Photographers in the age of catastrophe

  Via Riga Photomonth

Online with Facebook Live

Monday, May 31, 2021 at 11 AM MDT

Riga Photomonth invites to a discussion with Tanvi Mishra (Caravan Magazine, India), Nina Berman (Noor Images, USA), Shiraz Grinbaum (Activestills collective, Israel), moderated by Karolina Gembara (Archive of Public Protests, Poland). The event will be held in English and broadcasted live on Facebook and Riga Photomonth web page.

“This is a war we don’t know,” said Anne Applebaum, a political writer, when describing Russian paramilitary activities in Eastern Ukraine in 2014. This war was slow, masked, intrusive, without spectacular actions and rapid victories, almost invisible, almost silent but persistent and insidious. It was something we have to learn and recognise, she added.

In 2021, this description could be used in reference to many problems the world is facing. Some catastrophes happen abruptly, but others drag and lurk: the rise of the far right, the dismantling of democracies, fake news, climate change. There are catastrophes so old, forgotten, and normalised that no one wants to hear about them any longer. 

Photographers, since the invention of the medium, have been present as witnesses. But their role is changing just like the nature of catastrophes has evolved. Even though capturing events will always be crucial, photographers also have to adapt by recognising tactics and premises, using images, animating, ‘being there’ with the communities instead of just photographing them. Today visual artists document protests and ‘post-photojournalistic’ photographers make art books; some run photography workshops for children in conflict-torn neighbourhoods. But can we say that photographers have embraced the social and ethical turn?

During the discussion we will look at the nature of different visual practises in the context of everyday catastrophes. Remembering Jo Spence’s words about photographers being always immersed in politics, we’ll reflect on their changing role in today’s world.

View Nina Berman's photographs in the exhibition "Present Tense", now through August 22, 2021

MAY 17, 1954: BROWN vs BOARD OF EDUCATION DECIDED

 

Linda Brown (L), the 10 years old, who was refused admission to white elementary school, and her 6-yr-old sister Terry Lynn walking along railroad tracks to bus which will take them to segregated Monroe Elementary School.

Carl Iwasaki's assignment for LIFE magazine was to photograph the Brown Sisters starting school during the time of the Brown vs. Board of Education trial. This essay ultimately was one of Iwasaki's most poignant and significant. The remarkable photograph of Linda Brown and her younger sister walking to school is one of the more iconic photographs representing the early civil rights struggles of the 1950s. Recently, Iwasaki, now 87, remarked about this photo, "I distinctly remember tagging along with Linda and her sister on their 20-minute walk to school. I spent two days on the assignment and recall that it seemed curious that there was virtually no other photo coverage of the Brown family. I had a hunch as I worked that I was covering a history-making story."

In this landmark court case, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren delivered the unanimous ruling that State-sanctioned segregation of public schools was a violation of the 14th Amendment and was therefore unconstitutional. Handed down on May 17, 1954, the unanimous (9–0) decision stated that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal."

This historic decision marked the end of the "separate but equal" precedent set by the Supreme Court nearly 60 years earlier and served as a catalyst for expanding the civil rights movement during the decade of the 1950s and paved the way for significant opportunities for African Americans in our society—especially for equal justice, fairness and education.


Japanese-American Carl Iwasaki took up photography as a middle school student and began receiving assignments for the student newspaper and yearbook as he entered high school. His development, though, was interrupted when he and his family were forced into a prison camp in Wyoming by the War Relocation Authority. This arm of the government was designed to protect American soil during WWII from potentially dangerous Japanese infiltrators and locked thousands of people up for no other reason than their race.

While the experience was not a pleasant one, it did put Iwasaki in line for his first commission. Upon his release, in 1943, he was hired to take photographs for the WRA, chronicling life inside the camps and the relief experienced upon release. Working from Denver, he took over 1300 photographs for the project and gained enough on-the-job training to pursue a full-time photography career after the war. Iwasaki worked for Life, Time and Sports Illustrated, often drawn to stories about the marginalized and disenfranchised; his photos of the civil rights movement are some of the most affecting

Reporters Committee’s 2020 Press Freedom Report

 Via Reporters Committee For Freedom of The Press

May 12, 2021

The fourth annual report reveals the startling extent of police violence against journalists during a year of protest.

Press Freedom Tracker 2020

In 2020, journalists and news organizations across the United States faced record numbers of physical attacks, arrests and cases of equipment damage, as well as many other press freedom violations, according to the Reporters Committee’s fourth annual report analyzing data from the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.

