"A most satisfying photo...."

 

Hans Runesson: A woman hitting a neo-Nazi with her handbag, Växjö, Sweden, 1985

From The Santa Fe New Mexican Letters to the Editor, July 20, 2022

"A most satisfying photo

The reprint of a 1985 photo by Hans Runesson in a recent Pasatiempo of an elderly Swedish woman slugging a neo-Nazi in the back of the head with her handbag during a rally, is quite possibly the funniest thing I have ever seen. It provoked in me the most extravagant hilarity and happiness. Look at her! She puts her entire body into it. Her face is contorted in a grimace of pure rage. She looks like she is of the generation that actually experienced the real Nazis and knows what these silly, idle, testosterone-laden young boneheads do not know or will not recognize: that all of it was pure hell.

Slugging that young man must have been immensely satisfying. I will admit with only the smallest trace of shame that I wish I could have similarly slugged one of these boneheaded, malevolent and violent Jan. 6 rioters in the back of the head with my handbag. The photo is now on my fridge, to be enjoyed for weeks to come as a sort of counterweight against the hopelessness that befalls me at times these days."

"Imagine A World Without Photojournalism" continues through September 18, 2022

A Pennsylvania man pleaded guilty on Monday to attacking an Associated Press photographer during the Jan. 6, 2021 riot on the U.S. Capitol

Via The Associated Press

July 25, 2022

A Pennsylvania man pleaded guilty on Monday to attacking police officers and an Associated Press photographer during the Jan. 6, 2021 riot on the U.S. Capitol.

In a deal with prosecutors, Alan Byerly, 55, admitted to wielding a stun gun while confronting officers who were trying to protect the Capitol from the angry mob. He also admitted to assaulting AP photographer John Minchillo, who was documenting the chaos and violence outside the building where lawmakers were meeting to certify President Joe Biden’s election victory.

On July 22, photojournalists Nina Berman and David Butow spoke about threats photojournalists are facing. Both photographers covered January 6 at the US Capitol and talked about their experiences during the insurrection riot. View the discussion here on the Monroe Gallery YouTube page.

George Eastman Museum Acquires Ashley Gilbertson's Photograph of Office Goodman: The Storming of The Capitol, January 6, 2021

 

 Eastman Museum 

July/August 2022 Bulletin

"Throughout its history, our institution has collected and exhibited photographs and films that address timely and timeless topics. For example, we have recently acquired the powerful photograph (above) taken by Ashley Gilbertson, who bravely documented the events at the United States Capitol during the insurrection on January 6, 2021."

Ashley Gilbertson (Australian, b. 1978) Officer Eugene Goodman: The Storming of the Capitol, Washington, DC, January 6, 2021. Chromogenic development print, 12 x 18 inches. George Eastman Museum purchase from Monroe Gallery of Photography with funds from the Rusitzky Photograph Endowment Fund. ©Ashley Gilbertson

Photojournalism Under Threat: A Conversation With Photojournalists Nina Berman and David Butow

 

Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, was pleased to host photojournalists Nina Berman and David Butow for an engaging conversation on Friday, July 22,

Across America and throughout the world, photojournalists working to bring the world vital news have come under attack, often from authorities, governments, and groups using violence and repression as a form of censorship. Combined with deliberate misinformation creating public skepticism, the photojournalist’s mission of creating visual moments essential to understanding societal and political change is being threatened.

NINA BERMAN

Nina Berman is a documentary photographer, filmmaker, author and educator. Her wide-ranging work looks at American politics, militarism, post violence trauma and resistance.  Her photographs and videos have been exhibited at more than 100 venues from the security walls of the Za'atari refugee camp to the Whitney Museum of American Art.  She is the author of Purple Hearts – Back from Iraq, (2004) portraits and interviews with wounded American veterans, Homeland, (2008) an examination of the militarization of American life post September 11, and, An autobiography of Miss Wish (2017) a story told with a survivor of sexual violence which was shortlisted for both the Aperture and Arles book prizes. Additional fellowships, awards and grants include:  the New York Foundation for the Arts, the World Press Photo Foundation, Pictures of the Year International, the Open Society Foundation, the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, the MIT Knight Science Journalism Fellowship and the Aftermath Project.  She is a Professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism where she directs the photography program. She lives in her hometown of New York City.

DAVID BUTOW

David Butow is a freelance photojournalist whose projects and assignments have taken him to over two dozen countries including Afghanistan, Burma, Iraq, Peru, Yemen and Zimbabwe. His new book, BRINK, chronicles politics in the United States from the 2016 presidential election through the chaos of the Trump presidency, the turmoil of 2020 and concludes with the insurrection and its aftermath at the U.S, Capitol in January 2021.

