401. The Theater of the Street, the Subject of the Photograph

  In 1999, Philip-Lorca diCorcia set up his camera on a tripod in Times Square, attached strobe lights to scaffolding across the street and, in the time-honored tradition of street photography, took a random series of pictures of strangers passing under his lights. The project continued for two years, culminating in an exhibition of photographs called Heads at Pace/MacGill Gallery in Chelsea. "Mr. diCorcia's pictures remind us, among other things, that we are each our own little universe of secrets, and vulnerable", Michael Kimmelman wrote, reviewing the show in The New York Times. "Good art makes you see the world differently, at least for a while, and after seeing Mr. diCorcia's new Heads, for the next few hours you won't pass another person on the street in the same absent way." But not everyone was impressed.   When Erno Nussenzweig, an Orthodox Jew and retired diamond merchant from Union City, N.J., saw his picture last year in the exhibition catalog, he called his lawyer. And then he sued Mr. diCorcia and Pace for exhibiting and publishing the portrait without permission and profiting from it financially. The suit sought an injunction to halt sales and publication of the photograph, as well as $500,000 in compensatory damages and $1.5 million in punitive damages.   Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York The man in "Head No. 13, 2000," by Philip-Lorca diCorcia is Erno Nussenzweig. When he saw his picture in an exhibition catalog for diCorcia's "Heads," he sued the photographer and his gallery.   The suit was dismissed last month by a New York State Supreme Court judge who said that the photographer's right to artistic expression trumped the subject's privacy rights. But to many artists, the fact that the case went so far is significant.   The practice of street photography has a long tradition in the United States, with documentary and artistic strains, in big cities and small towns. Photographers usually must obtain permission to photograph on private property — including restaurants and hotel lobbies — but the freedom to photograph in public has long been taken for granted. And it has had a profound impact on the history of the medium. Without it, Lee Friedlander would not have roamed the streets of New York photographing strangers, and Walker Evans would never have produced his series of subway portraits in the 1940's.   Remarkably, this was the first case to directly challenge that right. Had it succeeded, "Subway Passenger, New York City," 1941, along with a vast number of other famous images taken on the sly, might no longer be able to be published or sold.   Metropolitan Museum of Art, Walker Evans Archive Walker Evans took a series of pictures on the sly in the subway in the 1940's; "Subway Passenger, New York City."   In his lawsuit, Mr. Nussenzweig argued that use of the photograph interfered with his constitutional right to practice his religion, which prohibits the use of graven images.   New York state right-to-privacy laws prohibit the unauthorized use of a person's likeness for commercial purposes, that is, for advertising or purposes of trade. But they do not apply if the likeness is considered art. So Mr. diCorcia's lawyer, Lawrence Barth, of Munger, Tolles & Olson in Los Angeles, focused on the context in which the photograph appeared. "What was at issue in this case was a type of use that hadn't been tested against First Amendment principles before — exhibition in a gallery; sale of limited edition prints; and publication in an artist's monograph," he said in an e-mail message. "We tried to sensitize the court to the broad sweep of important and now famous expression that would be chilled over the past century under the rule urged by Nussenzweig." Among others, he mentioned Alfred Eisenstaedt's famous image of a sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square on V-J Day in 1945, when Allied forces announced the surrender of Japan.       Several previous cases were also cited in Mr. diCorcia's defense. In Hoepker v. Kruger (2002), a woman who had been photographed by Thomas Hoepker, a German photographer, sued Barbara Kruger for using the picture in a piece called "It's a Small World ... Unless You Have to Clean It." A New York federal court judge ruled in Ms. Kruger's favor, holding that, under state law and the First Amendment, the woman's image was not used for purposes of trade, but rather in a work of art.   Also cited was a 1982 ruling in which the New York Court of Appeals sided with The New York Times in a suit brought by Clarence Arrington, whose photograph, taken without his knowledge while he was walking in the Wall Street area, appeared on the cover of The New York Times Magazine in 1978 to illustrate an article titled "The Black Middle Class: Making It." Mr. Arrington said the picture was published without his consent to represent a story he didn't agree with. The New York Court of Appeals held that The Times's First Amendment rights trumped Mr. Arrington's privacy rights.   In an affidavit submitted to the court on Mr. diCorcia's behalf, Peter Galassi, chief curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art, said Mr. diCorcia's "Heads" fit into a tradition of street photography well defined by artists ranging from Alfred Stieglitz and Henri Cartier-Bresson to Robert Frank and Garry Winogrand. "If the law were to forbid artists to exhibit and sell photographs made in public places without the consent of all who might appear in those photographs," Mr. Galassi wrote, "then artistic expression in the field of photography would suffer drastically. If such a ban were projected retroactively, it would rob the public of one of the most valuable traditions of our cultural inheritance."       Neale M. Albert, of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, who represented Pace/MacGill, said the case surprised him: "I have always believed that the so-called street photographers do not need releases for art purposes. In over 30 years of representing photographers, this is the first time a person has raised a complaint against one of my clients by reason of such a photograph."   State Supreme Court Justice Judith J. Gische rejected Mr. Nussenzweig's claim that his privacy had been violated, ruling on First Amendment grounds that the possibility of such a photograph is simply the price every person must be prepared to pay for a society in which information and opinion freely flow. And she wrote in her decision that the photograph was indeed a work of art. "Defendant diCorcia has demonstrated his general reputation as a photographic artist in the international artistic community," she wrote.   But she indirectly suggested that other cases might be more challenging. "Even while recognizing art as exempted from the reach of New York's privacy laws, the problem of sorting out what may or may not legally be art remains a difficult one," she wrote. As for the religious claims, she said: "Clearly, plaintiff finds the use of the photograph bearing his likeness deeply and spiritually offensive. While sensitive to plaintiff's distress, it is not redressable in the courts of civil law."   Mr. diCorcia, whose book of photographs "Storybook Life" was published in 2004, said that in setting up his camera in Times Square in 1999: "I never really questioned the legality of what I was doing. I had been told by numerous editors I had worked for that it was legal. There is no way the images could have been made with the knowledge and cooperation of the subjects. The mutual exclusivity that conflict or tension, is part of what gives the work whatever quality it has."     Mr. Nussenzweig is appealing. Last month his lawyer Jay Goldberg told The New York Law Journal that his client "has lost control over his own image."   "It's a terrible invasion to me," Mr. Goldberg said. "The last thing a person has is his own dignity."   Photography professionals are watching — and claiming equally high moral stakes. Should the case proceed, said Howard Greenberg, of Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York, "it would be a terrible thing, a travesty to those of us who have been educated and illuminated by great street photography of the past and, hopefully, the future, too."     Philip Gefter ©The New York Times March 19, 2006       http://zonezero.com/magazine/articles/gefter/index.htm    

