00 Dark Impact 00 The Impact of the Camera on Wheels: Steven Humblet The Moving Gaze in the Modern Subject 00 Imperial Impact Sara Dominici Ariella Azoulay 00 Fashioning an ‘Image Space’ in Apartheid 00 Relations and Representations of Artistic South Africa: Afrapix Photographers’ ‘Impact’ in Rio’s Favelas Collective and Agency Simone Kalkman M. Neelika Jayawardane

00 Shine a Light in Dark Places 00 The Crisis of the Cliché. Has conflict Donald Weber photography become boring? 00 So You Want to Change the World Peter Bouckaert

Lewis Bush 00 On Iconic Photography 00 The Reliable Image: Impact and Rutger van der Hoeven

Contemporary Documentary Photography 00 Burning Images for Punishment and Change Wilco Versteeg Florian Göttke

00 Radical Intimacies: (Re)Designing the 00 Photographing the Anthropocene Impact of Documentary Photography Taco Hidde Bakker Oliver Vodeb 00 Break the Cycle. Latin American 00 Imagining Otherwise: The impact of photobooks and the audience aesthetics in an ethical framework Walter Costa

Chris Becher and Mads Holm 00 What if We Stopped Claiming the Photobook? 00 Reclaiming Political Fires in Bangladesh. Stefan Vanthuyne Interview Shahidul Alam Shadman Shahid

00 Antwerpen Alberto García del Castillo 00 A Letter to Dr. Paul Julien. Pondering the Photographic Legacy of a Dutch ‘Explorer of Africa’ Andrea Stultiens 00 The Impact of the White, Male Gaze Andrew Jackson and Savannah Dodd

2 Titel 3 The first meaning of ‘impact’ refers to a forceful a genuine belief in the power of images to sway Preface striking of two bodies against each other—a Dark public opinion. Photographs are here supposed to collision, simply put. It derives from the verb function as visual arguments by simply showing ‘impinge’, which in turn comes from the Latin Impact what needs to be addressed. As such, they are ‘impingere’, meaning ‘to push, to bump into, to fully determined by the intentions of those who strike, to hit, to impose’. All very physical actions, produce and disseminate them. They stress a all executed with a certain amount of bodily human worldview and always fit neatly in the violence. This, of course, is not what photogra- Steven different scientific and intellectual frameworks phers mean when they say they want to have an we’ve developed to make sense of the world: they impact. They use the term in a more figurative never veer off-script (which makes them ulti- way, as ‘having a strong effect of one thing, Humblet mately quite predictable). Considered within the person, action, etc. on another’. In this subdued duality of the photographic process as a meeting definition, photographs function as vehicles between optics and chemistry, these argumenta- through which photographers hope to realise a tive images stress the optical side of photography. strong effect on others. If violence there is, it’s Clarity, readability, and sharpness are the most (safely) encapsulated in the images themselves. If important formal qualities of these images. they hit us, it’s only our moral imaginations that But if we go back to the original meaning of they strike. the word ‘impact’—as a forceful collision of two The aspiration for impact seems indestruc- bodies—then another way of thinking about tible. Even after the demise of the printed press photographic impact becomes possible. Instead and acknowledging that the impact of photo- of the optical (theatrical) side of photography, graphic images is uncertain, unmeasurable and this other kind of photography stresses the highly unpredictable, photographers still (cl) photo-chemical element as the (material) point aim to make images that have an impact. How of contact between us and the world. Thinking is it that this impossible desire is still alive and about impact in this way suggests that photo- kicking? Part of it is fuelled by a general move- graphic images, precisely because they are the ment in the artworld that’s taking up a more result of a semi-automatic process in which the activist role, with the photographer as a procurer influence of the human operator is rather limited, of vivid examples of the evil that men do. can open us to a different relationship to the Another part has to do with a lingering attach- world. Initiated by a human action, these images ment to the role documentary photography once are nevertheless attentive to the agency of the played in our visual understanding of the world. world itself and all the non-human elements in Here, the longing for impact takes on the form it. Maybe we need more of these non-human of a desire to become relevant once more—to be perspectives to tilt us out of our self-indulgent, a witness of our times. And last but not least, anthropocentric worldview. If we want more some of this desire can even be attributed to images with impact, maybe we should stop pros- mere calculation on the part of the photographer. elytising the public with trite truths and stale Having an impact is a sure-fire way of getting arguments and instead use photography as a tool noticed and could therefore become the starting to give presence to the spirits lurking in the dark, point of a successful career. silent world. The desire to have an impact is the desire to act upon the world. Included in this definition is the presumption that the one who wants to have an impact is in a position of power from which it is possible to influence worldly events. The wish to have an impact posits the photographer as an agent of change and the world in which he acts as his subordinate object. To strive for impact is to assert control, to state how the world ought to be, not how it is. The photographer understands having an impact as a moment of empowerment, whereas the recipient who absorbs the blow of the image often feels powerless. How to react to this injustice? How to answer the plea of the image? The image confronts us with an intolerable situ- ation but shows us no way out. In the end, we’re left to simply utter our moral indignation. Never- theless, there’s a (rather important) difference between moral indignation and acting morally. The former boils down to simply speaking up, to accusing, while the latter requires an imaginative leap. The question then becomes: how can photography help us attain this imaginative leap? Traditionally, the desire of the photogra- pher who wants to have an impact starts from

4 5 Steven Humblet This article first appeared on Still Searching, rights that continue to lie at the basis of our are reducible to their real estate components and where Ariella Azoulay published a series of essays Imperial political regimes’. The unlearning she proposes nation-building campaigns, these photographers called Unlearning Decisive Moments of Photog- re-envisions the impact photography in a non-im- dismiss the plight of the indigenous population raphy.1 In this series, Azoulay sought to invert Impact perial way: taking photos differently means really as well as the destruction of the common. Differ- common assumptions about the moment of the including the other(s).6 In order to do that, ‘one ences between situations were blurred in such a emergence of photography that present it as a sui has to [first] engage with the imperial world from way that perpetrators could be depicted as victims generis practice and locate said moment in the a non-imperial perspective and be committed or law enforcers even though they were respon- mid-nineteenth century and in relation to techno- Ariella to the idea of revoking rather than ignoring sible for the destruction of the existing world and logical developments and male inventors. Instead, or denying imperial rights manufactured and the plight of others. she proposes to locate the origins of photography distributed as part of the destruction of diverse These three 1956 photos taken by Burt Glinn in the ‘New World’, to use the early phrasing of Azoulay worlds’. in the same place—a destroyed Palestine, or the European colonial enterprise, and to study photo- Through [a] combined activity of newly declared State of Israel—and shown last graphs alongside early accounts of imperial expe- destroying and manufacturing ‘new’7 worlds, year in Paris were displayed only with their mini- ditions. The essays are based on her forthcoming people were deprived of an active life and their malist original caption: ‘Palestinian Prisoners’. book Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism, different activities reduced and mobilised to fit Both the display and the captions take the impe- which is out through Verso in fall 2019. larger schemes of production and world-engi- rial narrative for granted and assume that there’s 1 Two concepts play a fundamental role in this Still Searching is a separate blog of neering. Through these schemes, different groups no harm in reiterating it nor any need to question new work and thus in the essay below; these Fotomuseum Winterthur, ‘offering of governed peoples were crafted and assigned the authority of those who acquired their imperial are ‘unlearning’ and ‘imperial rights’. In order an intellectually challenging and access to certain occupations, mainly non-skilled rights and sovereignty against the Palestinians, interactive discussion on all aspects to acknowledge that photography’s origins are of the photographic.’ This essay was labour, that in turn enabled the creation of a whom they expelled from their homes. These in 1492, Azoulay posits that we have to unlearn originally published as ‘Unlearning distinct strata of professions with the voca- Palestinians are not ‘prisoners’. In the photos Expertise Knowledge and Unsettling the expertise and knowledge that call upon us Expertise Positions’ (9 September tional purpose of architecting ‘new’ worlds and taken in 1956 in Gaza, they are rather brutalised, to account for photography as having its own 2018), which was the third blog within furnishing them with new technologies. Such either as they attempt to return to their homes origins, histories, practices or futures. She wants a five piece series under the heading professions housed experts in distinct domains— or when the Israeli occupying forces invade their of Unlearning Decisive Moments of to re-write that history: photography does not Photography.https://www.fotomuse- economics, law, politics, culture, art, health, homes. Either way, they were expelled from their represent a domain apart, and you cannot hence um.ch/en/explore/still-searching/ scholarship and so on—that were differentiated homeland, Palestine, six years earlier, and when articles/155301_unlearning_exper- simply situate it in the early nineteenth century. tise_knowledge_and_unsettling_ex- and kept separate in racialised worlds engen- they insisted on their right to return to their Her critical – ‘unlearning’ – approach makes pertise_positions dered by imperialism. Experts in each domain homes, they were forced to embody imperial us want to explore photography as part of the 2 enjoy ‘the right to shape societies’ according categories such as ‘refugee’ or ‘infiltrator’, which Among these rights Azoulay specifies imperial world in which we, as scholars, photog- ‘the right to destroy existing worlds, to their vision or will, to study them and craft endow modern citizenship with a set of impe- raphers, or curators, operate. According to her, the right to manufacture a new world visionary templates in order to provide solutions rial rights to keep them in this role. They were in their place, the rights over others photography, like other technologies, is rooted in whose worlds are destroyed together to problems generated by other experts. made into the unacknowledged participants in imperial formations of power and the legitimis- with the rights they enjoyed in their Photography was shaped into such a model, such photographs: those whose spaces have been communities and the right to declare ation of violence in the form of rights exercised what is new and consequently what is with its own strata of experts. This class of expert invaded through the exercise of imperial rights so 2 over others. obsolete.’ professionals denied their implication in the that their images can continue to circulate, tagged The second point she makes is, that when 3 constitution and perpetuation of the imperial with imperial categories that photographers often The ‘few’ can stand for the explorers photography really emerged, it didn’t halt this of new worlds, the settlers, colonial regime and quickly convinced themselves that use as if they were spokespersons of imperial process of plunder that made others and their metropoles, officials and represen- they weren’t exercising imperial rights but rather regimes. Contrary to certain rights that people 3 tatives of imperial powers, and in worlds available to the few . It rather acceler- some cases even, as becomes clear in documenting and reporting the wrongs of the enjoy within their communities, imperial rights ated and provided further opportunities and this essay, the so-called ‘concerned regime, thereby acting for the common good. don’t emanate from the community in which modalities for pursuing it. The right to take photographers’. This is epitomised in the notion of the ‘concerned people are members, on behalf of their member- 4 a photograph of objects, art, wealth etc., ‘we’ As such, explorers like Amerigo photographer’, which is also the title of an influ- ship, or for the sake of a shared world. On the brought back from new discovered territories, is Vespucci for instance, proclaimed and ential exhibition, one among others in which the contrary, such rights are derived from the inva- enacted certain ‘imperial rights’ in based on ‘the right to appropriate others’ wealth, early letters written at the turn of the figure of the photographer is construed as a hero. sion of others’ communities and the destruction resources, and labor’.4 These new rights, the fifteenth century. However, in exchange for some of its exclusive of the worlds in which those others enjoy certain exercise of which involved mass destruction, were 5 rights, not necessarily those that were financially rights. Not surprisingly, these imperially unrec- Azoulay’s critical assumption, stated manufactured under the pretext of the promo- in the original essay, is ‘that the ubiq- rewarding, photographers have been mobilised ognised subjects reject the meaning of photo- tion of knowledge involved in the discovery of uity of destruction both precedes and to represent those imperial rights as if they were graphs as private property subject to copyright. enables the ubiquity of photographs. ‘new worlds’. Rather than conceiving of photog- The latter is derivative of the former disconnected from the regime of violence. It’s Thus, on the website Palestine Remembered, raphy as a means to document discrete cases and should be read in connection with out of this structural denial that the tradition of for example, Palestinians insist on the rights they it. of destruction, we need to ask ourselves how 6 engaged photography could invent the protocol have to these photographs, on their being part of photography participated in this destruction and See her fourth blog/essay for this. of the documentary as a means of accounting for the common, and by using them without permis- ultimately examine if and how it can play a part 7 objects that were violently fabricated by imperial sion, they challenge the idea of photographs as 5 In the introduction of her first essay, in imagining ways out of it. All this implies that Azoulay defines this moment of the actors, a mode of being morally concerned among objects reducible to private property and owned photography didn’t so much initiate a new world ‘new’: ‘The attachment of the meaning one’s peers. exclusively. The photographer isn’t the one who “new” to whatever imperialism impos- as it was built upon and benefitted from imperial es is constitutive of imperial violence: Thus, for example, Magnum/ICP photog- expelled them, but as long as his permission to looting, divisions and rights that were operative it turns opposition to its actions, raphers such as David Seymour or Robert Capa photograph is conditioned by those who did expel in the colonisation of the world to which photog- inventions, and the distribution of could depict the plunder of Palestine as the them and by the regime they established, his right rights into a conservative, primitive, raphy was assigned the role of documenting, or hopeless “race against time”—i.e., creation of a new state or world in which Jewish is not universal but imperial. recording or contemplating what was already progress—rather than as a race against sovereignty could triumph, conflating the plight imperialism. The murder of five there. thousand Egyptians who struggled of the Palestinians with the difficulties encoun- Even as photography becomes more and more against Napoleon’s invasion of their tered by the migrant Jews, who at that point were specialised, with its own division of ‘experts’, it sacred places and the looting of old made guardians of the new sovereignty. Misled treasures, which were to be “salvaged” tends to ‘structurally’ deny its impact when taking and displayed in Napoleon’s new by the documentary protocols that they were for granted these imperial rights. That’s Azoulay museum in Paris, is just one example using, and thus becoming implicated in what was of this. In the imperial histories of overall strategy: to lay bare ‘the set of imperial new technologies of visualization, misleading about them, acting as if lived worlds both the resistance and the murder of these people are nonexistent, while the depictions of Egypt’s looted treasures, which were rendered in almost photo- graphic detail, establish a benchmark, indicating what photography came to 6 improve.’ Imperial Impact 7 Ariella Azoulay From Gordon Parks to JR, and from Hélio Oi- in the drug trade, which means the vast majo- In my view, rather than the immediate local honest and upfront about what one project can ticica to Vik Muniz, a large number of Brazilian Relations rity of residents are engaged in ‘honest’ work or impact of a specific project, more attention should and cannot do. and international artists have worked in the fave- study. To frame an artistic project in this manner be paid to how art can work towards changing Unfortunately, such an approach doesn’t sit las of Rio de Janeiro over in recent decades. Partly and Repre- presents favela residents as (potential) criminals, structural inequalities on different scales. In well with the art world’s validation of newness, because of this, Brazilian favelas—low-income which affirms societal stereotypes that affect conversations with artists and photographers from originality and individual genius, as well as the neighbourhoods that are mostly built informal- sentations poor, Black men in particular. Of course, this Rio’s favelas, three points surfaced as being parti- narratives of transformation outlined above. That ly—are now well-known across the world. The isn’t to say that drug-related violence is not an cularly important in this respect. The first is the being said, many artists in Rio are doing valua- irregular, ad-hoc architecture of favelas, their of Artistic issue in favelas; rather, it’s to question how artistic necessity of a long(er)-term perspective, because ble work that contributes to the kind of impact supposed community life and the scenic hillside projects act in relation to this phenomenon. More to be effective, continuity is key. Foreign artists, outlined herein. A good example is Ratão Diniz, location of some in Rio have all contributed to ‘Impact’ generally, the oft-trumpeted goal of ‘bringing in particular, tend to conduct temporary projects a photographer from Rio de Janeiro’s Maré favela what might be called a global favela ‘aesthetics’ art to favelas’, as something previously unknown in favelas, staying only for a few months, which complex. His work focuses on the depiction and or ‘imagery’ found in cinema, design, advertising, in Rio’s or as unlocking some hidden potential, seems to raises the question of what happens after the ar- representation of Rio de Janeiro’s favelas and also photography and visual art. However, favelas are assume that favelas are spaces in which valuable tist leaves. Considering time constraints, it might on graffiti, popular culture and the Brazilian primarily a manifestation of the deep-seated soci- Favelas cultural expressions are absent. This denies the be more productive for an artist to contribute to countryside. His photographs have been shown oeconomic inequality that forms the city of Rio, wide range of local, cultural projects and artists or support an already-existing project or organisa- in exhibitions within and outside favelas; they’ve the country of Brazil and, indeed, the rest of the that exist in favelas, which often serve as crucial tion than to start a new initiative. Not only would also been published in a monograph and appeared world. There is a strong stigma attached to living mediators for outsider artists (e.g., by providing this publicly acknowledge the local structures and in print and online newspapers. He shares his in a favela, and diverse forms of urban violence Simone a space to work, reaching local participants or facilities already in place—challenging the idea of work on more accessible digital platforms, like are recurring problems in many neighbourhoods. through translation). favelas as derelict places without social or cultu- Flickr and Instagram, and he participates in a Navigating this complex landscape, artists Kalkman On the other hand, the transformative nar- ral organisation—it would also contribute to the number of photography collectives (e.g., Imagens and photographers often try to have some form of rative of artistic impact tends to overstate what long-term presence of such local initiatives, which do Povo, Favela em Foco). social ‘impact’ with their work in or about favelas. art can do. Marginalisation, poverty and urban are hard to sustain without continuously renewed Over the years, Diniz has created a diver- Fighting stereotypes and creating opportunities violence are deep-seated and widespread societal support and resources. se archive of images showing favelas and their for residents are the oft-heard goals. In this essay, problems, the causes of which range from racism Second, disrupting the dominant and unequal inhabitants that foregrounds the highly different I take a closer look at how the social impact of to low-quality public education and from wi- formats of art production and display needs to experiences that form part of living in these artistic projects is commonly imagined by local despread police violence to global capitalism. The be a primary and continuous goal, which inclu- spaces. Depicting daily life, acts of protest and and foreign arts professionals, trying to answer scale of these phenomena necessarily implies that des asking critical questions about who the art cultural festivities, his work reveals the favela as the question of what artistic projects can actually we need to be critical and modest about what art audience is and what role it plays. We often see an a place inhabited by regular people who suffer hope to do in and for Rio de Janeiro’s favelas. projects can achieve. Returning to the example implicit distinction between ‘favela participants’ many injustices (e.g., police violence, forced home Naturally, Brazil isn’t the only location in of criminality and drug trafficking, for example, who act only in the first stage of the project and evictions) but that also work, play and enjoy life. which artists and photographers have tried to we see that the involvement in criminal activities a secondary ‘global art public’ that observes the Put differently, there is no such thing as the quin- bring about social change through their work. is motivated by a complex pushing and pulling of overall project . No matter how nuanced and im- tessential favela, and it should not be represented In fact, this is now a common motive across the social and financial factors that may change over pactful a project may be, this ultimately results in as such. Again, my point here isn’t that local pho- world. Very often, it’s linked to practices in the time. This suggests that the idea that simply par- the consumption of images of poverty by a more tographers automatically provide a more ‘real’ or so-called marginalised or disadvantaged areas ticipating in an artistic project—particularly an privileged, outside audience. A notable exhibition ‘authentic’ depiction, and it’s important to repeat to which the artist may or may not have a per- unpaid and short-term one—can ‘get youngsters that disrupts this pattern is Travessias, organi- here that Diniz’s oeuvre also comprises other to- sonal connection. Under the aegis of terms like out’ or prevent them from entering the drug trade sed regularly since 2011 in Rio de Janeiro’s Maré pics. Nevertheless, living in closer proximity often ‘socially engaged’ or ‘participatory art’, many is somewhat simplistic. Finally, we must keep in favela complex. Here, the organisers actively aim makes a long-term and reciprocal engagement artists conduct projects with a social component, mind that despite noble motives, the desire to to attract both local and outside visitors to the easier, and the very presence of a successful artist working with a marginalised group of people to work in Rio’s favelas is often connected to their exhibition as well as the participatory workshops from Rio de Janeiro’s periphery is meaningful produce some form of artistic output. After this, current worldwide fame and aesthetic validation. organised in relation to it. In other words, rather both within and outside of Rio’s favelas because the documentation of such projects tends to be Despite these critiques, my goal isn’t to than changing the images/artworks shown, they it challenges the dominant relations of artistic displayed in exhibitions, documentary films or dismiss art as inconsequential. Rather, I hope hope to change the habits through which the production and display mentioned above. books. These documentations often tell a story of to redefine what we understand by impact in a images are circulated. Finally, Diniz engages in a variety of social transformation in which the artistic intervention more nuanced and productive manner, because Finally, considering the scale and complexity and educational activities around his photo- increases or reveals the beauty and potential of a how we imagine and define this term determines of socioeconomic inequality, as well as the mul- graphic work, for example giving lectures and previously neglected area. The Oscar-nominated how projects are put into practice. To do so, two titude of favela images that circulate the world, courses, participating in debates at photography documentary Waste Land, showing Vik Muniz’s starting points are crucial. First, building on the what one project can do is necessarily limited. festivals and art events and giving interviews in work in Jardim Gramacho, a Rio landfill and above, it’s necessary to acknowledge that social, For this reason, I argue for changing the focus Brazil and abroad. Naturally, many contempo- adjacent favela, is a well-known example. In my economic and spatial inequality are extremely from individual to collective impact. Rather than rary artists participate in such events, but I argue view, however, such narratives often do more complex phenomena to which a variety of histori- one, sweeping transformation, it’s the continued, in favour of seeing these as primary and central harm than good. Poverty and marginalisation cal and contemporary factors contribute. Second, collective presence of a multitude of diverse parts of the ‘impact’ of his work, rather than as become a spectacle consumed by privileged au- we must foreground the inherent inequalities of cultural projects in different favela neighbour- secondary promotion or explanation. To focus diences of the arts as feel-good narratives, while the so-called ‘art world’ itself—i.e., art’s producti- hoods that can ameliorate lived experiences and on these activities foregrounds artistic work and this particular conceptualisation of artistic impact on and display—on both a local and global scale. work towards challenging societal stigma. As favela representation as a process of exchange that also—and paradoxically— both exaggerates and In Rio, museums and exhibitions continue to such, instead of asking how well one photograph takes place in different locations in Rio de Janeiro downplays the struggles faced by Rio de Janeiro’s be—with few notable exceptions—located prima- represents the ‘reality’ of Rio’s favelas, it might and worldwide, which to most artists from favelas favelas. rily outside of favelas, which has important impli- be more relevant to investigate how that image I spoke with is more important than the actual On the one hand, poverty, injustice and vio- cations for the kinds of audiences they target. The works with or against the plethora of favela repre- artworks produced. Again, this is largely about lence are central to these narratives of transfor- very idea of challenging favela stereotypes implies sentations already out there, while also keeping in recognising the need to change the unequal struc- mation. For example, a commonly heard goal for an audience that does not know the reality of mind its commercial potential. Moreover, while tures of this circuit of knowledge and image pro- artistic projects is to ‘keep youngsters out of the favelas and needs its prejudiced views changed. one project might be helpful to one individual or duction, and Diniz is but one artist whose work is drug traffic’ by enhancing their self-esteem and Similarly, the identity of artists born and raised in a small group of participants, we must keep in gradually transforming this field. In other words, exposing them to different opportunities. Ne- favelas often hinges on this background, redu- mind the hundreds of thousands of favela resi- rather than in providing additional, new or ‘more vertheless, research has shown that less than one cing them to supposedly authentic spokespersons dents who aren’t participating in the project, not accurate’ images of Rio de Janeiro’s favelas, true percent of favela residents are actively involved qualified only to talk about their local reality. to set unrealistic expectations, but rather to be impact lies in changing the habits and structures through which we see, frame and make sense of these depictions.

