[Leica] Images of Africa WAS salgado et al.

[Johnny Deadman <john@pinkheadedbug.com>]

on 8/3/01 4:56 AM, polylux@gmx.co.uk at polylux@gmx.co.uk wrote:

>> who do you think is doing new interesting work?<
> 
> It is always the same: yes, I was impressed by McCullin's pictures, but
> later a bitter taste came in my mouth when I reflected that his view is also a
> colonialistic view. McCullin says he is not making a political statement, just
> feeling. 
> IMAGINE: WHAT WOULD YOU THINK, IF DROVES OF AFRICAN PHOTOGRAPHERS WOULD
> INVADE THE STATES AND TAKE PICTURES OF POOR AMERICANS THEN PUBLISH THEM IN THE
> MAJOR IMPORTANT JOURNALS (AFRICAN JOURNALS THEN OF COURSE) ACCOPANIED BY TV
> COVERAGE AN 'HELP AMERICA' CAMPAIGN FOLLOWS ...THE AFRICAN PHOTOGRAPHERS WOULD
> SAY: "Photography for us is not looking, it's feeling. If you can't feel what
> you're looking at, then you're never going to get others to feel anything"

I couldn't agree more. It's not only this aspect of it but also the parallel
emphasis on exoticism that leaves a bad taste.
> 
> Want pictures from africa? Ask african photographers. I sometimes think that
> the western photojournalism is - in priciple - a major lack of respect for
> other cultures. I've attended, some time ago an exhibition of african portrait
> photography. The approximately 300 works of 40 artists showed the dealing of
> African photographers with western modernism and the emergence of
> independent aesthetics and picture languages in the urban centres of West,
> East and South Africa.

> While the western tradition favors 'the decisive moment', exploitation even
> of the subject, there seemed to be more emphasis on the way someone wants to
> be seen in pictures from african photographers.

But there's no reason a western photographer couldn't take those pictures if
they just spent the time and had the insight. Look at Rob Appleby's stuff of
India. I know he is working towards an even more unsensational and domestic
version of his work. The problem is simply an economic one: there is little
market in the west for non-sensational non-exotic photographs of poorer
countries, however wonderful they might be. Moreover, these kinds of images
require a depth of immersion and engagement not just with the
country/culture, but with photography itself, that few photojournalists have
or more charitably can afford.

I'm very wary of the idea that only photographers from within a certain
group/race/nation/culture/subculture can properly photograph it. You end up
with a reductio ad abusurdum... let's say we need a photo of my mother... so
the photographer should ideally be a 70-year old woman from Lincolnshire
with bad knees, and if she can teach piano so much the better? I don't think
so. Some of the best work about America, for example, has been done by
outsiders. Robert Frank the most obvious example.

As a corollary, I have seen a lot of very bad work promoted just because it
*was* taken by someone within the subculture. Some really dire work in the
late 80s and early 90s when I was commissioning photographs in a left-wing
London local authority. The worst part of this is that it drives down the
very currency in question: indigenous photography.

But of course you are also absolutely right: few western photographers have
shown a vision of India anything like Raghubir Singh's. Rob talks about
another Indian photographer whose work I have yet to see but that sounds
wonderful. Nothing is harder than photographing your own back yard, and yet
when you get it right the result is transcendent.

But even Singh started out shooting India from a Western perspective
(working for LIFE for example). Didn't he live in Paris?
 
> Watch out for e.g. Samuel Fosso, Seydou Keita, just to name some very
> prominent photographers.

I certainly will. I would like to know more about these photographers. It
was only when I read your mail that I realised how poor and stereotyped the
west's visual sense of Africa is. I mean, game parks, traditional costumes,
civil war, fishermen, naked children, landmine victims and AIDS. Remove
those images from your mental image-horde and - assuming you've never been
to Africa this is - what do you have left?

- -- 
John Brownlow

http://www.pinkheadedbug.com

ICQ: 109343205