More than two dozen press freedom organizations, including the Reporters Committee, launched the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker in 2017 to document threats against press freedom nationwide. The Reporters Committee analyzes the Tracker data each year to assess what it means for our pro bono work as the only national legal services organization focused on protecting the newsgathering rights of journalists.

The full 2020 report can be found at this link, but here are five key takeaways:

1. Police were responsible for the vast majority of attacks on journalists — and appeared to frequently target them at Black Lives Matter protests

Journalists faced a record 438 physical attacks last year, 91% of which occurred as they reported on the nationwide racial justice protests that erupted in response to the police murder of George Floyd. Law enforcement officers were responsible for 80% of the assaults at protests, affecting 324 journalists. At least 195 of these journalists appeared to be deliberately targeted by police.

Law enforcement officers assaulted reporters with tear gas, batons, pepper balls and rubber-coated bullets, among other weapons. In Oregon, the attacks continued even after a federal judge barred law enforcement from targeting journalists engaged in lawful newsgathering.

2. Journalists faced 15 times as many arrests as the previous year

Journalists were arrested or charged with a crime at least 139 times in 2020. All but 10 of these arrests occurred at Black Lives Matter protests. In many of these cases, the report found, journalists were engaged in lawful newsgathering and clearly identified themselves as members of the news media. A TV journalist for CNN was even handcuffed as he reported live, on-air. No journalists were convicted of a crime, but a reporter in Iowa was forced to stand trial to defend herself against criminal charges. A jury acquitted her in March 2021.

3. Subpoenas reported to the Tracker increased for the third consecutive year

In 2020, journalists again reported a record number of subpoenas (31) to the Tracker. State and local prosecutors subpoenaed journalists for their footage and photos or testimony related to their coverage of Black Lives Matter protests in at least four cases across the country.

Multiple journalists and news outlets also reported receiving subpoenas in relation to government leak investigations. The New York City Police Department subpoenaed two journalists’ records as part of its leak investigations in 2020, and the Department of Homeland Security unsuccessfully tried to subpoena BuzzFeed for information about a journalist’s source. These subpoenas echoed similar efforts by DHS, the Justice Department and San Francisco police in previous years.

4. Journalists were denied access to a wide range of traditionally open government events, often in apparent retaliation for their questions or coverage

The coronavirus pandemic forced large parts of the government’s work to go online. But much of this came at a cost to press access. The Tracker highlighted 11 of the most egregious times when members of the news media were denied access to “government events” that were traditionally open to or attended by the press.

State and local officials denied journalists access to daily court proceedings and a historic impeachment trial. They also deprived journalists of access to COVID-19 briefings and excluded them from media advisory lists in apparent retaliation for their coverage and questions, depriving the public of important information about the pandemic and other important issues.

5. Former President Donald Trump accelerated his attacks on journalists in his last year in office

Former President Trump tweeted a record 632 attacks on the press during his last year in office — the highest count of his term, according to the Tracker — up until Twitter permanently suspended his account due to the “risk of further incitement of violence” after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

The former president’s chilling statements, some of which were repeated by state lawmakers, included mocking a reporter for being hit with a less-lethal munition, calling it a “beautiful sight.”

Anna Boyiazis "Finding Freedom in the Water on NPR Goats and Soda

 

Via NPR Goats and Soda

May 2, 2021

Kijini Primary School students learn to float, swim and perform rescues on Oct. 25, 2016, in the Indian Ocean at Muyuni, Zanzibar. "It was phenomenal to watch their facial expressions and body language shift from total fear and utter trepidation to peaceful, and then to what ultimately revealed itself as confidence and joy," says photographer Anna Boyiazis, who won one of this year's awards.

Anna Boyiazis

Girls learning how to swim in the Indian Ocean on Zanzibar's coast — a beautiful and calm image. It's also striking if you know the backstory: For these girls — who for years were prohibited from going in the water by their conservative Muslim culture — learning to swim is a revolutionary act. They are not only acquiring a potentially life-saving skill but also gaining access to a new space.

"It was phenomenal to watch their facial expressions and body language shift from total fear and utter trepidation to peaceful, and then to what ultimately revealed itself as confidence and joy," says photographer Anna Boyiazis, who was chosen as one of the Leica Women Foto Project winners for her work documenting the swimming lessons.

Swim instructor Chema snaps her fingers as she disappears underwater on Dec. 28, 2016, in Nungwi, Zanzibar. "It was fulfilling to photograph alongside a group of women swim instructors who are supporting positive change for women and girls in the archipelago," says photographer Anna Boyiazis.