Sunday, 19 March 2006

403. Leica Freedom Train An interesting piece of photographic history

  The Leica is the pioneer 35mm camera. From a nit picking point of view, it wasn't the very first still camera to use 35mm movie film, but it was the first to be widely publicized and successfully marketed.   It created the "candid camera" boom of the 1930s.     It is a German product - precise, minimalist, utterly efficient. Behind its worldwide acceptance as a creative tool was a family-owned, socially oriented firm that, during the Nazi era, acted with uncommon grace, generosity and modesty.   E. Leitz Inc., designer and manufacturer of Germany's most famous photographic product, saved its Jews.   And Ernst Leitz II, the steely eyed Protestant patriarch who headed the closely held firm as the Holocaust loomed across Europe, acted in such a way as to earn the title, "the photography industry's Schindler."   As George Gilbert, a veteran writer on topics photographic, told the story at last week's convention of the Leica Historical Society of America in Portland, Ore., Leitz Inc., founded in Wetzlar in 1869, had a tradition of enlightened behavior toward its workers.   Pensions, sick leave, health insurance - all were instituted early on at Leitz, which depended for its work force upon generations of skilled employees - many of whom were Jewish.   As soon as Adolf Hitler was named chancellor of Germany in 1933, Ernst Leitz II began receiving frantic calls from Jewish associates, asking for his help in getting them and their families out of the country.   As Christians, Leitz and his family were immune to Nazi Germany's Nuremberg laws, which restricted the movement of Jews and limited their professional activities.   To help his Jewish workers and colleagues, Leitz quietly established what has become known among historians of the Holocaust as "The Leica Freedom Train," a covert means of allowing Jews to leave Germany in the guise of Leitz employees being assigned overseas.   Employees, retailers, family members, even friends of family members were "assigned" to Leitz sales offices in France, Britain, Hong Kong and the United States.   Before long, German "employees" were disembarking from the ocean liner Bremen at a New York pier and making their way to the Manhattan office of Leitz Inc., where executives quickly found them jobs in the photographic industry.   The refugees were paid a stipend until they could find work. Out of this migration came designers, repair technicians, salespeople, marketers and writers for the photographic press.   Keeping the story quiet the "Leica Freedom Train" was at its height in 1938 and early 1939, delivering groups of refugees to New York every few weeks. Then, with the invasion of Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, Germany closed its borders.   By that time, hundreds of endangered Jews had escaped to America, thanks to the Leitzes' efforts. How did Ernst Leitz II and his staff get away with it?   Leitz Inc. was an internationally recognized brand that reflected credit on the newly resurgent Reich. The company produced range-finders and other optical systems for the German military. Also, the Nazi government desperately needed hard currency from abroad, and Leitz's single biggest market for optical goods was the United States.   Even so, members of the Leitz family and firm suffered for their good works. A top executive, Alfred Turk, was jailed for working to help Jews and freed only after the payment of a large bribe.   Leitz's daughter, Elsie Kuhn-Leitz, was imprisoned by the Gestapo after she was caught at the border, helping Jewish women cross into Switzerland. She eventually was freed but endured rough treatment in the course of questioning.   She also fell under suspicion when she attempted to improve the living conditions of 700 to 800 Ukrainian slave laborers, all of them women, who had been assigned to work in the plant during the 1940s.   (After the war, Kuhn-Leitz received numerous honors for her humanitarian efforts, among them the Officier d'honneur des Palms Academique from France in 1965 and the Aristide Briand Medal from the European Academy Ianthe 1970s.)   Why has no one told this story until now? According to the late Norman Lipton, a freelance writer and editor, the Leitz family wanted no publicity for its heroic efforts.   Only after the last member of the Leitz family was dead did the"Leica Freedom Train" finally come to light.   It is now the subject of a book, "The Greatest Invention of the Leitz Family: The Leica Freedom Train," by Frank Dabba Smith, a California-born rabbi currently living in England.     George Gilbert     http://zonezero.com/magazine/articles/leica/index.html      