8 Relations and Representations of Artistic ‘Impact’ in Rio’s Favelas 9 Simone Kalkman With light, we illuminate and dispel. Rebecca mately seeks to unify the globe in a single system intended to be common artefacts into privi- and then, if need be, with powerful institu- Solnit wrote that invisibility is a type of shield, Shine a of commodity production and exchange. Capi- leged objects. This change of focus to the status tions—to begin reconciling twenty-first century while democracy is founded on visibility. In polite talism has always consumed photography and of images as objects of a higher calling thus image-making as a complete process of knowl- concision, this is just what a photographer or Light in exploited it as a means of knowledge production legitimises the documentary photographer as edge, practice, aesthetics and politics contained— journalist does: claim visibility, counter hidden and value creation—from mass media to the the genius or auteur, the creator of a valuable embedded—within the act of image-making motives, yank corruption front and centre and Dark Places commercial gallery to the museum. commodity and thus a person who’s risen to a itself. This allows us to demand a perspective confront power. In other words, this light is a The new currency today isn’t a reasonable new position of privilege. of the power relationships that remain hidden form of democracy in action—and a fundamental expectation of remuneration but rather knowl- behind the image, pointing out the morally inde- pillar of journalistic integrity. edge-based labour that demands compensation by Reputation economy fensible, politically incoherent and sustainably And yet, how is this light shaped? What forces exposure or virtual recognition.11 Increasingly, the destructive. enable us to confront power? As society changes, Donald greatest need for any contemporary photographer But when a photojournalist is no longer a medium so too do the political and social infrastructures situated in such a cultural environment is that of of mass communication and has instead become We become amateur that create the space in which we photograph. We Weber incessant self-promotion. This, in turn, forces the a privileged commodity, the act of the photog- need to ask what it means to ‘do’ photography? practitioner of today to manage the aura of the rapher changes as well, transitioning to working We must become intruders into the profes- How can understanding political, economic and personal ‘brand’ as a product line, converting the in service of capitalistic forces and no longer sional field so as to dispel corporate, political cultural interests play a role in sculpting not only intellectual and creative practice of photography speaking truth to power. As photojournalism and moral entanglements. Photographers can a photographic process but also the environment into a tradable asset for the institutional exploita- bends to the pressures of capitalism, a predict- dismantle from the inside and out to act as in which we find ourselves working? tion of profit. able cult of authorship has taken hold. In order Edward Snowden-like creatures, disabling and We are very good at positioning the photo- This is clearly reflected in the vast nexus to survive—to thrive—it’s become necessary to confronting, subverting and disrupting. We do graphic discipline within issues of representation, of global photography festivals that promote place this authorship above the nearly mundane not shun awkwardness and unconventionality, but we must also look into the conditions of auteurism as well as in the era of self-publishing usage in which documentary and journalism is anathema in the professional world. We embrace photography’s production and begin to see what’s enabled by the Internet and educational insti- usually placed, driving a mannerist, aesthetic and what we don’t know, allowing ourselves to take inscribed in the image. Today’s condition is a tutions flourishing with assorted programs and subjective response. risks, make mistakes and engage with the plea- deep-seated confluence of corporate, military and workshops. These are generally altruistic endeav- What gets created, then, is a professionalising sure of creation (there’s nothing to lose). In effect, bureaucratic mechanisms, all determining our ours, marketed to the photographer as a way of influence on photography through the creation of we behave as the scorn of the professional—we daily existence and influencing our choices. This building exposure and recognition with the aim a ‘reputation economy’, subservient to the ever-ex- become amateur. Writer Andy Merrifield notes is what visual culture theorist Nicholas Mirzoeff of helping to secure a career in a precarious field. panding industry of branding, self-promotion that ‘the politics of amateurism is about disman- calls the ‘Anthropocene-aesthetic-capitalist And yet, these endeavours do nothing but create and careerism. The photographer is now profes- tling our giant professional machine, stripping it complex of modern visuality’,8 and it’s deeply a privileged commodity, underwritten by the sionalised by market conditions and colonised by of its legitimacy, of its functioning credibility.’14 embedded both in how we produce images and forces of capitalism and situated in the dominant finance such that inclusion becomes the prized By embracing the practice of the amateur, we within the images themselves. cultural and economic centres of the globe, such goal in one’s work. Thus, the photographer situate ourselves as autonomous beings, freely as London, New York and Paris. becomes professional. Concerned with the ways capable of building relationships outside the Exploiting photography Paris Photo is a key event that primarily of the market as dictated from on high within vectors of power and capital. Our amateurism speaks to capital and exerts great influence. corporate hierarchies, reconfirming and legiti- realigns pleasure and worth, and it acts as a As a subset of mass communication, photog- Situated under the glass canopy of the Grand mising existing power relations, the professional conduit between realms of experience usually raphy is a piece of what the Egyptian-French Palais, it’s the world’s largest and most exclusive photographer resides in the status quo, where sequestered in tight control behind the walls and Marxist economist Samir Amin called the five photography-dedicated fair. Paris Photo and labour is cheaply extracted in exchange for a line barriers of gatekeepers and institutions. American monopolistic elements of capitalism, alongside similar events emanate from and perpetuate on a CV or a humbled mention on social media. artist and writer Claire Pentecost calls this the technology, finance, resource exploitation and power, giving voice to institutional authority and To pick up on Solnit’s comment about democ- ‘public amateur’15, someone who’s able to acquire weapons of mass destruction. It’s paramount reinforcing a system of oppression and precarity racy as a form of visibility,12 this encroaching knowledge in a non-institutionally sanctioned that we, as photographers, begin to under- rather than promoting independence. These are professionalisation ironically shuts out others, way, living and working outside the dictated stand and investigate the conditions of politics places of power, where photographers, in their including other artistic disciplines, minorities, norms and freely exposed to scrutiny. and economics within which we practice.9 No perfectly understandable desire for stability, iron- women and gender identities, from opportunities Let’s not confuse the ‘amateur’ with someone longer can we separate the political and the ically strive to reposition themselves as artists, photography should offer, sorting and classifying who’s a dilettante, unprofessional. No, an amateur representational, nor can we turn a blind eye to trading the traditional, measured labour of jour- winners and losers through exclusion and selec- is someone who finds joy—love—in what they other social, cultural and economic influences. nalism for the intangible. tivity. do. Perhaps the best way to condition yourself as Corporate enterprise increasingly sees informa- For philosophers Yann Moulier Boutang and But all is not lost. We must start by asking an amateur is to look at the word’s etymology. tion as the principal vector for the production Maurizio Lazzarato, there’s been a transforma- simple questions. Questions enable us to chal- ‘Amator’ is Latin for lover. Don’t you want to of wealth, and capitalism bases its future largely tion of capitalism regarding creative work. ‘The lenge the assumptions of photography as a form do something you love, something that fulfils on the commodification of this information. essential point is no longer the expenditure of of cultural production and see it entangled you, that provides meaning? To me, the world Photography, a product of the mental labour that human labor-power, but that of invention power,’ within complex notions of a living social context, of possibility is open. I can drift across disci- generates information, is the perfect means of Boutang wrote. To me, this simply sounds like constantly on the move, fluid as an organism. plines and collaborate with others; I can engage extraction. a new manner of exploitation—instead of the This allows us to get at the deeper crises of the with institutions and challenge their power; the This form of wealth-building is called ‘cogni- photographer being paid by the client for assigned social, political and economic infrastructures that freedom to work outside the constricted norms tive capitalism’,10 and it’s embodied in a rela- work, as it once was, today the photographer preconfigure the conditions of producing work, provides sudden portals for a future I could never tively small set of knowledge workers on the one is asked to do all manner of other things in making it possible to reposition photography and imagine. Do what you love. Others will want to hand, and, on the other, in the commodification exchange for exposure, without knowing if any of reclaim visibility as a means to confront power. participate, allowing opportunities to reengage of all culture, thought and media through the it will actually pay off. One of the simple questions we should all be and reposition a field that’s more closely aligned 8 12 ever-quickening consolidation of corporate enter- Mirzoeff, Nicholas. 2014. ‘Visualizing All of this leads to the separation of photog- asking is: how are our lives invented for us by Paglen, T., and Solnit, R. 2010. to the needs of community. This will send the prise and Silicon Valley whiz-bang geniuses. the Anthropocene’. Public Culture 26: raphy from the social and civic conditions of its those in power? Perhaps a response might begin Invisible covert operations and classified powers that be into a convulsion as the formations 213-232. DOI: 10.1215/08992363-2392039. landscapes. New York: Aperture. Photography matured simultaneously with the 9 making and toward the necessities of commerce. with the command from German philosopher 13 of a future practice reform in a state of inclusion, 13 advent of corporate capitalism and mass media Amin, Samir. 2013. The Implosion of This erosion of social practice in favour of Hannah Arendt: to ‘think what we are doing’. To Think What We are Doing | New diversity and equality. enterprise. Capitalism functions as an exclu- Contemporary Capitalism. New York: commodification can be seen most clearly in What she means is that being able to think freely Compass. Accessed September 11, In other words, become educated. Empower NYU Press. 2019. http://new-compass.net/articles/ sionary process, a relentless sorting mechanism 10 documentary practice in which the co-opting of leads to action. What we do as photographers think-what-we-are-doing. yourself—and others—to make informed polit- creating institutions to serve and legitimise a Wark, M. 2015. ‘Cognitive Capitalism’. social value for commercial gain began decades is profoundly political, and we must engage in 14 ical decisions. Aim to engage with ‘prizes’ that Retrieved August 27, 2018, from http:// Merrifield, Andy. The Amateur: the strict hierarchy of power relations, and it ulti- www.publicseminar.org/2015/02/ ago. Capitalism has helped transform images messy debate as equals—among our peers first, Pleasures of Doing What You Love. seek social justice and sustainability as adequate cog-cap/ London: Verso, 2018. 11 15 Lazzarato, M. (n.d.). ‘Immaterial ‘Oh! the Public Amateur Is Not Afraid Labor’. Public Seminar, 19 February to Let on That She Just Figured It 2015. Retrieved 27 August 2018 from out’. The Public Amateur, May 4, 2008. http://www.generation-online.org/c/ https://publicamateur.wordpress.com/ 10 fcimmateriallabour3.htm Shine a Light in Dark Places 11 about/. Donald Weber reflections of democratic society. Generously Impact. This is what most people working in what its early stages, what we might now recognise enter into other discourses and disciplines to can be called photojournalism16 want to have, So You as documentary was typified by its self-initiated allow an informed process for yourself while however reticently they might admit it. They nature, the lengthy period of engagement with its opening up the conditions of making. Do not confess this desire guardedly because, like adults Want to subject matter and its diverse means of distribu- step back from the crises of the moment; rather, admitting they still believe in magic, the sugges- tion. Early practitioners often relied on strategies examine the deeper-seated issues of capitalism, tion that photography can change the world is Change like speaking tours, magic lantern shows, books consumer society and political engagement. If regarded as naïve, an irrational belief that flies in and public displays we might now recognise as you’re to challenge the assumptions of the system, the face of logic and history. exhibitions, each form combining multiple images then you cannot accept its creatures. This means This widely held cynicism isn’t unjustified. the World to build a sustained argument. Jacob Riis’s work the prizes, awards, reviews and other byproducts We live in a time more comprehensively imaged on New York slums is a good example of many of of the professional system must be pushed back than at any other in history, and it becomes more these aspects.18 into a public discourse so we know what the heck so every day. A panoply of wrongs and horrors is By contrast, photojournalism would seem by is going on and can all participate. We can pursue accessible to almost anyone, at any time, through Lewis Bush name and nature to demand the use of the printed alternative courses and resources that support a few taps and swipes of a smartphone screen. page as its medium of distribution. If we take independent and competing infrastructures; Humankind’s inhumanity has never been more this as a definition, then its origins date back to many such people and places exist in the photo- fully portrayed, but despite this visibility, our around 1872, when the halftone process first made graphic and communication world today. world seems to be getting worse. It hasn’t been it feasible for newspapers to be illustrated with This is about challenging the status quo from demonstrated that photography has slowed, much photographs on a large scale. Photojournalism was within to effectively operate independently and less halted, the global rise of authoritarianism, a to a significant degree driven by external, imper- be free to challenge and subvert, demystify and resurgent far right, ever-deepening inequality or sonal imperatives, motivated by complex inter- empower, and ultimately unite the everyday prac- the destruction of the environment. actions with the news agenda and economic and tices of consumers, producers and citizens. In the face of this, why do so many of us still political concerns; these factors left fewer oppor- It’s about opening up, rather than being buried cling to the idea that making photographs of tunities for the sort of long-term engagement that under common assumptions. problems can help to fix them? Maybe it’s partly characterised documentary. Perhaps consequently, because, as photographers, we’ve been reared on photojournalism also often dealt with things more tales of our forebearers who seemed to do exactly singularly, and in its relationship with text, it often this: the selfless crusaders recounted in the lore acted as an accompaniment to words rather than who were able to move mountains with their their equal.19 There are of course exceptions to images. Yet we, their descendants, seem unable these definitions, as there are to any that encom- to do the same, despite having many advantages pass such huge fields; for example, several histor- these forebearers lacked, from immense advances ically significant documentary projects, including in photographic technology to the far more Lewis Hine’s work on child labour, were not numerous platforms available for disseminating self-initiated.20 More important is what unified our images. these two practices: their shared use of photog- So why does photography no longer seem raphy as a form of didactic communication, which to work the way we’ve been taught it used to? could serve to inform and edify audiences. Maybe part of the challenge in answering this is So how were these related practices ever that whether they position themselves as critics imagined as a force of change? The answer lies or advocates of the idea, relatively few photog- in the time period from which both fields began raphers can explain how photography was ever to emerge, an era when democracy was on the supposed to achieve the change we spend so much march and a growing number of people were time debating. Photographs are just patterns of being enfranchised. Photojournalism worked in light and dark scattered across a surface. Photog- concert with expanding democracies by commu- raphy has no mobility, no voice and no agency nicating information to audiences, which aided in of its own. In and of itself, it isn’t able to achieve the creation of an informed citizenry, an essential a thing, and so in that sense, at least, the idea part of a healthy democracy.21 Only a citizenry that photography can change the world is indeed equipped with accurate and impartial information naive. The question to ask is what other forces 16 about the essential issues of the day could properly ‘Photojournalism’ is here used as and institutions did photography once work in a shorthand to encompass both debate them and reach rational conclusions in the concert with in order to achieve its remarkable, photojournalism and documentary free rhetorical space of what Jurgen Habermas photography for reasons explained 22 world-making acts, and what happened to those later in the text. called ‘the public sphere’. These conclusions relationships that brought about their end? To 17 could then be used to make decisions as part of answer that, we need to go back to where the idea Grierson, John. 1966. Grierson on democratic institutions and practices, most obvi- Documentary. California: University of of photographic journalism as a force for change California Press. ously at the ballot box. Politicians would in turn first arose. 18 take note and, once elected, would enact the will Riis, Jacob. 1890. How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of of the people, or else risk their wrath at the next Imagining change New York. poll. 19 While seldom explicitly explained to us as Bush, Lewis. ‘Photojournalism’s First Photojournalism encompasses two practices with Century’. Witness, 24 January 2019. students or trainees, the assumptions inherent in much in common but significant differences, and https://witness.worldpressphoto. this model about the functioning of journalism org/photojournalisms-first-centu- for these reasons they deserve to be discussed at ry-79645873e363 and democracy are programmed into photojour- least briefly on their own terms. The emergence 20 nalists at an early stage. The consequence of that of the first, documentary photography, is hard Sampsell-Willmann, Kate. 2009. programming is that we take this model to be Lewis Hine as Social Critic. Jackson: to date, but something that resembles its char- University Press of Mississippi. incontrovertible and unchallengeable. We never acteristics predates John Grierson’s 1925 coining 21 stop to ask if it makes sense because it is largely 17 Sampson, Anthony. 1993. The Essential of the term by roughly thirty years. At least in Anatomy of Britain: Democracy in Crisis, invisible to us, and we regard what are actually San Diego, Harcourt Publishers Ltd College Publishers 22 Habermas, Jurgen. 1962. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois 12 Shine a Light in Dark Places 13 Society, Cambridge, The MIT Press Lewis Bush choices as the exact opposite: we see them as the virtually; we are algorithmically forced together only sensible way of doing things. An obvious with ideological compatriots from whom we example of this is the way this model influences hear little dissent and who will often reinforce the idea that a successful photograph reaches rather than challenge our interpretations of the millions of people, while one which reaches a information journalism provides.28 The original handful is a failure, irrespective of who those techno-optimism about the global village of the handful are. Internet has given rise instead to highly insular and adversarial tribes that challenge democracy Old assumptions rather than empower it. Even for those intent on serious debates of the Now, we face a situation in which photojour- news, discourse is made challenging by the digital nalism that reaches millions seems to have little fragmentation of the media environment, a land- effect, and this is a model we need to urgently scape where news, opinion and entertainment are scrutinise. We need to revisit its assumptions increasingly indistinguishable. When rigorously about the way journalism, audiences and democ- researched news mixes readily with churnalism29, racy all function, assumptions formed in an age fake news and conspiracy theories, citizen before digital technologies. If these assumptions discourse and debate of the form previously prove outdated or false, then in turn the choices understood become almost impossible. The recent we make based on them may also be wrong. For success of political micro-targeting of social media reasons of brevity, I’ll draw attention to just three suggests a future in which the news media might major assumptions, but there are many others take up a similar tactic that could see each citizen worth probing. experiencing a news cycle algorithmically tailored A first, striking assumption, and one we can’t to their profile, eroding still further that notion of seem to avoid, is the claim that photographs have common references critical to democratic debate.30 any influence on people at all. We can argue this A third and final assumption, then, is that, as to be the case at least in so far as photographs are an electorate, we can reach some consensus and carriers of information and that we may some- turn to the institutions of democracy to address times use that information to make conscious the issues that concern us. As already noted, choices. For example, many people demonstrably democracy emerged in lockstep with journalism; changed the language they use regarding the the golden age of journalism occurred at a time mass movement of people in the wake of Alan 23 of ever widening enfranchisement, and it should Vis, Farida, Faulkner, Simon, D’Ora- Kurdi’s death, and politicians appeared to at least zio, Francesco, and Proitz, Lin. 2005. be little surprise that a decline in one is mirrored briefly echo these sentiments.23 Also important ‘The Iconic Image on Social Media’. in the other. Today, democracy looks distinctly In Picturing the Social: Transforming ‘Men Dancing in a Coffee House’, to note is that photographs change us in ways we Our Understanding of Images in Social unsteady, itself undermined by digital technol- an illustration from Tobias Smol- are sometimes not even aware of. Studies have Media and Big Data Research. http:// ogies that have evolved far more quickly than lett’s The Expedition of Humphry visualsocialmedialab.org/projects/the- Clinker (London, 1793), Vol. 1 shown changes ranging from the distortion of our democracy itself. This has combined, perhaps 24 iconic-image-on-social-media memories to more profound changes in brain 24 again not coincidently, with the polarisation of the chemistry caused by regular exposure to certain Sacchi, D. L. M., Agnoli, F., and electorate in many countries, a growing decline in 25 Loftus, E. F. 2007. ‘Changing history: types of photographs. Doctored photographs affect memory confidence that democracy works and politicians Even if we accept that photography has the for past public events’. Applied Cogni- serve our interest and the apparently irresistible power to consciously or unconsciously influence tive Psychology 21 no.8: 1005-1022. global rise of plutocrats, kleptocrats and auto- 25 31 us—in other words, to change us on an individual Huesmann, L. Rowell. 2010. ‘Psy- crats. level—we still need to accept certain caveats. One chological Processes Promoting the Can democracy still address the problems Relation Between Exposure to Media is that this power is certainly challenged by issues Violence and Aggressive Behavior by that the electorate identifies as pressing? This is that were less prevalent in photojournalism’s early the Viewer’. Journal of Social Issues 42: a question demanding far greater discussion than days. These include the massive increase in the 125–39. this text permits, and in any case, it’s probably too 26 quantity of available photography as well as the Edelman Trust Barometer Global soon to tell. But if in the coming years we reach widespread loss of faith in the veracity of images Report 2019. https://www.edel- the unhappy conclusion that it increasingly can’t, 26 man.com/sites/g/files/aatuss191/ and in the practice of journalism more broadly. files/2019-03/2019_Edelman_Trust_ then this may demand further reconsideration It is also important to note that photographs can Barometer_Global_Report.pdf?utm_ of the model most photojournalists subscribe to. source=website&utm_medium=glob- be forces of bad change just as readily as they can al_report&utm_campaign=downloads In an era of authoritarian demagogues, them- good. The photojournalist Gordon Parks, noting 27 selves subject to the often demagogic influence his success in changing lives with his photographs, Parks, Gordon. 1978. Flavio. New of contemporary media, we may have to reassess York, Norton said that, ‘in hindsight, I sometimes wonder if it 28 the core journalistic tenet that producing work might not have been wiser to have left those lives Barberá, Pablo, Jost, John T, Nagler, that reaches millions of people is the way to create 27 Jonathan, Tucker, Joshua A. Bonneau, untouched’. Richard, 2015. ‘Tweeting from left to change. It’s a dark admission, but maybe we’ve A second significant assumption in this model right: Is online political communi- entered a stage in which many seemingly robust is the way it sees the citizenry engaging with the cation more than an echo chamber?’ democracies are now subject to only a handful of Psychological Science 26, no.10: 1531–1542 information derived from photojournalism. The 29 people, or perhaps even just one person, wielding arrival of the digital public sphere has upended A British media neologism coined by the power to make the changes that we want to Waseem Zakir and used to describe much of what was understood about its analogue journalism as largely consisting of see. predecessor. The notion of a citizenry meeting repackaging press releases, entertain- This question, like so many, comes down to a in public spaces to debate the news now seems ment and other material into news matter of whether we believe means or ends are articles with minimal fact checking. remarkably quaint, replaced as it has been by the 30 most important. For too long, photojournalists sympathetic echo chambers and vitriolic silos of Bush, Lewis. ‘The Algorithmic have relied on formulas of action derived from a Photojournalist’. Witness, 20 January social media. We are now far more likely to debate 2017. https://witness.worldpressphoto. very old model of how photojournalism creates org/the-algorithmic-photojournal- ist-4f217d727101 31 https://www.pewresearch.org/fact- tank/2019/05/31/the-countries-where- people-are-most-dissatisfied-with- 14 So You Want to Change the World 15 how-democracy-is-working/ Lewis Bush change. We’ve too often regarded the means as It started with a shoe. In June 2017, Alexei Paradigm shift sacrosanct, with the result that the ultimate ends Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Fund uploaded a The we want to achieve go unfulfilled. W. Eugene long video outlining the supposed corruption of Traditional documentary photography is unde- Smith, one of the illuminating lights of photo- Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev to Reliable niably in crisis. The most important documentary journalism and another figure whose photographs their website and YouTube33 (figures 1 and 2). The images of the twenty-first century have not been can demonstrably be shown to have created probe of the Anti-Corruption Fund originated Image: made by documentary photographers per se. change, once famously responded to criticism of in the release by hackers of the underwhelming Visuals of important events are provided by civi- his use of manipulation by pointing out that he contents of Medvedev’s mobile telephone. No Impact and lians who happen to pass by; victims of human did not create the rules of photojournalism and incriminating material was found; instead, the rights abuses are increasingly able to document was under no obligation to follow them.32 In these phone contained a plethora of mundane images their own plights; and activist groups have bran- desperate times, I think we need to recognise that showing the politician going about his daily Contempo- ched out into documentation through photo- abiding by inherited dogmas about the function routine. An informal photo of the PM sporting a graphic imagery to make their cases in courts and of photojournalism does more to betray our fore- colourful shirt, a large watch and fancy trainers, rary Docu- public forums. Meanwhile, traditional docu- bearers than honour them. If we want to create however, caught the attention of Navalny’s team mentary photography seems to have found a safe the sort of change that the documentary photog- as a possible inroad to a larger investigation. The mentary harbour in cultural institutions, gallery spaces raphers and photojournalists of the past achieved, visual detectives simply asked which credit card or in the service of NGOs, but in doing so it has then perhaps we need to stop emulating them. was used to buy these items. This unremarkable Photography retreated from the public forums in which it most image served as the starting point for research logically serves its informative societal function. that uncovered a large and widespread network of This retreat is exemplified by commemorative illegal transactions, false identities, questionable exhibitions and ‘the photobook’ as the preferred real-estate holdings and financial cover-ups that Wilco locus of state-of-the-art discussions on what here- incriminated many high-ranking officials and tofore used to be a public, diverse documentary businessmen. Navalny’s resulting video helped culture.34 This self-sequestration might be the spark anti-Medvedev protests that caught Russia’s Versteeg logical result of a medium that has struggled to ruling classes off guard. Never before has such remain relevant in our political culture and might an unassuming image had such a large impact: slip further into artistic niches if it continues to it doesn’t pretend to be an aesthetic representa- turn a blind eye to the documentary demands of tion of an exceptional situation, and it doesn’t our sceptical, digitising epoch.35 maintain a privileged relationship to truth, like What are these demands, and how can docu- previous forms of documentary photography. mentary photography, in all its diversity, continue ‘Discussing the War in a Paris Café’, The Illustrated London Medvedev’s holiday snap illustrates a new para- to impact society? This article proposes a para- News, 17 September 1870 digm in documentary photography in which digm that safeguards documentary photography aesthetics, truth and artistry are replaced by from the trappings of scepticism, irrelevance reliability. and political obscurity by seeking to cut it loose from the millstone that has been hanging from Figure 1 its neck for almost a century: the insistence on its Screenshot from ‘Don’t’ Call privileged relationship with the truth and, having him “Dimon”’ been discouraged by relativistic theories, with its equally deceptive claim of raising awareness as the nec plus ultra of a medium that can be much more. By freeing documentary photography from the demand to tell the truth, we do more justice to the early history of the medium—in which photography was instrumental in science and other pursuits of knowledge—and create a future in which it can play a role of political importance. To do this, we might have to accept photograp- hy’s subordinate place in larger constructions Figure 2 Screenshot from ‘Don’t Call him of evidence. This article is a call to rethink the “Dimon”’. The text read ‘How medium through the concept of reliability. In Medvedev’s trainers prove to be his downfall’. our sceptical day and age, claims to the truth are outdated; the reliability of an image within a clearly defined context is more important. In fact, 33 these practices have deep roots in the history of This video was uploaded to multiple the medium: late nineteenth and early twentieth websites in order to secure a large and uninterrupted circulation. The video is century science and police photography never called Он вам не Димон (Don’t Call considered the medium the alpha and omega but him Dimon) and can be viewed here: https://dimon.navalny.com always as a tool to achieve clearly defined goals. 34 While these histories are often overlooked or For a dissection of contemporary considered as mere stepping stones in the medi- documentary culture, see Roberts, John. 2009. ‘Photography after the um’s progress to artistic, self-referential matu- Photograph: Event, Archive, and the rity, they show an awareness of the limits of the Non-Symbolic’. Oxford Art Journal 32, no.2; and Brunet, François. 2017. La medium and use these limits to construct reliable photographie: Histoire et contre-histoire, narratives based on facts instead of affects, Paris : PUF. emotions, aesthetics or the author’s ex cathedra 35 See Versteeg, Wilco. 2018. The Reliable exclamations of his or her own work. 32 Image. Documenting Contemporary Smith, Eugene W. ‘I Didn’t Write the Warfare with Photography, Paris Rules, Why Should I Follow Them?’ Diderot (unpublished); and ‘Fotografie Lens (blog), 3 January 2013. https:// als bewijslast in tijden van ongeloof’. lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/03/w- rekto:verso 7 August, 2015. https:// eugene-smith-i-didnt-write-the-rules- www.rektoverso.be/artikel/fotogra- 16 why-should-i-follow-them/ So You Want to Change the World 17 fie-als-bewijslast-tijden-van-ongeloof Wilco Versteeg Let’s do away with some perceived ideas of Paglen’s article is a call to arms to update our photography: most photographs do not circu- perceived ideas on visual culture in this volatile late widely or, frankly, at all; even our most technological reality. gripping images have close to zero impact on A decisive date in the history of our visual political and societal developments. The impact culture and an early example of this autonomi- of photography can hardly be overestimated, but sation of images is 3 July 1988. On this date, the the impact of individual photographs is usually United States Navy Cruiser USS Vincennes shot grossly overstated. This is most easily demon- down Iran Air Flight 655, killing all 290 passen- strated by looking at war photography, the forum gers on board. A tragic mistake for which Presi- in which most state-of-the art discussions on dent Ronald Reagan immediately apologised, documentary photography play out. The ideal this incident is rooted in the deceptive power of that documentary photography reveals ‘every- images. The cruiser’s onboard computers misi- thing’ and that its iconic images impact the hearts dentified the commercial plane as a fighter jet and and minds of the people as well as actual policy is autonomously set in motion its pre-programmed recent, originating from the Vietnam War. This response to imminent threats. While human so-called Uncensored War is repeatedly said to supervision over this automated process yielded have been shortened if not outright ended because substantial doubts as to the supposed belligerent of a handful of iconic images. While this is an identity of the aircraft, the chain of command appealing discourse that serves as the ultimate chose to ignore their own observations and apologia of a medium that’s suffered accusations instincts, instead trusting ‘what the computer was of indecency and voyeurism, it simply isn’t true.36 telling them.’ 38 Even today, we wish that images such as that of a While Paglen is right to worry, warn and Syrian boy face-down on a Turkish beach can and wake us from our complacency, we should equally do change the world we live in, but the harsher guard against technological determinism, which reality is that these images are seen and remem- is nothing more than a facile offshoot of the bered merely as icons of photography’s failure economical determinism that’s chased academic to do more than depict reality. The hope that photo theory to the brink of irrelevance and has documentary photographs mobilize people proves harmed the diversity of political expression in to be as persistent as it is futile. the artistic and academic worlds. While it’s true that technological developments give states and Exceptional forms of power other powerful parties new and different means of control, many of these are or will become Considering recent technological developments, available to the public at large even if often used the story becomes more complex. Since the late in a mundane way. In this paradigm, the tech- 1980s, developments in automated and auto- nologies and networks of the powerful can be nomous image-based technology have taken used by those who wish to protest, as a great judo flight, especially outside the traditional realms of player will use the power of her opponent to bring photography and its academic and critical study. him to his knees. Instead, the intersections of science, techno- A telling example is provided by satellite logical start-ups and state power have created photography. Technology from the Cold War, in more interesting developments in photography which satellites served to control and intimidate and image-making. Trevor Paglen is a notable the enemy, is now within easy reach of non-state exception. In an alarmist article for The New organisations and, through Google Earth, to Inquiry,37 he asserted that images no longer need civilians. For example, a PhD student using human agency to operate and cannot be under- imagery from Google Earth proved that the U.S. stood within our current human-centred critical prison at Guantanamo, Cuba, expanded between apparatus. Paglen states that ‘(a)ll computer April 2003 and February 2008, thus providing vision systems produce mathematical abstractions the first overview of the complex itself and also from the images they’re analyzing, and the quali- belying statements that the facility was slowly ties of those abstractions are guided by the kind closing. The student downloaded hi-resolution of metadata the algorithm is trying to read.’. This images that enabled him to interpret their details leads to a reversal in which, according to Paglen, and compare them to and corroborate them with ‘(w)e no longer look at images—images look at other sources, such as leaked government reports 36 39 us. They no longer simply represent things, but This myth is persistent despite its on the hermetically sealed prison. Another actively intervene in everyday life.’ Paglen sees debunking by, among others, Wyatt, high-profile satellite-based initiative is Amnesty Clarence. 1993. Paper Soldiers: The this as a threat and says that ‘we must begin to American Press and the Vietnam War; International’s Sudan Project. The organisa- understand these changes if we are to challenge Chicago: University of Chicago Press tion invites public scrutiny of satellite images the exceptional forms of power flowing through and Griffin, Michael. 1999. ‘The Great in order to investigate human rights violations War Photographs: Constructing the invisible visual culture that we find ourselves Myths of History and Photojournal- in the Northeast African Count (figures 3, 4, 5). enmeshed within.’ These developments include ism’. In Picturing the Past: Media, His- Notwithstanding a pixel cap for private satellites tory, and Photography, edited by Hanno Figure 3—5. Chinese face-recognition programmes that Hardt & Bonnie Brennen. Illinois: that prevents viewers from distinguishing details Screenshots Amnesty autonomously attribute value to certain beha- University of Illinois Press. smaller than the average human being, the future International’s Decode viours, billboards that track our eye movement 37 use of this form of photography will further Darfur website. Paglen, Trevor. 2016. ‘Invisible Images and change messages depending on our personal (Your Pictures Are Looking at You)’. uncover what some want to remain hidden. histories and unmanned killer drones that act The New Inquiry, Dec., 2016. Other examples of documentary practices in 38 when patterns on the ground indicate hostility. Singer, Peter W. 2009. Wired for War: which photography plays a role but isn’t the sole The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the Twenty-First Century. 125. London: Penguin Press. 39 Pringle, Heather. 2010. ‘Google Earth Shows Clandestine Worlds’. Science 18 329, no.5995. The Reliable Image 19 Wilco Versteeg Today, ‘impact’ is a much-used term largely contradictions are more obvious and more visible; related to the quality criteria of different expert Radical they are widely discussed, and designers seem to disciplines. Any expert is complicit in the system be much more aware of them than documentary that granted her the status of expert and enables Intimacies: photographers. her to exercise a specific expertise. Both documen- Documentary photography and communica- tary photography and communication design are (Re)Desig- tion design have many things in common. Both explicitly expert fields. Professional practitioners struggle to understand their future impacts and cling to disciplinary regimes of validation in the the social relevance and sustainability of their face of looming threats that developments like ning the professional practices. However, discussions artificial intelligence, mobile-phone cameras and about these issues are still marginal: univer- amateur culture pose to their privileged positions, Impact of sity programmes are running largely as always, which grant them somehow exclusive rights to grinding the mill until there is a steady intake of design our society. While both disciplines share Documen- students. Both disciplines have been historically many things in common, communication design self-referential and the formal training is largely already incorporates strategies, which can inspire tary Photo- focusing on the technical rather the intellectual documentary photography to (re) design its aspect of the practice. This is seen in the object/ impact. graphy image centeredness of photography and commu- nication-design training, as well as in the noto- Problems of impact rious shortage of serious theory and in the lack of contextual understanding about both practices The disciplines of documentary photography and Oliver among professionals. This is especially a problem communication design are rooted in colonisa- in relation to each discipline functioning as a tion. Ariella Azoulay points to the history of the social practice capable of going beyond Eurocen- colonial past and the rights experts had in shaping Vodeb tric traditions and the driving principles of colo- society, showing that photography’s invention of nisation. They aren’t the same and differ in their the documentary is rooted in a privilege acquired historical momentum of disciplinary maturity, but by denial: they both seem to largely fail at engaging in praxis and reflecting on the conditions of their own medium of expression can be found in the crowd- Figure 7. Screenshot Iconem visual recon- in exchange for some of its exclu- disciplinary construction of knowledge. However, sourced investigative journalism of Bellingcat’s, struction of the Temple of Bel, sive rights, not necessarily those it seems like while a small but significant part of most notably in its research on the MH17 airplane using archival footage as well as that were financially rewarding, communication design is the creation of successful shot down over Ukraine in 2015. Or in Errol digital models. photographers have been mobilized steps to articulate an autonomous practice, docu- Morris’ book Believing Is Seeing: Observations on to represent those imperial rights as mentary photography still (painfully) dreams in the Mysteries of Photography40, his deeply resear- if they were disconnected from the the comfort of its historical self-understanding. ched exploration and exposure of the myths of regime of violence. It is out of this Donald Weber, the Canadian photographer photography, using recent technologies to criticise structural denial that the tradition of and academic in the Master of Photography easy assumptions about the truth value of photo- engaged photography could invent programme at KABK in The Hague, says that in graphs and asking what notions such as ‘staged’ the protocol of the documentary as a order to achieve impact, a photographer ‘brings or ‘fake’ mean in today’s digitised world. Another means of accounting for objects that light into darkness’ and is therefore concerned example is Iconem’s fascinating projects restoring were violently fabricated by impe- with visibility, which is often considered a mech- war-torn patrimony in Syria, Iraq, and Afghani- rial actors, a mode of being morally anism of democratic guarantee. In this sense, the stan based on extant photo archives and digital concerned among one’s peers.41 photographer ‘claims visibility, counters hidden image reconstructions (figure 7). motives, dissembles corruption by yanking it full There is another story of colonisation, one that front and centre, and confronts power. In other From truth to reliability also goes beyond the influence of European words, this light is a form of democracy in action, modernism and haunts communication design, and a fundamental pillar of journalistic integrity.’42 These projects are carried out across the spec- 41 namely its roots in a service- providing culture at Weber is critical towards such dominant under- trum of science, journalism, humanitarian work, Azoulay, Ariella. 2018. ‘Unlearning the core of neoliberal capitalist principles. This Decisive Moments of Photography’. standings and sees them as reductionist; he also diplomacy and legal aid, and they illustrate a new Fotomuseum Winterhur.https://www. process has been continually intensifying since rightly points to the need to focus on the condi- paradigm in which reliability is more important fotomuseum.ch/en/explore/stillsearch- the growth of neoliberalism in the 1970s aimed ing/articles/155301_unlearning_exper- tions of photographic production.43 than truth and aesthetics. Instead of playing on at colonising the public sphere and everyday life tise_knowledge_and_unsettling_exper- The prevalent narrow understanding of the unlimited power of images to tell stories, they tise_positions through violent commodification. It’s this type 42 documentary photography’s impact being try to limit its saying power by offsetting them of colonisation, above all others, in which both Weber, Donald. 2018. ‘You Win, Pho- ‘bringing light into darkness’ is interesting from with text, digital embellishments (figure 6) tography Loses: Awards, Competitions disciplines exist today; we are all embedded in a disciplinary perspective. A question I would and other forms of manipulation unacceptable to and the Outsourcing of Responsibility’. Figure 6. capitalism. Vantage, 12 February 2018. https:// like to ask is, what is it about the photography previous forms of documentary culture. Through Screenshot NOS newsbroadcast medium.com/vantage/you-win-pho- showing a BUK missile-lancer For the majority of communication designers, discipline that hinders a broader, more complex these manipulations, which spell the de facto tography-loses-awards-competi- with digital overlay. serving the market has always been the natural tions-and-the-outsourcing-of-responsi- and more contextualised self-understanding of end of a pure documentary and journalistic thing to do, while documentary photography bility-398e7908bca0 impact, especially as there are other articulations aesthetic and ethic, photographic images can 43 tends to think of itself as ‘doing good.’ This is an of impact in closely related fields?44 Stephen speak more clearly in the public forums in which I have been putting forward an argu- important ideological difference, which in my ment about the necessity of focusing on Duncombe for example offered a list of ideal current battles for reliable facts and worldviews opinion actually works in favour of design and the conditions of photographic produc- types of what activist art aims to achieve.45 The are raging. In other words, should documentary tion within capitalism for several years. not photography, as it creates the false impression Among other occasions in the following list was a result of extensive surveys and inter- photography want to remain relevant in today’s of an inherent opposition to market forces by lecture, see: Vodeb, Oliver. 2016. ‘What views with diverse activist artists from around the world, it should break out of the confines of is Relevant Knowledge in Contempo- a principle of goodness rooted in the discipline world, and it included fostering dialogue, building artistic institutions, let go of its quasi-mytholo- rary Visual Storytelling Today?’ Keynote of photography. While communication design’s lecture, Visual Storytelling symposium, community, making a place, inviting participa- gical poetics and redefine its role in a changing Kathmandu, December 5, 2016. culture is largely defined by the same forces, its tion, transforming environment and experience, media landscape. This is a shift from photocen- 44 This is especially interesting as many tric to photo-inclusive, from truth to reliability photo documentarists see themselves and from art back to politics, and it’s the battle as artists. 40 45 at the heart of twenty-first century documentary Morris, Errol. 2014. Believing Is Seeing: Duncombe, Stephen. 2016. ‘Does it culture. Observations on the Mysteries of Photog- Work: The Æfect of Activist Art’. Social raphy. London: Penguin Press. The Reliable Image 21 Research: An International Quarterly Oliver Vodeb revealing reality, altering perception, creating Awards, as one of the primary mechanisms of disruption, inspiring dreams, providing utility, validating quality in the spectacle of creative political expression, encouraging experimentation, industries, determine our understanding of good maintaining hegemony, making nothing happen, documentary photography. What Weber calls ‘the imminent cultural shift, ultimate cultural change, industrial-awards complex’51 is one of the purest imminent material impact and ultimate material forms of neoliberal ideology: decontextualised result.46 competition aimed at shining the image of the Impact in practice expert profession. To my knowledge, there are no serious alternative awards in photography, I’d like to offer further concrete thoughts that while communication design has Memefest, might help to broaden the discussion about which, through its friendly competition and impact. I do believe we should think of documen- other activities, has been nurturing alternatives to tary photography as socially responsive commu- neoliberal capitalism in communication, design nication’.47 In this way, we’d be able to situate and art already since 2002. We’re now thinking photography as a social practice with a potential about inviting participation from documentary range of impacts. This would change the focus photography. from the object (image) towards the process of communication and would enable us to go beyond Future strategies for designing impact the dominant culture of a self-reflexive practice.48 What if we realised that power manifests I do think that significant parts of communication in realms beyond mere representation and that design’s discipline and practice have a lot to offer the real is actually socially constructed?49 In this documentary photography. I also think that docu- realisation, we might ask what processes we aim mentary photography can crucially contribute to a to create within society to contribute to a more common strategy with great impact potential. democratic construction of reality. The image Deep fake technology will dramatically alter is a medium, and the impact of documentary our already existing doubts about the documentary photography and communication design should mode, as we already constantly wonder if what be the process mediated and facilitated by the we see is true. It will both dramatically deepen image. 46 people’s mistrust in media and enhance media’s Idem. 2016. 120–125. While documentary photography is inherently 47 manipulative potential. Together with fake news, concerned with social change, many photogra- Vodeb, Oliver. 2008. ‘Družbeno odzivno the self-referentiality of social media and the use komuniciranje’, Ljubljana, Fakulteta za phers regularly work with NGOs like Amnesty družbene vede, 2008. of pleasure principles to create surveillance based International and Human Rights Watch. Inter- 48 addictive media, deep fake technology could soon estingly, these organisations act very much like The self-reflective practice is a common be the greatest challenge facing media democracy. description referring to practice-based corporations. Their communications approach approach to design/photography. The I believe that a new field of research, education is ultimately rooted in social marketing and recent growth of practice-based PhDs, and engagement connecting expanded versions for example, gives some valuable insight. branding, and, as such, it reinforces a capitalist By far the biggest focus of PhD work of communication design and documentary understanding of the world, specifically that seems to be on the personal, individual photography would have the potential to counter artistic/design experience gained by the neoliberal market is the only mode of social the practice. The reflection is therefore these developments. The way we do design organisation through which we can see and self-centred and self-referential, and and photography has crucial impact on society. understand the world. One part of Magnum it largely focuses on how to do pho- Ontologically speaking, as we design, design tography or design through a personal Photo operates like a creative client focused self-reflected experience, instead of on designs us. In the expanded field of documentary service, not unlike an advertising agency and what photography or design does in the photography, the relation to the source of the world. This is a fundamental difference, employs its eminent photographers. It explicitly which is present also in undergraduate story is ethically important, and there is still a says it works with ‘brands’ to create integrated, and master’s degrees. This particular strong presence of the tendency to do authentic marketing-based communications solutions. An focus is, in my opinion, one of the rea- work. A crucial relation between socially respon- sons why the usual ways of thinking of explicit example is the work Magnum Photo has the impact of photography and design sive communication and authentic work as social done for the largest European Bank HSBC, that are limited. practice is that the former aims to create dialogue 49 among other things is known for laundering drug See also: Vodeb, Oliver. 2012. ‘Beyond and/or conditions for dialogue, while the latter money. How are such projects related to docu- the Image and Towards Communica- is the very product of dialogue.52 And dialogue mentary photography’s ethos of ‘doing good’, and tion: An Extra-Disciplinary Critique of is the condition for an authentic social relation.53 the Visual Communication Profession’. what is their real impact? Design Philosophy Papers 10 no.1: 5–21. Here, I’m not interested in the authentic as ‘real’ By contrast, radical design studio Loki Design DOI: 10.2752/089279312X13968781797472 or ‘true’ but in the sense of ‘being close’. Our 50 54 lists on their website 31 design studios focusing Lokidesign. 2017. First Things Next: directly lived experiences are largely mediated on a radical communication design practice.50 Socially Engaged Graphic Design and our personal relations increasingly colonised.55 Studios. LOKI. https://www.lokidesign. Most of them explicitly distance themselves from net/journal/2017/1/23/first-things-next- I propose that our examination of the conditions neoliberal capitalism or actively work towards socially-engaged-design-studios of the production of images as well as the very an alternative. Many of these studios operate as 51 practice of making and disseminating them needs Weber, Idem. 2018 businesses; effectively, they’re designers making a 52 to include what I call ‘radical intimacies’. living at their practice. To my knowledge, radical Vodeb, Oliver. 2008. ‘Družbeno odziv- Italy’s first female photo journalist Letizia no komuniciranje’, Ljubljana, Fakulteta documentary photography studios like this don’t za družbene vede. Battaglia’s stunning photographic work on the exist. Why is this the case, and what can be done 53 Sicilian mafia transcends mere ‘closeness’ and to find a working model for a sustainable radical Buber, Martin. 2000. ‘I and Thou’. New becomes radical intimacy, as her photographic York: Scribner. photo documentary studio? 54 work fights oppression in ways that completely Food/Media/Crisis, Memefest Debord, Guy. 2002. ‘Society of the immerse her everyday life, including personal Spectacle’. Michigan: Black & Red. Los Angeles event poster 55 (love) relations, faith, gender politics and her by Kevin Lo (Lokidesign) and louz, Eva. 2007. ‘Cold Intimacies: Oliver Vodeb The Making of Emotional Cap- italism’. Cambridge: Polity Press; Zuboff, Shoshana. 2018. ‘The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of 22 Power’. Profile. Radical Intimacies 23 Oliver Vodeb relations to her local community, into her photo- There is no foreseeable quantitative mentary and art practice must be navigated, and graphic practice in ways that reflect, represent, correlation between the quality Imagining questions must constantly be raised: do we make communicate and change them at the same time. of a work of imagination and its our work in an ethically acceptable manner? Is The qualities of Battaglia’s photographic practice effectiveness. And this is part of Otherwise: our practice inclusive enough? Are we exploiting are close to some of the most important discus- its nature because it is intended to anyone? Do we share our power? sions and practices in today’s radical spheres of operate within a field of subjective The impact design. The discussions focus on a critique of interactions which are interminable A double-sided practice neoliberal capitalism as a form of oppression, and immeasurable. This is not to using everyday life as the primary sphere of grant to art an ineffable value; it is of aesthetics With our heads full of voices, we find ourselves engagement. Such design is oriented towards the only to emphasize that the imag- at a secondhand kitchen table in suburban local community; it understands itself as rela- ination, when true to its impulse, in an ethical Amsterdam in early spring of 2019. The year’s tional, subverting the patriarchal and colonial is continually and inevitably ques- first warm sunrays come through the room’s only ideologies embedded in dominant design and tioning the existing category of framework window and illuminate a small square of the striving to create dialogue and/or conditions for usefulness.57 parquet floor. We are in Khalid’s apartment, and dialogue. All these are qualities of radical intima- it’s the first time we’re meeting him. Our friend cies. Today, photographic artists dealing with issues Eric has organised the meeting, and Khalid has Radical intimacies are dialogic, embedded in of the social and political work under conditions Chris invited Fortune. The three of them at different everyday life and counter to systems of oppres- of increasingly strict ethical criteria. The focus of times left the African continent behind for a sion, specifically neoliberal capitalism. They are criticism has shifted from product to process, and Becher promising life in Europe. The five of us are slowly communicative and refer to a social practice in the the photographer must navigate a field of rights sipping hot instant coffee from different coloured sense that they seek impact beyond the production Letizia Battaglia, Luciano Liggio and wrongs. What Claire Bishop coined ‘the and Mads cups. The city outside goes about its everyday of visual artefacts. They manifest themselves in social turn’ is prevalent in how a new generation business, and today Fortune has crossed it from the process of production, distribution and recep- of photographic artists is expected to shape its the squatted building in which he currently lives tion of images, but understanding that they go practices: collaboration over subjectivity, engage- Holm with around 20 other people who don’t have beyond representation is crucial. They are onto- ment over observation, ethics over aesthetics. personal documents or so-called legal status. logical in the sense that they acknowledge design Artists don’t hesitate to define their practices Their situation is desperate. The group faces as a general human activity. They are interper- with words such as ‘activistic’, ’participatory’ and immediate eviction four days from now, and sonal, although they can also be mediated. Radical ’social’. When the practice of art is fused with they’ll have nowhere to go but the streets. He’s intimacies truly unfold as a practice and meth- that of social work, questions about usefulness direct and asks us if we can help document their odology when design and photography include are more likely to be raised. A world hungering precarious situation and make short videos to friendship, dialogue, pleasure and collaboration as for solutions asks what art does. What is its effect? spread through the wider support network Wij part of their creative processes of making. Radical The word ‘impact’ suddenly pops up every- Zijn Hier58 (We Are Here), a refugees organisa- intimacies build alternative worlds, they create where. Through the roof of the art academy in a tion in the Netherlands. With its nearly 15,000 autonomous spaces and occupy places meant for neoliberal society sifts the instrumentality of 2019 followers, the community’s Facebook page is an other kinds of relations. capitalism, casting its wandering shadow over indispensable platform, and the group can take As does every community, the photographic the notion of art for art’s sake. It’s compelling to charge of the distribution of images and infor- community practises the design of itself.56 The consider the imposition of artistic research—the mation. We suddenly realise that the situation is current states of environmental degradation and prevailing turn in today’s model of arts education exemplary and one that amplifies our concerns. radical uncertainties are urgent and demand new obligating students to functionalise their artistic Here’s a clear demand for images with impact, strategies that enable us to think and practise practices—in the light of Western neoliberal but how we make them cannot be up to us. impact in ways that won’t reproduce the status governments’ condemnation of anything useless. There’s no way we can put forward our own inter- quo. Shining a light in dark places as a primary ests here. It’s not our struggle, and, we conclude, goal of documentary photography is still its Navigating in a changing landscape there’s a difference between art and activism. We strength, but it should be expanded, especially must first be their supporters, then artists. as other very considerate articulations of impact Enrolled in Photography & Society, the new already exist and are already in use among activist master program at the Royal Academy of Art in Authorial renunciation artists and designers. They should be studied, The Hague, we’re asked to consider and assess practised, taught and developed further, and a the impact of our work from before we start to Unwinding ourselves from the cloud of cigarette close and intense collaboration between docu- after we finish. Immediately, the old slogan of smoke around the table, stepping out into the mentary photography and communication design photojournalism comes to mind: photography can sun, we feel the uncertainty of the decision we needs to be established. The concept of radical make a change. After five decades of academic just made. Little do we know how significant this intimacies binds documentary photography problematising of photojournalism and documen- agreement will be for the images we produce in with communication design in ways that have tary photography, it’s obvious that the aim must the following months. Reducing to a minimum the potential to counter what’s coming and can be to avoid convention and invent new ways for our roles as makers, we want to invent a new contribute to their decolonisation. photography to have influence. To have impact. visual strategy that will give Fortune and the During the first year of the program, the question other members of the group the right and power of what impact actually means remains open and to decide for themselves how to be represented without criteria for measurability. In some of its through our photographic labour. There seems attempts to respond, artistic practice winds up to be no other way to justify our presence in their confused by, rather than fused with, social praxis. environment but to sacrifice the photographer’s 57 59 We’re An urgency to distinguish between the two grows Berger, John. 2013. Understanding a privilege to decide upon representation. inside us because to ask for a determination of Photograph. 29. Penguin: London eager to establish a fruitful, non-hierarchical what art will do before it’s created seems rather 58 collaboration that, because of its political context, Wij Zijn Hier (We Are Here). Facebook alarming. For today’s photographers seeking to page. https://www.facebook.com/Wij- takes on an activistic approach. We and the make impactful art, however undefined, the new ZijnHier/ [last access: 06.09.2019] group aim to work towards the common goal of 59 landscape of social and ethical turns within docu- Cf. Azoulay, Ariella. 2018. ‘Unlearning raising more awareness and encouraging dialogue Imperial Rights to Take (Photographs)’, Fotomuseum Winterthur (blog), 10 56 September 2018. https://www.fotomu- Escobar, Arturo. 2018. ‘Designs for the seum.ch/en/explore/still-searching/ Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, articles/155338_unlearning_imperi- Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds’. al_rights_to_take_photographs [last 24 Durham: Duke University Press Radical Intimacies 25 access: 06.09.2019] Chris Becher and Mads Holm about their living conditions, and in the long a pitfall, a well-intentioned enterprise can become run we hope to perhaps improve their physical increasingly delicate. Intimidated in our work and psychological conditions. Not unlike Agam- with the group, we too easily justify the lack of emnon in Homer’s Odyssey we are catapulted commitment to aesthetic choices. without presentiment into a dilemma. Our minds By underestimating the possibility of creating oscillate between art and morality, aesthetics and images that potentially perturb and agitate, we ethics, artistic autonomy and social conscience, also belittle the fact that tenderness, discomfort self-preservation and sacrifice. Agamemnon and contradiction—together with fear, frustra- makes the decision to let his daughter Iphigenia tion, exhilaration, pleasure and absurdity—can die. In the turmoil of ethical considerations be central to any work’s aesthetic impact.61 These we—similarly—sacrifice artistic vision and visual aspects are quintessential in pushing the audi- literacy. ence’s boundaries as well as to the aforementioned In good faith, we and the group, though framework for promoting new perspectives on the doubtful, believe that this strategy will empower conditions and the image of migration to Europe. the latter to decide on its own images and fair In this respect, Frederick Douglass was a leading representation. What we miss is that these clear pioneer in understanding the impactful social and unguided images can be Janus-faced. In sum, power of what in his time was a young medium our conceptual gesture of authorial renunciation by realising that ‘[i]t is evident that the great becomes tantamount to the group’s understanding cheapness and universality of pictures must exert of how images should represent the situation a powerful, though silent, influence upon the of its members. In other words, desperate to do idea and sentiment of present and future genera- things right, we, by compromising our interfer- tions.’62 Thus, images operate as a blueprint for a ence in their representation, overlook the risk of reality that can be shaped the way it was supposed the imagery becoming yet another repetition and to be. In connection to this, images become the reinforcement of the existing, victimising pictures fundament of reality, not the other way around.63 of undocumented migrants in Europe. Only Consequently, their content filters back into the afterwards do we realise that the group didn’t just everyday and can advance people’s attitude as ask for our hands to hold a camera. They, without citizens. being able to formulate it themselves, asked for our knowledge, experience and awareness as New imaginative impact Still from video, 30.03.19 Still from video, 10.06.19 image-makers today. Nearly paralysed, we hesi- Still from video, 02.04.19 Still from video, 13.05.19 tate to put our knowledge to use and, as a conse- The contemptuousness of the individual’s quence, the image that would counter the existing encounter with the visual and sensory within the visual regime and contextualise the situation circles of the ethical turn, according to French is never produced. Against everyone’s will and philosopher Jacques Rancière, disregards the intention, the images we produce emulate those fundamental understanding of art in the West already established and thus don’t actively resist that’s grounded in the ambiguity of its autonomy the perverse structure of politics and the media. and heteronomy. This implies that the attempt What we’re not often enough reminded of is the to resolve this confusion, to unravel this ball of fact that the use of the regime’s vocabulary, be it wool, is a misunderstanding. For Rancière, the through images or words, can narrow our horizon aesthetic experience and contemplation of art is and make us unable to see and act in the world. the experience of pondering a positive contradic- Hence, it continuously threatens our ability to tion,64 which is the tension between the belief imagine beyond its framework.60 in art’s autonomy and the confidence in art to promote social change and transform social real- A tightrope (imp)act ities. He believes that in order to influence social change, the aesthetic need not be sacrificed. It’s at In the attempt to find the visual vocabulary corre- this intersection where the sensory experience of sponding to our doubts as to how we’re entitled an artwork—its artistic quality—shouldn’t relin- to represent people, the footage—even though quish itself completely to the reduction of analyt- it evidently states that the situation of people ical information about target audiences. Even forcibly denied documents and rights in Europe though he argues from a philosophical rather needs to be improved—isn’t enough to help us than art-critical perspective, he’s an important imagine a more positive future. Today’s tendency figure with regard to unmasking the binary tone to emphasise ethical guidelines in art production that predominates the conversation around politi- 60 actually grants us permission to be gratified, and Cf. Azoulay, Ariella. 2008. The Civil cised art: collectivity vs. subjectivity, process vs. so we are. Identity politics have succeeded in Contract of Photography. 16. New York: ends, generality vs. specificity, participatory vs. teaching us to respect fellow human beings—the Zone Books. exploitative, performative vs. authoritarian, social 61 people we’re working with—and acknowledge Cf. Bishop, Claire. 2012. Artificial Hells. effect vs. artistic quality. As a result, he cultivated diversity; the resulting assurance of personal Participatory Art and the Politics of a new terminology and emphasis on spectator- Spectatorship. 26. London & New York: autonomy can be seen as positive. Nevertheless, Verso. ship. Following this thought, perhaps the most conducting a faithful artistic project in a vulner- 62 enriching artworks interrogate exactly these able context like suburban Amsterdam can be a Stauffer, John. 2015. ‘Lectures on dialectic characteristics between art’s authority Images’. Picturing Frederick Douglass: An tightrope act. In a finger-pointing culture, where Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth and social interference by addressing its context, the precocious guardians of political correctness Century’s Most Photographed American. form, conditions of production and reception. 130. New York: Liveright. and moralism are waiting for you to stumble into 63 Back at the kitchen table in suburban Cf. Steyerl, Hito. 2008. Die Farbe der Wahrheit. Dokumentarismen im Kunst- feld. 80. Wien & Berlin: Turia + Kant. 64 Rancière, Jacques. 2004. The Politics of Aesthetics. London: Bloomsbury 26 Imagining Otherwise 27 Academic. Chris Becher and Mads Holm Amsterdam, all of us share the same vision. Photographer, activist and educator Dr. I began to see how photography can be However, the challenge is to find a common Shahidul Alam was kidnapped from his Reclaiming used as a persuasive tool. It pointed me to language to formulate that vision. Spectators, home on 5 August 2018 by a group of the direction in which my photography subjects or participants are more than competent officers dressed in plain clothes. He was Political might turn. The epiphany that you refer in handling different types of approaches striving allegedly spreading ‘false’ news through to actually relates to a little girl. I was for more sophisticated narratives of social truth. Facebook and ‘provoking’ during an Al Fires in having an exhibition in Belfast, and I was Otherwise, we’re in danger of art reduced to Jazeera interview against the backdrop staying in town with friends. One day, I weaponry65, meselectaning its utility and effi- of student protests for better road safety Bangladesh had come back from the show and as I was ciency become foreseeable. Further, the assump- taking place in Dhaka at the time. During emptying my pockets, their five-year-old tion of an already existing audience neglects the the dark, 107-day period he spent in jail, girl Karina asked me how come I had artwork’s ability to create its own situation.66 his unjust arrest was met with an over- coins in my pocket? As her parents were With the shift to foreseeing the effect of a photo- whelming outcry from the international development workers, she had been to graphic artwork within the context of the omni- community of freethinkers and human Interview Bangladesh; she knew how developmental present ethical and social turns, there has to be a rights organisations. Students and journal- agencies saved Bangladeshis as such. So refined language that also takes the imaginative ists rallied relentlessly in Bangladesh for Shahidul her idea of a Bangladeshi was someone strength of the non-foreseeable and unprovable his freedom. Eventually, the Goliath that poor and skinny needing financial aid. The into account when speaking about the situation is the Bangladeshi government was forced Alam fact that a Bangladeshi had coins in his of illegalised migrants in Europe. And even if to give in, and Shahidul’s bail was granted. pocket didn’t fit that equation. And that neither words nor images will ever give definitive The case is still ongoing, but it hasn’t was what got me thinking about the sort of answers to the complex situation the group in deterred him from his quest for a better social, political and cultural environment Amsterdam faces, new humanising, sensitive and world. Upon his release, he was named as a Shadman this five-year-old girl grew up in that made dignifying perspectives are required. If tomorrow Time person of the year, which he can add her incapable of seeing a Bangladeshi as we sit again with Khalid, Fortune and Eric, what to the already sparkling list of accolades anything other than an icon of poverty. would be the way to establish a non-hierarchical he’s achieved over the course of his career. Shahid Images played a big role in creating that collaboration that doesn’t sacrifice the aesthetic Despite that honour, he’ll tell you that environment. I realised that the narra- but rather subsumes both it and the political the greatest achievement that came out of tive had to be changed. Because whoever within an ethical framework? Would we be able this ordeal was to make transparent to the controls the narrative determines the story. to create these empowering and contradictory entire world the morose state of affairs in While White Western photographers images that counter the already existing tropes Bangladesh. His unbiased and unwavering were the people who largely told my story, and help imagine an alternative future? war on oppression in Bangladesh has been it would only be a certain kind of story ongoing for decades. I wanted to sit with that was being told. I decided then that I the veteran warrior to borrow some of his would create a platform for local photogra- boundless energy and also to talk about phers. The perception and expectations of his motivations, the shifting landscape of photography amongst the public needed to media, the importance of being flexible be taken into reckoning. and how to carry on the good fight in today’s hostile environment. I think now, almost anyone can tell their own story, regardless of their nationality Your career as a photographer has now or creed. The world is bombarded with spanned over three decades, during which billions of images. The preponderance of time you’ve achieved more than most social media means the people who make photographers can hope to do in a lifetime. photographs and who disseminate them are You were the first Asian to chair the World very different from who used to. No power Press Photo; you’ve won almost every structure has the exclusive monopoly over photographic award there; you founded the distribution of imagery. Their point the Drik Picture Library, which is the of view can be questioned. But this has first international platform for Bangla- also brought with it all this talk about fake deshi photographers; and you founded the news; there is scepticism surrounding how photography school Pathshala, which has images are made and seen. The perception produced generations of photographers and expectation of the public that you in Bangladesh and around the world. But talk about has shifted. Photography can before doing all this, you resided in the no longer be looked at as the harbinger of world of science. It was quite a leap from truth, can it? completing a PhD in chemistry to prac- tising photography. Was this shift caused Of course, photography can be misleading. by an epiphany of sorts, or was it more of a Any powerful tool can be used in any gradual process? way, and it’s who handles the tool [who] determines what it will be used for. It A combination of both really. During my was 1909 when Lewis Hine said, ‘While student days in the U.K., I got involved photographs may not lie, liars may take with the left movements that were taking photographs.’ I think today liars become place at that time. This was in the early presidents, liars become religious leaders, 80s, and we were going to street rallies liars own advertising agencies. Even activ- trying to raise public opinion. There, I ists can use and abuse photography. I think 65 began to see how photography was being what we need to do is place the weight of Berger, Understanding, 28. 66 used by others as part of that resistance. credibility upon the source and not the Minh-ha, Trinh T. 2013. ‘Trinh T. Minh-ha on Images and Politics’, TV Multiversity (blog), 9 September 2013. http://tvmultiversity.blogspot. com/2010/07/questions-of-imag- es-and-politics.html [last access: 28 06.09.2019 Imagining Otherwise 29 Shadman Shahid Kalpana’s Warriors exhibition medium. Yes, photographs may or may not opening at Drik Gallery lie, but it is the credibility of the source What I found interesting was that the From left to right, Taslima that determines whether the photograph review talked about the artistry of my Akhter, Shahidul Alam and Aungmakhai Chak at the open- is to be believed or not. Credibility is not work, my composition, the light and the ing of the show “Kalpana’s something that comes from above. It has aesthetical elements. [It] never mentioned Warriors” at Drik Gallery on to be earned and legitimised. But I think the politics. That got me thinking about the 12th June 2015, marking the 19th year of the disappear- it’s positive because I don’t accept that how we can be put in little boxes. As if to ance of indigenous activist and people should believe in the content solely say, ‘You can have your art but leave the general secretary of the Hill Women’s Federation, Kalpana based on the medium it comes from. They politics to others.’ So I decided that my Chakma. Photograph: Habibul should question on all levels. They should politics will be embedded within my art. Haque/Drik question the credibility and the intention Later on, for my work about the disap- of the source. pearance of Kalpana Chakma (the still missing human rights activist who was When one looks at your body of work, abducted from her home in 1996 allegedly what stands out is your willingness by the Bangladesh Army), I responded to be flexible. Your strategies of using to the needs of the time. Data was no photography as a tool for resistance longer the currency of news, and I needed constantly change and expand with the to find a way to engage with people that needs of the time. I’m curious to know simply went beyond providing facts. At an how and why your works have evolved, aesthetic level and at an intervention level. We want justice near Aarong but let’s start in the late 1980s: the final We asked questions to the silent witnesses, Students demanding justice for days of the authoritarian rule of General the people who should have been asked, fellow students murdered by Hussain Muhammad Ershad. The turmoil whose voices should have been heard. The buses on rampage. Abdul Karim Rajib, a second-year student of surrounding the fight for democracy in investigations either didn’t ask the right Humanities department at, and Bangladesh was at its peak, and it was questions or were not giving importance to Dia Khanam Meem, a first-year closer to the beginning of your career. the people who knew. In the conversations Science student of Shaheed Ramiz Uddin Cantonment What shape did your methodology take between Kalpana and her abductor, the last School and College were killed during that era? argument was about the military setting on 29th July 2018, when an Uttara-bound bus of “Jabal- fire to their villages. I used fire to create e-Noor Paribahan” rammed Of course, flexibility is vital. You must the imagery. The fact that she lived a very into a group of students who adapt yourself to the condition that you simple life was evidenced by the straw mats had been waiting on the road for transport. Road accidents are in. During Ershad’s time, the way to she slept on, so I used them as material are a frequent and major get photographs out there was through to print the pictures on. The process of source of injuries and death in Bangladesh. Students through- conventional media outlets and newspa- production and the material it was made out Dhaka city organised pro- pers. Therefore, the vocabulary that you on were all part of the politics of the story. test rallies, demanding safer roads and for justice. This photo used needed to be suitable for those outlets So if you needed to engage with the art, was taken at the busy intersec- and the audience of that time. To give you you had to engage with the politics. You tion of Manik Mia Avenue and a practical example, the work I had done couldn’t separate the two. Mirpur Road on 1st August 2018 Photo: Shahidul Alam/Drik/ during the last years of Ershad’s reign—I Majority World had juxtaposed images from a wedding of Nowadays, there is a tremendous compe- a minister’s daughter with the images of tition for the viewer’s attention that the floods that happened then. It was an photographers need to face. It is a chal- attempt to show the divide between the lenge to make the audience look at one’s rich and the poor and question the role of work, let alone having a lasting effect on the government in dealing with the victims them. Yet you continue to make an impact of the flood. It was a very literal sort of on society. What tactics should photogra- expression. It worked at that time. When phers realise in order to remain cogent in I submitted my work for the Mother Jones today’s society? photography award, I had included my open letter to the prime minister as part of I think today you have a more sophis- the photo essay. So I was not only relying ticated audience who are used to seeing on the photographs but also political inter- imagery in different forms through various vention. In the letter, I had mentioned the platforms. It is a much more complex situa- gagging of the media, discussing censor- tion where international trade and interna- ship among other things. tional recognition are crucial aspects, and mobilising global support is of the utmost I remember you telling me that when importance. Technology plays a massive you exhibited the work in 1989, the show part, both in terms of what the government was reviewed by the magazine that was does and how you resist. You have to create owned by the wife of the minister you were work that can play in many levels: social critiquing. And I found that fascinating. media, street and public exhibits, fine art Here is the minister that you question galleries and international publications. through your work, and this magazine that You might need to tweak your work to fit his wife runs was talking about it. And the platform. if I remember correctly, the review was a positive one, too. Did that surprise you or have an effect on your latter works?

