Retro Journalism

[paulr]

Anyone seen this?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/visuel/124158802/

[Denis Pleic]

Funny - the person posting the comment on that page didn't realize that the poster is not the author of the photo... :)

Anyway, looks like it's becoming a trend - "retro" seems to be "in" again.

Living in Europe (and a relatively remote part, at that), I first came across something "retro" in a major publication in NatGeo some time ago - with Robb Kendrick's tintypes from Elko, Nevada. I was immediately hooked!

Then came David Burnett with his fabulous Holga and Speed Graphic "political" portraits using Aero Ektar, being published in Time, I think. Lately I've been seeing comments on various analog/LF forums about spotting LF gear being used to document public events (some Congress hearing and whatnot).

And then there's a set of Burnett's photos in recent Katrina article, again in NatGeo....

Like I said, looks like a slowly growing trend.
Can't say I don't like it :)
First, it brings more "exposure" of LF and similar "antiquated" photography to "general public", and, IMHO, helps to educate the Joe Average that photography can mean something else besides pixels and Photoshop.
Mind you, I have nothing against digital photography - it's just not my cup of tea... :)

In short, yes, I think I see a pattern here. I hope the trend holds out :)

Regards,

Denis

[Marko]

If there ever was a situation that called for strictly documentary photo journalism, this was it.

Maybe it's just me, but such an artsy technique seems to be a pretty poor choice for disasters like that. Kind of banal.

[paulr]

Well, the guy's a daguerrotypist ... it's what he does. Considering how time consuming the process is, it wouldn't surprise me if he'd already been up on the roof photographing when the whole thing went down.

At any rate, a friend of mine who makes daguerrotypes showed me the picture. This guy is his hero, partly for technical reasons. Aparently getting the kind of film speed needed for a picture like that borders on magic.

How does it strike you as banal? A banal image of a terrorist attack would actually be quite a feat.

[Gordon Moat]

I think a technically historical approach could be a good choice for a subject of historical importance. The dangers would be the technique distracting from the importance of the events, or the technique causing a beautiful image result for a terrible event. The historical connection might work, but I think some care would be needed in selectively applying such an approach.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat
A G Studio (http://www.allgstudio.com)

[Marko]

Well, the guy's a daguerrotypist ... it's what he does. Considering how time consuming the process is, it wouldn't surprise me if he'd already been up on the roof photographing when the whole thing went down.

At any rate, a friend of mine who makes daguerrotypes showed me the picture. This guy is his hero, partly for technical reasons. Aparently getting the kind of film speed needed for a picture like that borders on magic.

How does it strike you as banal? A banal image of a terrorist attack would actually be quite a feat.

Like I said, it's probably just me, but an event on such scale does not really need any kind of embelishment nor amplifications. The photograph itself is unquestioningly exceptional on a technical level, and I do understand your reasoning. But somehow the choice of such an artistic technique still feels at least... well, awkward, to use a different term.

I really think that the loss of human life, especially on a scale like this or in such gruesome ways like that South Vietnamese officer executing the VC prisoner on the street represent events that are shocking enough as they are and should be simply documented without any attempts at emphasis.

{edit}

I just saw Gordon's reply:

"Beautiful images of terrible events."

This is the exact verbalization I needed for my impression of banality.

{end edit}

[Erik Gould]

If there ever was a situation that called for strictly documentary photo journalism, this was it....

I can't think of anything more strictly documentary than a dagguerotype. Artsy? Banal? not to me. Anyway, As I understand the photographers story, he had just prepared some plates in his studio for the days work when the attack happened, and he just reacted and went to the roof and made the image, I think many of us were grasping with what to do on that day. If you are going to worry that your image might be too beautiful for some ulgy event, you better just leave the camera home, no matter what the process. Photography just does that without you even tryin'. In my opinion, anyhow.

[Oren Grad]

Well, the guy's a daguerrotypist ... it's what he does.

Well said.

I hope I'll have a chance to see this daguerreotype "in the flesh" someday.

[Marko]

I can't think of anything more strictly documentary than a dagguerotype. Artsy? Banal? not to me. Anyway, As I understand the photographers story, he had just prepared some plates in his studio for the days work when the attack happened, and he just reacted and went to the roof and made the image, I think many of us were grasping with what to do on that day. If you are going to worry that your image might be too beautiful for some ulgy event, you better just leave the camera home, no matter what the process. Photography just does that without you even tryin'. In my opinion, anyhow.

As much as I'd like to be even close to the level of proficiency where I'd have to worry about my images being too beautiful, and as far as I really am from there, I think it would never occur to me to try anything else than just snap away. Again, it is amazing how he did it, and you all make a good point. And it's most likely just my background, but I still can't shake the feeling I got looking at the image, that's all.

[Erik Gould]

I get where you are coming from Marko. If this image was done in something like gum over platinum I would probably agree with you (although it could be done, and someone may just come up with such an image!) I think it has to do with what we think of as straight journalism, you may be looking for the 35mm b&w style that we all know from the 50's-70's. Me, I've looked at enough historical d-types to think of it as the ultimate recorder of facts, grainless, almost endless detail, cool, detached, perfect. Sure, it is an art process today, but this image is not really being bent to such ends. I would love to see this plate in person.

[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?

[Marko]

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?

Well, it appears there's one thing we do agree upon - neither of us seems terribly interested in what the other has to say.

So, let's leave it at that, shall we?

[Dirk Rösler]

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,....

We have been photographing suffering for a long time by now, and nothing seems to have changed. One could conclude that it does not work.

Book recommendation (http://www.amazon.com/Regarding-Pain-Others-Susan-Sontag/dp/0312422199/sr=8-1/qid=1158888739/ref=sr_1_1/002-0130435-2601653?ie=UTF8&s=books)