Tuesday, 07 March 2006

405. Telling Tales

  Digital Storytelling is about reclaiming the tradition of storytelling from the mass media as much as it is about creating personal or social history – a way of dragging the oral tradition up to date through the most basic of technology. In short, digital storytelling is usually short multimedia tales told from the heart and often made up of photos, words and music that come in at about two minutes in length.   A good place to start is by visiting Story Center, a non-profit making organization based in California which assists people in making short meaningful stories from their lives. It got into the possibility of this grassroots media very early, and is very much regarded as the grandaddy of the scene.   A very fine early example of the artistry behind digital storytelling can be found at I Photograph To Remember. At 35 minutes it’s a very long project, but touching and interesting in its portrayal of photographer Pedro Meyer’s parents. And the explanations of the issues behind the work are as engrossing as the work itself.     The BBC has been interested in the concept for a while on a local level, and the Capture Wales site is probably their most fascinating realisation. Partly because it gives people a voice and partly because the Welsh concept of “ysbryd” (spirit) can be found between the diverse stories on display.   Strictly speaking, Jonathan Caouette’s feature film debut, Tarnation, is the product of digital storytelling stretched out to cinematic proportions. Its mix of music, footage and narration reveals truths that straight autobiography might miss.   YouTube is where the next Caouette might lurk, as individuals upload their short projects. A constantly revolving selection of films makes this site worth revisiting.   Possibly the most culturally significant implication of the whole digital storytelling movement, though, lies in its capacity to educate.   Digital StoryTelling is a resource for schools, complete with archives encouraging younger people to create their own stories and reveal their history. It’s proof that even after a decade the art of digital storytelling is alive, well and as vibrant as the original art of storytelling.       Richard Hector Jones © Posted in Collective Interactive Culture Magazine       http://zonezero.com/magazine/articles/jones/index.html    

Wednesday, 01 March 2006

407. Laura Buchholz

  Date: February 21, 2006 6:43:55 PM   I first saw zone zero while studying photography in Ecuador, and am now in Minneasota at Macalester College, where we have very little access to photography resources. I am the president of the photography club and am trying to get the members to look at some work done by people outside the US. Thanks for the access to your site!   Laura Buchholz  

Tuesday, 21 February 2006

409. JimD

  Date: January 29, 2006 10:02:12 PM   I work as an engineer in Silicon Valley. My education is in photography. I have an MFA from the University of New Mexico. Even though I have a day job I do photography in my spare time. Digital tools have been a personal renaissance for me and my interest in photography since they facilitate the image making process without the need for a darkroom. For my interests Zone Zero is one of the better 'serious' sources for contemporary image making/   Regards,   JimD  

Sunday, 29 January 2006

411. Beyond the Camera First Match Human Vision. Then Surpass it

    By affirming "you push the button, we do the rest", George Eastman created the photography industry. Today the future of that industry lies in extending its partnership with users to enable them with a true synthetic eye — an image capture device that forces no compromises compared to human vision — and with the full complement of tools needed for the coming age of pervasive visual communication.   As Eastman's successor, Kodak CEO Antonio Perez, quipped in his recent CES speech, digital cameras have been "like horse-drawn carriages with the addition of a motor instead of a horse" (or "digital analogues of analog cameras" as we at Future Image have been saying.) To be fair, that is hardly surprising: As a rule, a new technology begins by emulating another technology; then it equals it — and only later does it develop into its own medium. There are technical reasons for this: the new technology needs development and scale to catch up first to the raw performance, then to the price/performance, of the older one. There are also psychological reasons: users — and often product developers — learn only gradually to think "outside the box" of what the older technology defined as "possible."   Recently a twenty-something asked me how come his digital camera produced blurred images in low light. I looked at his pictures and pointed out they were superior to what he would have obtained with a film camera. Then the irrelevancy of my statement hit me: He had no film-based reference — he had probably never used film. He was comparing the performance of his camera to the only standard that made sense to him, the only standard that makes sense today: his eye.   The eye, or to be more accurate the human visual system, is the performance standard that digital camera designers should have in their sights for the immediate future. There's a lot of work to be done just to equal it. Our best cameras do not have our ability to see fine detail (therefore, don't expect the resolution race to end anytime soon), or to hold detail at both ends of high-contrast scenes. They do not match even our limited ability to see in color in low light. In anything less than full daylight, cameras produce blurred images if they are not held completely steady, or if the subject itself moves. (We are starting to see progress in preventing camera blur with a flowering of anti-shake technologies, but nothing yet that helps with subjects that won't hold still.) And there are less obvious ways that cameras don't match human vision: cameras don't have peripheral vision. They don't perceive and record depth and dimension information. And they don't record anywhere near as much "metadata" as we associate with our visual memories.   Rising to these capabilities is a huge challenge. But ultimately, whether we realize it or not, we as users expect nothing less from our cameras than to equal what we see with our eyes — and we won't be satisfied until we get it.     It's also a huge opportunity because, in this dawning age of images-as-language, the integrity of visual information — how well it reproduces our perception of reality and the richness of context associated with it — who, what, when, where and why - are what determines the value of that visual information.   Which points the way to the real target for image capture engineers: Remarkable as it is, the human visual system is designed to enable us to function and survive in the natural world. It does not take into consideration the existence of computing devices, the internet, televisions — all the artifacts and infrastructures of a technological society. In fact it doesn't assume any society at all. But the ways we use — and the new ways we want to use — the images we capture is highly influenced by and dependent on all of these. And that's where the money is.   We are now in an imaging economy where the historical consumables and service-based value propositions, which were also the industry's primary monetization models, have largely migrated into the initial purchase of the camera itself: film to sensor, print to screen.   The recipe for future success centers around understanding how customers want to use images after they've captured them — and beginning, at the capture stage, a partnership to optimize their experience of these downstream uses as well as the capture experience itself. In order to accomplish that, generating sophisticated metadata [information about the picture] based on location awareness and scene analysis is necessary. But is not sufficient. Partnering with the user involves understanding both their intent and their system constraints, and also assisting them with future-proofing. By this, we mean:   Intent: What is the user trying to communicate? Will that intent be best served by a single frame, or by a short motion sequence? How can composition, focus and lighting be optimized to the user's purpose? These skills, which we at Future Image call "visual eloquence," are currently the domain of the pros, just as, until the advent of automatic cameras, achieving accurate exposure was beyond the skill set of the average user. And just as before that, until the advent of roll film and develop/print services, the entire realm of photography was accessible only to a small minority. Today, anyone can operate a point-and-shoot camera with satisfactory results. It's time to build that next level of professional skill — "visual eloquence" — into the capture process.   System Constraints: Will the picture be displayed on a 60 inch high-definition TV, or on a cell-phone screen? If it's the latter, not only would it be wise to create a low-res version for transmission, it might also be advisable to zoom and crop so that the key elements are clearly visible on a small screen. Or perhaps a dynamic file that pans and zooms across the image should be generated.   Future-Proofing: One of the key findings to come out of the research on my book "Going Visual" is that the lifecycle of images extends long after their original use, and to uses that are not predictable at the time of capture. It turns out that one of the keys to the imaging industry's "holy grail" — extensive re-use of pictures — is not just the ability to find a picture when you need it, but the option to do what you want to do with it now, which may be quite different than what you wanted to do then. A year later, I'd like to display on a 60-inch high-definition TV that same image I originally sent to a cell phone. Oh, and Uncle Bob, who was just outside the frame when I took the picture? I want him in it now. Film photography, rooted since its birth in the constraints of scarce physical materials, is all about editing time and space at the moment of capture. The digital age by contrast is about having it all, and editing for particular uses at the time of those uses.   Alexis Gerard is co-Author of "Going Visual" (John Wiley & Sons 2005) and Founder and President of Future Image Inc, the leading independent center of expertise focused on the convergence of imaging, technology and business and hosts of the Mobile Imaging Summit executive conferences       http://zonezero.com/magazine/articles/gerard/index.html    

