a generous, inspiring, great and normal man to talk to continued to rise even more with time.
David has been a blogger since the beginning of 2007. Very, very quickly his blog - or better his four blogs (1, 2, 3, 4) - became some of the most popular photography blogs out there. Through his blogs he shares his thoughts, advice and his own insecurities with those of us who do not have the chance to hang out with him or attend one of the many workshops he teaches. To me, reading his blog on a regular basis, sitting on another continent, is almost like talking to him or like reading in a book about photography. But it's more than just reading on the web, his blog became a real communication platform, something I would like the Magnum Blog to become too.
In a post entitled "in flight magazines" from May 2007 David wrote in reference to the community building power of the net, "...those of you who are still reading now know exactly what i mean...look at us right here...pretty cool right??? how else could we be doing this?? nice for me because it helps me keep my thoughts "organized" and is becoming the same kind of "diary" of life i did as a 14 yr. old photographer....and hopefully, this is nice for you because i try to put myself "in here" only to the extent that it will be useful information for you...mostly to let you know that i have the same problems as you or have had the same problems as you or certainly will in the future have the same problems as you ....the only thing i really have to "offer" is my current experience in the publishing world... both magazines and books.... and my long term friendships with so so many people in this biz....and mostly with the shared experiences i live every time i teach a workshop....i believe my students will tell you...
if i can keep this audience, we can do some really amazing things....here i am dreaming again, but sometimes my dreams happen...actually, they usually happen!!! once i focus, i am on the case!!"
And he continues "...we use the net to "community build" and then take that to reality...to print..."
This was the first time David wrote about his idea to get his readers directly involved and to eventually lead this to "real life".
Your Assignment
Over the next months David concreted his idea and gave his readers an assignment to work on. An assignment where you are allowed to work on a project that you always wanted to work on. He challenged his readers to produce a body of work that will stand out, that he would want to randomly select and present it to his audience that consists of known and unknown photographers alike, of photo editors, industry professionals and so on.
I would suggest reading his posts "in flight magazines", "collaboration", "your work", "timing", "psyched", "your assignment", "flood gates" and last but not least "bold steps" to get a better understanding of what David Alan Harvey is asking and looking for.
Finally, on September 18th he made yet another big step. He writes: "i announce now, to the readers of this forum, the offering of a $5,000. (u.s. dollars) stipend/grant for one exceptional photographer to help support their personal work.....this will be based on the photographs being sent to me now....
the deadline for sending work will now be extended to november 15, 2007....this will be based entirely on work produced between july 15, 2007 and the closing date.....the stipend will be awarded by december 15, 2007...Merry Christmas!!"
The "David Alan Harvey Blog Grant" aside, reading his posts, taking part in the very active communication with him, working on "your assignment" and trying to give your best in this collaboration effort provides a great chance for you that you shouldn't miss.
David was selected by his Magnum colleagues to help and initiate a Magnum educational program that is in the working. Even if his blog activities are not directly related to the Magnum educational program, it shows that he was the right person to be selected for this. His effort in helping and supporting young photographers is a unselfish and noble thing. This one goes out to you David!
Except for a few rare occasions over the last thirty years John Vink arrives too late... Or does he? When he gets where he wants to be, the paroxysms of the crisis are gone. So are most of the media, on to another spot on Earth where violence and tension are mounting. John thinks it's starting to get interesting when no one is watching anymore...
In 1989 he spent one month in Cambodia. He came back in 1991. Then again in 1999. And in 2000 he stayed. More than six years later he is still there and hardly moves outside the Cambodian borders. He is somewhere else without having to travel.
A pawn in the cynical game of geopolitics, Cambodia was dragged into a war it initially didn?t belong to. It was left stunned and bloodless by the second genocide of the 20th century: an estimated 1,7 million people died during the 3 years, 8 months and 20 days of the Khmer Rouge regime. It was liberated/occupied by a foreign country for ten years and was ostracized by the West for that. After the 1991 Paris Peace Accords it was kept breathless by a civil war which lingered on until 1998 and by political unrest. Today it still has a heavy price to pay for its reconstruction in an unbridled market economy where literally everything, from governmental property to human dignity, seems to be for sale (Cambodia is ranked nr 151 out of 163 on the level of corruption according to Berlin based Transparency International)?