30 Reclaiming Political Fires in Bangladesh 31 Shadman Shahid Technology is being used to repress as well. guerrilla warfare. Big power structures In Bangladesh, it is a risk for someone like have more money, have more muscle, than you to carry your mobile around because we do, but they are also slower, less nimble the government might be listening to what and not able to get into the spaces we can you are saying through your mobile, or it get into. And I think we need to recognise has the capacity to track your movements. our own strengths and turn it around. Western governments have been largely indifferent to this new form of repression in countries like Bangladesh and even provide the surveillance technology to these countries in some instances. Why do you think that is?

Bangladesh being allowed to get away with repression also has to do with what Bang- ladesh delivers to other countries. While Bangladesh can contain the Rohingya refugees and on the face of it can help out in the War on Terror, they will ignore human rights transgressions, they will ignore stolen elections, they will ignore the many, many other things that are wrong. Because it is convenient for them to have someone who delivers on their needs. What happens to Bangladeshis? They will provide lip service for that, but I don’t believe they will actually do anything.

You have always encouraged your students to be smart and not to perish in the act of resisting so that they can fight another day. But given the state of freedom of speech in today’s world, especially in the global south, or the ‘Majority World’, as you call it, do you think young photographers now can express themselves freely without Abahani wedding being persecuted? The resilience of the average Bangladeshi is remarkable. As I have better words to define it now: this woman waded through the flood waters in Kamalapur to ‘martyrs don’t make good reporters.’ get to work, there was a pho- Firstly, you have to build a network. Most tographic studio “Dreamland Photographers”, which was young photographers nowadays understand open for business. Dhaka, the value of having a good network in Bangladesh. 1988. Photo: Shahidul Alam/Drik/ terms of their professional career, but you Majority World also have to understand the importance of having a strong support system around you. One of the reasons I could get away with the things I said through my work—I mean the case still hangs against me, but I am out and I continue to say what I have said before—was because there was such a passionate movement internationally and in Bangladesh. We were able to do that because of the work that I have done over thirty-five years and the friends that I have made during that time. Of course, this doesn’t happen overnight, but I think each one of us needs to create that support structure. You need to build a community you can rely upon and strategic alliances that go beyond your immediate perimeter. But you also have to act smart. At the end of the day, banging away at the problem is not the answer. You have to find ways to get under their skin. You have to find cracks that you seep through, and it’s

32 Titel 33 Shadman Shahid The summer of 2018. I sit with Caroline Vincart in the museum’s collection. She knows that the What are you saying to us? Caroline has arranged a meeting with Christoph at the café of the Photo Museum of Antwerp Antwerpen photos were shown at the museum once in 2015 I say Antwerpen’s crime is to deceive. They in a hotel lobby in Ghent. The room is furnished (FOMU) in Belgium. Caroline is a curator at in an exhibition titled ‘Photography Inc. From deceive you. This is a term I’m borrowing from with green and brown sofas and armchairs. the museum. She’s showing me some photos Luxury Product to Mass Medium.’ Caroline also Susana Vargas Cervantes. In her 2014 essay There are tourist city guides and other leisure from the museum’s collection, which are vaguely tells me that she recently shared a selection of six and book Mujercitos, Susana looks at photos of publications spread over our coffee table. In this dated to the 1990s. I’m looking at self-portraits Alberto of Antwerpen’s photos with the Antwerp Queer mujercitos (effeminate men) who are transvesting condensed edit of our interview I start by asking of a cross-dresser, as I must call the model and Arts Festival. They were gathering material from and posing as a performative act of taking control Christoph how he got Antwerpen’s photos. photographer, as the photos cannot show me García del FOMU’s collection to publish during a take- of their images when photographed for the how they identified. I’m following the example over of the museum’s Instagram account. The Mexican true-crime magazine Alarma (between A Well, a member of my family sorted of Juliet Jacques. In her essay ‘Everything is caption of the Instagram post repeats some of the 1963 and 1986). During those years, the tabloid out some kind of administrative Permitted,’ published in Dazed and Confused Castillo information that Caroline just gave me. It says, published hundreds of stories about mujercitos problem that [Antwerpen] had—not magazine in 2019, Juliet describes some teenage ‘Christoph Ruys found these diapositives in 2009 being murdered, arrested in clubs and held at as a favor, but because that was part friends of Sophie Podolski, a poet and visual on [sic] a Flemish flea market. The man in the police stations. In most of them, mujercitos are of the job of the family member of artist who lived in Brussels, Belgium, as ‘people pictures is [Antwerpen] from Ghent.’ posing provocatively and unapologetically for the mine—and [Antwerpen] was very wearing nothing at all’ and ‘cross-dressers.’ This, Caroline and I finish lunch. I tell her that my camera. Susana writes, ‘It is never clear from the grateful. One day, [Antwerpen] Juliet writes, is because the 1970s footage of those main concern is the lack of information on how photographs and written stories in Alarma why died and the priest of the parish friends filming one another, which she is looking the museum acquired Antwerpen’s photos for the mujercitos have been detained, or if they are of the Port of Ghent found a note at, can’t show her how they identified. I’m being its collection, and later exhibited and published in a police station. But what seems to be clear is in his home instructing to leave shown these photos because I’m a transvestite, them. We agree to stay in contact, and I leave their criminalization for “deceiving.” … Thus, all his belongings to the family and I’m known in the Brussels contemporary Antwerp to go back home to Brussels. Lorena is described as “a real female who awakens member of mine. These included art scene for transvesting with my friends in our the admiration of whoever sees her walking by, a house by the Port of Ghent and public readings and pictures. Back in spring, so elegant and gracious.” But Alejandro Saucedo everything in it contained. The Caroline and I were chatting in the lesbian bar I return to the museum in the summer of 2019. It’s (Lorena’s given name at birth) is described as a house had three levels. Downstairs Mothers & Daughters in Brussels when she taken a year to be called back—this time I’m in “pervert” and a “degenerate” in the written text. there were jazz records and tapes, first told me of these photos, and I expressed Antwerp to search for information for the writing Queta is a happy modern woman, but Enrique and recording material. The rest of my interest in coming to the museum to look of this story, which FOMU has commissioned. Martínez is described with “disgust.” Claudia is the floors seemed unused. The top at them. But today in Antwerp Caroline can’t I meet with a member of the museum’s staff to “glamorous,” whereas David is an “invert,” partic- floor looked like an old repair shop provide much more information about the photos expand on the little information on Antwerpen’s ipating in an “orgy.” What is criminalized is the of pianos and other musical instru- she’s showing me. She says other staff members photos that Caroline gave me last year. How did mujercitos’ failure of masculinity, which makes of ments. [Antwerpen] lived down- of the museum don’t know either. I ask who the Christoph get the photos? Well, probably the flea them an abject, feminized (and desired) other.’ stairs amongst, I think, 20 cats, the model is. market story, but not sure. This is the informa- recording material, jazz records, ‘No record,’ she says. ‘Only a name and tion circulating at the museum. And the article I ask the staff member about the ‘Photography and piles, hundreds and hundreds surname.’ in Vice? The staff member vaguely remembers Inc.’ exhibition and they share the catalogue with of skirts that he made himself. The ‘How did you get those names?’ sending the photos. me. Curated by Tamara Berghmans, the show house was sold and I got the photos ‘We don’t know.’ I email Jill Mathieu, the author of the text was concerned with how photographic technol- because I was studying photography. I choose to call the model Antwerpen, which in Vice. My message contains this question: ogies have affected the practice of photography And that’s how the story went. is the way Antwerp is written in Dutch, the city’s ‘Your text is very short but it includes the phrase over time, and vice versa. It presented parts of official language. This is because I’m certain that “Een Belgische transseksuele seriemoordenaar uit de the museum’s collections of photos, photographic Q When did this happen? the photos are here today, and because I won’t seventies dus, verder niks bijzonders” [A Belgian equipment and books. When reading the cata- use the names that the museum attached to them transsexual serial killer from the seventies… so logue, I notice an effort to divide the act of taking A I think it had to be 1993 or 1994. without Antwerpen’s consent. In some photos nothing special]. How did you know this infor- photos in two: amateur and professional. Antwerpen sits on a small cabinet or stands on mation about [Antwerpen]? I mean their being In the same catalogue I see some of Antwer- Q So you got these pictures and kept them their leg. They wear a red T-shirt with a white “Belgian,” “transsexual,” a “serial killer” and pen’s photos described as a ‘Photo album with private for a while? stripe, or a coat, or a straw hat or dresses, which “from the seventies”?’ self-portraits and cats, 1992–1995.’ They’re printed are red, or blue, or green, or yellow, or pink, or Jill replies: ‘I honestly don’t remember much. within the chapter ‘You Press The Button, You A Yes. Although at the time I was white, or chequered or violet, which are loose or The line about him being a killer is a joke, not Do The Rest: The True Democratization of publishing a magazine titled tightened around Antwerpen’s waist with belts. I actual information :) … I think Kasper [Jill’s Photography.’ Antwerpen isn’t mentioned at all Obscuur, and there was probably a am also being shown other photos by Antwerpen, colleague at Vice at the time] somehow got word in the essay in that same chapter, or elsewhere in short article published there… which are portraits of tuxedo cats, ducks and of the fact that FOMU had come upon these the catalogue. Antwerpen’s photos are presented tabby cats, which have striped fur. And there are pictures and we decided to write about them as generic examples of amateur photography in Q Yes, a selection of [Antwerpen]’s photos, photos of a Belgian-looking city, landscapes and because they were so eerie, this guy making the company of a ‘Portrait of two girls, ca. 1925,’ 56 in total, was published in a monographic waterscapes, too. portraits in dresses.’ the ‘Passport photographs of a man, ca. 1950’ issue of Obscuur in 1999 under the title ‘Where were these photos taken?’ That’s fucked up. and a ‘[F]amily album with family and holiday ‘Over de herhaling, als tegenbeeld’ [About ‘Probably in Ghent. The landscapes are from Also in 2010, Vice Canada published an article snapshots, 1930–1972,’ all three from anonymous Repetition as Counter Image]. What led Ghent, we think.’ online about Antwerpen: ‘[H]e killed his mother authors. you to publish an issue on [Antwerpen]’s ‘How did they get into the collection of the himself. … [W]hen he died, his family found What are they showing us? photos? museum?’ stacks and stacks of pinafores and dresses in One eight-page unauthorized catalogue of ‘The museum’s former director, Christoph the house, all neatly wrapped in plastic and a gender performance? A Well, vernacular photography was Ruys, found them in a flea market and donated huge series of photographs of him wearing these a very, very big issue at the end of them.’ dresses, usually in the same spot and with a A twenty-page issue of Obscuur photo magazine the 1990s. And I thought that we I google the names that the museum attached similar pose.’ is missing from the library of the museum. The had the most interesting collection, to Antwerpen’s photos. This search leads me I can’t tell what’s made up by the journalists or same staff member finds it in another library and because it was so weird. to a transphobic and ableist article about these by the museum. sends me a scan. It’s a black and white monograph photos published in 2010 in the Dutch edition That’s not the point. on Antwerpen’s photos, which Christoph edited Q What was so weird? of Vice magazine, but Caroline is unaware of it The point is: The Making Up. The point is: prior to directing the museum. I decide to speak and there seems to be no record of this article Thanks to Caroline Vincart Why the Hell Are You Narrating Psycho To Us ? with Christoph. and Elviera Velghe, the current director of the Photo Museum of Antwerp, for making the writing of this story possible. Thanks to Bat Sheva Ross and Marnie Slater for reading early drafts of 34 this text. Antwerpen 35 Alberto García del Castillo A Well, it was weird because we amateur archiving. And I had the didn’t find any information from idea to combine it with a small [Antwerpen] explaining why he exhibition of [Antwerpen]’s photos, made this collection of photos. And not because of what they depict also the repetitiveness of the images but to present another example of interested me, as indicated in the amateur gathering and classification title ‘About Repetition as Counter of images. But the project never Image.’ There was repetition in occurred because the board of the most of the collections we saw at the museum was at the time composed time, but this is different in the way of politicians who saw Louis Paul’s [Antwerpen] looks at the camera. images as immoral, especially I’ll tell you that there was once a those of very young women. I project to print the whole series of never intended to show photos of [Antwerpen]’s photos in the form of underage women though. There was a book. I remember that there was a commotion all over the press. I left a suggestion to title it Small History the museum at that time because of of Photography, because this series this kind of political interference, contains a lot of key topics in the which had never happened before. history of photography: the self-por- trait for example, or the still life, or, Q Gender appears central to both exhibition again, repetition. projects, but you never wanted to make that connection? Q Apart from their amateurism and repeti- tiveness, cross-dressing appears to me as A No, the connection was collecting a relevant theme in the photos. Was that and archiving. ever apparent to you? … A I didn’t consider it as a specific theme at that moment. Q Was it during the exhibition project process that you decided to donate Q But in the photos, you see that [Antwerpen]’s photos to the museum? [Antwerpen] is cross-dressing… A Yes, the librarian at the time, Luc A es. Salu, was very fond of them and included them in the library’s cata- Q But that was never… logue.