Tuesday, 24 January 2006

413. Everyone is a photographer these days

    I have been getting a lot of complaints recently about how the digital world has turned everyone into a photographer.   There are those who believe that only those who actually understand what they are doing should be taking photographs, that otherwise we end up devaluing photography as in an inflationary process in which everything loses it’s value.   Although I don’t agree with that premise, I understand where such a sentiment comes from. As more and more photographers see an erosion of their work environment by the encroachment of people that also take pictures, thus taking away opportunities for earning a living, it is understandable that such a defensive attitude happens.   I was recently in Hong Kong; at the time when the meetings of the WTO (World Trade Organization) were held. As everyone probably read in their local papers across the globe, the protests were very intense outside those meeting halls. The local paper had advertisements that were in keeping with a world trend of gathering images in ways that were unheard of not too long ago.     The advertisement read: Be a Citizen Journalist. As you probably recall, the most important, and of course, the first images of the terrorist bombing that took place in London, in 2005, were made with cell phone cameras, both in their video and still image formats. The same happened with the first images we got from the Tsunami in Asia. In Iraq today, the news agencies do not bring in any Western photographers anymore. Instead, they train local people who not only have the benefit of speaking the language but also have the necessary credentials for being present in those places where a photographer needs to be at and to which a Westerner most probably would not have access to. The citizen journalist is in keeping with the notion that these days almost anyone, or shall we say everyone, is recording everything that happens all the time.   Ever since photography became so easy that a five year old can take pictures (and with the advent of digital technology picture taking has become an increasingly simple operation) a lot of pictures which would have required a professional, now can be done by just about anyone. Even wedding pictures are no longer the exclusive realms of a professional.     Yes, we are seeing a very deep transformation of who takes pictures and what for. The emergence of a vast number of people taking pictures today that are not particularly interesting or good save to the person who is taking them and their friends or relatives, brings to forefront the need to reconsider the very notion of what makes a professional photographer. No longer is it just someone who is capable of actually making a picture, like it has been in the past, but new criteria is in now in order depending on the final usage of the image.     I actually enjoy the proliferation of people taking pictures, no matter that they are not very good; as I find that it has an equivalent in singing. How many people who love to sing in the shower or in a karaoke, are actually very good at singing? They are simply enjoying the pleasure of singing the same way as their counterparts enjoy taking pictures. I find that to be a very encouraging sign about the universality of capturing an image.   Pedro Meyer January 2006 Coyoacan, Mexico     As always please joins us with your comments in our forums.       http://zonezero.com/editorial/enero06/january06.html      

Thursday, 05 January 2006

415. Enigma

      I have found that for me the best pictures are those that leave me with more questions than answers   When I do not fully understand what I am looking at, I feel more intrigued by the image. It allows me speculate, it gives me the opportunity to be creative with the possible interpretations of what the photograph is all about.   I have always felt that photographic images were multifaceted in their possible interpretations, even those of a photo-journalistic nature, which is the main reason why photography is such a poor medium to deliver specific information. How else to explain that a photo-journalistic image always requires captions in order to anchor the image to a specific interpretation of its content.   For the viewer the story telling abilities of an image are open ended, and when the story is presented well, we become intrigued by the information we are given. What am I looking at? is never a bad question to provoke in the mind of a viewer.   Pictures that are so easily decoded that the moment I look at them I've already answered the question "what I am looking at?", are usually quite uninteresting images. They are the equivalent of "one liners". Before a dialogue is established between the viewer and the creator of the image, the photograph has ceased to raise interest.   While having a conversation with a friend of mine, we were discussing what it must have been like to be aboard a nudist flight. We came to the conslusion that all those naked bodies elicited absolutely no erotic emotions in us. I was very understanding of this situation remembering a time when I had taken pictures in a nudist colony. I feel that complete exposure with nothing left to the imagination would be the equivalent to pictures that have no veil of unanswered questions. They become so explicit that one is left with no particular interest in the imagery.   We at ZoneZero, wish you the very best for the Holidays. I am leaving for a month long journey with my ten year old son, Julio. We are going fishing. Fishing, not as in fish, but as in explorations and the capture of images, hopefully with plenty of room for the imagination. We will be going to China, which has all the enigmas one can imagine, especially for the outsider. There is nothing there that is so explicit that you loose interest in the dialogue with their reality. Hopefully we will have some interesting things to report back to you next year, in the year 2006.   Pedro Meyer December 2005   As always please joins us with your comments in our forums.       http://zonezero.com/editorial/diciembre05/december.html      