Born in New York and raised in Dallas, he has a degree in Government from the University of Texas at Austin. After college he moved to Los Angeles and worked in newspapers before beginning a freelance career for magazines in the 1990's. From the mid-90's through the late-2000's he worked as a contract photographer for US News and World Report magazine covering social issues and news events such as post- 9/11 in New York, the Palestinian/Israeli Intifada, the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, the 2019 Hong Kong protests, the funeral of Nelson Mandela, and the death of Pope John Paul II at the Vatican.

Most recently, his photographs from Ukraine and Ulvalde, Texas have been published in Politico, Time, and The New York Times

David's photographs have been shown in numerous exhibitions including the Asia Society NY, the United Nations NY and Visa Pour l'Image in Perpignan, France. His photographs have also appeared in books and magazines worldwide.

Defend Our Clinics! Photo Story by Nina Berman

 Via Indypendent

Photos by Nina Berman

July 5, 2022

A Planned Parenthood clinic in Lower Manhattan has become a magnet for anti-choice activists who don’t want to stop with Roe’s repeal.

Women who have abortions should get the death penalty,” Beatrice, a pro-life protester, told The Indypendent. She wore a T-shirt that read “Hope is here” and was one of several women protesting outside the downtown Manhattan Health Center on the Saturday morning before the Supreme Court toppled Roe v. Wade. 

While the religious right’s quest for earthly dominion over women’s bodies proceeds undisturbed on this morning, that’s not always the case. On the first Saturday of each month, Witness for Life, an anti-choice group, returns to the same clinic, which is run by Planned Parenthood. They are met by counter-protests organized by NYC For Abortion Rights, a socialist-feminist collective that fights for full abortion and reproductive justice.

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Mississippi will lead to the outright ban or severe restriction of abortion rights in 22 states that are home to 64 million women and girls, with several more states likely to enact similar laws. It won’t stop there. People who suffer miscarriages or stillbirths could face criminal investigations and those who cross state lines to procure an abortion will be targeted, as will all the people and organizations that help them. Digital surveillance technologies will further the aims of the abortion police in ways that weren’t possible when Roe was decided in 1973.

Meanwhile, New York’s state and local leaders have promised that ours will be a sanctuary state for women seeking abortions and won’t cooperate with out-of-state law enforcement. Mutual aid groups have also vowed to aid those in need. The prospect that anti-choicers, now further emboldened, will step up their protests and harassment outside New York City’s abortion clinics seems likely. If they do, how many of us will be there to greet them? For more, see abortionrights.nyc.

Nina Berman: Thousands of abortion rights supporters rallied in Washington Square Park hours after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on June 28.

More photos and full article here

Nina Berman and David Butow will be in discussion about the current threats to photojournalism on Friday, Jul 22 - Zoom registration here.

Capturing The Front Lines Through The Lens

 

Via The Albuquerque Journal

July 17, 2022

Two of the millions of refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine, this woman and her son leave for Poland and a completely unpredictable future. (Courtesy of David Butow)

From the Depression years to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a human through line weaves among heroism, deprivation, power and oppression.

Open at the Monroe Gallery of Photography, “Imagine a World Without Photojournalism” explores those repeated connections through a roster of 24 photojournalists and 44 prints.

The photographs cover an arc of 20th and 21st century social and political change, from the battles of World War II to the Civil Rights struggles of the 1960s, from the Dust Bowl to the devastation of climate change, from the frenzy of presidential elections to the Jan. 6 insurrection on the U.S. Capitol.

“I think of it as a survey of our 20 years in Santa Fe,” gallery co-owner Michelle Monroe said. “We’re reinforcing the power of being educated by a free press. We’re trying to draw parallels between past events and current events.”

David Butow’s haunting portrait of a Ukrainian woman and her son leaving home for an unknown future in Poland reflects the uncertainty of migrants everywhere.

“It’s the heroism of every day people,” gallery co-owner Sidney Monroe said.

“He was in Ukraine covering the exodus when millions of people were trying to evacuate. He just returned from Uvalde, Texas (the site of the latest school massacre, where a gunman killed 21 people). He was also has covered the aftermath of other tragic school shootings.”

Margaret Bourke-White’s 1936 image of a line of African American flood victims lining up for food and clothing beneath a sign touting the “American Way” reveals her ironic and subversive intent. Similar lines formed during the ravages of COVID-19.

Steve Schaprio’s “Stop Police Killings, Selma March, 1965” could have been taken at a Black Lives Matter march.

“It’s never changed; the concept of an armed occupier,” Michelle Monroe said. “They can’t manage power responsibly.”