A No. Because at the end of the Q Was there at the time any policy in the ’90s—it’s important to think about museum concerning the copyright of found this in that context—when we, the photos? editorial team of Obscuur, thought about cross-dressing and that kind A Yes, there was. But we didn’t talk of thing, we thought about extrav- it through because at the time agance. Not about this very sober there was no urge or need to do it. style. We knew the work of Nan Luc always said that in a way they Goldin, so it’s not that we didn’t belonged to me. The author was know the theme, but we didn’t dead and we’d never met any family connect it with [Antwerpen]’s member, so we didn’t go any further photos. than that.

… …

Q You were the director of the Photo Q It seems surprising that there is no infor- Alberto in Plaça Reial in Barcelona in the summer of Museum of Antwerp from 2003 to 2009. mation attached to [Antwerpen]’s photos 2019. Photographed by César It’d seem that the photos were not shown in the museum. Did you donate them as is, Segarra. or published within that period. without any other documents?

A No. But in 2008 I had the project to A Yes, in a box. make an exhibition of Louis Paul Boon’s collection of images Fenom- Q Did you ever think about leaving a docu- enale Feminateek. He’s a Belgian ment explaining the story that you just told writer who’d been collecting photos me about how the photos got to you? of women from magazines and all other types of sources. I wanted to A Yes, if they’d been exhibited, even- show this collection in the museum tually then I would’ve done it. It for its relevance in the practice of would’ve been nice to write about

36 Antwerpen 37 Alberto García del Castillo them or ask someone to do it. That But we are. was the bigger plan. Q You never thought that the museum had to document a history of LGBTQIA+ In Lille, France, Sœur Dide, a member of the international Q So this story was known orally between activism and lives? order and activist group The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, the museum’s staff and then it was lost? once told me, ‘Après avoir souffert d’une agression, nous les A No. But if you’d asked for the transpédéguoines pouvons faire plein de choses avec nos A It has its own logic. I think in a famous photographers of that time, sentiments, l’activisme et l’expression artistique en sont deux way people working there now are there were certainly books in the bons exemples’ (After being attacked, us transfagdykes can more eager to know this kind of library. This is because the mission do many things with our feelings; activism and artistic expres- sion are two good examples). thing. At the time it was all about of the museum was to acquire art photography, and there was a collections from Belgian photogra- Merci. huge discussion on whether we had phers, and newspaper collections, to show all kinds of photography like the one of the Gazet van Us transfagdykes can do a lot of things with our feelings. or not. I thought we had to. Antwerpen and others. We worked with the money of We can tell stories in museums of photography. taxpayers, so my opinion was that Q And you never looked at [Antwerpen]’s all kinds of photography had to be photos as queer photography? Your co-edi- Readers and audiences have insistently been told to look shown. Also, amateur photography tors, the team of the museum… they never at Antwerpen alone, erasing the linage of a ‘whole motley is closely related to the origins of said these photos were queer documents? crew of artists, actors, writers, and drag queens and other photography, more than the artistic sexual deviants [who] worked on one another’s projects and format. A No. But also I have to admit that generally found mutual inspiration in a shared countercultural at the end of the 1990s queer wasn’t milieu. And they inhabited and helped make a world beyond … like it is now. It wasn’t an issue. their aesthetic endeavors, a world that devised innumerable Don’t get me wrong. It’s not part means of resisting the forces of conformity and repression Q Did the museum have a section of of my culture, it wasn’t part of with radical hilarity, perverse pleasure, defiant solidarity—a LGBTQIA+ photography? the culture of anyone involved in truly queer world.’ Obscuur, and it wasn’t a part of the A Well, we had a lot of the infor- culture we worked in at that time This is a quote from Douglas Crimp’s essay ‘Getting the mation but not specifically from either. Warhol We Deserve,’ that appeared in Social Text in 1999. that point of view. We also bought a lot of books by gay and lesbian I can’t know if Antwerpen felt close to a queer linage but I photographers because we thought know that it’s irresponsible to look at their photos outside of a history of cross-dressing culture and politics. that their work was good. That was the first reason, more than their The choice is between cross-dressing politics and non-cross- personal sexual orientation. dressing politics.

There isn’t culture full stop and then cross-dressing culture.

The first-ever cross-dresser made everyone else a line- That time? What time? Straight time? dresser.

For ten years, those behind Obscuur magazine and the This is about looking at Antwerpen’s photos long after that Photo Museum of Antwerp have shown Antwerpen’s photos day when the first-ever cross-dresser… as exemplary documents of amateur photography and self-portraiture. Antwerpen’s photos have been used to delete gender and sexual dissidence and queer activism and art. Antwerpen was never around. People… they’ve been used to delete people. Nobody asked them. When first posted as queer photos on Instagram, they were to Nobody spoke about cross-dressing. carry the burden of years of straight false framing.

They were too busy making fun of it. They were said to have been found in a flea market!

‘you think Oscar Wilde was funny / well Darling I think he was It makes no sense. busy / distracting straight people / so they would not kill him’ It’s nonsense. CAConrad wrote this in 2018 in the poem ‘Glitter In My Wounds.’ In 2011 Paul B. Preciado wrote ‘The Ocaña We Deserve: Campceptualism, Sexual Insubordination, and Performa- Thanks for the poems. tive Politics’ in the exhibition catalogue Ocaña 1973-1983: acciones, actuaciones, activismo. I can’t know how Antwerpen identified. Ocaña was an Andalusian, anarchist, artist and transvestite I’ve chosen not to show their photos here. who lived in Barcelona, Catalonia.

I can’t know what they wanted to do with them. Ocaña was notorious for making artistic and activist perfor- mance work during Spain’s political regime shift—from a It could be that Antwerpen wasn’t part of a queer commu- fascist dictatorship to a parliamentary monarchy—in the nity—this isn’t certain. 1970s and 1980s.

38 Antwerpen 39 Alberto García del Castillo In Barcelona, Ocaña lived in two different apartments in Dr. Paul Julien (NL, 1901–2001)68 was a trained Excerpt from a radio lecture by Paul Julien, Plaça Reial. chemist, a largely self-made anthropologist A Letter to broadcasted in 1933: and an ‘explorer’ who travelled through four- Antwerpen’s photos have been used to delete Ocaña. teen different countries in sub-Saharan Africa Dr. Paul Gbarnga is an economic hub ... with a between 1932 and 1962.69 The Nederlands Foto- level of activity one wouldn’t expect in Paul writes, ‘Ocaña’s performative feminization, which met museum currently holds a collection of 20,000 of Julien. central Liberia. It is the seat of a District with mistrust both in the left and amongst homosexual his photographs. A significant number of them, Commissioner, Mr. Ross, for whom I movements, was not only a satirical reference to bourgeois including 9x12 black and white negatives and carried a letter from the president giving and national Catholic female models (wife, mother, virgin) but autochromes, 35mm colour slides, 6x9 and 6x6 him the assignment to assist my expedi- also the exaltation of marginal figures such as mad women, black and white negatives as well as lanternslides tion. It had been difficult along the way tomboys, spinsters, widows, invalids, southern women, sinful and vernacular prints, concern his journeys on the Pondering to get access to the materials needed for saints, orphan girls, hunchbacks, outcasts, whores, dykes… African continent. Julien produced his photo- my blood research so any assistance was Ocaña’s performance embodied all these subordinate biopo- the Photo- litical figures. By theatralizing them, he did not represent graphs in the service of science, but portraits more than welcome. Mr. Ross went to the them (in the political or even metaphysical sense of the word); of the people he met on his journeys were also market with me, asked the people to squat rather, he brought them to life, embodied them, produced used to illustrate interviews that were primarily graphic and, helped by an interpreter, addressed them, activated them as somatic fictions and at the same concerned with Julien himself. Currently, Julien’s them: ‘A powerful witch-man came to the time affirmed them as not only ghosts in history (invisible photographic legacy is considered to be of more Legacy of village, a sorcerer, a big medicine man. bodies with no discourse or agency of their own) but also as importance than the outcomes of his scientific Tomorrow at 8 am all those suffering from lines of flight through which life evades biopolitical control.’ research.70 However, he did not only ‘collect a Dutch pest, all the lepers, all those with yaws the world’ in photographs71 but also produced should come to the courthouse to be exam- Do you believe in ghosts? ‘statistical data’ in the form of the measurements ined and give blood.’ There was obviously a of physical features, blood samples and finger- ‘Explorer misunderstanding and the man took me to They’re just like living people, only a bit transparent. prints, which would supposedly contribute to the 67 be a medical doctor. I hurried to whisper in understanding of the spread and even the origin of Africa’ the commissioner’s ear that I would prefer This is Jacinta’s idea. Jacinta is a character in the latest of humanity.72 healthy people. The messenger shouted: Almodóvar film. Since 2012, I’ve been working with Julien’s ‘The healthy should also come, women, photographs under the premise that it’s impos- children all should come. The whole My friend Marnie Slater is a living person. sible to understand what we see without Andrea village should come. Understood?’ A loud consulting the people whose world was depicted. applause was the result. This morning I told her about Jacinta. I’ve taken up the responsibility of activating the Stultiens Early the next morning I was busy collection with stakeholders from the places Julien preparing for the research. Eight am there Marnie told me how Chris Kraus said in a public talk that the visited, including the descendants of people who was nobody there. Nine, nobody, quarter question of genre is not important to her, but that literary appear in the photographs, as well as artists and past nine Mr. Ross grew nervous and tradition is incredibly important. designers who currently contribute to the produc- 67 sent out a group of messengers to force That’s it. tion of the visibility and imagination of future Scare quotes are used in this text with the people, with violence if need be, to histories. The idea is that this will offer a read of words that I would rather avoid, they the courthouse. It was all in vain. The thus are meant to problematise the We got it. the photographs beyond the context Julien gave conventional categorisation connected village was completely deserted. The whole them so we can then reconsider their value for to the word. 68 community had fled into the forest, and I Julien’s photographic legacy and the The dismissal of considering Antwerpen’s photos along the both ‘African’ and ‘Western’ audiences. numerous documents related to it are in may add that they did not return before I tradition of cross-dressing erases the countercultural agency In a series of illustrated letters, I tell Julien the care of the Nederlands Fotomuseum left a couple of days later. about my actions and share my thoughts as they in Rotterdam. of yesterday and today’s cross-dressers. 69 develop. This format allows me to manoeuvre In the film in footnote 5 and elsewhere, * * * * * Antwerpen’s photos have been used to delete gender and from speculating about Julien’s intentions and Julien speaks of 1926 as the starting point of his work on the African sexual dissidence, queer people, living, and queer activism actions to reflecting on the potential value and continent. This refers to his journeys to Excerpt from an interview with Julien published and art. meaning his photographs could have in the Northern Africa. in 1960: present, as well as the effects of the way I deal 70 De Wijs, S. in Bool et al, 2007 ‘Dutch I can’t know how Antwerpen identified. with my self-appointed responsibility to work Eyes, A Critical History of Photography I can imagine that someone who collects with this legacy. This is the third letter in an in the Netherlands’. 316-319; Zwolle, blood samples is thought of as a medical But. 73 Waanders Uitgevers. open ended ‘correspondence’. Two translated 71 doctor. There are of course photographs text fragments, which shed light on Julien’s Sontag, S. 1977. On Photography. 1. New on which I am taking or analysing these We’re here. York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. practice, precede this letter that speaks of both 72 samples while surrounded by a group of recent and more distant encounters in which the The stories and pictures reached large Negroes. I always tell them that I have Ask before taking a picture. impact—in terms of both effects and responsibil- audiences through lectures and four come to see their diseases. They would not bestselling books. See this short film ities—of my and Julien’s actions emerge in rather in which Julien himself introduces understand my true interests and also, I problematic and, for now, unresolved ways. his practice: https://vimeo.com/show- have been able to help many people with case/4306567/video/195524279 73 medication, injections and dressing of * * * * * The use of illustrated letters as a discur- wounds. The authorities of course know sive format is explored in my doctoral better. 74 thesis. In PJU, its potential will be fur- ther examined. In the first and second letters, I introduced myself to Julien and compared our respective methodologies * * * * * and methods. All the letters will be published on www.bridginhumanities. nl. Also see https://www.facebook. com/ReframingPJU and https://www. instagram.com/andreastultiens for work progressing. 74 The radio lecture was broadcasted by Dutch national broadcaster Katholieke Radio Omroep. The interview was published by the Katholieke Illustratie. Both media had a national reach and a Catholic denomination. In addition to his ideas about science, Julien also 40 Antwerpen 41 operated from a Catholic worldview. Andrea Stultiens Addis Ababa, Wednesday, 7 August 2019 maker. Such a judgment, however, also dismisses the possible agency and relevance of the visibility Dear Dr. Julien, of the people, places and objects you photo- graphed. It eliminates the potential impact of the Sixty-four years after you briefly visited this town accessibility of the photographs for them as it does on your way to South Western Ethiopia, I am in the possibility for people in ‘the West’ to learn Addis Ababa. Yesterday, I visited Itegue Taitu from them. In order for this potential to unfold, I Hotel, where you spent your first nights in the take it as my responsibility to explain the purpose country. I brought a print of the Kodachrome of my visit to whomever I encounter and work slide you made of the accommodation. The host I with. This may lead to uncomfortable situa- met was surprised to see how much has changed tions, as was the case with the person I offended, since 1955. He showed me where you once stood, despite my attempts to carefully position my looking down towards the building behind the words. It cannot, however, result in my being restaurant and the tennis court on its right. A less honest about my intentions. Which reminds banner and a truck now blocked the view. The me of a question. In your writing, you repeatedly tennis court, the host informed me, was long mention how the ‘natives’ you met were rude, gone. Meanwhile, time seemed to have stood still primitive or dishonest. Did it ever occur to you in the restaurant itself. While enjoying my lunch, that they might have rightfully thought the same it was easy to imagine you coming down the stairs of you? at any moment. With regards to your first major scientific Dining hall of Itegue Taitu Hotel, While I type this letter on my computer, a expedition in 1932, I have a more particular but August 6th 2019. documentary titled The Great Hack75 is playing related concern. In July 2014, I was in Liberia for on the television set of my host, artist Michael the third time. During earlier visits, I followed Tsegaye. This film addresses the theft of personal the same route you travelled eighty-two years data shared on the internet, a phenomenon you earlier. I visited, as I mentioned in the previous may remember emerging in the late 1990s. The letter, descendants of ‘King’ Kwei Dokie and stolen data was used to influence national elec- prepared an exhibition of your photographs in tions without the ‘provider’ being aware of it. the National Museum in Monrovia that was You, too, collected data from individuals you then about to open. Ebola, at the time a deadly encountered on your journeys without their and highly contagious virus, had been raging informed consent. This, therefore, seems to be an through the region for a couple of months. The appropriate moment to share some thoughts with crisis related to it reached a new height in the you about the relationship between our respective week before the planned exhibition opening. I ambitions and the effects our actions had and was invited to speak about the show during the could have. In other words, this letter is about weekly governmental press conference of which impact. Ebola was, of course, the major topic. After Last Monday, I did a presentation for a group providing journalists with numerous facts about Illustration (based on negative of Ethiopian photographers and designers. After the virus, the minister of health addressed the filed as PJU-656 exposure 76 3) with the quoted interview. speaking about my way of working, I showed people of Liberia directly through the micro- Personal collection. them the photographs and films you produced phones and cameras in the room: ‘You should not here. I added translated information from your be afraid of the health workers, because they too notebook and from newspaper clippings reporting get sick.’ I doubted what my ears had heard. As on a public lecture titled ‘Shankala’. Michael told if aware of my incredulity, the minister repeated PJU-colour slides box 6 [Itegue me that Shankala, which is Amharic for ‘Black’,77 the remark several times. Then I remembered Taitu Hotel, Addis Ababa, 1955]. Collection Nederlands is now considered to be a derogatory term because reading an anecdote in which the population of Fotomuseum. it was used to refer to people with dark skin as Gbarnga fled town because of the way in which well as to slaves. I decided to avoid using the the district commissioner had communicated the word. I did, however, use ‘Negroe’ and ‘Pygmy’ purpose of your visit. It occurred to me that the when quoting you, even though I’m well aware minister’s remark could’ve been part of a damage these words are considered to be offensive, too. control strategy related to the actions of people Their past and present-day uses by non-Black like you, who through their practice generated people like you and me emphasise the differences a distance between ‘the sick’ and those coming between people with different positions of power. from elsewhere to treat (and research) them. Is it The interpretor of Mr. Ross (on They generate a distance I consider problematic. possible that you contributed to the ‘fear-related the far right of the photograph) One of the members of the audience was indeed behaviour’ the minister responded to?78 Would addressing the people at the market of Gbarnga, Liberia, offended by my using the words, while others you do things differently now? August 1932. Collection argued that the messenger should not be shot. And also, going back to a more general Nederlands Fotomuseum It was not the first time I encountered this 75 concern about impact, would it make sense for Noujaim J. and Amer, K., dirs., The kind of response to the work I, as a White Great Hack. 2019. you to be decentred from the meaning and value European, do on the African continent or to the 76 of the photographs you produced? This question Stultiens, Andrea. Pages 13-30 of my historical materials I bring to the table. I take dissertation (https://openaccess.leide- and the others asked earlier will stay with me as I this to be a reply to the privileged positions that nuniv.nl/handle/1887/67951) work my way towards the next letter. both of us have and use to ‘take’ whatever it is we 77 Shinn, D.H. and Ofcansky, T.P..,Ethio- need before leaving again. This observation could pian Historical Dictionary. 363. Wash- With best regards, result in a dismissal of ‘your’ photographs because ington, Scarecrow Press. Andrea 78 it reduces their meaning to your position as a A lot has been written, particularly in mainstream news media, about this phenomenon; however, a historical perspective is rarely taken. See Shultz et al. ‘The Role of Fear-Related Be- haviours in the 2013-2016 West Africa Ebola Virus Disease Outbreak’. Current 42 Psychiatry Reports, November 2016. A Letter to Dr. Paul Julien 43 Andrea Stultiens P.S. I almost forgot. Yesterday, I came across the first proof of your presence on the African continent from a perspective other than your own. Johan Helland, an emeritus anthropolo- gist specialising in issues concerning the Horn of Africa, replied to the message I sent him. He was the eight-year-old son of the Norwegian family with whom you spent a night in Southern Ethiopia.79 He recognised all the adults in a group portrait I attached to my words. You took the picture at the mission in Neghelle. Johan does not remember you himself but recalls his mother mentioning an anthropologist who was on his way to research ‘pygmies’ and visit Lake Steph- anie.

* * * * * The encounters generated by my engagement with Julien’s legacy continuously make me aware of certain privileges I ‘enjoy’ as a White woman, such as freedom of movement and access to resources. They also bring up the relativity of my rather specific expertise as an artist and researcher educated in the Netherlands. Little can be taken for granted when it comes to, for instance, the benefits of ‘Western’ healthcare or the ethnic categorisation of people. Spending time with Julien’s photographs where they were produced decades ago leads, time and again, to experiences that make it possible to connect particular narratives to photographs that were, so far, framed from an ideologically coloured outsid- er’s perspective. These experiences and narratives have the potential to expand existing ideas of Governmental press confer- ‘African’ pasts and presents for audiences both ence, July 15th 2014, Monrovia, Liberia. on the African continent and elsewhere. For this to be possible, they have to be presented in ways that are open-ended and inclusive of the multiple perspectives related to Julien’s legacy.

PJU-637, exposure 1. Mission Neghelle, Ethiopia, July/August 1955. Collection Nederlands Fotomuseum.

Composite of exposures 5 and 6 from film PJU-657. Collection Nederlands Fotomuseum. 79 From Paul Julien’s Ethiopia notes, 44 A Letter to Dr. Paul Julien 45 private collection. Andrea Stultiens Upon the announcement that the White finalists is in the institutions that govern our media. In While job-seeking and trophy-hunting are key African photographers and, to extrapolate further, of the 2018 Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize had all The Impact a now infamous job advert for Nairobi Bureau causes for the repetition of these photojour- photographers of colour in general, via their produced portraits of Black sitters, the historian Chief Michael Slackman, the International Editor nalistic tropes, we must nonetheless return to adherence to these canons, exhibit and replicate John Edwin Mason wrote on Twitter that the of the White, for the New York Times, conjured up a fetishised the gatekeepers responsible for prioritising the the very same form of Orientalism within their portraits, ‘like all of western visual culture, swim image of Africa: White, male gaze—and by extension, White male photographs, creating images which objectify and in a sea of white supremacist cultural flows ... Male Gaze It is an enormous patch of vibrant, photographers. victimise—just like their White counterparts. like most creators & producers of western visual intense and strategically important World Press Photo reports that of 5,202 Similarly, women photographers are forced to culture, [they] have not challenged those flows, territory with many vital storylines, professional photographers from more than 100 replicate the male ways of seeing and being in those ways of seeing.’80 including terrorism, the scramble countries over a four-year period, over 80% are the world that have come to constitute ‘good’ In a previous article,81 we asked why images for resources, the global contest with male: ‘more than one half participating photogra- photography. produced predominantly by White, cisgendered Andrew China and the constant push-and- phers are Caucasian/White’ and ‘only 1% of men are chosen over images produced by histori- pull of democracy versus authoritar- participating photographers classify themselves Impacts of a dominant gaze cally marginalised photographers. Here, we want Jackson ianism.86 as Black.’89 That’s means only 52 Black photogra- to explore the consequences of the continued phers participated in World Press Photo between We’ve explained in this article that photojour- prioritisation of the White, male gaze and the and Slackman’s words stem from a dominant ideology 2015 and 2018. If the percentage of female partic- nalism has carried into the present two critical repetition of its visual tropes, both for photojour- that continues to cast Africa, and notions of ipation holds true across racial lines, which is characteristics from its birth in the nineteenth nalism and broader society. Savannah Blackness in the diaspora, through a colonial unlikely due to the double marginalisation of century: our collective trust in its objectivity and prism. The impact of this is clear; the advert seeks women of colour, then that means that no more a colonial lens that upholds certain representa- Colonial lenses Dodd to employ a journalist able to continue its master than 10 Black women participated over a four-year tions of the world and silences others. By placing narrative about Africa. Slackman’s ideal candi- period. a higher value on representations that reinforce a The origins of photography coincide with two date must show ‘a commitment to understanding Let us be clear: this does not mean that there colonialist and patriarchal view of the world, and important moments in history: positivism and the needs and behaviours of our audience’, so no are only a few Black or female photographers. by imbuing these images with the truthfulness colonialism. The core tenant of photojournalism, matter how contrite Slackman’s mea culpa,87 the Instead, this makes it clear that Black, female commonly attributed to the photographic image, that photographs must represent the truth, comes advert is a clear signposting of the type of content and other marginalised photographers haven’t we’ve further inherited a limitation on the range as a hangover from the era of positivism into the Times desires from its suppliers. There is no been supported, encouraged or otherwise enabled of ‘truths’ that are represented in photographs. which the camera was born. In the nineteenth question that photojournalists who are unable or to produce photographs in the same way that The danger herein cannot be overstated. century, seeing really was believing, and scien- unwilling to produce imagery that conforms to White men have. This becomes evident when we Photographs shape how we understand the tific knowledge was restricted to that which was Slackman’s desired narratives will not be reporting look at the discrepancy in the representation of world. They can confirm our prejudices or break observable and reproducible. The camera was on Africa for the New York Times. women in the industry at different stages in their them down. When the images we consume therefore used as a scientific instrument tasked career. Amanda Mustard states succinctly: ‘Female replicate patriarchal or colonialist tropes, these with capturing an accurate, objective and truthful Perpetuation of the White, male gaze photojournalists go from a majority in university tropes become further embedded in our collective representation of the world. to the minority in the industry.’90 conscience. The history of the camera is also inextricably 80 If representations are to be seen as reliable and This matters because we all bring our own life Under the White, male gaze, women are linked to the colonial project. Photography has Mason, John Edwin. Twitter post. 18 truthful, they have to be presented to us in ways fetishised: October 2018, 8:45 a.m. experiences to the table when we photograph a acted as an instrument of colonialism since its https://twitter.com/johnedwinmason/st which we already presume they exist, or in ways subject. Tara Pixley explained it best: inception, beginning with the photographic atus/1052948844504322048?lang=en we’ve been told they exist, within the dominant The determining male gaze projects 82 81 application to anthropometry and intimately Dodd, Savannah, and Jackson, Andrew. ideology. Slackman’s advert, then, isn’t really just We shape the world in our own its phantasy onto the female figure connected to acts of appropriation83 and objecti- ‘“Good” photographs: that of a Nairobi bureau chief; it’s an advert for image: our individual understand- which is styled accordingly. In their 84 The white male gaze and how we pri- fication. These uses of photography, combined vilege ways of seeing’. Witness, 11 May the institutionalised perpetuation of a colonialist ings of truth and reality, our personal traditional exhibitionist role women with the belief in photographs as true and objec- 2019. narrative. This is how stereotypes are constructed, experiences and backgrounds do are simultaneously looked at and tive representations of reality, underpinned and https://witness.worldpressphoto.org/ maintained and continued. play into the scenes we choose to displayed, with their appearance good-photographs-the-white-male- validated the colonial project in a way that other gaze-and-how-we-privilege-ways-of- But if editors are upholding the framework capture, how we frame them and coded for strong visual and erotic artforms, like painting or drawing, could not. seeing-30ac3f005acc of the colonialist narrative, it is predominantly whether we find them deserving impact so that they can be said to 82 93 Hannah Mabry explained: Spencer, Frank. 1992. ‘Some Notes on White, male photographers—and indeed some of public dissemination. There is 89 connote to-be-looked-at-ness. the Attempt to Apply Photography to conditioned marginalised photographers—who so much more to the photographs Hadland, Adrian, and Barnett, Camilla. That most if not all people believe Anthropometry during the Second Half are complicit in providing content that conforms we take, select, and publish than The State of News Photography 2018. Representations of Blackness and people of colour of the Nineteenth Century’. In Anthro- World Press Photo. https://www.wor- each photograph appearing before pology and Photography: 1860-1920, edi- to these tropes and stereotyped representations. aesthetics and the reality of any indi- ldpressphoto.org/getmedia/4f811d9d- take on a problematic, crisis-driven aesthetic, by them to be a truthful representation ted by Elizabet Edwards. London: The Although we recognise that people will do what is vidual moment. Rather, each frame ebc7-4b0b-a417-f119f6c49a15/the_sta- showing people as always violent, bestial, broken, Royal Anthropological Institute. te_of_news_photography_2018.pdf of its subject causes serious social 83 necessary to find work in a competitive environ- captured is a single millisecond in a 90 inferior or dead, as Sarah Sentilles aptly points issues. Photography, like any form Sontag, Susan. 1977. On Photography. ment like photojournalism, there is, nonetheless, sociocultural, historical reality that Mustard, Amanda. ‘Want more women out: of representation, was and is a social London: Penguin Books. a lack of criticality. Max Pinckers writes about the in journalism? Get predators out of our 84 predates subject, photographer, and way’. Witness, 4 October 2017. https:// 91 practice whose connotations were Barthes, Roland. 1981. Camera Lucida: repetition of tropes in photojournalism: viewer. witness.worldpressphoto.org/want-mo- Publishing some images while organized through cultural ideas Reflections on Photography. New York: re-women-in-journalism-get-predators- suppressing others sends the Hill and Wang. out-of-our-way-f6c85a1fe0e4 and contracts … During coloni- 85 I don’t think photographers that When photographs reflecting a White, male 91 message that the visible bodies are alism photographs portrayed explicit Mabry, Hannah. ‘Photography, Coloni- produce such images are doing it gaze are invariably chosen above photographs Pixley, Tara. ‘Why We Need More somehow less consequential than alism and Racism’. International Affairs Visual Journalists and Editors of Color’. cultural ideas, justified colonization, Review, fall 2014. https://www.usfca. on purpose ... I think it’s some- presenting alternative perspectives, a trickle-down Nieman Reports, 15 May 2017. https:// the bodies granted the privilege of advertised empire, and represented edu/sites/default/files/arts_and_scien- thing that’s deeply ingrained into effect manifests as pressure on all photographers, niemanreports.org/articles/a-new-focus/ privacy … ‘The more remote or different peoples and cultures, and ces/international_studies/photograp- the subconscious. If a template-like regardless of their marginalisation, to conform 92 exotic the place, the more likely we hy_colonialism_and_racism_-_universi- Taylor-Lind, Anastasia. ‘How a Lack of fed into a racial discourse of Euro- ty_of_san_francisco_usf.pdf image wins the World Press Photo to the accepted canons. As Lagos Photo Festival Representation Is Hurting Photojour- are to have full frontal views of the pean superiority.85 86 award, it’s going to influence the Director Azu Nwagbogu explained: nalism’. Time, 4 May 2016. https://time. dead and the dying,’ Sontag wrote. ‘Nairobi Bureau Chief at The New com/4312779/how-a-lack-of-representa- York Times’. MyJobMag, 3 July 2019. next photographer going out into tion-is-hurting-photojournalism/ But 15 years later, her words are not Within any historical overview of photojour- https://www.myjobmag.co.ke/read- the field wanting to win the next African photographers also tell these 93 quite true. Sontag’s sentence could nalism, it’s clear that colonial legacy has continued job/50658/jobs/nairobi-bureau-chief-at- World Press Photo award.88 [White] stories because they think Mulvey, Laura. 1999. ‘Visual Pleasure be rewritten: The darker the skin, the-new-york-times and Narrative Cinema’. In Film Theory to dictate how the world is represented. Even the 87 it’s what the West wants to see … and Criticism: the more likely we are to have full- way that Africa is described today by industry Slackman, Michael. Twitter post. 7 July They instinctively begin to follow Introductory Readings, edited by Leo frontal views of the dead and the 2019, 2:25 p.m. https://twitter.com/me- Braudy and Marshall Cohen. 837. New professionals reveals how imbedded colonialism slackman/status/ 1147980093429620741 these canons because they think this York: Oxford UP. dying, even when those suffering 88 is what will get published.92 94 bodies are just across town, down the Crosson, Kayle. ‘The camera that Sentilles, Sarah. ‘When We See Photo- street, right next door.94 produces perfect pictures’. Witness, 30 graphs of Some Dead Bodies and Not May 2018. Others’. The New York Times Magazine, https://witness.worldpressphoto.org/ 14 August 2018. https://www.nytimes. the-camera-that-produces-perfect-pic- com/2018/08/14/magazine/media-bo- 46 tures-b43072adb649 The Impact of the White, Male Gaze 47 dies-censorship.htm Andrew Jackson and Savannah Dodd Amy sleeping, Dudley, England Hand #1 Kingston, Jamaica