Tuesday, 27 December 2005

417. Anandaroop Ghosh

  Date: December 20, 2005 9:14:47 AM   Hi, I am an amateur photographer, actually more of a photography enthusiast than an actual photographer, considering I bought my first camera only last year. As of now, I am just shooting whatever I can, and hoping someday, I'll evolve my own style. This was my first visit to your site, and I really liked what I saw. It'd be wonderful if you could include me in your miling list. Thank you,   Anandaroop Ghosh, Kathmandu, Nepalo  

Tuesday, 20 December 2005

419. Project Iconography of the Mexican Stage

  The Photographic Archive Armando de Maria y Campos When the Theatre Research Center "Rodolfo Usigli" (CITRU) was founded in 1981, the photographic material of the Armando de Maria y Campos Archive became one of the materials that needed to be organized by the Phototheque of the Center. Since 1990 the new Audiovisual Materials Department had transformed into a workshop in which physical cleanliness and reorganization of the scattered materials was the main goal, looking to set up a series of Photo Shows in the Center’s facilities in 1992.   After performing the basic tasks as a photo archivist to preserve the historic materials of the Maria y Campos Archive, my job ended when these materials were transferred to the research area of CNA (National Art Center) to be handed over to the Special Meterials Department of the Library of the Arts. Pina Penotti. Prima donna brillante assoluta of the Italian Opera and Operetta Comica Company “Cità di Trieste”of the brothers Pío and Francisco Verona at the Gran Teatro Nacional in 1893.Cabinet-portrait.-Silver solution in self developing paper.G. Marchand. Calle de los Loros No. 4.Puebla. 13 X 19 cm. After a very productive conversation with Sergio Torres Cuesta, the research coordinator of CITRU, we considered that a digital archive would be a great option, since it would speed up consultation by users and avoid human contact with the original images, which is the main cause of deterioration of photographic materials. A digital archive would facilitate the making of my project "Iconography of the mexican Stage, a history of theatre in Mexico", which would bring into context the photos of the artists that were part of the Maria y Campos Archive. Since March 2002, now helped by the technological know-how of the Digital Graphics Workshop of the Multimedia Center of CNA, we produced an electronic catalog of the 1951 images of the archive in 85 CD ROMs, an index of the photographs plus the contact sheets printed in letter-size paper.   María Conesa. First Tiple Ballerina of the Maria Conesa Company at the Teatro Principal in1923.Cabinet portrait. Silver solution in self developing paper.- s.p.i.- 19 X 23 cm.   This interdisciplinary project intends to add an aspect of the artists life that is missing in the cold news reports of the entertainment press. Part of the protocol of the presentation of Mexican and foreign artists to Mexican Society was represented by the photographic studies of the actors, which identified them, put them into a hierarchy and fixed them upon the visual memory of their fans. This pecularity made the artists a showcase for fashion. They were of great importance and in them we see the costumes of the characters that were brought to life by them. The portrait of an artist on stage has an intrinsic value. It is an important part of the evolution of Photography in Mexico. Much of the work of many wonderful photographers would be in danger of disappearing if it were not by the new technologies which enable their optical and chromatic restoration. The decay of the paper and fading of the images even happens in the best of conditions, and let’s not talk about the normal deterioration sufferd by the portaits of the artists, which at their prime were exposed to strong lights, stained by humidity and the occasional insect and also by the tear drops of the loyal fans and friends that demanded a signed souvenir!!.   It is now the time to try out a new way to enjoy the marvelous work of either 19 th. Century photographers using the wet collodion process or the industrial photomechanic processes used during the first threee decades of the 20th Century. Hector Quiroga Pérez hquirogap@yahoo.com.mx     http://zonezero.com/magazine/articles/iconografia/  