Anna Boyiazis

Finding Freedom in the Water

When Boyiazis first visited Zanzibar many years before she started this project, the local people told her, "Girls don't swim" — to which she replied, pointing to herself, "This one does!"

Years later, Boyiazis learned from a fellow journalist that a nonprofit organization called The Panje Project was teaching children in Zanzibar to swim in an effort to stop the high number of drownings. The organization helped break the "girls don't swim" taboo by providing burkinis — a swimsuit that covers the entire body except face, hands and feet — so the girls could be in the water while following their culture's dress code.

"It was fulfilling to photograph alongside a group of women swim instructors who are supporting positive change for women and girls in the archipelago," says Boyiazis.

A swim instructor named Siti, 24, helps a girl learn to float on Nov. 17, 2016. "By encouraging long-term cultural change — the acceptance of women learning to swim in an Islamic community — Anna Boyiazis's project Finding Freedom in the Water could literally save lives, said Leica photo contest judge and former National Geographic photo editor Elizabeth Krist.

Anna Boyiazis

"By encouraging long-term cultural change — the acceptance of women learning to swim in an Islamic community — Anna Boyiazis's project Finding Freedom in the Water could literally save lives, says Krist.

Continue article

World Press Freedom Day 2021

 Via UNESCO

3 May acts as a reminder to governments of the need to respect their commitment to press freedom and is also a day of reflection among media professionals about issues of press freedom and professional ethics. Just as importantly, World Press Freedom Day is a day of support for media which are targets for the restraint, or abolition, of press freedom. It is also a day of remembrance for those journalists who lost their lives in the pursuit of a story.

Resources

The Committee to Protect Journalists promotes press freedom worldwide

US Press Freedom Tracker

Police in Minnesota round up journalists covering protest, force them on the ground and take pictures of their faces

Journalists blinded, injured, arrested covering George Floyd protests nationwide

2020: The Year In Press Freedom: 10 Urgent Cases Of Journalism Under Attack

Joe McNally's Photograph of Joe Biden Commuting Featured for AMTRAK's 50th Anniversary

 

Joe McNally's photograph of Joe Biden commuting on Amtrak in 1988 was featured on the POTUS Twitter feed today.

Important Slices of Time

 

Via Joe McNally's Blog

April 26, 2021

In the spring of ’95, I was a staff photographer at LIFE magazine, and was assigned to photograph the subjects of four famous, Pulitizer Prize winning photos, all taken some twenty five years or so previous. One of them, Mary Ann Vecchio, as a teenage runaway, was photographed by John Filo, leaning over the body of a dead student at Kent State University, on May 4th, 1970. The Washington Post Magazine recently took a look at Mary Ann’s life. It’s a beautifully written, reflective piece by Patricia McCormick.

Slices of time is an oft used expression in the realms of still photography. It refers, I think, to the essential conundrum of what we do. Life flows, time moves. In equivalently relentless fashion. And we face off against these ever sluicing torrents with a “still” camera in our hands. A machine designed to stop time. Could any challenge be more quixotic, on the face of it? The digitally driven world around us accelerates, and we’re out there shouting, “Hey, wait a minute!”

But, just as time surely, inexorably advances, we continually succeed in our improbable mission. Moving pictures are wonderful and video is all the rage, but for me, my sense of history, of place, of time and life lived, is utterly fixed in still images. Would I remember the Kent State shootings, on that day, as well as I do, if John Filo had not been there, and had the guts and instincts to put his camera to his eye?

No need to show the photo. We all could draw it in our heads. Then 14-year-old Mary Ann Vecchio kneels over the body of Jeffrey Miller, fatally shot, her face a mask of anguished pain.

When you’re the subject of a Pulitzer Prize winning photo, as Mary Ann was on that day, your life is no longer a private life. You become a part of history, referred to and much discussed. There was sympathy for Mary Ann, a teenage runaway, but also vitriol and accusations, such as the governor of Florida, where she hailed from, labeling her a “dissident communist.” The students were blamed for their own deaths. John Filo was followed by the FBI. Anyone now, in the year 2021, hearing echoes of behavior such as this?

Reading the article in the Post, it was a relief to know Mary Ann is still the person I met years ago in Las Vegas. And indeed the same person even now, quietly living in Florida, going to older neighbors, making visits and delivering meals. Still helping. Others ran away that day. She ran to the body of Mr. Miller, seeking to help. But that decision began an odyssey, one not of her choice. As she says in the article, “That picture hijacked my life.”

