Retro Journalism

[paulr]

There's a long debate about the rightness of making beautiful depictions of terrible things. I understand that on the surface it can seem like a trite or disrespectful exercise. But there's justification for it ... and a long tradition (specifically, modernism). In all the arts and related traditions, bringing form to things is how we make them comprehensible. And broadly speaking, form and beauty are inexorably tied to each other.

The modernists, lacking metaphysical principles run to, turned instead to formalism and beauty in order to bear the unbearable. Picasso's Guernica is one of the most famous examples.

I'll quote Milan Kundera on another:

"Until Stravinsky, music was never able to give barbaric rites a grand form. We could not imagine them musically. Which means: we could not imagine the BEAUTY of the barbaric. Without its beauty, the barbaric would remain incomprehensible. (I stress this: to know any phenomenon deeply requires understanding its beauty, actual or potential.) Saying that a bloody rite does possess some beauty--there's the scandal, unbearable, unacceptable. And yet, unless we understand this scandal, unless we get to the very bottom of it, we cannot understand much about man. Stravinski gives the barbaric rite a musical form that is powerful and convincing but does not lie: listen to the last section of the "Sacre," the "Danse Sacrale" ("Sacrificial Dance"): it does not dodge the horror. It is there. Merely shown? Not denounced? But if it were denounced--stripped of its beauty, shown in its hideousness--it would be a cheat, a simplification, a piece of "propaganda." It is BECAUSE it is beautiful that the girl's murder is horrible."

Of course, there's a difference between beauty and prettiness, or decoration. We might reasonably be bothered by a needlepoint of the Trade Center collapsing, or painting made with glitter. Or a gum over platinum print, to use Erik's example. But I don't see gratuitous decoration or an effort to prettify in this particular D-type. Just something beautiful in its horror ... or horrible in its beauty. Like much of modernism.

As Robert Adams wrote about Weston's haunting photo of a dead pellican floating in kelp ... "It depicts the mystery at the end of every terror--the survival of form."

[Dirk Rösler]

It should worry us more that there are cruelties in the world that are not photographed or reported enough or not at all. It should also worry us that some of the events in "our world" i.e. the western civilisation are excessively reported on. This imbalance of attention needs to be questioned more.

[Jonathan Brewer]

You can go overboard w/this, the movies and the gaming industry do, in the glorification of violence, if you've ever been involved in violence, particularly up close, where you can smell somebodies breath, it's terrifying, sickening, and you pay dearly physically and emotionally for having been involved, regardless of whether you are the winner or loser.

I had a job where fighting was one of the things you had to do on a sometimes daily basis, and when I had to do it, there was nothing about it that remotely resembled what you see in some movies and video, concussions, back injuries, busted elbows, gouged out eyes, stab wounds, bite wounds, broken noses/jaws, blood, screaming, knashing, and then after whatever happens in over with, thinking about it.

Having worked out w/weights, and knowing some self defense, I started this one career w/a distinct advantage, and with the benefit of that, I was able to go from day one to retirement w/out put in a coma, or one of my eyes put out, or being stabbed, despite the fact that a couple folks on occasion, confused me with a Christmas turkey, but despite never losing a fight, I have a 'knot' on the side of my head the size of a golfball, put there w/a mahogany chair, busted knees/busted shins/3 compressions in my back/a busted elbow, I've had about 3 concussions, and went to the hospital about a half dozen times for treatment.

Every time something happens, you pay twice as much emotionally as physically, a good percentage of the great folks I worked with, are dead/homeless/on drugs, probably from going to sleep and reliving some of the violence and dread they had to suffer through on the job, thinking of this while reading this thread, it struck me that the depiction of something like the Twin Towers so far off simply can't give an idea of what's happening to those people inside, and their suffering, and I would say that most folks would not want to experience it, me least of all.

[paulr]

Jonathan, I think you're touching on the difference between depictions of violence that make it real but still comprehensible, vs. those that simply reduce it to entertainment. The former sensitizes us; the latter desensitizes.