Thursday, 03 November 2005

421. The camera's brushes

              So where do we go from here? The decisive moment had been explored through an infinite variety of great images over the past decades. However, there came a point, that I was looking at images that looked like those of other great photographers where only the subject matter would be slightly different, from one author to the next. But what could follow after “great images” would be for me, the great unanswered question.   In art there has always been this search for new formal solutions to express the ever changing potential presented by and through new tools. So throughout the history of art, we have a panorama that has always been in the process of transformation. The present moment, being no exception.   With regard to photography, pictorialism was an important movement at the end of the nineteenth century up to the start of the twentieth.   * Robert Leggat, wrote in 1999, the following: “The modern usage of this term may give a misleading picture of the movement as it arose in the second half of the nineteenth century; in any case, like the all-embracing word "art" it is a most elusive, intangible, and highly subjective term. In modern parlance it is sometimes taken to suggest conservatism, and the unwillingness to explore new approaches. In its original meaning anything that put the finished picture first and the subject second was pictorialism. Given such a meaning, pictorialism by no means excluded more modern trends; any photograph that stressed atmosphere or viewpoint rather than the subject would come under this category.   By the second half of the nineteenth century the novelty of capturing images was beginning to wear off, and some people were now beginning to question whether the camera, as it was then being used, was in fact too accurate and too detailed in what it recorded. This, coupled with the fact that painting enjoyed a much higher status than this new mechanistic process, caused some photographers to adopt new techniques which, as they saw it, made photography more of an art form. These new techniques came also to be known as High-Art photography.   In effect, the term Pictorialism is used to describe photographs in which the actual scene depicted is of less importance than the artistic quality of the image. Pictorialists would be more concerned with the aesthetics and, sometimes, the emotional impact of the image, rather than what actually was in front of their camera.   Because pictorialism was seen as artistic photography, one would not be surprised that current styles of art would be reflected in their work; as impressionism was in vogue at the time, many photographs have more than a passing resemblance to paintings in this style. Examples of this approach include combination printing, the use of focus, the manipulation of the negative, and the use of techniques such as gum bichromate, which greatly lessened the detail and produced a more artistic image.”   If in fact conservatism would be the perception that would define pictorialism, because of it’s unwillingness to explore the new. One could say that today, the precise opposite has started to happen. Where the practitioners of the “straight picture” seems to be on the defensive and unwilling to explore the potential use of all the new digital tools at our disposal.   This arsenal of new options provided by the digital tools, open up vistas, that are very different in many ways to the historical notions of pictorialism.   Let me point some of these out, so that we can observe what is new and different. I would start out by the single most important aspect I have encountered in my personal explorations. The level of control, down to the last pixel to be found within the image. Such fine and precise slicing and dicing of the image, would be unimaginable in the past.   What this level of control provides us with, is the option to define and combine styles that would have eluded most practitioners of photography in the past. I am always hesitant to suggest that this has never been done before, because as soon as something like this is stated, someone will surely come up with an example by someone who in fact did something like that a hundred years ago.   The problem is not so much if something has never been done before, but if that something was produced in such a way, that the effort might be repeated in more than just an isolated instance. Photography became a world wide cultural phenomenon precisely because of it’s widespread adaptation, and ease of use is certainly at the center of such an experience.   So being able to combine within a single image, various styles, where the pictorial and the hyper real essence of straight photography, might be merged into a seamless presentation, is hinged directly to the possibility of control over every single pixel within the frame.   I am well aware that the defenders of the “straight image” would somehow like to retain the aura of veracity about the photograph, even though all the evidence from a factual point of view flies directly in opposition to such an argument. The photograph is merely a piece of evidence about something that took place in front of the camera, not a slice of reality as some would like to interpret.   As we are well aware, such evidence is very much a subjective representation, because that is all it can be. Even scientific pictures created by robots sitting on top of remote rovers on a distant planet need to be interpreted for their evidential representation. Who would believe if you had a little figure appear staring into the view finder of such a robot visiting a far of planet, that this was indeed proof of life there?   But getting back to life on this one, if Pictorialism was a photographic term used to describe images that emphasized the artistic quality of the photograph rather than the scene it depicted. The movement’s primary aim was to bring photography into the fine art realm. Also concerned with aesthetics and impact, Pictorialists sought to produce images that were not solely about the objects in front of the camera. Techniques used by these photographers to create a more painterly effect included combination printing, focus, and manipulation of the negative.   So then what is different this time around is the emphasis on representing the “photographic reality” of the scene depicted while incorporating at the same time the “artistic quality” of the painterly technique. I would imagine that combining elements of the pictorial with traces of photographic realism, might take us into a new territory worthy of exploration. Is this neo pictorialism, or is it neo realism? or something yet altogether different, either direction depends on the preference of what is emphasized within the image. Let us have your opinion, as the subject lends itself to a lot of very interesting debates.   Pedro Meyer November 2005   As always please joins us with your comments in our forums.         http://zonezero.com/editorial/noviembre05/november.html      

Tuesday, 01 November 2005

423. Shannon

  Date: September 18, 2005 1:10:01 PM   Hi there,   My name is Shannon and Im studying photography at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in South Africa. I'm Specialising in Fashion and Documentary.   Im writting an essay on documentary and my approach is how involved should a photographer be in his subjuect matter. I mean this in the context of when does a photographer stop taking the photographs and start physically helping the person whos being beaten or assaulted. Does the photographer get involved at all? And what emotional damage can war photography and photojournalism cause to the photographer.   Thank you for supplying such a brilliant site, its verry inspiring!   Thanks again Shannon  