Outside the house where Sea #1 Montego Bay, Jamaica Amy lived Kingston, Jamaica

48 The Impact of the White, Male Gaze 49 Andrew Jackson and Savannah Dodd These representations effectively serve to reify Challenging photojournalism sexism and racism. They do not create empathy with the viewer; they subjugate women and Within his role as a World Press Photo judge in place Black bodies away from any notion of the 2009, Stephen Mayes asked the question: ‘What is perceived normality reserved for Whiteness in our journalism if it doesn’t inform but merely repeats visual landscape. and affirms?’100 However, a lot has changed in On the other hand, Tara Pixley points out that ten years. The immediacy of social media and the it’s the humanised images—images like ‘peaceful accessibility of the camera has meant that photo- protesting en masse and black communities journalism is no longer the domain of an elite few. working harmoniously’—that ‘evinc[e] empathy As Margaret Simons explains: ‘Today, just about rather than a paternalistic sympathy.’95 When anyone with an internet connection and a social there’s a dearth of these kinds of images, we’re media account has the capacity to publish news left with an empathy gap, or an inability to relate and views to the world. This is new in human to or understand individuals with different lived history.’101 experiences. This democratisation is a critical step towards Photographic representations do not only a photojournalism that reflects the diverse range shape how we understand others, they also shape of narratives that exist in the world. This comes how we understand ourselves. Daniella Zalcman with a responsibility for photographers to recog- wrote that ‘The way others see us, and the way we nise that not every story is theirs to tell and to see ourselves, are not always aligned.’ Therefore, reflect on the question: am I the best-placed there are consequences when others are respon- person to tell this story? If the answer is ‘no’, then sible for constructing our image in the media: perhaps there are other ways of enabling those who are best placed, for example by seeking out Photographs don’t just tell us stories, photographers from the community in question or they tell us how to see. So when by facilitating participatory photography practices. representations of womanhood, the But diversity in storytelling is not enough. female body or femininity are largely As we have explained, even some marginalised constructed by men, it’s not just that photographers have internalised and reproduced they define us, they teach us how to the same perspectives and stories. Therefore, we see ourselves.96 need to actively interrogate the messages our photographs are sending, what tropes they invoke, Medicines for sick farm Photojournalistic tropes can even shape the the harm they do and what stereotypes they rely employees, Central Province, trajectory of our lives. Leigh Donaldson wrote the on. We do this by heightening our sensitivity to Kenya following about a 2011 study, Media Representa- the visual language we employ, recognising that tions & Impact on the Lives of Black Men and Boys97: aesthetic choices are not benign. These choices 95 carry with them their own coded messages that Pixley. ‘Journalists and Editors of …negative mass media portrayals Color’. https://niemanreports.org/arti- have the power to either reproduce or subvert were strongly linked with lower life cles/a-new-focus/A stereotypes. Going back to the words of John 96 expectations among Black men. Zalcman, Danielle. ‘We’ve made an Edwin Mason, we need to challenge cultural These portrayals, constantly rein- all-woman photography issue. This is flows. We need to redefine the visual language of forced in print media, on television, why’. Huck, 26 November 2018. https:// www.huckmag.com/art-and-culture/ photojournalism if we are to subvert the White, the internet, fiction shows, print photography-2/daniella-zalcman-wo- male gaze and its ways of seeing in the world. advertising and video games, shape men-photograph-change/ 97 public views of and attitudes toward Topos Partnership. 2011. ‘Social Science men of colour. They not only help Literature Review: Media Representa- create barriers to advancement tions and Impact on the Lives of Black Men and Boys.’ New York: The Oppor- within our society, but also ‘make tunity Agenda. http://racialequitytools. these positions seem natural and org/resourcefiles/Media-Impact-on- 98 Lives-of-Black-Men-and-Boys-OppA- inevitable’. genda.pdf 98 Donaldson, Leigh. ‘When the media Just as important as the impact of how subjects misrepresents black men, the effects are are represented is the impact of when subjects are felt in the real world’. The Guardian, not represented at all. What are the consequences 12 August 2015. https://www.theguar- dian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/12/ of not seeing yourself represented? How does media-misrepresents-black-men-ef- this affect someone’s sense of belonging, their fects-felt-real-world 99 ability to express themselves to other members of Means Coleman, Robin. 2008. ‘The their society and their own self-image? Robin R. Symbolic Annihilation of Race: A Means Coleman explains that these omissions are Review of the “Blackness” Literature’. https://www.researchgate.net/publica- not a kind of stereotype, as stereotypes ‘actively tion/30860804_The_Symbolic_Anni- signify that which is a present and identifiable, hilation_of_Race_A_Review_of_the_ 99 Blackness_Literature constructed image.’ Instead, these omissions are 100 a kind of ‘systematic annihilation’ of marginalised Mayes, Stephen. ‘World Press Photo: groups. 470,214 Pictures Later’. Jens Haas (blog), 26 May 2009. https://www.jenshaas.com/2009/05/26/ world-press-photo-470214-pictures-la- ter/?source=post_page- 101 Simons, Margaret. ‘Journalism faces a crisis worldwide—we might be entering a new dark age’. The Guardian, 15 April 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/ media/2017/apr/15/journalism-faces-a- crisis-worldwide-we-might-be-ente- 50 ring-a-new-dark-age The Impact of the White, Male Gaze 51 Andrew Jackson and Savannah Dodd Writing in 1885 on the practice of combining photography and cycling for leisure purposes, The Impact George Vincent, a contributor to the British peri- odical Amateur Photographer, said the following: of the Hobbies, like men and women, Camera seldom do well apart; and the recent marriage of the tricycle with the camera is in my opinion ‘a good on Wheels: match.’ Undoubtedly they were ‘made for each other,’ the one being The Moving the necessary counterpart to the Figure 1 other. What common sense there- Gaze in the Carte-de-visite, E. Denney & Co. Studio, England, early 1880s fore has joined together, let no man © Lorne Shields, private put asunder! Young ones we wish Modern collection you luck!102 Subject As contemporary accounts reveal, a key reason This marriage had been made possible by the photographers were undeterred by these difficul- development and mass production of new camera ties was that the self-propelled vehicle afforded and cycle technologies, which began in the the freedom to travel where and when one 1870s and included dry plates, thanks to which Sara liked, and thus to find more subjects to photo- photographers no longer needed to attend to graph. The front cover of Amateur Photographer’s glass plates immediately before and after expo- bounded 1885 volume (figure 2), which shows a sure, and tricycles and quadricycles, three- and Dominici couple riding a tandem quadricycle by a shore and four-wheeled machines safer and more practical a camera mounted on a tripod in the foreground than the high-wheeler favoured for racing events. (the suggestion being that this is the camera the Vincent’s enthusiasm was widely shared by his couple secures to the back wheel), is indeed about fellow amateur photographers. ‘The two pursuits visual and mobile independence: a location off go most admirably together; in fact, neither is the main tourist sites and a camera positioned to complete without the other’, wrote a photogra- capture what’s found therein. The photographs pher in 1884.103 ‘Photography and cycling— of a man standing next to a sociable quadricycle particularly tricycling—are, and must always be, on an unidentified country road(figure 3) and that most intimate associates,’ another commented the of a woman sitting on the same model in what following year.104 appears to be a rural hamlet (figure 4) were perhaps What this combination entailed, however, was taken to demonstrate that they had reached a no small feat: camera equipment was still heavy location unfrequented by the masses. and fragile (depending on the size and number of This engagement with technology, however, glass plates used, it could’ve weighed between 5 did more than simply expand one’s field of action. and 25 kilograms), and the cycling machines were Most importantly, it impacted on how people rather bulky and laborious. Figure 1, which shows experienced the landscape they rode through a tricycle with a camera mounted just underneath Figure 2 and, consequently, how they thought of them- the saddle between the two big wheels, offers an Front cover of the Amateur selves and their visual experiences. At this time, Photographer bounded volume illustration of such a precarious arrangement. The for 1885. Advertised in (1885). body-machine interactions were central in the roll holder carrying negative paper patented by Amateur Photographer. (11 De- public discourse. In the context of widespread George Eastman had entered the market in 1884, cember), 610. © British Library industrialisation, for example, technology was Board. Shelfmark: LOU.LON followed in 1885 by the ‘safety’ bicycle, a machine 123B. seen by some as hindering the human body (e.g., with two same-size wheels similar to today’s William Morris’s view that it ‘reduce[d] the bicycles. Nonetheless, until the second half of the skilled labourer to the ranks of the unskilled’),105 1890s, the majority of upper- and middle-class while others saw it as extending the body’s photographers, the only group who could realisti- capabilities (e.g., Henry Ford’s comparison of the cally afford both technologies, continued to prefer worker’s body to the assembly line).106 For its part, glass plates over film because of their clear defini- cycling was considered by those who practised tion and sensitiveness, fundamental to a class that it to be a splendid extension of the body. In this sought to demonstrate artistic value as a marker sense, we could think of these early camera and of respectability. Consequently, they continued cycle combinations as a prosthetic technology to ride tricycles and quadricycles to transport this experienced by its users as an augmentation their material. bodily capabilities and sensory faculties, espe- Figures 3 + 4 cially their sight. This was because, by virtue of a England, early 1880s. © Lorne Shields, private new experience of speed, cycling not only allowed collection. 102 people to see more things but also to see them Vincent, S.G. ‘The Tricycle and the Camera’, Amateur Photographer, 4 Sep- differently. A typical description of this new sense tember 1885, 344. of empowerment and what it meant for photo- 103 graphic practices was published in 1885 by Photo- Salmon, S.H.R. ‘Correspondence. The Tricycle and Photography’, Photographic graphic News, another major British photographic News, 18 April 1884, 252. periodical: 104 Anon. ‘Our Views’, Amateur Photogra- pher, 20 March 1885, 378. 105 Morris, W. 1885. Useful Work v Useless Toil. 37. London, UK: Socialist League. 106 Ford, H. 1923. My Life and Work. New 52 York: Doubleday The Impact of the Camera on Wheels 53 Sara Dominici we know of no greater pleasure than ← Figure 5 Camera manufacturers’ early attempts at Advertisement published in a spin along the country roads on (1884). Amateur Photographer. meeting cyclists’ demands can thus be read as a a bicycle. The bracing air, the easy (12 December), 160. © British way of adapting the technology to the require- exercise given to all parts of the Library Board. Shelfmark: ments of a modern subjectivity. This was the case, LOU.LON 224. human frame, the delight of the eye for example, with the Birmingham-based firm J. with the surrounding scenery, give Lancaster & Son, a major camera maker in this new life to a man … As the rider period that in 1884 presented itself as ‘[t]he largest spins along, his eye catches some makers of photographic apparatuses in the world, little bit of scenery, some quiet nook for tourists, bicyclists, tricyclists’.110 The apparatus with bubbling water, or some exqui- promoted specifically for cyclists, the Instanto- site vista stretching in the distance, graph (top right, figure 5), came with a lens and stand that he would gladly fix in some or a cycle clip ‘in place of stand’. Its promoted more permanent form than upon the benefit was that it allowed photographers to get tablets of memory.107 rid of the cumbersome tripod and instead use the wheel as a support, as shown in the same ad. The text starts by highlighting the positive Unsurprisingly, many photographers complained impact that cycling, widely regarded as a truly about how this constricted one’s freedom because modern technology, was deemed to have on the one was limited to work from the road and at human body. In its fusion with the machine, the height of the wheel. This image of a camera the capabilities of the body are extended—it on a wheel, however, also crystalises the unre- is ‘give[n] new life’—or, to put it differently, solved desire to pass the speed of cycling and becomes modern. The author then describes the associated benefits of autonomy and spontaneity new experience of how this modern subject looks to photography, something that would come to at the world. Operating from a mobile position, define the compact cameras of later years. the ‘eye catches’ a rapidly changing environment; Figure 6, an ad produced by George Eastman it perceives the landscape not as a stable view to in 1891 to promote the Kodak camera (possibly be contemplated but as a collection of different the Kodak B Daylight Box, launched that year) ‘bits’ that viewers assemble in recollecting their illustrates some of the possibilities enabled by own individual experiences of looking at the compact cameras and the reasons why cameras world. This was the moving gaze of technolog- like that, as opposed to previous types, were ically empowered individuals who’d developed considered suitable for the moving gaze of a a new sense of self and place and, accordingly, modern subject. Combining the high-wheeler felt in control of their own visual experiences. and the Kodak was an interesting choice because Many contemporary accounts similarly describe the safety-bicycle era was by now well underway. this new way of seeing the world. For example, The high-wheeler, which people would have almost ten years later, Milton Hayden said the Figure 6 associated with the fast machines used for racing Advertisement published in landscape ‘seems to open out before one’s eyes (1891). The American Cyclist. in the 1870s and early 1880s, might have been like a magnificent, ever-changing panorama’, and (July), 165. © John Weiss, used to highlight some of the features of the this makes one want to ‘“bag” the numerous little private collection. Kodak: it was as fast as a high-wheeler and so “bits” of sylvan scenery which surround him on easy to use you could take photographs while every side.’108 pedalling, which is what the photographer in the This had a profound influence on photogra- illustration seems to be doing. The speed of the phers’ expectations, fostering a desire to use the bicycle merges, in this image, with the speed of camera to engage with such a proliferation of the camera. In his interaction with technologies, individual perspectives. As both examples indi- the physical abilities of the photographer are cate, however, existing cameras were considered augmented. He can move quickly, and he can unsuited to the requirements of this moving gaze. capture what he sees without having to stop: in While by the 1890s glass plates were fast enough this example, he masters the tools as he masters to capture moving subjects, the sense of freedom, his environment. In doing so, he can capture his independence and spontaneity—including of own experience of the world and those ‘bits’ that visual experiences—that photographers had come many cyclists were writing about. to appreciate while cycling dissipated with each By the turn of the century, cameras and bicy- step of the fiddling set-up and capture of just cles were almost ubiquitous in Britain, and taking one exposure. As Cyclops (a pseudonym) wrote photographs during a cycling holiday became as late as 1899, ‘[a]s the pace is often pretty fast, the norm. For the generation of photographers one does not want to carry weight, and when the and cyclists who came of age in this period, the time necessary to select the view, unpack, and intertwined speeds of cycling and seeing defined set up the camera and expose, then to take down their experience of modernity. As Scribe (a pseu- and repack on cycle.’109 Consequently, cycling donym) enthused in 1903, recollecting a bicycle photographers joined outdoor photographers in descent from the top of the Grimsel Pass in the asking manufacturers for compact, portable and Swiss Alps: accessible cameras. Their requests, however, were also seen as crucially motivated by a desire to use [A]s we flew down the steep road, the camera in a way considered to be suited to the ‘every now and then,’ to borrow gaze of a modern and fast-moving individual. from Mark Twain, ‘some ermined monarch of the Alps swung magnif-