The destruction caused by all those years of turmoil was not only physical. It was moral as well. The very particular and intricate values which built Khmer society over the centuries were shattered by a constant urgency to survive. The country is far from having recovered the tissue of solidarity which binds a society and which provides protection to those weaker members of its community.
Khmer Chronicles proposes to give you a glimpse of that Cambodia. John Vink won't talk about himself right away but it'll tell you a lot about what he is interested in... And you can always ask him a question. Probably he'll answer...
These pictures were made during a local assignment for UNICEF.
Established in Cambodia since 1972, but interrupted by he Khmer Rouge regime ripping apart the country from 1975-79, UNICEF, today with a staff of about 140 people, has set up a widespread range of programmes in six provinces with its usual focus on children to support the government in rebuilding the country.
The country programme for 2006 to 2010 has a budget of 92,5 million$US which will be used for the Seth Koma (Child Rights in Khmer), the Child Survival, the Expanded Basic Education, the Child Protection, the HIV/AIDS Prevention and Care and the Advocacy and Social Mobilization programmes. These programmes cover an impressive array of topics ranging, among many others, from hand washing campaigns to the improvement of water quality or child-friendly classrooms, from dengue fever protection to supporting NGOs dealing with drug addiction or Buddhist monks doing HIV/AIDS prevention, from implementing a decent treatment of children caught up in the judiciary system to thorough immunization campaigns or avian influenza awareness campaigns.
The road ahead is still steep though, and several years of economic growth with double digits have by far not rendered the presence of UNICEF in Cambodia obsolete. In fact the rapid growth of the country and the ensuing increase in economic disparities among the population have made the presence of UNICEF and many other active international organizations in Cambodia even more indispensable.
As I have another book out I thought I'd post again to follow up on my Tokyo Love Hello and Korean Comfort Women ones, and respond to your comments - sorry for the long delay if anyone is still out there - most were very positive, so thanks a lot for that feedback. (Rafal there is a Magnum book of new work on Korea coming out. Daniel and Alok, an interesting idea to photograph the perpetrators, but few are now alive and I am sure would not come forward.)
This is the cover of the new book, Northern Exposures. Its in B&W and about Rural Life in the North East of England; County Durham to be precise.
Why B&W? It was great to change modes - it is also in medium format, on Mamiya 7s mostly - and to adopt a slower more contemplative approach than towards the frenetic urban life of Tokyo. It was shot in some of the same time frame as Tokyo too. I like to keep plugging away at my own country, exploring England at the same time I am exploring foreign places. Maybe it keeps you rooted. But the answer to why it is B&W is nothing more complex than I wanted to. It just felt right.
What started it off? It all started from a small commission from Side Gallery in Newcastle who were working on a larger group project on Durham Coalfields, the onetime heartland of the defunct British coal-mining industry. Once I got started I found myself hooked into it, in Cartier-Bresson's phrase, it got between the shirt and skin, and I decided to continue working on it for my own interest.
We have invited Claudia Guadarrama, 2004 winner of the Inge Morath Award to tell us about the project that she has been working on with the help of the award.
The Inge Morath Award is organized by The Inge Morath Foundation in cooperation with Magnum Photos and is awarded annually to a female documentary photographer or photojournalist under the age of 30.
In future blog articles we will continue to look at the work of the previous Inge Morath Award winners.
My project is about undocumented Central American migrants crossing the southern border of Mexico trying to eventually get to the United States looking for a better life. There are no official records about the number of people crossing the Mexican border illegally everyday; but in agreement with official counts along this border, they detain approximately 44 percent of the total number of migrants that cross illegally through Mexico.
This is one of the most critical stages of the journey to the United States. The harassment and extortion of migrants are common things. Only a few of them can get through successfully.
Last year, Jessica Dimmock received the Inge Morath Award which was established to encourage young female photojournalists. She shares with us how she found and completed her award-winning photo documentary 'The Ninth Floor' about several people in a New York apartment living with drug addiction, and why it's important to have an award only for women.
How did you find the subject of your photodocumentary?
I was studying at the International Center of Photography at the time. I was on the street fiddling with a digital camera because as of then I had not used one before. I was approached by a cocaine dealer who made it clear that he was a dealer. Over the course of the conversation he made it clear that if I wanted to follow him and photograph him I could. He took me to a variety of places - parties, people's apartments, the owner of an escort service. The last place he ever took me was the apartment where the project starts. He was arrested shortly thereafter, and I have never seen him since, despite trying to find him. But because he brought me to this apartment and made the initial introduction I went back with prints from my first visit. After that, and some slow starts, I was allowed to return at any time.