Sunday, 18 September 2005

425. Photography from now on

  - Original published in 1993 in Luna Cornea, Mexico, D.F. -   "The great writer Jorge Luis Borges was once asked what he thought about a certain translation of one of his works, “The original does not do justice to the translation” was his response. Today, Photography, is confronted by Digital Imagery in much the same way".     Only a few minutes away from having the minute join the hour hand, and both of them turning to the hour zero, as if pointing in prayer towards the new year of 1993, in parallel, the odometer in the car also turned to zeros after displaying 99 999 kilometers. We have these wonderful and basically simple instruments to tell us how far we have gone, both in time and distance. They perform quietly and steadily, day in and day out, until that special moment which informs us of a new marker in the path of our lives. As I age, these changes in the year tell me there is less time ahead of me than there used to be, and as with my car, I also disclose the inevitable passage of time and how use takes its toll. My eyes are not as strong and focused as once they were, the vertebrae in my back are all bent out of shape and hurt after carrying heavy camera bags all my life, and I do get tired more frequently. I don't say this in a complaining mode, these statements are simply facts that I acknowledge for myself. Another such fact irrespective of any choice, and which I acknowledge in order to move on with my life, relates to the inconceivable speed with which technology is altering every single activity that I have been or will be involved with, in the years to come. Complaining about poor eye sight, does nothing to solve the problem, eye glasses do that; complaining about the rapid change of technology will do nothing to restore our placid past, learning about such issues in order to deal with them, might help much more.   The digital revolution, is going to have a much larger impact on the surrounding landscape, than did the internal combustion engine in its time. At stake is the way we produce, distribute and consume, everything related to communications, entertainment, education, travel, management. Photography is only a minute part within this tidal wave of change, and anyone who still harbors doubts whether the new technologies are going to change photography, is ignoring, if you will, the “larger picture."   It's not easy to see oneself age, as it's not easy to find oneself technically obsolete when one thought that a life's experience actually meant something. All of a sudden that which one knew from the accumulated experience of decades, is brought into question by all the innovations spawned by emerging technologies that alter the equation of the how, and the why, of an image. The rules of the past are no longer valid, a new set of values are taking over, and so they should. To our good fortune civilization has the promise of a new renaissance in the making.   It only took six years, to have the IBM corporation come tumbling down from being the world's pre-eminent leader in the world of computer technology, to become a fractured and disintegrating empire. IBM's income used to be larger than the gross national product of several sovereign nations combined. No one in their right mind, at least none of the eight hundred thousand stock holders of the company, considered it even remotely possible that their life savings invested in owning IBM stock, might be so savagely ravaged as was the case over the last few months, when the market value dropped up to 70 % from the level of its better days. This collapse has become a true testimony to the speed with which technology can pronounce obsolete an existing structure, no matter how important and large it used to be. Very few believe that the company has the slightest chance of ever coming back to its vanguard days. What happened? You might ask, and the answer is very basic: arrogance. They truly thought that their economic clout would enable them to hold back the threat from emerging technologies that would have forced them to change their traditional way of doing business, it only took six years to prove that they couldn't.   Apart from the 100 000 employees that IBM had to let go over the past 24 months, they now have to fire an additional 25 000 people, nothing to say of all the plants, and research laboratories now programmed to be closed. When I hear such statistics, I can't get over the fact that so many photographers still question the fact that their livelihood is going to be affected by advanced technologies.   Lets face a few facts just as we had to do when confronted with the issue of age. We have to go back to school once again; there is no way around this if one is intent on remaining active in the world of image making. It's daunting I admit, to find the time needed to re-train oneself, but that, I'm afraid, is only the beginning. The lesson we can derive from observing IBM's debacle, is that trying to maintain “business as usual” will work only for a few years, after which it's going to be increasingly harder to play catch up with those that are ahead in the game.   Those entertaining the idea that acquiring the needed skills to face the technological revolution, can be accomplished without some major adjustment, are only deceiving themselves. Not only are there serious considerations with regard to the investments required, such as, time to learn on one side, and monetary resources for equipment on the other, but an even greater challenge is associated with the conceptual approach to ones work. One needs to rethink visual solutions vis-a-vis all the new possibilities of solving the ever present puzzle of form and content.   No longer are we held back in our creative solutions by the historic limitations placed upon us by chemistry and optics. The result is that we have new levels of creativity to reach for, and impressive as this might be, it only represents the beginning. The power of what is possible within the digital revolution increases by a factor of 100% every 18 month.   The changes we are thinking off, deal not only with how images are made, but how these will be placed into circulation as well. The historic notions of what we can do with pictures in order to either sell them, exhibit them or whatever the photographer has in mind, will be totally overturned before we reach the year 2000. The traditional formats will obviously not vanish, we shall continue to have books, magazines, gallery walls, etc., but these options will now be enlarged to include digital formats unknown until now, these conduits enable a faster, cheaper, and quite effective ways of distributing information, among these we can find CD-ROM disks, fiber optic networks, satellite transmission, cable networks, flash memory cards, compression technology, and so on. Every month one can find news with yet another twist and turn that allows for a more effective way of having digital information flow faster and cheaper, between the creator and the end user.   It used to be that the photographer, either working for someone or for him or herself, only represented a peg within a large cogwheel, with the photographers role clearly delineatead. There were exceptions as when a photographer would venture beyond such lines, by including his or her text as a story to go with the images made, or when the photographer would participate in the layout or design of the work itself. These latter examples being more an exception than the rule, will probably become in the near future, more of a rule than the exception.   The reason seems quite simple to envisage. The access to the main markets for images, that photographers all over the world will have, will increase exponentially over the coming decades. This potential glut of images ( any time you read the word glut you can rest assured that it also involves reduction in price) available to those buying for any publication, will be directly related to the greater ease with which any photographer can place his or her archive on line for direct access and review by those interested in acquiring images, half away across the world. There is going to be an unending spring of images that up to now where not available, and which will be brought forward all of a sudden. Those living in or near the vicinity of major markets will no longer have so much of an advantage over those working far away. As an example, just think of the dozens of first class photographers in Mexico City who at present do not have their work accessible to potential buyers in such markets. And how in the near future one will see all these photographers empowered to show their work with relative ease for both the buyer and seller, anywhere in the world. What is true for the photographic community in Mexico City, can be said, just the same, for any other group in the world, the potential for establishing contact with such talents anywhere, will inevitably lead to an erosion of the competitive advantage of those who were closest to the market. In the near future the photographer will have to deliver more than just the pictures in order to remain competitive. Those photographers that do not retrain will only be able to deliver images as “raw material” for others to transform and use, and we know from history all to well, how those who only delivered raw materials were treated: to say the least, not very well.   