107 Anon. ‘Photography for Wheelmen’, 54 55 Photographic News, 16 October 1885, 659. Sara Dominici icently into view for a moment, then Almost forty years ago, South Africans from a McKenzie and others of his generation were drifted past an intervening spur.’ range of social, economic and racial backgrounds Fashioning inspired by the German worker photography of But whereas Mark Twain saw these organised to challenge the repressive policies of the 1920s—factory workers and union members things from a slow-moving carriage, apartheid, its violent police apparatus and the an ‘Image used newly available, more affordable cameras, we had kaleidoscopic changes of National Party, which had ruled the country such as Leicas and Ermanoxes.118 Likewise, the beautiful landscape, owing to the since it came into power in 1948. Artists, cultural Space’ in Afrapix photographers’ mandate was to be partic- great pace at which we were trav- workers, members of fast-food workers’ unions, ipants in action, aligned with the politics and elling. With him the handle of the university student groups, faith-based organisa- principles of the anti-apartheid movement. Their panorama turned slowly; we had it tions and members of the radical, oppositional Apartheid work was grounded in the belief that exposure highly geared; his was the pace of press came together, despite their differences and visibility were not the end goal; rather, the Venice, ours that of New York.111 in race, culture, class and political opinions. South objective was ‘preconditions for an empathetic Their goal: nothing short of regime change from and humanistic reaction that would prompt The author’s speed-based analogy clearly captures within, with their collective power as leverage. Africa: international political action.’119 In many ways, the shift in the visual culture of this period. Their vision: a non-racial future in which South the Afrapix photographers’ ultimate goal was The way of seeing enabled by the horse-drawn Africans of all backgrounds played a part. Afrapix nothing short of the desire to use photography carriage, which the protagonists of Mark Twain’s This collective spirit, evident throughout as a political tool in the liberation struggle. As A Tramp Abroad112 used to traverse the Alps, the 1980s’ organised resistance to apartheid, was Photogra- Pierre-Laurent Sanner’s rousing rhetoric sums up, is associated with the panorama. Such a large, instrumental in the formation of Afrapix, one Afrapix’s objectives were to expose the atrocities slow-moving circular painting sought to simu- of the most influential photographers’ collec- phers’ of a regime that had been in power since 1948 late one’s presence in the landscape so that this tives in the country. According to Afrapix and, just as importantly, to foster and train a new could be appropriated visually, thus relying on cofounder Paul Weinberg, those who initially generation of black photographers. At the time, the view of looking as a means to knowledge. came together to discuss the possibility of Collective South Africa had been experiencing the most For Scribe, this belonged to the past (‘Venice’). forming a photographers’ collective had two turbulent racial history. As particularly intimate Conversely, cycling made him feel at the cutting major objectives: first, to become ‘an agency and and Agency witnesses of the events of the period, photogra- edge of human experience, an active and self- a picture library’—modelled on the principles phers felt the imperative necessity of testifying to aware participant in modernity (‘New York’). His of Magnum Photos, the photographer-owned their involvement through their images.120 visual experiences are accordingly associated with and operated cooperative founded in 1947 by the Given the state’s repression, censorship laws the kaleidoscope, the tube containing mirrors and photographers Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert M. Neelika and sanitised propagandistic images white- coloured pieces of glass that represent a fractured Capa, David Seymour, George Rodger, washing the violence under which the collective and idiosyncratic way of seeing modernity, one in and William Vandivert—and second, to ‘stim- Jayawardane lived and operated, calls for ‘objectivity’ seemed which knowledge depends entirely on the single ulate social documentary photography in the high-minded and unrealistic, if not directly observer. country.’113 Coming together during this last, feeding into the directives of the state; the times The cameras now commercially available and turbulent decade of apartheid, Afrapix photogra- ‘did not call for objectivity, art, or multiple that cyclists like Scribe would’ve used (while phers wanted to ensure that photography became 113 perspectives’ but a commitment to portray ‘the 114 121 only incidentally mentioning them in their tour ‘a more effective vehicle for social change.’ Weinberg, Paul. 1990. ‘Beyond the truth’. Afrapix needed to create a radical, accounts) were small, light and compact. The They dedicated themselves to exposing the Barricades.’ Full Frame: South African oppositional image-bank to counter the surfeit Documentary Photography. 1:1: 5. Idento camera, for example, produced by the lies behind the regime’s propaganda, using 114 of propagandistic images showing Black people company Adams & Co., catered to this market photography as their medium. They provided Weinberg, Paul. 1984. ‘Afrapix – Going as incapable of political leadership or intellectual beyond the image.’ Creative Camera. (figure 7) . As the man in the ad says, ‘that ruin a visual dimension to the South African resist- July/August: 1479. achievement. reminds me that I have my ‘Idento’ here, I had ance movement through their artistic and social 115 quite forgotten it.’ Photography had become an Figure 7 documentary photography projects, as well as The Culture and Resistance Symposium Advertisement published in and Festival was organised by Staffrider * * * * * assumed tool that could be swiftly summoned (1906). Amateur Photographer. their journalistic work. As photographers who and the Medu Art Ensemble (a cultural to record anything that attracted one’s attention. (29 May), xxiii. © British Library embraced the philosophy and principles of social association operating in Botswana, Long before the formation of Afrapix in the Board. Shelfmark: LOU.LON 13. formed by Botswanan and South Vincent, who, as seen at the beginning of this documentary photography, they were motivated African artists and writers who opposed 1980s, South African photographers had been article, ended his ode to photography and cycling by the imperative to make things visible and South Africa’s apartheid policy of racial using their cameras—the instruments through with ‘Young ones we wish you luck!’, would have transparent—and to bear witnesses. But many segregation and violent injustice). It was which Black and African people were (and hosted by the Botswana National Mu- been pleased; what his generation had longed Afrapix photographers took a more radical seum and held in Gaborone, Botswana. continued to be) depicted in denigrating ways— for had finally been realised. In the present-day approach. At the influential Culture and Resist- It brought together a large cohort of to write over the colonial archive and the apart- activists, political party members living media environment, replete with anxieties over ance Symposium and Festival, held in Botswana in exile and those who identified as ‘cul- heid state’s growing reservoir of propaganda. In technology’s influence on our experience of the in June 1982,115 Peter McKenzie—who was, at the tural workers’—artists, photographers, the hands of Black South Africans, cameras and writers, musicians and performers. ‘real’, where new prosthetic tools from smart- time, the first ‘Coloured’ person to attend the Included in the festival’s programme pictures became conduits for Black people to phone cameras to selfie sticks are shaping how exclusively Whites-only Technikon Natal to study was an exhibition of photography. refashion themselves, re-visualising the country we move through and see the world, the experi- photography—famously stated, in no uncertain 116 and its inhabitants’ day-to-day experiences in Katz, Leslie. 1971. ‘An Interview ences of these early pioneers can perhaps help us terms, that the ‘committed photographer’ must with Walker Evans’. American spite of the superfluity of a racist gaze. It wasn’t reimagine contemporary body-machine interac- not only ‘take sides’ and ‘accept their responsi- SuburbsX. https://www.americansub- only a way of wresting control of the image field urbx.com/2011/10/interview-an-inter- tions as empowering and inspirational. For us, as bility to participate in the struggle’ but also use view-with-walker-evans-pt-1-1971.html. from the state but a visual practice essential to for photographers in the late nineteenth century, their cameras as ‘weapons’ in the liberation strug- 117 the struggle for political liberation and the desire what’s at stake is our own sense of self, as how we gle.116 He urged photographers to ‘be involved McKenzie, Peter. 1982. ‘Bringing the for self-liberation. Black photographers also Struggle into Focus’. Staffrider 5, no. choose to use technology impacts who we are. 108 in the strikes, riots, boycotts, festivities, church 2: 18. understood photography’s power to bear witness Milton Hayden, C. 1894. ‘The Camera activities and occurrences that affect our day to 118 and disseminate a political message to audiences on Castors’, Photographic News, 3 See: Ollman, Leah. 1991. Camera as August 1894, 483–486. day living [and to] identify with [their] subjects in Weapon: Worker Photography Between around the world. 109 order for … viewers to identify with them.’117 the Wars. San Diego, CA: Museum Despite photography’s rich presence in South Cyclops. ’A Photographer’s Compan- of Photographic Arts: ‘Photography Africa, little to no opportunities were available ion’, Photographic News, 27 January entered a new age of creation in the 1899, 58. mid-1920s with the advent of small, for Black people interested in the discipline, this 110 hand-held cameras, such as the Leica because of the racialised education system, with [Advertisement]. Amateur Photographer, and Ermanox, capable of functioning 14 November 1884, 96. with available light rather than flash. its built-in inequalities preventing Black learners 111 These cameras facilitated a new, more A.J.C. ‘Through Switzerland Awheel’, candid documentation of the world, Polytechnic Cycling Club Gazette, June while faster, more efficient rotary print- 1903, 4–5. ing methods made this vision widely 112 available to the German public through Twain, M. 1880. A Tramp Abroad. a proliferation of new, photographically 56 London: Chatto & Windus The Impact of the Camera on Wheels 57 illustrated magazines. M. Neelika Jayawardane from advancing. Black, Coloured, and Indian that were directly confronting the apartheid Cedric Nunn 126 people were barred from attending photography state’, according to Nunn. It housed alternative The morning after. The youth classes at technikons, to which only White media groups and several community organisa- who was the target of a mas- sacre in which twelve members students were admitted. For most, imagining tions, charities and NGOs, including the Black of his family where shot dead. the camera as a conduit to engage, contemplate Sash and the United Democratic Front (UDF). Security forces were implicated or theorise their outer and inner worlds wasn’t a Afrapix photographers not only created practical in the murders then dubbed the ‘AK47 massacre’. This youth realistic possibility. collaborations with these groups; in the face of was killed several months later. A number of catalysts and conditions were police raids, restrictions and states of emergency, KwaMakhuta. KwaZulu-Natal. essential to the formation of Afrapix, helping the they provided each other with genuine support 1987 Credit ©Cedric Nunn cofounders forge a clear vision for their future. and solidarity. On practical and logistical levels, Afrapix’s formation was aided by the cultural magazine * * * * * Staffrider.122 Since its inception in 1976, the maga- zine created a much-needed social location for At its height, Afrapix’s full members included ‘up to then unheard’ and unknown poets, writers, a large repertoire of photographers, as well as a artists and photographers, so that they could number of photographers who contributed their learn about each other’s work.123 Biddy Partridge, work to the agency as non-members.127 Many a Zimbabwe-born musician and photographer young, White photographers, such as Eric Miller, who’d worked with Staffrider since its early days, remember that they were aware that the politics was instrumental in selecting the photographers’ 119 of the country made them angry, but they had work for publication. Through seeing each other’s Campbell, David. 2009. ‘“Black Skin limited experience of what apartheid meant for and Blood”: Documentary Photography Anna Zieminski work in Staffrider, photographers learned that and Santu Mofokeng’s Critique of the Black communities and individuals. He remem- there were a significant number of photography Visualization of Apartheid South Afri- bers that the police would regularly release a Albertina Sisulu and Helen enthusiasts interested in using the discipline to ca.’ History & Theory 48 no. 4: 53. so-called Unrest Report, and the media would Joseph at a FEDTRAW meeting 120 ©Anna Zieminski, SAHA document the injustices they, too, were seeing. Sanner, Pierre Laurant. 1999. ‘Comrades quote those reports, saying that due to ‘provoca- collection AL2547 and Cameras’. Anthology of African tions by Black provocateurs, “police were forced and Indian Ocean Photography. Edited The idea of creating a photographers’ collective by Saint Léon, Pascal Martin, Fall, to retaliate” or “forced to fire”’; but even then, was also influenced by a prevalent cultural ethos N’Goné, and Chapuis, Frédérique. 253 – he knew that ‘it simply didn’t sound logical or among activists, student groups, unionists, artists 259. Paris: Revue Noire. 253. correct.’128 121 and cultural workers who used collective action Wylie, Diana. 2012. ‘Introduction Anna Zieminski was 19 when she bought her to special issue: Documentary photogra- to push for change. At the time, photographers first camera. It was ‘a tiny, baby Rollei’, and with phy in South Africa.’ Kronos 38, no. were generally disconnected from each other by 1: 17. that, she took photography classes at Ruth Prowse geography, class and race. They had little to no 122 School of art, learning about F-stops, basic Staffrider Magazine began its first print structure to aid their development, nor did they run in 1976; it reflected the political and darkroom techniques to process and print black have connections to platforms that would publish cultural needs of the progressive, leftist and white photographs, and, eventually, Ansel or exhibit their work. The structure of a collective and radical youth that emerged after the Adams’s ‘zone system’.129 There were many factors 1976 student protests against the forced provided a spatial construct, bringing together introduction of Afrikaans in schools. that led to her political awakening; one event that White members of JODAC photographers from Johannesburg, Cape Town 123 stands out in her mind was the discovery of Leslie visiting Alexandra to and Durban, each isolated in South Africa’s Weinberg, Paul. 1989. ‘Apartheid – a Lawson’s book on domestic workers, which she commemorate the “Alexandra vigilant witness, A reflection on pho- massacre” ©Anna Zieminski, socio-political geographies of White suburban tography’. In Culture in Another South found at Grassroots, ‘a little bookshop in Obser- The Unbreakable Thread enclaves, Black townships and designated areas Africa, edited by Willem Campschreur vatory’, a left-leaning artists’ and writers’ enclave publication, SAHA collection and Joost Divendal. 63. London: Zed 130 for ‘Coloureds’ and ‘Indians’. Press. in Cape Town. Another significant event she Although Afrapix’s official formation as a 124 remembers was the day she decided to go to Weinberg, Paul. Interview with author. photographers’ agency took place in 1982, they’d Cape Town. 26 October 2018. Khayelitsha, an area to which Black Capetonians already begun discussions in 1981 at Staffrider 125 were about to be forcibly removed. At the time, publisher Ravan Press’s offices in Johannesburg. Nunn, Cedric. Interview with author via the apartheid municipal government was telling a WhatsApp. 20 March 2019. Omar Badsha, Judas Ngwenya, Jimmy Matthews, 126 completely different story; ‘they were trumpeting Biddy Partridge, Mxolise Moyo, Lesley Lawson Nunn, Cedric. Interview with author how they were building a new development … a via WhatsApp. 21 March 2019. 131 and Paul Weinberg were among those at the first 127 place called “Our Home”.’ When she got to the meeting, along with Lloyd Spencer and others Full members included, in alphabetical location, she saw that some sand dunes had been order, Joseph Alfers, Peter Auf de Hy- from Ravan Press, including Mike Kirkwood of der, Omar Badsha, Steve Hilton Barber, cleared off to flatten the land, and that ‘some tall 124 Staffrider. Graham Goddard, Dave Hartman, lamp posts, like [those] at football stadiums … COSATU Cultural Day, JHB. Afrapix photographer Cedric Nunn, one of Lesley Lawson, Chris Ledochowski, toilets, and houses [were] beginning to go up.’ 18/7/87 ©Anna Zieminski, John Liebenberg, Herbert Mabuza, SAHA collection AL2547 the collective’s first coordinators and administra- Humphrey Phakade ‘Pax’ Magwaza, But it was nothing but a desolate, windswept tors, also remembers that Rev. Bernard Spong, Kentridge Matabatha, Rafique Mayet, area that ‘was such a contradiction to the name, Mxolise Mayo, Vuyi Lesley Mbalo, 132 who headed the Interchurch Media Project, Peter McKenzie, Roger Meintjies, Eric “Our Home”.’ Subsequently, Zieminski moved which was part of the South African Council of Miller, Santu Mofokeng, Deseni to Johannesburg, where she met powerful Black Churches (SACC), supported Afrapix during Moodliar, Cedric Nunn, Billy Paddock, women who were community workers, which Biddy Partridge, Myron Peters, Jeeva 125 its early years. For a small fee, the SACC Rajgopaul, Wendy Schwegmann, Cecil also made her want ‘to know … what [else] was provided Afrapix with an office, a darkroom Sols, Guy Tillim, Zubeida Vallie, Gille kept from me? I knew I was in the receiving or de Vlieg, Paul Weinberg, Gisèle connected to the office area and bookkeeping Wulfsohn and Anna Zieminski. privileged end of the system. I felt … why had I services at Khotso House, a modernist, concrete 128 all these amazing people been kept from me?’133 high-rise building located at 42 De Villiers Street, Miller, Eric. Interview with author via For Gille de Vlieg, her political awakening WhatsApp. 20 December 2018. in the heart of Johannesburg’s Central Business 129 came with a personal revelation in her 40s: ‘My District. The building became a hub, playing Zieminski, Anna. Interview with the daughter was about to leave; I was emotion- author. London. 2 February 2019. the important ‘role of incubating organisations 130 ally upset. I wanted to do something that was Ibid. 131 Ibid. 132 Ibid. 133 58 Ibid Fashioning an ‘Image Space’ in Apartheid South Africa 59 M. Neelika Jayawardane relevant for my own life.’ One night, she was moment’.136 Mayet was similarly from a working so agitated she couldn’t fall to sleep. ‘It was … class background; he’d been working at the a long night of the soul. Up till then, I was a Sasol chemical factory when he decided to leave wife, mother and sportswoman.’ She read one of after seeing a horrific accident that permanently Andre Brink’s seminal novels Rumour of Rain or disabled a fellow worker. He was at home, unem- Dry White Season, and the following morning, ployed, when Badsha invited him to try his hand she knew that the ‘something’ she wanted to do at photography. would involve women’s organisations. She’d seen Moodliar Soobben, one of two ‘non-White’ members of the Black Sash women’s organisation women to join Afrapix, came from a Durban quietly holding anti-apartheid placards on street Indian family that ran a successful business. She corners as she drove to the offices of her and recalls that ‘[m]y dad [was] always reminding her husband’s sail-making company. She ‘found me that I wanted to become a human rights the Black Sash in the telephone book’, phoned lawyer’, but her interest in photography took her them and began working in their Advice Office. to Technikon Natal to study photography. She There, she learned that a root cause of the urban became the second Black (or ‘Indian’) person to migration of Black people from rural areas to the attend Technikon Natal for photography after city was due to forced removals of entire settle- McKenzie. Like McKenzie (who was two years ments and villages from arable, desirable land ahead of her), she was forced to apply for and designated for Whites to ‘Bantustans’ – remote, obtain a special permit, as a Black (or Indian) inhospitable locations. Those displaced people South African, to study photography at the were forced to come to Johannesburg in search Whites-only institution. She remembers clearly of an income because they’d lost their way of life that she ‘was the only non-White in my class.’ and their livelihoods generated through farming Because of the hard-won education of the Durban and rearing cattle and because of taxation by the contingent who used Badsha’s darkroom, she apartheid state. She began to go to those rural was the only person to have formal training in areas to document what was happening and photography. record organised resistance to forced removals. Because Black Sash had offices in Khotso House, * * * * * where Afrapix was also based, she met Weinberg, who invited her to join Afrapix. As young, politicised photographers, Afrapix’s Of those who operated in Durban, there earliest members had been independently ‘docu- were Rafique (Rafs) Mayet, Cedric Nunn, Jeeva menting the horrors of apartheid resettlement, Rajgopaul, Pax Magwaza, Myron Peters and squatter life, migrant labour [and] poverty’.137 Deseni Moodliar (now Moodliar Soobben). Many saw themselves as comrades of the Badsha generously opened his tiny photographic working class, intricately embedded in the darkroom in the Good Hope Centre on Queen struggle against apartheid, along with the greater Street (currently named Dennis Hurley Street) in collectivising forces of the time. Unions repre- Durban to a disparate band of hopeful photogra- sented one of the most effective modes of collec- phers from a range of apartheid-era racial groups tivised effort, spearheading pushback against (Black, Coloured, and Indian of both Tamil corporate and government policies that exploited and Gujarati descent), social classes (some Black workers. If photography is stereotypically whose families had worked in the cane fields; thought of as a visual technology that works others whose families were middle class business best with ‘action’ and drama—and, in the case people), educational backgrounds and levels of of photography in South Africa during the photography experience. They honed their skills 1980s, as something dependent on the actions through the photography workshops he organ- accompanied by spectacular violence—attending ised; he invited veteran photographer David trade union meetings would be the antithesis. Goldblatt to, over the course of a weekend, ‘train Discussions, collective agreements and deci- [them] in the Ansel Adams “zone system” of sions moved at a glacial pace, although punctu- developing and printing.’134 Acts of generosity like ated by moments of impassioned speeches. Yet, this—by Goldblatt, in particular—helped profes- Afrapix photographers attended these meetings sionalise Durban photographers, most of whom faithfully to learn about the concerns and daily had no formal training because photography struggles of union members. Reflecting back on courses were typically only available to White his years as a photographer with Afrapix, Chris students. Ledochowski noted, ‘[e]ntire days were spent Rajgopaul had been a physics teacher who attending the meetings of one union or the other; decided to leave the profession to become a full- we were highly committed and wanted to change time photographer. Nunn had been straining to the course of history with our cameras.’138 Their find something more fulfilling than a lifetime cameras followed and recorded ordinary South of working at the Amatikulu sugar mill, 130 134 Africans’ concerns, rather than solely the spectac- Nunn, Cedric. Interview with author via kilometres from Durban. He’d been ‘making WhatsApp. 20 March 2019. ular moments of confrontation. occasional forays into the city of Durban’ to 135 Much of the way apartheid operated was hear live music and socialise; there, he met Ibid. through legislation and institutional violence. 136 McKenzie, then a third-year student at the Nunn, Cedric. 2011. ‘The Bright Light To photograph those almost invisible machina- Technikon Natal.135 He remembers that upon of the Maelstrom: Okwui Enwezor in- tions meant that Afrapix photographers became terviews Cedric Nunn’. In Cedric Nunn: seeing McKenzie’s portfolio, he ‘had an epiphany Call and Response. Fourthwall Books: witnesses to the ‘slow processes’ of political Johannesburg. 137 Weinberg, ‘vigilant witness’, Another South Africa, 65 138 Sanner, ‘Comrades’, African and Indian 60 Fashioning an ‘Image Space’ in Apartheid South Africa 61 Ocean, 253. M. Neelika Jayawardane movement towards justice and democratisation; censorship laws, which restricted their move- Moreover, the international media in Dozens of photojournalists were flying into the these photographers became attuned to photo- ments and what they could photograph, as well as particular demanded spectacular, two-dimen- country, wanting to get in on the danger and graphing less obvious and difficult-to-imagine pressures from market forces governing the media sional visuals for the sake of sales and stock adrenaline-fuelled ‘missions’. violence. This meant living with the experience and internal discord. values. In order to make an income, photogra- Black photographers remember that they of the quiet, quotidian violence faced by displaced To begin with, apartheid security forces phers often felt the pressure to work in ways that simply had more difficulties because they came communities long after the spectacular violence continually harassed Afrapix photographers. were sometimes antithetical to the politics they’d with far less resources than their White counter- of forced removal, replete with bulldozers razing They lived in constant fear of police surveillance, come to espouse: that is, photographing commu- parts; these difficulties came about as a result of homes. It meant following those who were infiltrators, spies and direct threats. In June 1986, nities in a way that provided deep context rather structural racism, rather than because of indi- forcibly displaced to the hinterlands and recording the apartheid police raided offices of the UDF, than caricatures of a violent, dystopian Africa. vidually-directed racism. For instance, it was the violence they faced: little to no services, SACC and Afrapix, all of which were housed Given that the money was in those spectacularly sometimes difficult for them to find transport to opportunities for work or arable land to farm. in Khotso House. In August, the building was violent images, photographers found it difficult a particular assignment since they didn’t often It meant being present before a community is bombed for harbouring anti-apartheid groups, to balance their desire to change and challenge have the luxury of owning a vehicle or having displaced to record how they did, in fact, organise resulting in the injury of nineteen people. visual tropes with the realities of making an money for petrol; so a White photographer with and present powerful, unified bodies that resisted, Media restrictions in the country grew in income. For instance, a photograph of a ‘white those resources was likely to get the jobs that sometimes for decades, the might of the apart- ‘length, scope, and complexity with each succes- policeman beating a black school child or required mobility. Black photographers also had heid legal and policing institutions that wished to sive state of emergency’, expanding on the ‘one protester’152 would show the apartheid govern- little access to the funds required for expensive erase their existence. Leslie Lawson remembers hundred censorship statutes already in exist- ment as the instigator of violent actions, creating camera equipment and photo-developing mate- that one of the unspoken rules in Afrapix was ence’.143 These restrictive laws were designed a public relations and diplomatic nightmare. But rials. When he moved to Johannesburg, Nunn that they used wide angle lenses to include and to combat ‘the public relations nightmare the the iconography essential for such stark images realised that there were few in the Afrapix group reveal ‘as much of the context and the landscape apartheid government was experiencing overseas, of violence also depends on the continuation who would actually spend time teaching technical as possible.’139 In a country with a government namely, images of white police officers brutalising of predictable narratives and simple binaries proficiency to other, less experienced photogra- and legal system that actively prevented much unarmed black civilians’.144 between ‘good’ and ‘evil’. Even if photographs of phers. He remembers that though there were of the ‘context’ of its divided communities as There were also practical realities that gave police brutality made the apartheid regime look several White photographers with whom he felt possible from entering the White public’s (and pause to many executive editors as they looked bad, the people they violated often appeared to be a deep kinship, he was sometimes forced explain each other’s, too, by default) field of vision, this at their bottom lines. The mainstream press in without agency. his (and other Black photographers’) disadvan- was a revolutionary photographic practice. South Africa actively avoided running stories that Afrapix also developed ideological rifts tages in stark terms: The practices of Afrapix photographers showed opposition to the party’s official line. It within. Lawson remembers that that the legalism We came from fucking Bantu education; meant that much of their work had a remarkable mainly censored itself in order to survive, and it and didacticism embedded in Afrapix’s poli- the [White photographers] … when we asked quality that the work foreign photojournalists, actively avoided running stories that could have tics could be limiting. Although she under- for help from the guys who did know and had parachuted into the country, did not. Rather been read as opposed to government policy.145 stood photography as ‘a language’ that came training … they laughed at us. These guys were than showing their subjects as a dehumanised The paper’s White readership, from which the with nuances and contradictions, the politics very good at doing the talk … but it took Gold- and powerless lot demeaned and damaged by mainstream newspapers earned their revenue, of Afrapix maintained ‘that the camera was a blatt to [eventually] set up the Market Photo police brutality and reliant on violence as their complained that they were bored and annoyed weapon of the struggle’.153 At the time, photogra- training centre. We then became part of the sole means of expression, Afrapix photographers by headlines about the experiences of Black phers felt the pressure to internalise this refrain.154 original workshops that became the Photo Work- showed those people as they saw themselves: South Africans.146 Moreover, the addressing of However, therein lay the conflict: ‘if you are shop.157 wrestling for power by any means possible, both ‘race issues’ didn’t appeal to advertisers, who saying it is a weapon of struggle’ notes Lawson, Nunn maintains that the ‘greatest difficulty peaceful and not. As photographers in a collec- didn’t want to appear as though they supported ‘you are making it one dimensional. And that did [for Black photographers] … was not being tive, their individuality took a back seat; they dissent.147 That meant Afrapix photographers’ happen in Afrapix.’155 networked into the publishing world [which was] didn’t adopt the role of ‘saviour’ assuming the work, which conscientiously objected to the Conversely, as Afrapix’s influence and roster almost entirely white at the time … [Because] mantle of giving a ‘voice to the voiceless.’ 139 apartheid state, wouldn’t find space in main- of contributing photographers grew, it became whites were likely to have an “uncle in the Having positioned their work so clearly Masduraud, Nathalie, and Urréa, stream newspapers. Rather, the resistance and evident that not all of them were onboard with business”, they knew more about publishing and Valérie. 2014. ‘Afrique du Sud Portraits alongside radical, oppositional politics, Afrapix chromatiques’. Uploaded in 2013. alternative presses and anti-apartheid organisa- the non-racial politics and collective action that what was possible, so were also more likely to get members and contributors had no doubt that they https://vimeo.com/69172861 tions provided space for Afrapix productions. drove the activism and became the popular commissioned.’ 158 140 posed a threat to the apartheid regime. As Okwui Enwezor, Okwui. 1996. ‘A Critical Pre- Life as a photographer, whether as a member strategy of the 1980s. Some weren’t as committed As several women photographers noted, Enwezor recognised, in the 1990s, photography sence: Drum Magazine in Context’. In of Afrapix or an independent, remained precar- to developing a political consciousness to under- there was very little recognition of gendered ‘frightened the regime’ because no other form In/Sight: African Photographers 1940 To ious, and securing a dependable source of income gird their work or as the motivation for their differences, or everyday sexist attitudes towards The Present, edited by Okwui Enwezor, of testimony matched its ability ‘to expose and Octavio Zaya and Olu Oguibe. 191. was difficult. According to Cedric Nunn, practice; others made successful careers producing women or patriarchal expectations. For instance, counteract the sanitized, propagandistic images New York: Guggenheim Museum. Afrapix photographers mostly found work with images that reflected demands for stereotypes. the expectation that women would serve as office 140 141 working in the [apartheid] government’s favor.’ Thomas, Kylie, and Green, Louise. the ‘so-called alternative press newspapers … as Many who became involved in Afrapix towards coordinators or in administrative positions, rather Even when photographs showed ordinary scenes 2016. ‘Introduction – Stereoscopic “stringers”’,148 independent photographers hired the latter part of the collective’s life were anti-au- than aspire to develop their skills as photogra- Visions: Reading Colonial and Con- in which Black people were carrying on with temporary Photography.’ In Photography to take photographs of a particular event. But thoritarian and rebellious, but they weren’t phers, was the norm. But as several photographers life, creating culturally vibrant centres outside In and Out of Africa: Iterations with few of these outlets hired staff photographers, necessarily as articulate or clear about the need to and office coordinators noted, these were such the confines of the depravation that apartheid’s Difference, edited by Kylie Thomas with only the odd person like Santu Mofokeng work collectively against White supremacy. Many normative attitudes at the time that they never and Louise Green. United Kingdom: 149 mandates engineered, they threatened and Routledge. getting a staff position at The Nation.’ And the were rebelling against the restrictions that the questioned or challenged them; de Vlieg notes ‘taunt[ed]’ the state, argues visual culture scholar 142 pay, whether from the mainstream or alternative apartheid regime placed on them as White youth, that the idea of taking on an administrative 141 Ibid. Kylie Thomas. While these photographs 143 newspapers, was poor—maybe ‘R15 per photo, especially mandatory conscription into the South position may have, in fact, been in her on mind, depicting ‘alternative’ and thriving existences did Trabold, Bryan. 2018. Rhetorics of starting out’, notes Nunn; even after accounting African Defence Forces. As Gille de Vlieg, one as she had previously been doing administrative not ‘directly attack the state [they] … ignored it’ Resistance: Opposition Journalism in for inflation, and the fact that the pay improved of the photographers who joined Afrapix early in work for her husband at their shared business. But Apartheid South Africa. 28. University of 152 and thus illustrated that ‘there is a space outside Pittsburgh Press: Pittsburgh later in the 80s, they couldn’t ‘make [a] living its formative years, remembers: ‘We were really a Mayet, Rafique. Interview with author. she, and other women who joined Afrapix simply apartheid’s stranglehold.’142 144 doing the news beat.’ 150 If photographers were conglomerate of, I suppose, somewhat rebellious Johannesburg. 15 October 2018. refused to be limited; instead, they did as they Ibid., 29. 153 145 able to get jobs as stringers with foreign wire people. All of us had a slightly “fuck you” nature, Masduraud and Urréa, ‘Portraits saw fit—and necessary. As a member of the Black * * * * * Ibid, 23 services or get commissioned to cover a story, the as one could put it.’ At the time, apartheid ‘gave chromatiques’. Sash, de Vlieg used her camera to document 146 pay was better.151 However, Nunn maintains that us a unity; apartheid … and the fight against it … 154 injustices and pushed to get the photographs Ibid., 43. Ibid. 156 As Afrapix grew in influence and numbers during 147 those jobs were hard to come by. was always the great unifier.’ 155 published in order to educate a (White) public the mid- and late 1980s, its photographers faced Ibid. They wanted to photograph the unfolding Ibid. that was often ignorant of these events. 148 156 challenges from increasingly oppressive media Nunn, Cedric. Interview with author via action and violence, a feature of South African de Vlieg, Gille. Interview with author. Nunn’s memories of rivalries and the some- WhatsApp. 20 March 2019. photojournalism in the late 1980s and early 90s. Johannesburg. 31 October 2018. 149 157 Ibid. Nunn, Cedric. Interview with author via 150 WhatsApp. 20 March 2019. Ibid. 158 151 Nunn, Cedric. WhatsApp message. 23 62 Ibid. Fashioning an ‘Image Space’ in Apartheid South Africa 63 August 2019. M. Neelika Jayawardane times-dismissive attitude he encountered from and what it meant to resist that government’s For accomplished conflict photographers, the Year after year, we see the same images endlessly those who refused to understand the disparities dehumanising edicts, the structures that upheld hardest part of the job is getting to where the The Crisis repeated in our media, at award ceremonies and and disadvantages arising from racial (and at racial hierarchies and the police that maintained action is. Once in the thick of it, instinct and at photography festivals. times gendered) differences accentuate some of the status quo with violence. Their photographs experience take over. Their senses are on high of the Cliché This failure limits the impact of war the less-than-idealistic issues with which non-ra- remain essential to how we comprehend and alert as they wait for the elements of a powerful photography. We’ve become inured to seeing cial collectives of the period dealt. His pointed decode apartheid. image to fall into place. dramatic, often violent, but very similar images critique illustrates that the idealistic thesis that Actually, the latter part is more difficult from conflict after conflict, and we’re rarely Pierre-Laurant Sanner present in 1999159—of than it sounds: when really dramatic things are moved to register the horror behind them, let ‘comrades and cameras’, or of a band of brothers happening really quickly before your eyes, it’s Has conflict alone take action to stop it. We just turn the page (and some sisters), united as one, who went forth easy to fall into the trap of thinking you’ll capture and move on. to fight a regime’s injustices using photography them by just pressing the shutter release, whereas photography as their weapon—may not, in fact, be wholly it’s ever crucial to think about composition, what’s What’s to blame accurate. happening in the corners of your frame and other become technical issues. The best conflict photographers The print media crisis has led to the collapse * * * * * can cope with everything happening and focus on boring? or reorganisation of newspapers and magazines capturing striking images. The process of compo- that war photographers once relied upon for Afrapix disbanded in 1991 amid rising internal sition becomes instinctive in those situations, but their bread and butter. During the Balkan Wars, tensions, moves by some photographers to estab- capturing the emotion doesn’t. That’s an entirely outlets such as Time and Newsweek perma- lish a more commercially minded agency and more complex process. Peter nently assigned photographers to the conflict growing pressure from international photogra- Almost every rubber raft packed with with generous benefits, including expenses and phers hired by foreign news agencies. However, desperate migrants hitting the Greek shores in Bouckaert double-day rates. its members’ photographs remain a unique record 2015 made for powerful images, with the vivid With the ability to devote months or even of the struggles waged by the mass democratic colours of the lifejackets, the panic-stricken faces years to a story, the great photographers of the movement and the myriad of grassroots resistance onboard and the presence of infants and toddlers time had the luxury to stay away from clichés and groups that sprang up, as well as a record of ordi- among them. It was much the same with Phil- explore nuances and backstories. They could earn nary life under apartheid in the 1980s. ippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war in the trust of their subjects, embed themselves with Ultimately, Afrapix’s long-term impact as 2016. Photographers could snap away nightly, various fighting sides and come back with images a collective and an agency that its founding photographing the latest victims of a drug war that were unique, striking and impactful. members engaged in the invaluable work of executed by the police (or police-tolerated hit All that has changed. There’s hardly a conflict creating what I refer to as an image-space, despite squads): young bodies next to a police-planted photographer left in the world with that kind of ever more restrictive and often dangerous condi- handgun, surrounded by grieving relatives. job security. Assignments are counted in days, tions. In his investigation into the ways in which not weeks or months, with the exception of some the resistance press in South Africa operated Limited edition impact unique outliers like those working for National under the states of emergency, Brian Trebold Geographic and The New York Times, which uses the term ‘writing space’ as a ‘metaphor to When I covered the bloodshed in the Central continue to invest in long-reported work. On describe the parameters of expression’ and as a African Republic in 2014 for Human Rights short assignments, conflict photographers lack way to show how ‘editors, journalists, and attor- Watch, photographers could head out on the the time to explore in depth; rather, they go out neys working for the newspapers devised various violence-plagued streets of the capital Bangui, with a list of images they need to complete the legal, writing, and political tactics to maximise and expect to witness a few lynchings before assignment. their writing space’ even as the government, breakfast. The killers didn’t flinch from our Two years ago, they all headed to Bangladesh, using states-of-emergency legislation, worked cameras—in fact, when we would leave in disgust and all shot images of newly arrived refugees to constrict expression.160 This is similar to the at their brutality, they would invite us to stay to crossing the watery border, the misery of the ways in which Afrapix photographers pushed the witness further mutilations, saying, ‘We are not refugee camps and portraits of rape and massacre boundaries of apartheid censorship in concert finished yet.’ They seemed surprised we didn’t survivors. They all knew what their editors were with resistance organisations and the anti-apart- want to keep photographing. looking for, and most of their work looked very heid alternative-media community that emerged But what the dramatic photographs from the similar—even down to the portraits of the same in the late 1970s and early 80s. Together, they European migrant crisis, the Philippine drug war female survivors of rape and massacres from the helped create visual spaces in which they could and the civil war in the Central African Republic village of Tula Toli. challenge the narrow picture circulated by the do not capture is the throng of photographers When we talk about the impact of state and mainstream media within the country standing on the other end of the camera, often photography, we should not only think about and the often misleading narratives that reporters ensuring no other photographers or cameras are the impact of the images on us and the general and photojournalists from international news in their shot, creating the illusion that they are public. We should also pause to reflect on the agencies disseminated to a global public. the only ones on the scene. impact such a herd mentality has on photographic The collective influenced the opening up If a camera had been turned on the photogra- subjects. Imagine the impact on a rape and of photography to those who would otherwise, phers, you’d have generally found a dozen of massacre survivor of having her portrait taken by under apartheid, not have had the chance to them lined up side by side behind the yellow dozens of photographers, each spending hours record and disseminate their worlds and expe- police tape of the drug war scenes in the Phil- snapping away, or of repeatedly being asked how riences as they saw them. Its legacy is today ippines or on the beach in Greece during the her children were murdered or gang-raped in evident in South Africa’s thriving and multifac- refugee crisis, strictly abiding by the new rules of front of her. eted photography scene. It’s also evident in the conflict photography (rule number one: don’t step What was it like for Muslim migrants arriving historical importance of Afrapix photographers’ into another photographer’s frame). in Greece to be faced by a wall of cameras? When images; their work has contributed to how the Conflict photography is facing a crisis, and it’s male relatives on the rafts objected to female public—both within and outside South Africa, a crisis of the cliché, a crisis in which the orig- migrants being photographed, photographers as well as the generations that came of age in inality is lacking and the dramatic is rendered would sometimes insult them, saying they were in subsequent decades—envisions what it meant to banal. War photography—long the most dramatic Europe now and better get used to having their live under an unjust, racist system of governance 159 of subjects in the visual arts—is at times boring. women photographed. Sanner, ‘Comrades’, African and Indian Ocean, 253. 160 Trebold, Bryan. 2018. Rhetorics of Resistance: Opposition Journalism in Apartheid South Africa. University of 64 Pittsburgh Press: Pittsburgh Fashioning an ‘Image Space’ in Apartheid South Africa 65 Peter Bouckaert The culture within conflict photography is Rights Watch prompted the international The Euromaidan Revolution ousted President Victor also partly to blame for its downward slide. It’s a community to deploy a UN peacekeeping force Yanukovych in 2014 and culmi- macho culture in which, like notches on a belt, to try and stop the carnage. The photography nated in the worst day of vio- lence on the 20th of February, the number of conflicts covered earns a photogra- industry recognised Marcus’s work with which became known as Bloody pher respect. Afraid to miss a big story, too many numerous awards, including the Robert Capa Thursday. conflict photographers jump from conflict to Gold Medal, the most prestigious award in I set up a make-shift photo-stu- conflict, padding their portfolios with superfi- conflict photography. It was the first time a dio inside the barricades on cial images. Such photographers wouldn’t have photographer was awarded the medal for work Hrushevskoho street and spent a month making hundreds of wanted to miss Libya in 2011, Syria in 2012, the commissioned by an NGO rather than a tradi- portraits of the anti-government Central African Republic in 2014, the refugee tional media outlet. Such recognition confirms protestors who fought the riot crisis in 2015, the drug war in the Philippines in that the photography industry values the kind of police in running street battles in the centre of Kiev. 2016 or the Rohingya crisis in 2017. There were original work that’s increasingly rare in today’s countless other interesting stories unfolding media environment. From the book MAIDAN- Portraits from the Black Square, elsewhere, but swarms of conflict photographers When I discussed these issues with Marcus published by GOST in 2014. travelled like a herd to those high-profile stories. recently, he reflected that conflict photography Once they’d checked off the assignment, they isn’t so much about conflict or even about ↖ moved on to new adventures, leaving behind a photography—it’s about understanding the Photo by Anastasia Taylor- coverage vacuum (Syria’s war rages on, as does context and people’s lives: ‘Photographers need to Lind @anastasiatl | Oleksiy. Euromaidan protestor, Kiev, the conflict in the Central African Republic, the understand that photographing conflict is about Ukraine. refugee crisis in the Mediterranean, the drug war photographing people’s lives. The more you can ← in the Philippines and the Rohingya crisis). understand about how and why these people you Photo by Anastasia Taylor- Beyond the changing media environment meet arrived at this point, and how they feel and Lind @anastasiatl | Eugene. and the often toxic culture of war photography, what their hopes are, the better you can represent Euromaidan protestor, Kiev, Ukraine. the world in which conflict photographers work them to an international audience and hopefully has also shifted. Just over a decade ago, conflict change things for the better for generations to ↙ Photo by Anastasia Taylor- photography was an exclusive club of intrepid come.’ Lind @anastasiatl | Serhiy. and talented photographers who provided us with It’s troubling to meet photographers working Euromaidan protestor, Kiev, our only images of wars around the world, often in countries where they may not even know the Ukraine. at great risk. In today’s social media environ- name of the president, the warring parties or the ment, we are flooded with violent images from basics of the conflict they’re covering. A good conflict zones, many of them taken by citizens conflict photographer needs to be a historian, and activists posting to social media. In such a an anthropologist, a sociologist and an investi- crowded field, the erstwhile uniqueness of war gator all rolled into one. You need to understand photography has faded away. the politics, the people and why the conflict is happening in the first place, and you need to do The more intimate path that before you get on a plane and pick up your camera to take your first picture. There’s a way out of this crisis of conflict The idea that one can just jump on a plane photography. Many of the best conflict photogra- and ‘be there’ documenting a conflict is deeply phers have never succumbed to the shallowness embedded in our social media culture, the era of currently plaguing their profession. They know Instagram. One sees it out in the field. Imme- that great photography requires time and effort diately after migrant boat landings in Greece and often takes place far away from the circling during the refugee crisis, photographers often pack. These photographers tread a more intimate split into two groups: those staring at their path towards stories with unique and impactful camera screens to see if they got a good shot approaches. and those who put down their cameras to talk Surman, Libya, June 20, 2011 Even in a crowded media environment, it’s to the newly arrived migrants they’d just photo- At around 4AM, NATO bombs possible to find fresh and powerful ways to tell almost completely flattened an graphed to learn more about their stories. Again, extensive complex of five villas stories. In 2014 in the Central African Republic, the photographers aren’t the only ones to blame: belonging to Major General El Marcus Bleasdale and I left behind the rest of the many work under deadlines so tight that a few Khweldi El Hamedi, alledgedly used as a military control and media focused mostly on the capital Bangui and minutes’ delay in filing an image can lead to command center. Among the its shocking violence and travelled for months reprimands, limiting their ability to pause and victims were members of his family including 3 children, but deep into the bush to find the people affected interact with their subjects. he himself survived the bomb- by the conflict further afield. We drove for days, A question many photographers never pose ing. Pictures were taken during negotiated with violent rebels, waded through themselves is this: what’s the reason for being a regime organized trip the fol- lowing day. ©Bruno Stevens rivers and looked for signs of life in deserted, here photographing this? Is it just to put another burned-down villages. series of images in one’s portfolio and advance This is how we found people living in abso- one’s career? Or is it because one actually cares lute misery, dying from hunger and malaria after about what’s happening to these people, wants to fleeing their torched villages. We met Christian understand what’s happening to them and wants religious leaders risking their lives to save Muslim to provide the public with informative and mean- neighbours and poorly armed rebels seeking to ingful images? ethnically cleanse their country of Muslims. Some of our best hope for original, absorbing Our images revealed a world rarely glimpsed, and impactful work comes from the increasing engaging our audience and allowing them to ranks of top female photographers working on witness an otherwise unseen reality. conflict and the unique and refreshing perspec- The images and our reporting for Human tives and approaches they bring to their work.

66 The Crisis of the Cliché 67 Peter Bouckaert The likes of Anastasia Taylor-Lind, Nicole Fromt heseries Rohingya → Women ©NicoleTung The mother of Eliam Fedongare Tung, the late Anja Niedringhaus and Lynsey 24, greets him and celebrates Addario bring a unique perspective to conflict → as he arrives home wirth his photography, often devoting the time and effort Kulsuma, 30, embraces her son father Jean de Dieux. They while waiting by the side of the were abducted in their farm by needed to tell the more intimate and private road for food and cash distribu- Seleka as they fled Bangui to stories of individuals affected by war. tions near the Balukhali refugee carry their belongings for them. camp in Bangladesh on Friday They were forced marched Anastasia’s powerful portraits of war-affected September 22, 2017. Kulsuma through the bush for 9 days and persons from Ukraine and Bangladesh (where I arrived in Bangladesh 8 days 4 of the others who were taken ago. She does not know the fate were shot and killed when they worked with her) and Nicole’s similarly haunting of her husband. became too tired to continue. night-time portraits of Rohingya widows and They escaped during an attack their children begging by the road allow us to In less than a month, over on a local village. 420,000 Rohingya have fled look deeply into the experience of war, without to Bangladesh from Myanmar, the need of AK-47s waving in the background. Of leaving behind entire villages in course, the female perspective on war is nothing townships burned to the ground and hundreds dead since a → new, with outstanding photographers like Susan military crackdown began late Hasina Begum, 25, waits with and into the night. Much of the Anti Balaka on the road to Meiselas producing a uniquely personal and last month in retaliation over her son by the side of the road food distribution to the nearly Boda. They are going there to the ARSA (Arakan Rohingya for food and cash distributions half a million new arrivals has attack the muslim residents painful body of work since the 1970s. Salvation Army) attacks on near the Balukhali refugee been ad hoc, leaving many who remain there. Previous the police stations and an army camp in Bangladesh on Friday families with the uncertainty of muslims were protected by the base in the Rakhine State. After seleka but they fled leaving the Effective conflict photography September 22, 2017. Hasina where their next meal will come arriving at the designated sites does not know where her hus- from, even with local and inter- civilians to their fate. Over 40 for the Rohingya, thousands band is as they were separated national organizations scram- muslims have been killed in the Having worked alongside some of the most of refugees throng the main after crossing the border in to bling to provide aid. town in 5 days and nearly 50 road hoping for a food handout, Bangladesh. Christians. talented conflict photographers for the last twenty sometimes for the whole day More than half of the 420,000 years, I’ve learned a few important lessons. First and into the night. Much of the In less than a month, over people fleeing have been chil- food distribution to the nearly 420,000 Rohingya have fled dren and women, who were and foremost, producing powerful and captivating half a million new arrivals has to Bangladesh from Myanmar, either separated from their photography in conflict zones takes a lot of time, been ad hoc, leaving many leaving behind entire villages in husband in the violence, or killed original thinking and planning—before you start families with the uncertainty of townships burned to the ground by the military. Without the where their next meal will come and hundreds dead since a family’s main bread winner, this photographing. It can’t be rushed, and it can only from, even with local and inter- military crackdown began late has left many women vulnerable → come about when the photographer is given the national organizations scram- last month in retaliation over to exploitation in the form of Muslims flee the town of Bangui bling to provide aid. the ARSA (Arakan Rohingya sexual violence, harassment, together with Chadian special time needed to do the job right—often a period Salvation Army) attacks on and potentially human traffick- forces. Over 10,000 peole leave of months or even years, but not days. Very few More than half of the 420,000 police stations and an army ing. The rate of child marriage the city for Chad on a huge con- photographers have the resources (or backing) people fleeing have been chil- base in the Rakhine State. After amongst displaced populations voy as the Muslim population is dren and women, who were arriving at the designated sites also rises when families see no forced out of the country by the and dedication needed to produce that kind of either separated from their for the Rohingya, thousands other choice. population of CAR. work, but if you see outstanding work, you can be husband in the violence, or killed of refugees throng the main by the military. Without the road hoping for a food handout, pretty sure that it took an incredible, exhausting family’s main bread winner, this sometimes for the whole day effort on behalf of the photographer. has left many women vulnerable to exploitation in the form of Second, most professional photographers can sexual violence, harassment, take good pictures in just about every conflict and potentially human traffick- ing. The rate of child marriage zone, but only a few have the dedication, experi- amongst displaced populations ence and talent to take extraordinary ones. When also rises when families see no → you sit down with one of the greats after a day’s other choice. The sister of Vanessa mourns for her after she was shot by work and review the uniqueness of their vision, Muslims close to her home in the perfection of their work just jumps out at you, Kilo 5, Bangui. Five people were and it doesn’t come from hours spent editing their killed overnight and just after this photograph was taken, her images in Photoshop. cousin was killed by Rwandan Third, good conflict photographers make soldiers as he was killing a mus- impactful partnerships with organisations that lim in a revenge attack. can transmit their images and messages to a target audience in order to create the change they would like to achieve with their work. Effec- tive conflict photography is no longer about the relationship with the magazine or newspaper but working out how to place the images in front of Khadidja Alhadji Adbou, a 30-year-old Mboro woman, the right policymaker to create real change. witnessed anti-balaka forces Finally, it’s worth acknowledging the impact shooting and killing her husband of conflict photography on those behind the and three children. In the same Jahan, 25, waits with her two police stations and an army family’s main bread winner, this attack, she was shot in the neck lens. For too long, conflict photography has been children by the side of the road base in the Rakhine State. After has left many women vulnerable but survived. October 31, 2013. dominated by a toxic macho culture, ignoring the for food and cash distributions arriving at the designated sites to exploitation in the form of near the Balukhali refugee for the Rohingya, thousands sexual violence, harassment, mental health impact of documenting traumatic camp in Bangladesh on Friday of refugees throng the main and potentially human traffick- events. In a business rife with PTSD, alcoholism, September 22, 2017. Jahan’s road hoping for a food handout, ing. The rate of child marriage husband remains in Myanmar sometimes for the whole day amongst displaced populations mental health problems, broken relationships but she does not know of and into the night. Much of the also rises when families see no and suicides, we can no longer ignore the basic his fate. The Burmese Army food distribution to the nearly other choice. reality that it’s painful to document the pain of attacked their village, attempt- half a million new arrivals has ing to round up its civilians, been ad hoc, leaving many others. The work can leave deep emotional scars. when her husband ran away. families with the uncertainty of Prominent photographers like Patrick Baz and where their next meal will come In less than a month, over from, even with local and inter- Finbarr O’Reilly have opened up about their own 420,000 Rohingya have fled national organizations scram- mental health struggles, beginning an essential to Bangladesh from Myanmar, bling to provide aid. leaving behind entire villages in dialogue. In order to produce powerful work, it’s townships burned to the ground More than half of the 420,000 important we look after ourselves and each other and hundreds dead since a people fleeing have been chil- and acknowledge the impact our witnessing has military crackdown began late dren and women, who were either separated from their last month in retaliation over Machete collected by on ourselves. husband in the violence, or killed the ARSA (Arakan Rohingya FOMAC troops in the by the military. Without the 68 Salvation Army) attacks on 69 disarmament process. Peter Bouckaert When considering the impact of photography Academic scepticism Academic publications, on the other hand, in line the portrait of Che Guevara (Alberto Korda, on the world, what instantly springs to mind are On Iconic with postmodern analysis, can be highly critical. 1970). The photograph of Buzz Aldrin standing the photographs we all know, no matter where It’s not difficult to find examples of faith in the No Caption Needed, one of the most-cited books on the moon (Neil Armstrong, 1969) was familiar we’re from. Popular books like to celebrate these Photography almost mythical power of images. This is written on iconic photographs, characterises such photo- to even more respondents: 80 percent. And the ‘iconic’ images, while a fair amount of academic about—often in loving terms—in many coffee- graphs as ‘fragmentary representations of events picture of hijacked American Airlines Flight literature is devoted to disparaging them. But table books on photography. Take 100 Photo- that reinforce dominant, totalizing narratives … 175 about to hit the World Trade Center in New what these pictures mean, and how people read graphs: The Most Influential Images of All Time, for used to justify state action; the reproduction of York, taken by accountant Carmen Taylor on 11 them, is far less straightforward than we might Rutger example. As the compilers—editors from Time exploitative conceptions of race, class and gender’. September 2001, was actually recognised by over imagine. Magazine—wrote in the introduction, ‘What all No Caption Needed wasn’t alone in this view of 85 percent of all respondents. There were three 100 share is that they are turning points in our iconic images: many other media studies agreed. other photographs that were familiar to almost Half a century ago, in the late summer of 1969, van der human experience’. Some of the photographs in A famous photograph would be analysed, the half of all respondents: the one of American the American investigative journalist Seymour their book ‘shaped the way we think’, they write, effect on the public described and the different marines raising the flag in Iwo Jima (Joe Rosen- Hersh spent months trying to sell a shocking Hoeven while others ‘directly changed the way we live’. layers of meaning—as the authors saw them— thal, 1945), that of the solitary demonstrator in story to U.S. media. According to Hersh, Amer- Such superlatives aren’t only found in American would be considered until the picture was Tianenmen Square in Beijing (Tank Man, Jeff ican soldiers had killed hundreds of civilians books. Bold claims expressed in melodramatic declared to be, ‘in fact’, a neoliberal-capitalist Widener, 1989), and the one of Kim Phuc running in the Vietnamese villages of My Lai and My words are typical of popular books on famous mouthpiece. Jeff Widener’s Tank Man photo- up a road (Napalm Girl, Nick Ut, 1972). Khe following the Tet Offensive a year earlier. photographs in the West, an expatiation of the graph, taken in Beijing in 1989, thus becomes a These dry figures suggest something incon- No newspaper, magazine or press agency would cliché ‘a picture says a thousand words’. symbol of ‘freedom through consumption’; Steve ceivable: that people all over the world share the touch it. When the small news agency Dispatch Of course, the fact that something is a McCurry’s 1984 portrait of an Afghan girl then same visual references of the past. They have News Service finally broke the story, it was only cliché doesn’t make it untrue. But proving this ‘legitimises the war on terror’, and so on. many visual memories that diverge completely, printed locally. However, the local paper The particular cliché is actually very difficult. In her These are disturbing conclusions. But just of course, but also ones that are identical. The Cleveland Plain Dealer got hold of photographs marvelous book, The Power of Photography: How as in Goldberg’s book, which tried to prove that above-mentioned images are included in the to accompany the story and published them a Photographs Changed Our Lives, photography photographs have the power to shape our lives, latter, but no doubt many more too: perhaps week later. That same day, The Associated Press historian Vicki Goldberg sets out to show us the there’s no hard evidence. If photographs transmit The Beatles on Abbey Road, or the painting of distributed Hersh’s story on its network, and it tangible evidence that pictures do, in fact, speak all sorts of social concepts, then it would be useful Chairman Mao? I propose that this phenomenon was soon being picked up by all the American at least a thousand words. She writes on subjects to see evidence about how people read images, could be called ‘the global visual memory’. media—including the outlets that had previously such as Seymour Hersh, photographs taken on what the ideas and messages are that they take Those interested in what such a memory rejected it. My Lai rapidly became a global news the moon, the galloping horse and shocking away from them, which photographs people might mean will soon come across the work sensation, and Hersh’s story is still considered to news stories. And yet, despite a wealth of indi- remember and find important, how this varies by of French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs. In be one of the biggest journalistic scoops of the rect evidence, Goldberg doesn’t come any closer country and age group, etc.—all more pertinent La Mémoire Collective (The Collective Memory), past century. to explaining this power. She’s not the only one: than the broad brushstrokes of an author. published posthumously in 1950, he describes how Fast-forward to 2004, and we find the same on the subject of the power of photographs to a person’s memory isn’t formed autonomously, as Seymour Hersh working on another big story. influence human thought, she writes, ‘No one Plural readings people tend to believe, but socially and collec- This time, it’s about American soldiers abusing ever seems to find proof of what nearly everyone tively. What people think about something in prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison in Bagdad. believes’. I found all this dissatisfying and decided, seven particular, what they find important, and the There’d been a few stories on Abu Ghraib from It’s a strange observation. The impact of years ago, without the hindrance of knowing too symbols and stories they use to remember them— The Associated Press, but they’d barely been photography has been the subject of broad much or of thorough preparation, that this was this is all, according to Halbwachs, socially noticed. In one such story, a prisoner commented (though not very focused) debate for at least virgin territory for a dissertation. I wanted to constructed. that he wished ‘someone would publish photos of forty years among media scholars, historians, create a questionnaire with some simple ques- So this is what some of these photographs are what’s going on here. Now, Seymour Hersh did art critics, sociologists, photographers, curators, tions about recognising twenty-four photographs on a global scale: symbols that recall moments indeed have the photographs. When they were political scientists and others. The leading book that feature prominently in academic discus- in history and that tell us which events we’re published together with his story and aired on on the subject was, for a long time, Susan Sontag’s sions about ‘iconic’, ‘historic’ and ‘world-famous’ supposed to remember; objects that have frozen national television, Abu Ghraib became a global On Photography, a fascinating analysis that, photographs, plus some questions regarding what a particular event from a particular perspective news story within hours. from start to finish, is an attack on photography. exactly people see in a smaller selection of them. to be remembered that way for always. I find Stories such as these emerge whenever one According to the author, the medium is ‘preda- This turned out to be a lot more difficult than it a fascinating and exciting idea that such a looks at the influence of photography on our tory’, ‘treacherous’ and so forth. ‘To photograph I’d anticipated (especially developing it into a thing exists. However, if the academic litera- lives. They confirm the widely held belief that people is to violate them’, Sontag claimed, ‘… it dissertation). But it did yield a number of inter- ture—which often reflects the same suspicion of photography is extremely powerful. They also turns people into objects that can be symboli- esting conclusions—about photographs that many photography that Sontag and other postmodern corroborate the feeling everyone experiences at cally possessed’. Photography is therefore ‘a soft people think speak for themselves, such as Robert authors display—is anything to go by, this isn’t some time in their lives: photographs can have murder’. A whole range of authors followed in Capa’s Falling Soldier or Richard Drews Falling a good thing. Such photographs are inevitably a much more direct and intense emotional impacts her footsteps, writing about how photography Man and about individual photographs and their simplification of reality; they transmit emotions than words. Such an impact may be entirely creates a hierarchy, flattens experiences and familiarity or interpretation—but also conclusions but no causes or background, and, according personal: in Camera Lucida, the French philos- monitors and levels people. Allan Sekula, for about how people actually ‘read’ pictures. to media scholars and others, always serve the opher Roland Barthes writes about the effect example, called photography ‘primitive, infantile, A research agency distributed ,y questionnaire powers that be. his mother’s childhood photographs had on him aggressive’; Abigail Solomon-Godeau wrote that in twelve countries: Argentina, Brazil, China, But this view seems to be a simplification in and about how you may be the only person who’s documentary photography commits ‘a double act Germany, Great Britain, India, Italy, Japan, the itself. The fact is, when you ask people all over struck by a particular image. of subjugation’. Netherlands, Russia, Turkey and the United the world what they read in such photographs, the But strong feelings can also be experienced In a postmodern reading, the photographs States. (Unfortunately, the research agency that responses you get are incredibly diverse. I asked collectively: photographs such as the one of the that best serve the dissemination of the prevailing wished to help with my work in the Arab world, respondents in my twelve chosen countries to drowned Syrian boy Alan in 2015 or the Salva- ideology—that everyone is expected to adopt— Survey Sampling International, didn’t have a indicate which of the six photographs they found dorian girl and her father in the summer of 2019 are those that are reprinted ad nauseam and wide enough reach) I had expected that some important, how much of an emotional impact provoke a simultaneous emotional response enjoy a second life as postage stamps and other of the images would be recognised by over half each one had, which historical events they were all over the world. It seems that images of this memorabilia. They’re considered ‘iconic’. Such the respondents (nearly three thousand). But the taken during and what was their central message. nature have huge transformative power and, when photographs receive very mixed reviews. Non-ac- results were still very surprising. The result was an astonishing variety of interpre- identical ideas are received in identical moments, ademic books on the subject often wax lyrical More than two thirds of all respondents in the tations, ways of describing them and idioms used people and societies are inspired to change. At about their beauty and impact on the world. world (70 percent) indicated that they recognised to do so, but there was also a diversity of ‘read- least, that’s the popular belief. But is it true? ings’ of the pictures.