I chose to photograph Mary Ann in a peaceful setting, outside of Vegas, where she was living at the time. Vulnerable, wounded, but still possessed of a lovely and giving heart. She and John, the author of the photo, have met. John, who’s an incredibly decent guy, and works now in NY, also has felt the weight of the photo for all these years. So much emotion, history, and pain in a split second.

I made pictures of four people who were prominently featured in momentous Pulitzer pictures on that assignment for LIFE. The other three are below.

Kim Phuc…

Ted Landsmark….The Boston lawyer who was speared with the American flag by a racist mob, in a famous photo made by Stanley Forman of The Boston Globe, known widely as The Soiling of Old Glory. He’s now a professor.

And Ed Wheatley, who along with fellow students, occupied Cornell’s student union for 36 hours, protesting racist practices and a cross burning on the Cornell campus. After an attempt to dislodge them, the protesters armed themselves. Ed led the group out of the building, carrying a rifle, and became, in an instant, part of the history of the tumultuous 60’s. He’s gone on to a life of community activism, fighting for equality in housing. When I met him he was active in projects to reclaim abandoned and rundown properties. Hence the setting.

I’m guessing, but I imagine the collective shutter speeds on all four of the Pulitzers under discussion most likely amount to less than one second in time.

But, because photographers put their camera to their eye, that second won’t pass….ever.

More tk….

View Joe McNally's print collection here.

Not standing still: new approaches in documentary photography at the Monash Gallery of Art includes Ashley Gilbertson's photography

 

Via Monash Gallery of Art

On exhibit through May 16, 2021

Virtual tour here

PHOTO is a major new biennial international festival of photography that will activate Melbourne and sites across regional Victoria with the most inspiring photography from Australia and around the world.

MGA’s headlining Photo 2021 exhibition will explore the festival’s theme of ‘Truth’ through the lens of new documentary photography.

Not standing still: new approaches in documentary photography, will introduce Australian audiences to leading photographers from around the world who are making new documentary photography, many never having exhibited in Australia before. This exhibition will place Australian photographers alongside their international contemporaries; spanning 11 countries of origin, these are the photographers who are changing the way we think about photographic storytelling.

Truth is implicitly linked to photography because of its capacity to be a medium of record, but photographers have been using their tools to uncover and reimagine truths through investigative, imaginative and allusive photography.

New documentary photography is about rethinking the traditional ways of representing what the camera sees. Instead of straight documentation, these photographers have sought new ways to show pressing social and political issues, and in doing so are transforming photography itself.

Ashley Gilbertson

 Marine Corporal Christopher G. Scherer, 21, was killed by a sniper on July 21, 2007 in Karmah, Iraq. He was from East Northport, New York. His bedroom was photographed in February 2009. 2009

Included in the exhibition are selections from Ashley Gilbertson's "Bedrooms of the Fallen" series.

In 2004, Australian photojournalist Ashley Gilbertson spent time documenting the Second Battle of Fallujah in Iraq. Images he made during this assignment won him the Robert Capa Gold Medal for ‘best photographic reporting from abroad requiring exceptional courage and enterprise’. During the trip, one of the young marines escorting him was killed. 

War photography is a complex phenomenon. It often relies on the bravura of a photographer to be in the ‘right place’ at the ‘right time’, capturing the action and the adrenaline on film to illustrate the drama of battle. To demonstrate the cost of this drama and to peel back its layers, Gilbertson has photographed bedrooms left behind by 40 soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The soldiers represented come from America, Canada, England, France, Germany, Italy, and Scotland. Their rooms show us what remains of lives cut short, displaying what is not evident in pictures of the battlefield. The familiar and ordinary objects that pepper these images communicate some of the texture of a soldier’s life, which is preserved in these photographed spaces – like an altar or memorial – in a way that a picture of an explosion or even a coffin struggles to convey. 

This series also show us what families cling to, and how memory and remembrance work in the real world of contemporary conflict. Gilbertson’s photographs show an aspect of war that is often secondary to images of battle. In their quietness these images reach no crescendo or catharsis, and so force a shift in pace in both the making and viewing of war photography.

View more of Ashley Gilbertson's work here

“I think we all need to recognize the assault on media across the world and even in our country over the last few years is chilling”

 

Via The New York Times

By Kellen Browning

April 18, 2021

Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, on Sunday responded to reports that the state’s police officers had assaulted journalists covering the unrest in a Minneapolis suburb, saying, “Apologies are not enough; it just cannot happen.”