As we collectively face technological obsolescence, we should know that all photographers will have for a limited time only, a level playing field. The challenges that need to be met for retraining, are the same regardless of where the photographer comes from, be that San Francisco or Calcutta. A photographer working today in New York does not have that much more knowledge about the digital revolution as a photographer at the other end of the Continent, in Buenos Aires. Every one is in need of learning about the changing realities, and in that sense we're all faced with the same challenges as well as opportunities.   Interestingly enough, richer countries already have a certain built in advantage, with their more developed infrastructure, but this is a blessing in disguise, as developing nations will be able in the future to leap frog towards the latest technological break through, landing with even better and more modern infrastructures than their wealthier neighbors. At the rate of technological innovations, it's almost impossible to predict what the exact scenario might be, however we can be sure that if we don't keep up with events and are knowledgeable about what is going on, instead of us making the needed decision for our well being, someone else will be doing it, and not necessarily to our benefit.   One almost inevitable outcome of all these changes has to do with a vertical integration of photographers' present day activities. Until very recently very few of us had even a clue of what a color separation consisted off, or for that matter how a half tone could be achieved to arrive at a good printed image, these were topics better left to the printer. Today, photographers, are beginning to deliver, instead of a set of pictures as in days past, a color separation or a half tone, and in so doing bypassing altogether the delivery of the print or transparency. Photographers will be able to edit their own publications in ways never before possible when the medium for distribution was the printed book. Digital video will become increasingly the means to capture images, and in so doing the territory for the photographer will expand. No longer will the photographer be circumscribed to a static still image. The moving picture will enter increasingly into the realm of the photographer's domain, and in so doing bring along the need to understand sound. Photographers will be capable of doing in video what before was essentially undertaken only by television crews, thereby altering the concept of reportage and whom it is done by, all of this will take on new meanings and so will the needs and realities of the clients that a photo agency or the photographer will have to deal with.   I've been considered to be a fairly good printer of my own work, so it was with great interest when I unpacked a recent exhibition of my images that had just returned from a two year tour. I was eager to compare a particularly difficult to print image done on a silver based emulsion photographic paper and one that I had recently produced with the aid of the computer and new digital technologies. A process that allows me to have absolute control over each single grain in the image, something unthinkable within the traditional chemical process. The outcome was so astounding when I compared the two, that I felt embarrassed with the terrible silver print I had produced earlier on and allowed to travel. In working with the tools I now have at my disposal, I'm able to reproduce what earlier had always eluded me. The wealth of a tonal range and the possibility to adjust every last detail to my own liking without making any concessions is something that does not cease to amaze me, especially when I compare the output. This was the first time that I had seen the same image produced in their two different technological moments. It was like comparing an old 78 rpm record to a new digital stereo CD recording.   I haven't used a dark room for the last two years, given that I'm only printing with a dye sublimation process or with an ink jet printer, (when I print with the ink jet unit, no longer do I use photographic paper, instead I use the traditional artist's paper such as the French Arches) the quality of the prints is so much richer than anything that I have ever done before, that I find it unthinkable to ever return to the darkroom. I'm one of those who used to work in the dark room enjoying the process very much, so I imagine how ecstatic anyone who didn't like working in the darkroom might be.   This issue of digital image making brings to a head, among many other topics, one that is particularly interesting to almost everyone in the world of culture, namely that of representing “reality." It is has become increasingly clear that we can now alter an image at will, by including or excluding whatever meets our fancy, both before or after having made the picture. The interesting situation that emerges from all of this, is that documentary photography which all along was considered such a bastion of “integrity” when it came to representation, given that there was a negative as proof of something, is now an issue which is fading from the scene very fast. I for one, never thought that photography should have been burdened with this aura of being a reliable representation of reality, especially since it never was true. All too many photographers have used this fragile misrepresentation to fool the public into believing that their documentary images were that: a document, when in fact they were not.   A case in point is the well known image, “The Kiss," by the French photographer Robert Doisneau. It turns out that Doisneau, in order to defend himself from a lawsuit brought forth by the supposedly featured pair, is now alleging that the kissing couple presented to us all along as a prime example of the “decisive moment” is not that at all, but instead, a couple of actors (and he has the negatives to prove it, so he stated, according to a Newsweek magazine). I've always liked that image immensely, I even own a print (given to me as loving gift) which hangs on the wall of our living room, but when I view it today it saddens me that the photographer was less than forthright as he led us believe that the image was a spontaneous moment of love. The information this image delivers is now altered by our knowledge that the moment is fabricated, gone is the idea of real love between those two people, we are now aware that this was only make believe love, as actors do. We were induced to accept that this was a document witnessing love, when all along it wasn't. All of us who own a print, might be inclined to sue him, for destroying the myth of a gesture of genuine love; then we can also be thankful for making us aware of how gullible we had become with regard to the documentary tradition.   The Doisneau affair is very pertinent, as we address the digital revolution in photography and the world of culture at large, it will inevitably bring about the unmasking of all those images that have been presented as “genuine documents” when indeed they weren't. As our knowledge of digital image making evolves, so will the awareness of how images can be fabricated with great ease, they always have been, only now it's no longer solely the domain of what happens in front of the lens, it can also be accomplished, as never before, after the image has been taken. A more challenging public will be less inclined to view pictures with the innocence of days past, thus deceivers such as Doisneau, won't be able to get away with their illusion so easily. The digital revolution will usher forward a whole new gamut of ethical values that need to be adhered to. This doesn't imply that there isn't ample room for fabricated images, quite the contrary, such pictures will come into existence more and more, many of them will be very powerful in their editorial comment, much as the written word is today. We only have to make it clear to everyone concerned, when a photograph is a document and when it's not. I believe we are in for an unpleasant surprise as to the level of present day documentary work that has been constructed, so as vigilance increases due to the potential for mischief by digital means, we will find ourselves scrutinizing as never before, everything we get to see. This enlarged awareness will gradually bring to the surface all those deceptive practices, which to our dismay, will reveal that they are not so unusual. So in a roundabout way, digital image making will also help to clean up our act within traditional photography.   As I look forward to the new year about to begin, I have to review what has elapsed over these last few years besieged with upheaval; a startling period of confrontations with new ways of doing things, changing values, concepts rethought, recast perceptions, and ideas torn asunder. Entropy at it's finest. Which leads me to a recent question posed in San Francisco a few weeks ago, by the distinguished English scientist Stephen Hawking: Why can we remember the past, yet not the future?   It was Giotto who seven hundred years ago, redefined the artist's framework of time, he single-handedly created a new way to envision and organize space, he also isolated for art the frame of stopped time, a precursor to the decisive moment so prevalent in modern photography. We are at the threshold where photography could move beyond the “decisive moment” anchored in Giottos time towards the“decisive pixel” of our time, maybe it's right that we now move towards the future and bring Hawking's question to bear, and that we find a way to remember the future and depict it through digital photography, and by so doing, find a new passage to be marked by the clock and odometer of history.     Pedro Meyer, 1993 pedro@zonezero.com         http://www.zonezero.com/magazine/articles/meyer2/meyer02.html      

Friday, 19 August 2005