70 On Iconic Photography 71 Rutger van der Hoeven For example, in a photograph of starving prisoners taken in Buchenwald in 1945 (probably by Lee Miller), some respondents read moral messages, such as ‘This must never happen again’. But many others did not. ‘None’ was a frequent answer to ‘What is the central message?’ Others wrote: ‘this is informative’ or ‘this describes the living quarters in concentration camps’. These differences could be found for all the photographs that respondents answered questions about. An upsetting photograph of a collapsed, starving child in Sudan being watched by a vulture (Kevin Carter, 1993) elicited emotional reactions from many respondents, especially in Italy, Argen- tina and Brazil. ‘Misery… hunger… fear… pain’, wrote a Brazilian respondent; and from an Italian: ‘the never-ending sorrow of the world’. But many others simply said, ‘famine in Africa’ or ‘hunger’. Others read the central message as ‘donate to charities’ and ‘don’t throw away food’.

Starting all over again

When you read through these responses, it imme- diately becomes clear that the assumption that people receive the same message from a photo- graph, and that this can be expressed in moral terms, is nonsense. One can perceive photographs as moral precepts, but that’s only one of at least six different ways that an international general public will read a photograph. For example, many people turn to the factual information a picture provides about a past event to find the ‘message’, while others try to imagine how the person in the photograph feels and call that the message. You might imagine that the result would be different for older photographs, and that our frenzied image culture would have an impact. I can only say that I found no evidence of this. I couldn’t see a pattern that more recent photo- graphs are better recognised than older ones or any other age-related patterns. The photographs that people recognised and found important as well as what they could see in them appeared to have little to do with the respondent’s age, educa- tion, media use, or nationality; there’s no Russian or Asian way of reading a photograph. For this reason, I believe we need to start all over again, not by declaring in no uncertain terms that photographs have great influence on us and why that’s a bad thing, but instead by asking ourselves what we actually know about how photographs work, both on an individual level and on that of society and the world. It’s particularly important now, in a time when a visual culture has gone global and photographs can become a worldwide news story or meme within hours of their being taken, that we realise that the pictures we all simultaneously consume mean different things to different people, and we’re too quick to put our own interpretation on the meaning or effect of a photograph. All those photographs that speak for themselves—they actually don’t.

73 Rutger van der Hoeven Burning Images for Punishment and Change

Florian Göttke

During a December 2016 demonstration on This was just one of the many effigy protests International Human Rights Day, protesters targeting Duterte in his first three years in dragged a giant effigy of President Rodrigo office, denouncing his indiscriminate war Duterte with them through the streets of Manila: against alleged drug peddlers and users, his ties a two-metre-tall head, painted ghastly green, to the family of the former dictator Marcos, his attached to a monstrous crawling creature. The disregard for the rights of indigenous peoples and head bore two demonic horns, its eyes glowed red his neoliberal policies that only catered to the in the dark and its stuck-out tongue was painted wealthy. Recurring features were the giant head, with the stars and stripes of the American flag. iron fists and vehicles like tanks and trains that The armoured and spiked hand, clenched into signified Duterte’s political style of barrelling a fist, was splashed with red paint, just like through all obstacles, regardless of the costs. The the horns. According to its makers from the train also refers to his contentious tax reform bill activist artist collective UgatLahi, the effigy called TRAIN (Tax Reform for Acceleration and symbolised the ‘resurrection and rehabilitation of Inclusion Law). Always included in Philippines the Marcoses’161 under Duterte’s administration. protests are references to the United States—the It was slowly rolled along the path of the former colonial power who supported the regime demonstration and burned at the end of the route of Ferdinand Marcos and retains major economic surrounded by crowds of protesters with cell and military influence—as the evil force pulling phones and journalists with cameras, who spread the strings of the country’s politics. the images of the monster Duterte perishing in the flames through social media and news networks: photographs of burning images were employed to damage the image of the president.

161 Tupaz, Voltaire. 2016. ‘Left’s 1st effigy under Duterte depicts fascist monster’, Rappler, 10 December 2016. http://www.rappler.com/move-ph/ 155140-left-burn-effigy-duterte-au- 74 thoritarian-tendencies. Burning Images for Punishment and Change 75 Florian Göttke Ridiculing animals and monsters

A number of influences contributed to the development of these spectacular protest effigies in the Philippines. First, they were appropriated from two types of traditional effigies imported by Spanish colonialists. The higantes are friendly giants that dance in street processions during a festival in Angono, a town east of Manila, on 22– 23 November, just as they do in Spain and other European cities, many of which are in Flanders.163 Effigies ofHudas (Judas Iscariot) are burnt before Easter in a town on the island of Panay and north of Manila in Minalin, as they are in Spain, Greece, Poland and many countries in Latin America. Other influences include political street theatre from the first half of the twentieth century, the practice of displaying large cut-out Ever since effigies were employed successfully figures of politicians during political rallies and in the resistance to the Marcos regime in the the activist street theatre group Bread and Puppet Theatre from Vermont, USA, which worked with 1970s and early 80s, protesters have burned every 164 Philippines president in effigy. Over the years, Philippine activists in the mid 1990s. the Philippines developed its own effigy tradition. Effigy protests became a very elaborate form of street theatre with complex visual narratives: giant effigy floats, with moving parts, animated by activists and inviting interaction with the public. They always end in a big, spectacular fire, staged for maximum impact. In keeping with the rhythm of the political calendar, effigies are rolled out on International Workers Day on 1 May, International Human Rights Day in December and other occasions, but they’re most prominently used in demonstrations during the annual State of the Nation Address delivered by the president in July. Records of effigy protests in the 1930s in resistance to U.S. colonial rule hint at an even longer tradition.162

163 ‘The Angono’s Higantes Festival for San Clemente’, International Information and Networking Center for for Intangible Cultural Heritage in the Asia-Pacific Region, 17 November 2017. https://www.ichcap.org/the-an- 162 gonos-higantes-festival-for-san-cle- The United States bought the mente/. Philippines from Spain after the 164 Spanish-American war in 1898 for Cariño Ito, Lisa. 2005. ‘Dissident Pup- $20 million. After being occupied by pets: The Effigy in Philippine Radical Japan from 1943 to 1945, it was granted Politics’. 64. BFA thesis, University of 76 independence in 1946. Burning Images for Punishment and Change 77 the Philippines Diliman. Florian Göttke These kinds of theatrical protest performances— albeit usually with smaller, less sophisticated puppets—can be found almost everywhere across the globe. The earliest known example dates from 1329, when Emperor Louis IV staged the trial of Pope Johan XXII, and his troops burned the pope’s effigy in Pisa, Italy.166 Effigies often appeared during revolutionary upheavals. In the beginning of the American Revolution (1765–1783), New England activists paraded, hanged and burned effigies of tax collectors to threaten British loyalists. After the founding of the Union, it became a well-established practice in U.S. politics that remains today, as shown by the many effigies of George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump. During the Iranian Revolution in 1979, effigies of the Shah and President Jimmy Carter were paraded and burned to protest the regime and U.S. interference in domestic politics.

The friendly, dancing giants of the Spanish tradition were turned into scary and vile monsters. Using the carnivalesque strategy of During the 2011 Arab Spring, effigies of Hosni inversion, turning the world upside down, the Mubarak, Muammar Gaddafi and Bashar figures of power are defamed and ridiculed. al-Assad were hanged in the streets in Egypt, They’re smeared with blood, pus, slime and Libya and Syria. Effigies have been hanged and excrement and disfigured by diseases; the burned for many causes: in the fight against whole gamut of bodily grotesque denigration dictators, against racism, against corruption, is employed.165 Politicians are depicted as against capitalist exploitation, against corporate duplicitous, as traitors to their people and wrongdoing, against foreign aggression, against beholden to foreign interests, puppets steered rising fuel prices, against rules regulating the by more powerful forces. The presidents, their treatment of manure and many other societal and allies and cronies are dehumanised, turned into political injustices. animals and monsters. The effigies are there to unmask them, to reveal their true nature as enemies of the people. They are the demons that need to be exorcised in a ritual of punishment and purification to liberate the people and create a new future.

165 166 Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1984. Rabelais and Brückner, Wolfgang. 1966. Bildnis und His World. Indianapolis: University of Brauch: Studien zur Bildfunktion der Effi- 78 Indiana Press. Burning Images for Punishment and Change 79 gies. 197. Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag. Florian Göttke This bodily interaction, and the resistance offered by a material body, provides a physical outlet for the protesters’ pent-up anger. It transforms the psychic energy of anger, frustration and powerlessness in the face of ongoing injustices into a positive energy, expressed with laughter and exhilaration. It’s a communal energy derived from acting together in the ritual of protest. Creating and performing an effigy is both a ritual of punishment and a ritual for change. It demands the end of injustice, and it projects an imaginary new order for the rebuilding of society Tableaux vivants as bodily protests through the purifying violence of fire. Making the effigy—working collectively towards a common goal—is the first stage in the ritual and strengthens the bond between activists. In the Philippines, artists’ collectives brainstorm the image, program and scenario and, together with crafts, people and volunteers, work on the effigies for weeks. But effigies can also be made very spontaneously from old clothes stuffed with straw or paper; with an improvised head and a sign attached to identify the targeted persona, they effectively communicate disdain towards the represented.

During the protest march, the effigy, with all its grotesque features, is proudly presented to demonstrators. It is carried, dragged or rolled along the demonstration route. The ritual-like nature of the performance invites participation, and activists and bystanders interact with the effigy by insulting, mocking, hitting, kicking or punching it.

80 Burning Images for Punishment and Change 81 Florian Göttke This was different in early-modern societies, where the street was by far the most important site to gather the public, and an effigy was staged to arouse—and entertain—the people present and to make a statement about social or political wrongdoing. But already during the American Revolution, the media helped spread the uprising by publishing detailed reports about burning effigies and other protests in New England’s newspapers.

Beyond iconoclasm

Parading, hanging and burning effigies is a truly visual form of protest, but it’s not an iconoclastic practice. Images (the effigies) are created, mutilated and destroyed—but they’re destroyed to produce new visceral and affective images: the scene of a public figure punished by the people and the media images of that performance. These spectacular and symbolic images fit the needs of the media. They’re able to communicate political conflict and anger at an experienced injustice in a condensed way.

The street, though, is just one stage that effigy performances occupy, and the demonstrators and onlookers are just one audience they address. When the time comes to burn the effigy, a space opens up around it. The protesters face the cameras, and pose with the effigy as a living image, a tableau vivant. They make themselves into an image for the onlookers and even more so for the cameras in order to address those audiences reached through the media.

Every photograph in itself already attests to the presence of the camera and the photographer at the scene. In many photographs, the cameras themselves become visible: the bulky frames of professional still cameras, shouldered video cameras and, increasingly in recent years, the rectangles of smart phones held overhead. Being present in traditional news media, as well as on social media platforms, has become an integral part of the protest on the street. The space of the media is not just an add-on but an essential extension of the protest space—the channel to reach a much larger audience than the one physically present. Political philosopher Judith Butler, who generally emphasises the importance of bodily presence for political protests, wrote that ‘the media is the scene or the space in its extended and replicable visual and audible dimensions.’167

167 Butler, Judith. 2015. Notes Towards a Performative Theory of Assembly. 91. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University 82 Press Burning Images for Punishment and Change 83 Florian Göttke In recent years, the term ‘Anthropocene’ has release of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. taken centre stage in debates about climate Photo- I had vague memories of a 1980s public campaign change and global warming. The name was in the Netherlands, including the slogan ‘A better proposed in 2000 by natural scientists to desig- graphing the environment begins with you.’ However, I was nate the current geological epoch as the ‘time too immersed in studying the Inupiaq-Eskimo169 of the human’, set to succeed the Holocene, but Anthropocene culture and history and searching for any histor- in recent years it’s ignited hot debates among ical documents related to Shishmaref that I could social scientists and philosophers.168 Artists and lay my hands on. Any worries about my own photographers have taken note as well, as the climatic impact were secondary. term frequently appears in their discussions and A decade later, environmental concerns have in writing about their work. More and more Taco risen on the global political agenda, and rightfully artists are trying to capture images of or imagine so, as the situation for vulnerable populations has what the term signifies, from straightforward Hidde only worsened. Despite the many conferences documentation of climatic events threatening and international agreements, both binding and human settlements to deeper ways of relating to Bakker non-binding, the human consumption of fossil the human-nature complex. fuels and the release of greenhouse gasses have In 2007 and 2008, I worked as a researcher continued to increase. Awareness is one thing, for Paradox (a Dutch producer of multiplatform swift political change another. It seems that, photography and film projects) on a large- for the time being, we’ll remain trapped within scale documentary. The Last Days of Shishmaref a political-economic system based on limitless comprised a feature-length documentary by growth at the expense of ecological resilience director Jan Louter and an extensive photo and sustainability. For a long time, we (most of series by photographer Dana Lixenberg. A team all people whose demand on natural resources compiled by Paradox mainly worked on turning exceeds the biocapacity per person) behaved as Lixenberg’s photographs into a photobook, an if no outside force could ever stop the march of exhibition, a project website and, later, a web progress. documentary (released in 2010). Louter’s docu- On a return flight from Alaska, I began mentary, which had a limited release in cinemas reading a 2007 reissue of The Weather Makers and was screened at international film festivals, (2005), Tim Flannery’s popular science book focuses on how a few families in Shishmaref, about humanity’s influence on climate change, Alaska, view changing environmental conditions and James Lovelock’s poignant The Revenge of and their foreseeable consequences for the village. Gaia (2006), a plea for the rapid decarbonisa- Along with thirteen other Alaskan coastal tion of society. I felt I needed to learn at least villages, Shishmaref has been severely threatened a minimum of background while working on with erosion since the beginning of this century. a project in which global warming was a major Hanging and burning effigies was an effective During a series of November storms over the past theme. And while the term ‘Anthropocene’ was form of protest in premodern societies that two decades, Shishmaref, which sits on a barrier already there in Flannery’s book, I barely took entertained the public and allowed for the island off the coast of the Seward Peninsula, near notice. delivery of a statement and the vying for support. the Bering Strait, has lost at least fourteen homes Many years later, in 2015, when the increasingly In the print-media-dominated societies of the to the sea. In 2008, the United States Army Corps urgent topic of global warming was becoming nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it was of Engineers started construction on a storm impossible to ignore, I attended a lecture by surge barrier consisting of basalt blocks, but this Bruno Latour in a theatre in Utrecht, and the effective in reaching national audiences. In the 170 twenty-first century, it might be even more solution can only be temporary. Within one or term ‘Anthropocene’ resurfaced. Latour spoke effective for activists across the globe who stage two generations, all of the approximately 600 like an eloquent prophet of doom, and his words the spectacle for maximum media exposure—for inhabitants will have to move to higher ground on were supported by his four decades of deep the biggest impact. In the contemporary global the mainland. reading and thinking about exchanges between media environment, where visual media take Louter referred to the villagers as belonging science and society since the seventeenth century. a central role in communication and where it to the first generation of ‘climate refugees’ right Latour opened my eyes in that I began to under- becomes easier to access a variety of channels at the time when the news broke that several stand that the problems posed by the Earth’s for distribution—traditional news media online small islands in the Pacific had sunk below sea warming shouldn’t only be interpreted technolog- level. For some Polynesian nations, the situation 168 ically; rather, they’re fundamentally of a religious and off, as well as social media platforms— For a concise and accessible history hanging and burning effigies enables protesters was already direr than that of Alaskan villages, of the origins of the term Anthropo- and ethical nature. In Latour’s terms, we must although it’s true that global warming conditions cene, including its nineteenth century feel the Earth trembling as if the apocalypse is to communicate their grievances directly to a predecessors (such as ‘Anthropozoic wide variety of audiences across the boundaries of proceed much more quickly in the polar regions. Era’), see: Lewis, Simon L. and Maslin, happening right now and not in some mythical This year, for example, Alaska experienced Mark. 2018. The Human Planet: How past or ominous future. In another telling meta- language and culture. We Created the Anthropocene. London: unprecedented heat waves and multiple forest Pelican Books. phor, he spoke of how modernists tend to assume fires. 169 nature to be a passive backdrop to their activities Without much environmental concern, I The exonym Eskimo is controver- but that we’re now rediscovering it happens to sial. Most indigenous people in the booked flights to the United States in the spring circumpolar regions nowadays refer to have a will of its own. Through all sorts of unpre- of 2008 for my research in museums and archives themselves using indigenous names. dictable and uncontrollable acts, nature claims an In Alaska, the southwestern Yup’ik in New York City and Washington D.C., in the and northwestern Inupiaq still tag important role on the stage of human activities. Alaskan cities of Fairbanks and Anchorage, and Eskimo onto the endonym or refer to I began to reflect on the roles photographers subsequent fieldwork in Shishmaref. Strangely, I themselves more broadly as Alaskan and visual artists can play in addressing this new Eskimos. had no qualms about my carbon footprint while 170 condition. The tentative and highly controversial I participated in an endeavour aimed at raising Latour, Bruno. 2015. How to Sort Out concept of the Anthropocene hints at an issue the Many Ambiguities of the Concept awareness of the grave consequences of excessive of the Anthropocene. Lecture given at so large and pervasive that it undermines all Stadsschouwburg, Utrecht, 15 April 2015. A revised version of this lecture was later included as a chapter in Latour, Bruno. 2017. Facing Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climatic Regime. Cambridge: Polity Press. 84 Burning Images for Punishment and Change 85 Taco Hidde Bakker comfortable certainties. How on Earth could this fact that photography is itself a strange hybrid be appropriately depicted? The world-famous between high technology and natural appearance photograph AS08-14-2383, taken on Christmas already provides the impetus to think through Eve, 1968, by astronaut William Anders during the intersections of the powers of humanity and the Apollo 8 mission to the Moon, hasn’t done nature. much to prevent the levels of human-emitted The Fotogramme series that Eva-Fiore Kova- greenhouse gasses from further increasing. The covsky has been producing since 2011 reflects this photograph, more commonly known as Earth- hybrid condition in a way that’s timeless and rise, inspired a generation of environmentalists contemporary in equal measure. These photo- and was famously featured on the cover of the grams are improvised compositions of leaves American countercultural magazine Whole Earth that Kovacovsky has collected throughout the Catalog (1968-1972). years, many of which come from linden and alder For a while, I thought the documentary trees. In her darkroom, Kovacovsky experiments approach taken by Louter and Lixenberg was with employing colour filters to arrive at prints the way to portray climate change. It’s of course of a hallucinatory nature. The leaves leave their important that the impact of rising sea levels or imprint as if they’re fossils from the deep past, melting permafrost on human settlements be while the process also returns to the earliest documented in an honest manner. Yet, despite days of photography in which pioneers such as all our documentary efforts, nothing seems to Anna Atkins made contact prints with algae. For change fundamentally, or not fast enough consid- Kovacovsky, the concept of symbiosis, as devel- ering the speed of climatic changes. The concept oped and described by biologist Lynn Margulis, of the Anthropocene is perhaps better expressed is an important source of inspiration. In this by means of the hockey stick graph. This line case, Symbiosis also extends to the way in which with a strong upward curve at the end represents she seamlessly interweaves the artificial and the the sudden rise in global mean temperatures natural. over the last century. But the same type of graph Closely related in method and outlook is results from many other analyses of changes Suzette Bousema’s series of photograms titled related to the impact of human civilisation on Future Relics. For a time, Bousema made photo- ecosystems, from the exponential growth of the grams (akin to the Atkins-like cyanotypes from human population to the extinction of species. the 1840s) of every piece of plastic waste she Despite its limitations in representing longer found. The irony is in the contrast between a durations, let alone geological timescales, historical printing technique and the hint in the photography has proven to be a suitable medium title that plastics will remain on Earth for a long for recording changes like the retreat of glaciers. time to come; the Anthropocene may as well be This type of ‘comparative photography’ is a renamed the Plasticocene. In Climate Archive, the popular means of demonstrating that the melting series with which Bousema graduated from The of icecaps is real and swift. It’s also been artis- Hague Royal Academy of Art in 2019, a warped tically adapted by photographers such as Mark notion of time is again at play. Frontal mono- Klett and, more recently, Chrystel Lebas. chrome photographs show samples of the ice Eva-Fiore Kovacovsky, From the series Fotogramme Klett’s Third View project is a meticulous cores that provide scientists with a record of up to (2011-ongoing). Image cour- re-photographing of the exact locations of 800,000 years of climate history. tesy of the artist and Galerie Stampa, Basel. previous American landscape photographs, some In the face of current warming conditions, over a century old. By overlaying two or three the impact of which, on a scale of epochs, must photographs in a slideshow of the same location be considered sudden and swift, the work of over a multi-generational timespan, the viewer photographers and other visual artists may seem can see these gradual changes within a fraction futile. Nevertheless, I place my hope in art as an of a second. Lebas’ series Field Studies: Walking instigator of fruitful debates and as a means of Through Landscapes and Archives more or less imagining new or renewed man-nature relation- follows the same procedure, albeit in a freer ships. mode. Lebas literally followed the footsteps of British botanist and ecologist Sir Edward James Salisbury (1886-1978), whose field notes and hitherto unexplored photographic glass plates depicting the flora and landscapes of Scotland and Norfolk provided the blueprint for Lebas’ re-photographing of these landscapes a century later. My encounter with the work of two other artists put me on the track to imagining alter- natives to the complex topics of climate change and man-nature relationships. I believe that storytelling, whether in words or graphics, may be best suited to narrating the unfolding apocalypse, and I also believe that photography and related methods can communicate urgency without compromising artistic vision and autonomy. The

86 Photographing the Anthropocene 87 Taco Hidde Bakker in the NOUN exhibition Good work, good work?, “good work”, The Greyspace in the Middle, The Hague, 25–30 January 2018.

Suzette Bousema, From the series Future Relics (2018).

Suzette Bousema, From the series Climate Archive (2019). Suzette Bousema, Installation view of Future Relics (2018)

88 Photographing the Anthropocene 89 Taco Hidde Bakker Walter Charge less, buy more: keep a fair price for your photobook, it will reach more shelves. Quebre o círculo: não comece um projeto editorial sem ter em conta sua circulação desde o Manifesto for the future of Latin-American photobooks EnCMYK Photobook Festival Be an ant: however small it may be, every effort is important in order to get closer to our primeiro momento. beloved readers. Montevideo Center of Photography (UY) 25-27/03/2019 Acessibilidade Conheça seu público como você mesmo Costa ENGLISH VERSION Rebelliousness Let’s read photobooks to our children before bed Não há atalho sem trabalho: saia do mundo fotográfico, arrisque-se conectar com novos Sustainability To think is rebellious: photography doesn’t change the world, but photobooks can be tools to públicos e linguagens. Não é nada fácil, mas é necessário. (Not)everything exists in order to end up as a (photo)book foster discussions related to urgent topics that matter society. Fazemos histórias: procure mostrar para o público que os fotolivros contém histórias assim It’s not the end of the world: there are photography projects that don’t fit the book format. Readable products, close topics: don’t forget that the book was born as a democratic format, como quadrinhos e filmes. Listen to them. work in order to connect photobooks with the real world. O leitor é teu pastor: um fotolivro é um espaço de liberdade artística e experimentação, mas Selfish publishing: the book is a medium of communication. If you want to communicate with I want you to consume what I do: be careful not to impose what you do. Be humble and tenha cuidado para não intimidar aqueles que nunca leram um ou acham que não sabem fazê- yourself more than the readers, what you need is a personal diary. Listen to yourself, honestly. passionate. lo If you don’t do, you don’t understand: experiment by making (many) dummies, it’s crucial in More miscegenation, more dialogue: photobooks can be fed by hybridism with other Quantidade não define acessibilidade: não pense em quantas cópias fazer antes de refletir order to understand what you can ask a photobook. languages and media, circulating through them and getting closer to new potential photobook e definir quem são teus leitorxs. Instagram is another thing: a book persists in time and needs time to be developed. lovers. Menos prêmios, mais alcance: um fotolivro funciona quando alcança seu público alvo, não Sustainability is collectivity: you will never have the same experience as editors, designers Rebel with a cause: remember that including artivism strategies in your publishing practice necessariamente quando ganha reconhecimento. Fotolibros and graphic producers together. Collaborate with them since the very first steps of your book can generate photobooks that are beneficial to specific groups of people. Cobrar menos para que comprem mais: mantenha um preço justo para que seu livro possa project. Honour the sacrifice: respect the trees that have been cut in order to become paper, to estar em mais prateleiras. Pay the bills: to fairly remunerate all the professionals involved in the editorial process -not only publish doesn’t mean vanity, it means to make public. Seja formiga: por menor que pareça, cada esforço é importante para conseguir alcançar the printer- it’s sustainability too. Creative engines: stay tuned to what happens around you, work with more people, work nossxs estimadxs leitorxs. Local and honest: value materials and techniques that you can find in your area. They are part horizontally, discuss your ideas to generate efficient publications, with a clear message and a Latinoamericanos Photobooks of your identity. defined audience. Rebeldia Adapt or die: to renounce some desires, work with local professionals and evolve together Leiamos fotolivros para nossas crianças antes de dormir during the process is what transforms frustrated expectations into sustainable practices. Pensar é rebelde: a fotografia não muda o mundo, mas os fotolivros podem ser ferramentas Break the circle: don’t start an editorial project without considering its circulation from the very SPANISH VERSION Sostenibles Sustainable Sostenibilidad de discussão que abordam assuntos urgentes para a sociedade. beginning. (NO) TODO EXISTE PARA ACABAR EN UN (FOTO)LIBRO (NOT) EVERYTHING EXISTS IN ORDER TO END UP AS A (PHOTO)BOOK (No) Todo existe para terminar en un (foto)libro Produtos legíveis, temáticas próximas: não esqueça que o livro nasceu como suporte democrático, trabalhe para conectar o fotolivro com o mundo real. Accessibility No es el fin del mundo: hay proyectos fotográficos que no funcionan en formato libro. Quero que consumas o que faço: tenha cuidado para não impor o que você faz. Seja humilde No es el fin del mundo: hay proyectos fotográficos que no It’s not the end of the world: there are photography projects Know your audience like you know yourself Escuchalos. e apaixonadx. There is no shortcut without work: go out the photography world, take the risk of connecting that don’t fit the book format. Listen to them. Auto publicación: el libro es un medio de comunicaci n. Si quer s conectar contigo m s que funcionan en formato libro. Escuchalos. ó é á Mais miscigenação, mais diálogos: o fotolivro pode se alimentar de hibridismos com outras with new audiences and languages. It’s all but easy, but it’s necessary. con los/as lectores/as, el libro que Auto publicación: el libro es un medio de comunicación. Si Selfish publishing: the book is a medium of communication. linguagens, circulando por elas e se aproximando a novos potenciais amantes do formato. We craft stories: try to show the audience that photobooks contain stories like comics and If you want to communicate with yourself more than the necesit s es un diario personal. Escuchate honestamente. Rebeldes com causa: lembre-se que incluir estratégias de artivismo na sua prática editorial querés conectar contigo más que con lxs lectorxs, el libro que movies do. á Si no hac s, no entend s: experiment produciendo (muchas) maquetas, es fundamental pode gerar fotolivros que beneficiam grupos concretos. necesitás es un diario personal. Escuchate honestamente. readers, what you need is a personal diary. Listen to yourself The reader is your shepherd: a photobook is a space of artistic freedom and experimentation, é é á Honre o sacrifício: respeite as árvores que foram cortadas para virar papel; publicar não Si no hacés, no entendés: experimentá produciendo (muchas) honestly. but be careful not to intimidate those that have never read one or guess they can’t. para entender qué podés pedirle a un fotolibro. significa vaidade, significa tornar público. maquetas, es fundamental para entender qué podés pedirle a If you don’t do it, you won’t understand it: experiment by Quantity doesn’t define accessibility: don’t think about how many copies you will print until Instagram es otra cosa: el libro persiste en el tiempo y necesita de tiempo para ser Motores criativos: fique atentx ao que acontece ao seu redor, trabalhe com mais gente e un fotolibro. making (many) dummies, it’s crucial in order to understand you ponder who will be your readers. desarrollado. horizontalmente, discuta suas ideias para gerar publicações eficientes, com uma mensagem Less prizes, more reach: a photobook works when it reaches up its audience, not necessarily Instagram es otra cosa: el libro persiste en el tiempo y what you can ask of a photobook. Sostenibilidad es colectividad: nunca vas a tener la misma experiencia que editorxs, when it wins an award. clara e um público alvo definido. necesita de tiempo para ser desarrollado. Instagram is another thing: a book is lasting and needs time diseñadorxs y productorxs gráficxs. Colaborá con ellxs desde las primeras etapas. Sostenibilidad es colectividad: nunca vas a tener la misma to be developed. experiencia que editorxs, diseñadorxs y productorxs gráficxs. Sustainability is collectivity: you will never have the same Colaborá con ellxs desde las primeras etapas. experience as editors, designers and graphic producers Pagá las cuentas: remunerar de forma justa a todxs lxs together. Collaborate with them from the very first steps of profesionales involucradxs en el proceso editorial –no solo la your book project. gráfica– también es sostenibilidad. Pay the bills: fairly remunerate all the parties involved in the Local y honesto: valorá materiales y técnicas que podés editorial/production process -not only the printer- is creating encontrar en tu territorio. Son parte de tu identidad. sustainability too. Pagá las cuentas: remunerar de forma justa a todxs lxs profesionales involucradxs en el Productos leíbles, temáticas cercanas: no olvides que el libro nació como un soporte democr tico; trabaj para conectar el fotolibro con el mundo real. Adaptarse o morir: renunciar a algunos deseos, trabajar Local and honest: value materials and techniques that you proceso editorial –no solo la gráfica– también es sostenibilidad. á á Quiero que consumas lo que hago: ten cuidado de no imponer lo que hac s. S humilde y con profesionales locales y evolucionar juntxs en el proceso can find in your area. They can be a vital part of your identity. Local y honesto: valorá materiales y técnicas que podés encontrar en tu territorio. Son parte é é é es lo que transforma expectativas frustradas en prácticas Adapt or die: to renounce certain desires, work with local de tu identidad. apasionado/a. sostenibles. professionals and evolve together during the process is what Adaptarse o morir: renunciar a algunos deseos, trabajar con profesionales locales y Más mestizaje, más diálogos: el fotolibro puede alimentarse de hibridismos con otros Rompé el círculo: no empieces un proyecto editorial sin tener transforms frustrated expectations into sustainable practices. evolucionar juntxs en el proceso es lo que lenguajes, circular por ellos y aproximarse a nuevos/as potenciales amantes del formato. en cuenta su circulación desde el momento uno. Break the cycle: don’t start an editorial project without transforma expectativas frustradas en prácticas sostenibles. Rebeldes con causa: record que incluir estrategias de artivismo en tu pr ctica editorial considering its circulation from the very beginning. Rompé el círculo: no empieces un proyecto editorial sin tener en cuenta su circulación desde á á el momento uno. puede generar fotolibros que beneficien a grupos concretos.