A photo of floating Zanzibar primary school students holding empty water jugs leads to the treatment of women, particularly in Muslim countries.

Daily life in the Zanzibar Archipelago centers around the sea, yet the majority of girls who inhabit the islands never acquire even the most fundamental swimming skills. Conservative Islamic culture and the absence of modest swimwear have compelled community leaders to discourage girls from swimming. The rate of drowning on the African continent is the highest in the world. The swimming lessons challenge a patriarchal system that discourages women from pursuing things other than domestic tasks.

“It’s a through line to the oppression of women,” Michelle Monroe said.

Associated Press photographer Jeff Widener captured the iconic photograph of a lone man standing in front of a column of tanks during the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre in 1989 Beijing.

Widener was one of just a handful of photojournalists at the site.

“There were very few that got out with their film,” Michelle Monroe said.

“He hid it and let them take other canisters in his bag to get out,” Sidney said.

“That image is completely forbidden in China now,” he continued. “That whole movement has been erased.”

‘Imagine a World Without Photojournalism’

WHEN: Through Sept. 18

WHERE: Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, Santa Fe

INFO: monroegallery.com

Confronting “Press Freedom Predators”

 

Via Nieman Reports

Newsrooms are running a gauntlet of abuse around the world. But the threat is greater than against journalism alone — it’s against democracy itself

'In the United States, once considered a model for press freedom and free speech, press freedom violations are increasing at a troubling rate,” said Reporters Without Borders in this year’s World Press Freedom Index. That index ranked the U.S. 42nd out of 180 countries, an anemic standing for a nation whose origin story is rooted in press rights. The organization attributed the ranking to factors including online abuse of journalists and the unprovoked “harassment, intimidation and assault” reporters endure in the field.  

Moreover, some government officials in the U.S. have played a shameful role in delegitimizing the media at home and abroad, spreading anti-press rhetoric that gives succor to despotic regimes around the world. The term “fake news” is a deadly American export, one used to devastating effect by Vladimir Putin since the start of the Ukrainian invasion. And as Emre Kizilkaya writes, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is using the same language to push through a so-called “disinformation bill” that would represent “an unprecedented attempt to suppress journalism in Turkey.” '

Related: The Human Condition Through The Lens: “One of the challenges journalists are facing is just the outright denial of reality,” he says, adding that some visitors get defensive when confronted with uncomfortable truths.

Threats to Photojournalism, a panel program with photographers Nina Berman and David Butow, 5:30 p.m. July 22

The human condition through the lens

Via Pasatiempo

By Brian Sandford

July 15, 2022

The 44 photos adorning the walls at the Monroe Gallery of Photography offer an unvarnished look at the human condition — tracing an emotional range from tender love to the fallout of hatred.

Many showcase the human spirit’s perseverance through challenges or trauma, while others are provocative reminders of recent history that some people would rather ignore or forget. That’s part of the point of Imagine a World Without Photojournalism, an exhibit that runs through Sept. 18 and includes a selection of art that has been shown throughout the gallery’s 20-year history.

The Monroe Gallery’s exhibit represents about a century of photojournalism. Gallery co-owners and spouses Sid and Michelle Monroe say the exhibit’s photographs were selected based on “individual universal relevance,” with each representing an important subject of social and political history.

In a way, records of historical events were created by painters for hundreds of years, if perhaps with less fidelity to the truth. As a result, accounts of historical events could come years — even centuries — later. The invention of photography in 1826 changed that, opening the door to real-time documentation of events and the work of photographers such as Mathew Brady, who defined our notion of the in-between moments of the Civil War.

Whitney Curtis, Rashaad Davis, 23, backs away as St. Louis County police officers approach him with guns drawn and eventually arrest him in Ferguson, Missouri, on Aug. 11, 2014; courtesy of Monroe Gallery of Photography

Modern photojournalism, though, began in the mid-1920s with the invention of the Leica, a portable camera using film able to capture movement.

Some photojournalists have gained fame for their work, such as Robert Capa, who documented war and whose photo of chaos on Omaha Beach in France on D-Day is part of the Monroe exhibit. Others are lesser known, despite producing iconic images, such as Eddie Adams. His name might not ring a bell, but his 1968 photo of the street execution of a Viet Cong prisoner in Saigon is an iconic symbol of the brutality of war.

Some of those photos might have been viewed differently had they been taken recently, Sid says.

Human condition on display at photography exhibit

Nina Berman, Afghan Woman with Diploma, Kabul, Afghanistan, 1998; courtesy of Monroe Gallery of Photography

“One of the challenges journalists are facing is just the outright denial of reality,” he says, adding that some visitors get defensive when confronted with uncomfortable truths.