I think of Hemingway ... after seeing his world (including his values and moral ideas) shredded during World War I, he devoted much of his career to trying to make sense of things. Much of what he engaged in could be seen as a kind of ritualization of death. A formalization of something that he'd seen in real life without form or meaning.

Some people assume his obsessions with hunting and bullfighting were about sport or manliness, but they make more sense when you read his take on them. For him they were ritual; art. An attempt to find order and meaning in death, which was so horrible to witness in its naked state during the war.

Anyway, are you still for hire? There's a certain curator whose attention I'd like to get, and I can't think of a better way than to send a heavy over with my portfolio to kick him around a little.

[Jonathan Brewer]

I'm retired from that career, thankfully.........saw things I wish I hadn't, did things I wish I didn't have to do, but the good thing about it is that I absolutely have no interest in seeing suffering, if they're showing somebody getting killed on the news, I change the channel.

You made a good point about an image serving to sensitize folks to suffering, I think that's a good thing, even though a picture can never tell the whole story,......what I don't like is the part of it when it's presented to satisfy the curiousity/voyeuristic part of human nature that doesn't need to be brought out in us, but of course done to report on the human condition, it is a necessary and vital tool if used sparingly, to improve the human condition.

[David A. Goldfarb]

This is one of my favorite images of 9/11, if "favorite" could be an appropriate word. As a New Yorker of fifteen years living in Manhattan for twelve of those years, I like that it shows the crisis from the perspective of many Manhattanites.

It was a beautiful clear day. Most of us who don't work or live downtown were far away from the tragedy, and yet could not be unaffected by it. The smell travelled up to Harlem. Lines formed at ATMs and in grocery stores. We all were on the phone calling to let people know we were okay, and to see if our friends were okay, and to see if our friends' friends whom our friends couldn't reach by phone were okay. And here this artist who makes daguerreotypes made a daguerreotype of the thing he saw, just as he might do on any other day, when he saw any other thing. It doesn't sensationalize--the events were sensational enough on their own, and it doesn't isolate the World Trade Center from the rest of the city. It shows what happened as we saw it.

[Jason Greenberg Motamedi]

... such an artsy technique seems to be a pretty poor choice for disasters like that...

Marko, I fail to see what is artsy about this technique. It is a very straight-forward Daguerreotype, nothing funky or artsy about it.

Are you trying to say that such images only be made in digital or color?

Would a black and white print be artsy?

How about a platinum print?

Anyhow, Jerry has been making "documentary" Daguerreotypes for quite a while.

[Marko]

Marko, I fail to see what is artsy about this technique. It is a very straight-forward Daguerreotype, nothing funky or artsy about it.

Are you trying to say that such images only be made in digital or color?

Would a black and white print be artsy?

How about a platinum print?

Anyhow, Jerry has been making "documentary" Daguerreotypes for quite a while.

Well, it is not exactly mainstream either, now is it? As far as I can see, it has not been widely used for reporting for at least 60-70 years or so... That makes it an alternative process and by extension an art tecchnique, just like oil or watercolor.

On reflection, b&w 35mm is also fast joining the alternatives when it comes to straight reporting and photo journalism. As Erik pointed out, it mainly ceased being mainstream too at the end of 70s, maybe 80s at the most.

As for your other questions - I am not trying to say anything I didn't already say. I have simply stated how that picture made me feel.

You're not telling me what I should feel, are you?

[tim atherton]

Well, it is not exactly mainstream either, now is it? As far as I can see, it has not been widely used for reporting for at least 60-70 years or so... That makes it an alternative process and by extension an art tecchnique, just like oil or watercolor.

Britain still sends War Artists to conflict zones to "document" them (in their own terms) - in Afghanistan and Iraq they have used everything from watercolour to acrylic to oils to pencil and charcoal etc

[Jason Greenberg Motamedi]

...You're not telling me what I should feel, are you?

This isn't, for me at least, about how you feel.

Rather, it is your tacit assertion that serious events must only be represented through particular means or technologies that concerns me.

Shall we leave interpretation and representation to the so-called experts?