Jang Jum Dol was 14 and on the way to do laundry when she was taken by a Japanese man and told she was going to a factory to make money, but she was tied up in a house with an 11-year-old girl and then taken with some other girls to Manchuria. She tried to escape and was captured and beaten and kept at a sex station for the Japanese military which was surrounded by a wire fence. She had three children there and two of them died, the surviving girl had a weak heart. When she came back to Korea with her daughter after the war she was so poor they had to sleep in the streets. Chris Steele-Perkins/Magnum Photos
2007 marks the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery within the British Empire. However, two hundred years later, it is estimated that 27 million people across the globe are still enslaved. To help raise awareness of this ongoing human rights crisis, Autograph ABP has commissioned nine Magnum photographers to document slavery as it exists around the world in the anniversary year of its abolition. A major exhibition of the work will open at the Royal Festival Hall in London in February 2008, and will include work on bonded labourers, child labourers, trade slavery, people trafficking, and domestic and sex slavery. Chris Steele-Perkins shares his experience of photographing "Comfort Women" in Korea for the project.
I am sitting in a fire station in South Korea waiting for an incident on the quietest day of the year - so it seems an appropriate moment to write something briefly as it was in South Korea at the end of last year that I did my work for the Slavery project photographing Comfort Women.
Afro Alpine Pharma factory, Kabale, Uganda. April 16, 2007. Dry artemisia leaves, used in the production of medication, are bagged then weighed at the factory. A farmer can get around $15 for a 30kg bag, almost three times the amount they could earn for food crops. Kabebe William awaits the weight tally on how much artemisia he brought in 14 bags. Chien-Chi Chang/Magnum on Malaria
Magnum photographer Chien-Chi Chang is currently in Uganda, accompanied by writer Kyu-Young Lee, to document the many sides of the malaria story – the tragedy, the solutions, the hope for tackling this disease – through the narrative potential of photography. It is the first effort of a new, ongoing project we’re calling Magnum On Malaria, through which we will track the worldwide effort to bring this disease under control. In the run up to Malaria Awareness Day on April 25, Chang will visit factories where first-line malaria drugs are being produced, fields where key ingredients are being grown, medical clinics where malaria is the number one cause of visits, homes where bed nets are used, a bed net distribution center and a brand new state-of-the art bed net factory.
Chang has just begun filing photographs from the last few days in Uganda. Watch this space as we explore the story of malaria through his lense.
The story of malaria begins with the scale of the problem. 40 percent of the world’s population, some 3.2 billion people, are at risk of contracting malaria. There are 350 to 500 million diagnosed cases each year. The problem is most severe in sub-Saharan Africa where more than 1 million people die every year from the disease. Children and pregnant women are most vulnerable: malaria is the leading cause of death among children in Africa, with a child dying every 30 seconds from the disease; women are four times as likely to contract malaria as other adults, resulting in miscarriages and dangerously low birth weights.
Documenting the conditions of detention centers is not a novel preoccupation of Magnum photographers, nor is reflecting on the philosophy versus the reality of incarceration. Donovan Wylie, Chien Chi Chang, Carl de Keyzer, Alex Majoli and Jean Gaumy have all produced books related to this topic.
Tearsheet from Donovan Wylie's 2004 book 'The Maze.'
For nearly 30 years, the Maze prison, ten miles outside Belfast, played a unique role in the Northern Ireland troubles. Built in 1976, it became a microcosm of the struggle between loyalists and republicans, with prisoners segregated in the infamous H-Blocks according to their political beliefs and membership of paramilitary organizations. It was the scene of violent protests, hunger strikes, mass escapes and deaths of both prisoners and prison staff.
I have just returned from Dubai where I was photographing the first Dubai DIFC Art Fair. We all know that Dubai is the fastest growing city in the world and this fair was part of an ongoing strategy to try and position Dubai as a cultural destination, to compliment their known love of tourism and business.
Dubai. 2007. Martin Parr/Magnum Photos
This city has a lot of cash swashing around, and when you have bought all the cars, houses, plastic surgery and clothes you need the only thing left to buy is Art. And this is what appeared to be happening at the VIP launch of this fair last Thursday evening. What for me was interesting, is that the normal art fair crowd was entirely different. There were the normal Western Europeans and Americans, but also of course, the Arabs, the wealthy Indians, and the Asians too. This heady mix was wonderful to photograph, it was really a truly international event. The way people dressed and their demeanour was very Bling, not a word I have encountered much, but you know it when you see it.