At least one of the images in the exhibit has created a stir elsewhere: A 2019 photo by Grant Baldwin was removed from a public museum in North Carolina in June. It depicts two men kissing at a Pride parade in Charlotte, North Carolina, while people in the background cheer and take pictures.

County Manager Kim Eagle ordered that the photo be removed from the Gaston County Museum, a move backed by at least two county commissioners there.

Grant Baldwin, Charlotte, North Carolina, Pride Parade, Aug. 18, 2019; courtesy of Monroe Gallery of Photography

While some images are divisive, Sid says, others are noteworthy for their unifying qualities. He cited as an example the iconic World War II shot of six Marines raising a flag at Iwo Jima, which is included in the Monroe Gallery’s exhibit. Joe Rosenthal captured the image on the Japanese island in 1945.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, “a photographer happened to capture these firefighters who took a flag off a boat that was docked near the towers, and they were putting it up on a column that had survived,” he says. “And then it was immediately seized upon, like, ‘Oh, this is a rally moment for America after 9/11.’ Well, we need [calls to rally]. Because most of these situations require sacrifice. Ukraine requires sacrifice. World War II required sacrifice. And so in order to galvanize the effort, you need that imagery to bring you all together.”

Selecting images for the exhibit wasn’t an easy task.

“You could do an entire museum, like, three floors and 200 pictures, and still not really tell the full story” of photojournalism, Michelle says.

Human condition on display at photography exhibit

Hans Runesson, A woman hitting a neo-Nazi with her handbag (Vaxjo, Sweden, 1985); courtesy of Monroe Gallery of Photography

Part of that story is simply the power of an image viewed on a white wall, not accompanied by distractions on a computer screen.

“I often ask people in the gallery, ‘I wonder who’s benefiting from us thinking that we can’t be friends even though we think differently?’” she says. “As I like to say to my kids, don’t be an unpaid intern for someone. Because that’s what we’re doing for those people that are benefiting from separating us. We haven’t even examined how we really feel.”

The Monroes don’t aim to influence how others feel, they say.

“There’s never an agenda to the exhibit in terms of a viewpoint,” Sid says. “This is what happened. This is history.” 

Ashley Gilbertson, Officer Eugene Goodman: The Storming of The Capitol (Washington, D.C., Jan. 6, 2021); courtesy of Monroe Gallery of Photography

Details

▼ Imagine a World Without Photojournalism

▼ Through Sept. 18

▼ Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar Ave.

▼ 505-992-0800, monroegallery.com

▼ Also, “Threats to Photojournalism,” a panel program with photographers Nina Berman and David Butow, 5:30 p.m. July 22, at the gallery or via Zoom. RSVP required

 

Monroe Gallery of Photography : Imagine a World Without Photojournalism

Via L'Oeil de la Photographie

July 14, 2022

Monroe Gallery of Photography presents an exhibition celebrating the Gallery’s 20th anniversary in Santa Fe. “Imagine a World Without Photojournalism” is a multi-photojournalist presentation of news events of the 20th and 21st Centuries. (slideshow here)

Across America and throughout the world, photojournalists working to bring the world vital news have come under attack, often from authorities, governments, and groups using violence and repression as a form of censorship. In 2021, there were 141 assaults on journalists in the US according to the US Press Freedom Tracker. Combined with deliberate misinformation creating public skepticism; the decline of newspapers and the “news deserts” that result from newspaper closings, the photojournalist’s mission of creating visual moments essential to understanding societal and political change is being threatened.

For 20 years, Monroe Gallery of Photography has presented exhibitions championing the critical work of photojournalists.

Photojournalism’s work and mission—one that can be put simply as documenting a news event through the medium of photographic images, has arguably become the most essential and enduring news messaging tool, and one that has gained only further traction and relevance in the 21st century. On the occasion of Monroe Gallery of Photography’s 20th anniversary in Santa Fe, we are proud to present an exhibition of photojournalists that we have exhibited throughout the years which span almost 100 years of history.

 

Imagine a World Without Photojournalism

through September 18, 2022.

Monroe Gallery of Photography

112 Don Gaspar

Santa Fe, NM

www.monroegallery.com

A special program with gallery photojournalists Nina Berman and David Butow will be held on Friday, July 22 at 5:30 PM, RSVP required, please contact the Gallery for information.

 

 

Ashley Gilbertson Photographs of Deforestation of Congo River Basin in NY Times

 Via The New York Times

July 13, 2022

Dionne Searcey and Ashley Gilbertson  reported from the Mpatemata Forest community, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to understand the far-reaching effects of the charcoal trade on deforestation.