Protests have erupted in Brooklyn Center, Minn., in the wake of the death of Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man who was killed by a veteran police officer during a traffic stop. Law enforcement officers have fired tear gas or pepper spray into crowds and have made dozens of arrests.

“I think we all need to recognize the assault on media across the world and even in our country over the last few years is chilling,” Mr. Walz said in an interview with a local CBS station. “We cannot function as a democracy if they’re not there.”

On Saturday, a lawyer representing more than 20 news media organizations sent a letter to Mr. Walz and leaders of Minnesota law enforcement organizations detailing a series of alleged assaults of journalists by police officers in the past week. Journalists have been sprayed with chemical irritants, arrested, thrown to the ground and beaten by police officers while covering protests, wrote the lawyer, Leita Walker.

The letter provides details of some of the alleged incidents, including ones involving journalists working for CNN and The New York Times.

Joshua Rashaad McFadden, a freelance photographer who was covering the protests for The Times, said in an interview on Sunday that the police surrounded the car he was in on Tuesday as he tried to leave the protests. They beat on the windows with batons, then entered the car to force him out, beating his legs and striking his camera lens, he said.

“It was definitely scary — I’ve never been in a situation like that with so many police officers hitting me, hitting my equipment,” Mr. McFadden, 30, said.

Mr. McFadden, who is Black, said the police did not believe his press credentials were real until another photographer vouched for him — a situation that has happened to him and other Black journalists many times, he said.

“It’s extremely frustrating,” he said, to know that “if a situation like this happens, they’re not going to believe or care about anything I’m saying.”

Later in the week, he said, he was forced to the ground along with other journalists and photographed by the police.

A spokeswoman for The New York Times Company on Sunday confirmed that Ms. Walker’s letter represented the company’s response.

On Friday, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order forbidding the police to use physical force or chemical agents against journalists. But Ms. Walker wrote that officers were still engaging in “widespread intimidation, violence and other misconduct directed at journalists.”

Mr. Walz said in a tweet on Saturday that he had “directed our law enforcement partners to make changes that will help ensure journalists do not face barriers to doing their jobs.”

“These are volatile situations and that’s not an excuse,” he said during the television interview on Sunday. “It’s an understanding that we need to continue to get better.”

Greta Thunberg: A Year to Change the World

 

Adam Karls Johansson

Greta Thunberg's first school strike for Climate, outside the Swedish Parliament, August 20, 2018

The first episode of Greta Thunberg: A Year to Change the World airs tonight (Monday 12 April) at 9pm on BBC One; then premieres in its entirety as a special presentation on Earth Day, Thursday, April 22 at 8:00-11:00 p.m. ET (check local listings) on PBS stations nationwide in the United States.

 

Via PBS:  Greta Thunberg is on a mission to save the world. She is asking every one of us to act and to mobilize in order to slow down the growing climate change that is destroying our planet and threatens our way of life. The message is clear, and scientists agree—we need to keep global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees in order to give our species the best possible chance of avoiding a catastrophic future. 

This revealing series follows Greta as she steps from behind the podium and onto the front lines. Over the course of the three episodes, Greta explores the science as she travels to extraordinary locations across the globe, meeting leading climate scientists, witnessing first hand the consequences of climate change and confronting the complexity of what is required to make change happen. She travels from the burning tar sands of the Canadian oil industry to the coal mines of Europe and the melting glaciers of the U.S.—places where the impact of a changing climate is glaringly obvious, both for the planet and for the inevitable human costs—making clear the reasons why scientists call for action to be taken. The series also hears from a range of academics, economists and experts, further exploring the climate change science Greta encounters on the ground.

In the fall of 2019, then-16-year-old Greta took a year off from school to embark on an international mission to spread her message: that we must act to drastically reduce our carbon emissions—immediately. The world was transfixed as this teenager spoke with directness and clarity to power, from diplomats at the United Nations to the world’s economic elite at Davos. However, just as her journey was gaining serious momentum, a new threat emerged, and everything became uncertain. The COVID-19 pandemic brought the world to a terrifying standstill when the global economy, modern society and Greta’s journey all came to a halt. However, as days turned to months and people around the world were confined to their homes, an unintended consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the ongoing global shutdown, revealing how much we can lessen our impact on the planet if we radically change our behavior.

“Through Greta’s exploration of the science, we get a deeper understanding of the problems of climate change and the complexity of resolving them,” said Bill Gardner, Vice President, Programming and Development, PBS. “This is also a very personal, intimate and moving story about an incredibly brave person who has found herself in the global spotlight and navigates the challenges of unsought fame. PBS is proud to bring this powerful story to our viewers of all ages.”