In an ongoing email conversation with British Magnum photographer Simon Wheatley about photographing youth in different countries, Wheatley also touched upon the fear that the U.K. may be introducing measures that will restrict street photography. He answered a few questions from Malaysia where he is currently working.
Blois, France. 2005. The monotony of another boring afternoon for two youths who have been excluded from school. Simon Wheatley/Magnum Photos
What would be the implications of such legislation for you?
I’m not sure exactly what is being proposed, but if France is anything to go by then it’s very worrying. When you take someone’s eyes away or blur a facial expression you can remove the meaning of the picture. There was a debate on lightstalkers after my story from the banlieue of Blois was placed on the Magnum website. Someone said he mourned the death of photojournalism in France, and I share that sentiment if this is really the way things must go. But France has become very interesting and I do retain hope that the work in Blois might be the beginning of my efforts there. Another comment on lightstalkers said that it would have been more respectful of me to obtain people’s permission before publication, but most of the youths in my pictures from Blois are extremely alienated, and would probably have ripped up any piece of paper I’d ask them to sign. A 14 year old boy of Algerian origin did exactly that with a contact sheet in which he spotted his younger sister, who’d actually asked me to take her picture! I would not expect such a heated reaction in London but I don’t think many of the youth I’ve photographed there would be exactly queuing up to sign releases.
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?
Front cover of Chris Steele-Perkins' new book Tokyo Love Hello.
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?
Growing up in South Carolina in a Greek household was an experience that, in retrospect, had a definite influence on how I viewed the U.S. as I began photographing it later in life. From the beginning I felt that I was an outsider looking through a window at the society around me. That window later became the viewfinder of my Leica camera. As I grew up and attended school in the segregated South, I became more and more upset about the treatment of black people.
Daufuskie Island, South Carolina. 1952. Men praying in church. Constantine Manos/Magnum Photos
In college in my hometown, where all my schooling took place, I wrote the first anti-segregation editorials in the college newspaper - which led to telephoned threats to our house. While still in my teens, I photographed the Klu Klux Klan burning crosses in the countryside and went to Montgomery, Alabama to photograph the bus-boycott and the young Martin Luther King Jr. This was the beginning of my fascination with America and things American. As I saw more and more of the U. S. it became more exotic to me; I had no desire to go to India...
The 3,6 ha of land where once thrived the Dey Krohom community is now empty... The 3-year long struggle of its 1400 residents with repeated and often violent intimidations by 7NG, a development company which plans to build high rises and a shopping mall, has come to a brutal end. In the night of January 24th, at 2:00 am, police blocked access to the site. At 6:00 am, in a well planned move some 200 police using tear gas and 400 hired workers with axes and crowbars, backed-up by bulldozers and fire trucks, violently and thoroughly flattened every single building, burying people's belonging -motorcycles, refrigerators, clothes, family pictures, everything- underneath rubble and torn tin sheeting. Neutral observers of Human Rights organizations and press photographers were intimidated, pushed and beaten.
In Access to Life, eight Magnum photographers portray people in nine countries around the world before and four months after they began antiretroviral treatment for AIDS. Paolo Pellegrin in 
Now that this tome has hit the streets, I thought it would be worthwhile to give some details to the background of this project. All Magnum group projects have to gain board or membership approval, and so it was at the 2006 AGM in London we were discussing Thames and Hudson's interest in doing a book to celebrate our 60th anniversary for 2007.I came up with an idea that the photographers select each other as being a potentially interesting way to get a fresher selection, and to benefit from inside knowledge within the agency.
In Cambodia one often knows what he'll lose but not what he'll get in return. And here the loss is considerable. The theatre is one of architect Vann Molyvann's highest achievements. In the so-called "Golden Era" of the 60's the Cambodian architect has dotted the landscape of his capital Phnom Penh with landmarks of international standards like the School of Foreign Languages, Chaktomuk conference hall or the Olympic stadium. During the 80's the theatre was a point of convergence for the artists scattered by the Khmer Rouge regime. This was the place where one could assess who was left alive among the heirs of centuries old culture. Cambodian film director Rithy Panh has used the theatre as a pivotal point for his film "Le Theatre Brule" which precisely and quite humorously checks where exactly Cambodia stands today on a cultural level.