Honor al sacrificio: respetá los árboles que se cortaron para convertirse en papel; publicar no Accesibles Accessible significa vanidad, quiere decir hacerlo público. Accesibilidad CONOCE TU PÚBLICO COMO TI MISMO KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE LIKE YOU KNOW YOURSELF Motores creativos: mantenete al tanto de lo que pasa a tu alrededor, trabaj con m s gente y Conoce a tu público como a ti mismo á á horizontalmente, discut tus ideas para generar publicaciones eficientes, con un mensaje claro No hay atajo sin trabajo: sal del mundo fotogr fico; arriesgate a conectar con nuevos í No hay atajo sin trabajo: salí del mundo fotográfico; There is no shortcut without work: go out of the photography í á y un público objetivo definido. públicos y lenguajes. No es nada fácil, pero es necesario. arriesgate a conectar con nuevos públicos y lenguajes. No es world, take the risk of connecting with new audiences and Hacemos historias: trat de mostrar al p blico que los fotolibros contienen historias igual que nada fácil, pero es necesario. languages. It’s everything but easy, but it’s necessary. á ú los c mics y pel culas. Hacemos historias: tratá de mostrar al público que los We craft stories: try to show the audience that photobooks ó í PORTUGUESE VERSION El lector es tu pastor: un fotolibro es un espacio de libertad art stica y experimentaci n, pero fotolibros contienen historias igual que los cómics y can contain stories like comics and movies do. í ó Sustentabilidade ten cuidado de no intimidar a quienes películas. The reader is your shepherd: a photobook is a space of é (Nem) Tudo existe para acabar em um (foto)livro Não é o fim do mundo: existem projetos fotográficos que não funcionam em formato livro, El lector es tu pastor: un fotolibro es un espacio de libertad artistic freedom and experimentation, but be careful not nunca leyeron uno o creen que no saben leerlo. escute-os. artística y experimentación, pero tené cuidado de no to intimidate those that have never read one or guess they Selfish publishing: o livro é um meio de comunicação. Se você quer se comunicar mais Cantidad no define accesibilidad: no pienses en cuántas copias hacer hasta que reflexiones intimidar a quienes nunca leyeron uno o creen que no can’t. contigo mesmx do que com xs leitorxs, o livro que você precisa é um diário pessoal. Escute-se, y definas quiénes son tus lectorxs. saben leerlo. Quantity doesn’t define accessibility: don’t think about honestamente. Menos premios, más alcance: un fotolibro funciona cuando alcanza su p blico objetivo, no ú Sem fazer, não vai entender: experimente produzir (muitos) bonecos, é fundamental para Cantidad no define accesibilidad: no pienses en cuántas how many copies you will print until you ponder who your necesariamente cuando gana un reconocimiento. copias hacer hasta que reflexiones y definas quiénes son tus readers will be. entender o que você pode pedir para um fotolivro. Cobrar menos, comprar más: manten un precio justo para que tu libro pueda estar en m s Instagram é outra coisa: o livro persiste no tempo e precisa de tempo para ser desenvolvido. lectorxs. Fewer prizes, more outreach: a photobook works when it é á estanterías. Sustentabilidade é coletividade: você nunca vai ter a mesma experiência que editorxs, Menos premios, más alcance: un fotolibro funciona cuando reaches its audience, not necessarily when it wins an award. designers e produtorxs gráficxs. Colabore com elxs desde as primeiras etapas. Sé hormiga: por pequeño que parezca, cada esfuerzo es importante para alcanzar a nuestrxs alcanza su público objetivo, no necesariamente cuando gana Charge less, buy more: keep a fair price for your photobook, estimadxs lectorxs. Pague as contas: remunerar de forma justa todxs xs profissionais envolvidos no processo editorial -não apenas a gráfica- também é sustentabilidade. un reconocimiento. it will reach more shelves. Local e honesto: valorize materiais e técnicas que você pode encontrar no seu território. São Cobrar menos, comprar más: mantené un precio justo para Be an ant: however small it may be, every effort is important Rebeldía parte da sua identidade. que tu libro pueda estar en más estanterías. in order to get closer to our beloved readers. Leamos fotolibros para nuestrxs hijxs antes de dormir Adaptar-se ou morrer: renunciar a alguns desejos, trabalhar com profissionais locais e evoluir Sé hormiga: por pequeño que parezca, cada esfuerzo es Pensar es rebelde: la fotograf a no cambia el mundo, pero los fotolibros pueden ser í juntxs no processo é o que transforma expectativas frustradas em práticas sustentáveis. importante para alcanzar a nuestrxs estimadxs lectorxs. herramientas de discusión que aborden asuntos urgentes para la sociedad. Rebeldes Rebel LEAMOS FOTOLIBROS PARA NUESTRXS NIÑOS ANTES DE DORMIR LET’S READ PHOTOBOOKS TO OUR CHILDREN BEFORE BED

Pensar es rebelde: la fotografía no cambia el mundo, pero To think is rebellious: photography doesn’t change the world, los fotolibros pueden ser herramientas de discusión que but photobooks can be tools to foster discussions related to aborden asuntos urgentes para la sociedad. urgent topics that matter in society. Productos leíbles, temáticas cercanas: no olvides que el libro Readable products, close topics: don’t forget that the book nació como un soporte democrático; trabajá para conectar el was born as a democratic format, work in order to connect fotolibro con el mundo real. photobooks with the real world. Quiero que consumas lo que hago: tené cuidado de no I want you to consume what I do: be careful not to impose imponer lo que hacés. Sé humilde y apasionadx. what you do. Be humble and passionate. Más mestizaje, más diálogos: el fotolibro puede alimentarse The more multiplicity, the more dialogue: photobooks can de hibridismos con otros lenguajes, circular por ellos y express hybrid interplays with other languages and media, aproximarse a nuevxs potenciales amantes del formato. circulating through these other fields might help get you closer Rebeldes con causa: recordá que incluir estrategias de to new potential photobook lovers. artivismo en tu práctica editorial puede generar fotolibros Rebel with a cause: remember that including artivist strategies que beneficien a grupos concretos. in your publishing practice can generate photobooks that are Honor al sacrificio: respetá los árboles que se cortaron para beneficial to specific groups of people. convertirse en papel; publicar no significa vanidad, quiere Honour the sacrifice: respect the trees that have been cut in decir hacerlo público. order to become paper, to publish doesn’t mean vanity, it means Motores creativos: mantenete al tanto de lo que pasa a tu to make public. alrededor, trabajá con más gente y horizontalmente, discutí Creative engines: stay tuned to what happens around you, tus ideas para generar publicaciones eficientes, con un work with more people, work laterally, discuss your ideas to mensaje claro y un público objetivo definido. generate efficient publications, with a clear message and a defined audience.

Propuestas recopiladas durante: 6° En CMYK Encuentro de Fotolibros ¡COPIÁ, COMPARTÍ, DISCUTÍ! Proposals collected during: 25-26-27/03/2019 COPY, SHARE, DISCUSS!

90 Break the Cycle 91 Walter Costa The author sows, the reading fecundates.171 That imbalance establishes a cultural vector that author now states that you need a photobook. 175 Charge less, buy more Weinstein, Luis. 2018. ‘Sobre la circula- Break the drives many authors to generate and circulate But the formats are incomparable both in terms ción y distribución de nuestra fotografía Photobooks have been the engine of exciting works that affirm a local exoticism—commer- of purpose and investment. Dutch artist and [On circulation and distribution of our When even loyal readers are complaining about photography]’. In Sur - Revista de Fo- experiments in the book medium for the last Cycle cially more successful—that fits into a view built publisher Erik van der Weijde affirms in his tolibros Latinoamericanos [South – Latin prices, making photobooks accessible to less fifteen years. We’ve never before had such a over centuries from the cultural hegemony of the publishing manifesto: ‘Each published title must American Photobooks Magazine] 1, edited specialised audiences necessarily means making variety of titles circulating the globe, yet we’re capitalist, Christian, White and wealthy West.175 add value to the existing ones. ... All books that by Villaro, Leandro. 3. Buenos Aires: them affordable too. Latin American resiliency FOLA Fototeca Latinoamericana; 181 witnessing a saturation point. To blame the The situation is changing, but the legitimation are not made are, at least, just as important.’ Caracas: La Cueva Editorial. in the face of limited resources and high produc- confrontation between print and online is that comes from being recognised by the centre If after studying, testing and collaborating, you 176 tion costs fosters creative achievements with little Latin Entler, Ronaldo. 2019. ‘Notas sobre misleading. Books should actually thank the nevertheless keeps tempting local authors to realise that a photobook is not the answer, more o atrito entre o livro e a fotografia support; another factor is that the market isn’t Internet for intriguing potential, faraway readers please the distant over the local. creative energy will be available to translate the [Notes on the friction between book wealthy enough for making photobooks just for before swooping in with their physical presence. American This mismatch is connected to an original project into other formats, without contributing and photography]’. Zum Revista de collectors a viable choice. Weinstein’s project Es Fotografia [Zum Photography Magazine]. 185 It’s this very physical, intimate, two-way sin that needs to be faced. Brazilian critic and to the above saturation. Colombian author and revistazum.com.br/en/colunistas/li- lo Que Hay (That’s the Way Things Are) is based relationship that readers seek in tandem with the photobooks professor Ronaldo Entler nailed it when he publisher Jorge Panchoaga realised that the vro-e-a-fotografia on his archive of pictures taken during the years 177 need to take a break from this hyper-connected wrote that there’s a certain contradiction in our best way to present Dulce y Salada (Sweet and Costa, Walter. 2019. Walter Costa. of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. He wanted to world and escape the palimpsest of their lives by and the discourses celebrating the photobook: we value Salty)—a project about a fishing village at the https://waltercosta.site/writing/ focus on narrative and budget so, in collaboration 178 diving into a narrative, something they feel they this format for its capacity to circulate, but we mouth of the Magdalena River—was to make http://cdf.montevideo.gub.uy/ with designer Carolina Zañartu between 2014 and 182 can be a part of, or at least relate to. This is the audience still want to collect them like artworks sold by both a photobook and interactive multimedia. 179 2018, he published four thin and affordable books best impact we can ask of a book, but photobooks art galleries. In doing so, we fail to let books be Tuning the contents according to the strengths Pressfield, Steven. 2009. ‘The Most as independent chapters of a whole. The only Important Writing Lesson I Ever struggle to achieve it on a larger scale. consumed in a less solemn way by a broader and and limitations of each medium, both were bene- Learned.’ Steven Pressfield (blog). wink at collectors is a cardboard cover to house The conditions necessary for increasing their less specialised public.176 Solemnity is exclusivity, fited by cross-references and synergies. stevenpressfield.com/2009/10/writing- them together. outreach are out there waiting, above all the that is, self-referentiality, which is, again, endog- wednesdays-2-the-most-important-wri- ting-lession-i-ever-learned author) the of courtesy Santiago: Cenfoto. (image 2018)** Weinstein, Luis (2014-

Walter Bogotá: Croma Salty]. and [Seet y Salada Dulce (2018) Jorge Panchoaga, visual literacy of the ‘latent’ audience, which is amy—a self-imposed standing point around 180 significantly higher than just a few decades ago. which a vicious circle keeps wheeling, delimiting Ibid. 181 Costa Hay que lo Es To name a close and successful example, comics an artsy comfort zone whose size tells it all about Weijde, Erik van der. 2017. This Is Not have been both contributing to and benefitting the lack of ability—or willingness—to actively My Book. 16-17. Leipzig: Spector Books. 182 from this visual turn, constantly growing their increase photobooks’ outreach. Panchoaga, Jorge. 2018. Dulce y Salada. circulation while offering, besides classic super- But fresh energy is coming from the Latin http://www.dulceysalada.com/ 183 . hero titles, increasingly literary and experimental 171 American authors and publishers who face these Grigolin, Fernanda. 2014. Tenda de Liv- Giannetti, Eduardo. 2016. ‘Perante o graphic novels. challenges. In this context, continental venues ros. https://tendadelivros.org/historia/ leitor [Before the reader]’. In Trópicos 184 Tagging the audience as ‘latent’ is not Utópicos [Utopian Tropics]. São Paulo: and fairs come into play not as extensions of the Estol, Federico. 2019. Heroes del with deals Chicago how know don’t years, published during these been have books **the Companhia das Letras. arbitrary: people with interests other than same old comfort zone but as spaces to discuss Brillo. Uploaded 2019. https://vimeo. 172 com/302063565 photography are likely to enjoy photobooks once This is a problem that was already ideas and practices aimed at engaging with 185 pointed out back in 1981 by Guatemalan 177 they get to know them, but are they really offered broader audiences. The manifesto drawn up The four titles (Esto ha sido [This Has photographer and publisher María Been], Se vende ilusiones [Illusions for The reader is your shepherd this opportunity? A bubbly publishing ecosystem Cristina Orive, who conducted the first during the sixth EnCMYK Encontro de Fotolibros Break the cycle Sale], Apuntes del Edén [Eden Notes], together with specialised events and fairs are ever research on photography books (Photobook Meeting)—a biannual festival organ- Toque de queda [Curfew]) can be found published on the continent: Hecho en spreading the word, yet those answering the call ised by the Montevideo Center of Photography here http://www.luisweinstein.com/ Readers are always way smarter than we think, Latinoamérica. Libros Fotográficos de 178 There are radical actions that can make photo- 186 are normally already part of the photography Autores Latinoamericanos [Made in Latin (CdF) —lists some bold cues to work on more yet it’s easy to fall into ‘I-want-you-to-con- The Front’s approach to publishing America. Photography Books from Latin books more accessible to audiences beyond scene, probably with a dummy to publish. No sustainable, accessible and rebellious photobooks. focuses on dissident publications in sume-what-I-do’ attitudes. How can we tune American Authors], published and exhi- the fans of independent publishing. Brazilian form of photozines, whose price can matter if it’s the centre or the periphery of the bited in occasion of the second Coloquio our message better and be more reader-friendly, publisher and researcher Fernanda Grigolin, be a maximum of 3% of the minimum cultural world, endogamy is what joins both Latinoamericano de Fotografía [Latin Against selfish publishing avoiding underestimation and imposition? The 183 wage. For more information: https:// American Photography Colloquium] held with her project Tenda de Livros (Book Tent), under the same sword of Damocles: the future frenteeditorialabierto.com.ar/ journey of a book is defined well before it’s in Mexico City. She came to three final brought affordable photobooks, artist books and 187 of photobooks has to be increasingly outside the conclusions. The first: nobody knows When it’s all about having one’s name on the printed, so choosing and understanding the target Photobook lovers can only download a what’s been done, even in their own poetry to an open-air Sunday market in São photography cosmos, or there won’t be any future cover, there’s little room for anything but the free pdf. The printable version can be audience during the process is a good starting countries. The second: there are pho- Paulo throughout 2014. Between clothes and food, found here: https://drive.google.com/ at all. tographers who paid for the publishing author’s ego, let alone the reader; the same goes point. In 2018, during a harsh debate around the solemnity was soundly stripped down, bringing file/d/10-UGC_U5qXm67B_4EMG- Latin America is relegated to the cultural of their work. No doubt they think that for the ‘author/dictator’ who wants the book to be legalisation of abortion, Argentinian Tamara near many people who’d never flipped through jysXiNkKrk_y_/view periphery, meaning there are far fewer resources once created and printed, the book will interpreted in only one way. A good antidote is to Goldenberg and Martina Perosa published the reach the reader because of its inherent a photobook before. Uruguayan photographer available and it has serious difficulties making its always keep in mind what writer Steven Press- photozine Mamarazzi with Frente Editorial value. The third: in many countries, Federico Estol developed a project with a group cultural production circulate within and outside books have been paid for by a company, field said: ‘Nobody wants to read your shit.’179 His Abierto (Open Publishing Front).186 By appro- an institution or a government. They’re of shoe-shiners in La Paz, Bolivia, creating Héroes its boundaries.172 Continental networks have statement brutally points out that publishing is priating images and texts used by a widespread objects of prestige (like culture!), and del Brillo184 (Shine Heroes). He chose to co-pub- indeed risen in the recent decades; nevertheless, unfortunately, they never reach an above all a transaction based on a much-coveted gossip magazine to celebrate motherhood, they lish it as a supplement to the group’s newspaper, knowing what’s happening in a neighbouring interested audience. commodity nowadays: attention. What do we revealed the subliminal propaganda behind 173 offered to clients and passers-by to fund their country can still be hard. Big cities, where most It’s interesting to look at the survey give in exchange for the time and money donated it. In addition to the use of easily recognisable activities. It’s an ‘artivist’ strategy that, besides culture-makers and audiences concentrate, are done before the Encontro de Publicadores by busy people who also happen to be readers? materials, the next step they took to reach their (Publishers’ Meeting) that took place empowering the protagonists of the project, awfully far from each other, with loose or expen- Pressfield gives a couple of tips: ‘Reduce your audience was to distribute the publication in hair- in São Paulo in 2016. Considering that reached local audiences through an already estab- sive connections. Great socioeconomic inequali- out of 310 replies, 80 percent were Bra- message to its simplest, clearest, easiest-to-un- dresser shops around the Palace of the Argentine zilians, 68 percent of the total defined lished distribution network without impeding 187 ties maintain a classism interwoven with racism, themselves as White. VVAA. 2016. En- derstand form’ and ‘Make it fun. Or sexy or National Congress in Buenos Aires. 180 the publication’s ability to circulate within the making minorities shamefully underrepresented tre, à maneira de, junto a publicadores [Be- interesting or informative.’ Somebody could photobook world as well. on the makers’ side173 but overrepresented in tween, the way, together with publishers]. argue that this equates to a loss of purity, but isn’t São Paulo: Tenda de Livros; Edições the works that circulate, raising urgent issues of Aurora; Zerocentos Publicações. Survey empathy with readers the only possible starting Héroes del Brillo. 2018 (2018), Federico Estol, Abierto. Editorial Frente Aires: Buenos Mamarazzi (2018) Martina Perosa, Tamara; Goldenberg, authors) the of courtesy (image Aires Buenos in shop hairdresser Mamarazzi inclusiveness and ‘speech positioning’174. booklet, 2. Also available at https:// point to getting out of the circle? docs.google.com/document/d/1GkZBa- An added difficulty fostered by this peripheral gupVauwRaavUCJo8maOUKdg2v3B- status is described by Chilean photographer and KaDQkywbBTA/edit?usp=sharing (Not) Everything exists in order to a in read being curator Luis Weinstein. He noted that on one 174 end up as a (photo)book This is a term from critical race theory hand, more and more pictures are made in Latin brought to current public discourse by America, and on the other, the big market for Brazilian political philosopher Djamila The mantra that once said you must have a nicely Ribeiro. It refers to the privilege of tal- these images is located in other, richer territories. king in racist and patriarchal societies, printed portfolio if you want to be a respected . where the legitimised discourse is that of White heterosexual men. It reveals how different voices are considered as ‘others’ and how this regime of discursive authorisation prevents those considered as ‘others’ from exercising 92 the right to make their voices heard Break the Cycle 93 Walter Costa Rebel with a cause Let’s read photobooks to our children before bed In a written conversation with Stanley Wolukau- were often produced anonymously, quickly and Wanambwa, I asked him if the contemporary What if cheaply with the goal to distribute them as fast Photobook history shows an extensive use of the Making the youth familiar with this format is documentary photobook hadn’t become subject as possible so people would join the protests. medium to support or criticise political stances another long-term path we can start walking to the same critiques to which people like Allan We Stopped Euromaidan—handmade with a designer and a and trigger discussions on urgent issues.188 Argen- right now, like the itinerant library193 of CdF, Sekula and Martha Rosler subjected documentary publisher and limited to 250 copies—circulated in tinians Sebastián Pani and Belén Grosso devel- which brings photobooks to different educa- photography in the late 1970s and early 80s. Claiming artbook fairs and was nominated for the Kassel oped Y un Día el Fuego (And One Day the Fire),189 tional institutions, or the image-editing and Because if documentary is thought to be art ‘when Photobook Award. As Stanley said: different a project about women burned by their partners photobook-making workshops for children led the work can be regarded, first and foremost, times, different concerns. Still, they’re different in a country that suffers a new victim of gender by Claudia Tavares and Rony Maltz194 in Rio de as an act of self-expression on the part of the the Photo- in a significant way, altering how we perceive the violence every 30 hours. In addition to telling Janeiro. Besides fostering an early connection artist’,195 as Sekula wrote, then the same can be medium. painful stories of survivors, the resulting publica- with the format, playfully analysing photographic said about the contemporary photobook. In his book? Like Sekula, I’m not suggesting ‘that we tion, made possible by Buenos Aires-based plat- narratives helps in the forming of a critical response, Stanley felt that it was ‘dangerous to ignore or suppress the creative, affective and form Turma,190 also serves as a guide for women attitude towards the images that have been use their concerns as a fixed rule for this moment, expressive aspect of cultural activity’199. Instead, to understand how gender violence works and pervading our daily lives since childhood. because documentary’s purchase on the broader I tend to agree when he states, albeit a bit how to denounce it before it’s too late. With 3,000 Photobooks won’t be viral or mainstream. conversation is many orders of magnitude smaller Stefan strongly, that we should at least understand the copies printed, it’s being used for informational Instead, they’ll be patiently waiting on the shelves now than it was then.’196 He also pointed at how, extent to which art offers ‘a wholly imaginary talks that raise awareness and offer legal advice. to be browsed over time. The challenge is getting in the last decade, the work of both Rosler and Vanthuyne transcendence, a false harmony, to docile and On a different level of political engagement, to those shelves and offering more opportuni- Sekula—the latter with two gallery shows in isolated spectators.’200 Martha Rosler argued the work of Mexican designer and publisher ties for impact. Like sowing seeds, if we want to London and New York just last summer—had that the art world was indeed important for any León Muñoz Santini fits with André Breton’s create a sustainable environment for photobooks, been embraced by the art world and was itself movement trying to bring about substantive declaration: ‘One publishes to find comrades!’191 hands need to get dirty, and grains must be now shown as fine art (rightly so, we agreed). Yet, changes, but it didn’t suffice. She tried to make His publishing house, Gato Negro,192 prints very selected according to the soil. And the harvest, if there seems to be an annoying side effect to being her work accessible to as many people outside affordable and densely political publications from we work well, won’t be ours. embraced or taken in by the art world: being put the art audience as she could.201 Considering the different genres and authors. These pamphlets, under a glass bell where there’s little oxygen tends contemporary photobook, Krzysztof Pijarski poetry, illustrations and photobooks are united by to slowly kill the original scope of the work. And writes that ‘it quickly became apparent that their sharp and often ironic criticism of politics, once in, it becomes very hard to reach out again. the photobook revival, while an important violence, migration policies, economics and other It seems to me this is what David Campany development for the medium and (self-) deformations of power. meant when, a couple of years ago, he wrote that 193 understanding of photography, remained an the term ‘photobook’ is recent and that both A brief log of their activities can be inbred phenomenon’202—the endogamy Walter consulted here: Montevideo Center of Aires: TurmaAires: (2018) Belén Grosso, Sebastián; Pani, previous makers and audiences of photographic Photography. 2019. Mobile Book Library. Costa refers to. And as Donald Weber aptly books really didn’t require the term to exist. http://cdf.montevideo.gub.uy/articulo/ pointed out to me some time ago, today we find mediateca-movil Buenos Buenos Fuego. el Día Y un ‘Indeed they might have benefitted from its 194 ourselves in a situation in which photobooks are absence. Perhaps photographic book making A video summary of the activities can made as objects for the museum, rather than for be viewed here: https://www.ateliedaim- was so rich and varied precisely because it was agem.com.br/curso/maos-a-obra-brin- an audience. As such, the covers of the books are not conceptualized as a practice with a unified cando-com-fotos-e-livros/ themselves the glass bell, not just containing but name.’197 Naming is claiming, and today the also retaining their content. 195 photobook resides firmly and comfortably within Sekula, Allan. 2016. ‘Dismantling So how do we breach that? How do we, as the art world, even the documentary photobook. Modernism, Reinventing Documentary Weber put it, activate the photobook? How do we (Notes on The Politics of Represen- This naming and claiming sometimes takes on tation)’. In Photography Against the keep its content alive? Think about the audience strange forms, like in 2016, when Aperture’s The Grain. Essays and Photo Works 1973- first, as is the moto of Mark Neville, who firmly Photobook Review coined the term ‘the accidental 1983. 53-76. United Kingdom: Mack. believes we don’t pay enough attention to the Gato Negro Gato house publishing from titles Some 196 photobook’, referring to books that were never Wolukau-Wanambwa, Stanley. 2019. dissemination of the work. His Port Glasgow Book made with the intention of being ‘photobooks’ ‘The paradoxically perfect and utterly Project resulted in the production and distribution imperfect photobook: A three-part and therefore existed ‘outside the photobook conversation with Stanley Wolu- of ‘a hardback book of social documentary radar’.198 Most examples given were vintage—and kau-Wanambwa’. The Belgian Platform images, with high-production values, that somewhat idiosyncratic—cookbooks, scientific for Photobooks (blog), 15 August 2019. subverted conventional ways in which such books http://belphotobooks.org/the-para- 203 books or manuals. doxically-perfect-and-utterly-imper- are disseminated as ‘art’.’ Eight thousand copies The fact that there is now ‘a photobook radar’ fect-photobook/ were distributed uniquely to every home in Port 188 197 Critic Gerry Badger has long been isn’t a bad thing. The renewed attention—from Campany, David. 2014. ‘The ‘Photo- Glasgow; the book was never commercially collecting and studying propaganda both the art world and from scholars—for the book’: What’s in a name?’. In Aperture available. If today a photographer wants to see and protest photobooks, a selection of The Photobook Review 7, winter. which was exhibited in 2017 during the phenomenon that the photobook has become has https://davidcampany.com/the-photo- his or her book in university libraries, social or Photobook Phenomenon exhibition in allowed the medium to claim its long-disregarded book-whats-in-a-name/ educational organisations or political institutions, Barcelona. A chapter about the topic place within the history of photography. Since 198 he or she has to take that responsibility and go can be found in the catalogue: VVAA. Wolff, Denise. 2016. ‘The Accidental 2017. Photobook Phenomenon. Barcelona: the turn of the century, books on photobooks Photobook’. In Aperture The Photo- the extra mile, as current distribution models RM Verlag. have flourished, and the photobook is now the book Review 11, fall. https://aperture. don’t allow for such a follow-up. 189 org/pbr/accidental-photobook/ A pdf version of the publication is subject of several museum exhibitions. Within 199 Costa gives some fine examples that break the available here: https://goo.gl/iKqkRE this context, and given that photobooks are Sekula, Dismantling, pp. 53. cycle, presenting wonderful efforts by Federico 190 treated as cultural products of their time, a lot 200 Ibid. Estol, Tamara Goldenberg and Martina Perosa Julieta Escardó founded Turma in 2016. 201 After running the first photobook fair of consideration goes into form and aesthetics, Rosler, Martha. 2006. ‘For an Art and Sebastián Pani and Belén Grosso. For on the continent since 2001, when turning those aspects into prominent reference against the Mythology of Everyday her graduation project at KASK Ghent, Iris fotolibro the Spanish translation of ‘pho- Life.’ In Decoys and Disruptions. tobook’ didn’t exist yet, she realised that points for the contemporary photobook. For Selected Writings, 1975–2001. 3-8. Janssens made Did You Know?, a book about to help spreading photobook culture, example, in 2014, when Vladyslav Krasnoshchok Massachusettes: the MIT Press. the 1984 chemical disaster in Bhopal, India, other activities were necessary. More and Sergey Lebedinskyy made Euromaidan 202 the consequences of which are still painfully can be learned here: http://somosturma. Pijarski, Krysztof. 2018. ’On Photog- com/. during the protests in Kiev, Ukraine, it was often raphy’s Liquidity, or, (New) Spaces present today. The dummy was made up out 191 noted how the small book resembled the Japanese for (New) Publics?’. In Why exhibit? of photographs and pink pamphlets, which This declaration was made by André Positions on Exhibiting Photographies, Breton in 1920, quoted by Gareth protest books of the 60s—books that at the time edited by Anna-Kaisa Rastenberger could be torn loose and handed out. It won this Branwyn, Jamming the Media: A and Iris Sikking. 17-30. Amsterdam: Citizen’s Guide Reclaiming The Tools of Fw:Books. Communication, Vancouver: Chronicle 203 Books, 1997 Neville, Mark. ‘The Port Glasgow Book 192 Project’, www.markneville.com. http:// Gato Negro. https://www.gatonegro. www.markneville.com/#/the-port- 94 ninja Break the Cycle 95 glasgow-book-project Stefan Vanthuyne year’s Kassel Dummy Award and is now being printed in a much larger edition. ‘A manifesto of political activism’,204 as juror Markus Schaden calls it, hopefully the book will somehow find a way to fulfil the distribution potential that’s so consciously and cleverly embedded in its form.

Thinking outside of the book is another line of investigation when talking about dissemination, one that Costa also addresses. But since the manifest that he presents departs solely from the viewpoint of the artist or photographer, I’d like to finish with an example of the photobook being thoughtfully handled by someone other Iris Janssens, Did You Know? than an artist. Kristof Titeca is an associate professor in development studies at the University of Antwerp. His book Rebel Lives presents an impressive visual account of life inside the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda, based on photographs taken by the militia’s commanders between 1994 and 2004. Here, we have an archive handled not by an artist but a scholar. Dealing with photographs, and also text and drawings, the book clearly makes use of the creative design used in contemporary photobooks—this comes as no surprise, as it was published by an art and photobook publisher. It also accompanies an exhibition at the Foto Museum of Antwerp. It reminds me of Forensic Architecture, another exciting example of researchers finding an entrance into the art world, using artistic media and platforms to present their results and, while they’re at it, causing an interesting friction with and challenge to conventional ideas about art. One of the characteristics of ‘accidental photobooks’ was that they were in fact free from an artist’s agenda. Perhaps if we stopped claiming the photobook, the medium might find more breathing room and more space to move; it might find new forms and new life, perhaps even new audiences. It’s possible that, in the hands of others, and in fields or disciplines other than art, the photobook can keep expanding.

204 Schaden, Markus. 2019. ‘Did you know? by Iris Janssens’. Kassel Dummy Award ’19, Fotobook Festival. https://fotobook- festival.org/portfolio-item/kassel-dum- 96 my-award-2019/ What if We Stopped Claiming the Photobook? 97 Auteur Authors Colophon

Ariella Azoulay is an author, art Florian Göttke is a visual artist, Shadman Shahid is a photogra- curator, filmmaker and theorist of researcher, and writer. He inves- pher and filmmaker born and photography and visual culture. tigates the functioning of public raised in Dhaka. His work is about She’s a professor of modern culture images and their relationship to the precarity of the corporeal and and media and the Department of social memory and politics. This the spiritual human conditions in Comparative Literature at Brown essay builds on his dissertation contemporary society. He’s currently University. “Burning Images: Performing Effi- based in the Netherlands, where gies as Political Protest” about the he works on personal projects Chris Becher is an author of peculiar, age-old and media-savvy while completing the Master’s long-term documentary work with protest practice to hang or burn in Photography and Society emphasis on intimate portraiture scarecrow-like puppets representing programme at the Royal Academy through photography, text and video. despised politicians. of Art in Hague and teaching at the He studied at National University same institute. Bogotá and Academy of Media Taco Hidde Bakker works as a writer, Arts Cologne. He recently was editor, translator, researcher, and Andrea Stultiens does things with artist-in-residence at the Goethe lecturer. He completed a Master’s photographs as an artist, researcher, Institute India and is currently degree in Photographic Studies curator and educator. She uses enrolled in the Master Photography & at Leiden University with a thesis her artistic practice as a method Society at Royal Academy of Art The combining photography theory and to investigate photographs that Hague. anthropology (2007). His writings function in complex cultural contexts about art and photography have been while trying to bridge gaps between Peter Bouckaert is currently involved published in (artist’s) books and documented pasts and presents. in youth empowerment and agrofor- periodicals as Camera Austria Inter- The photographs she woks with estry in Madagascar. He’s the former national, Foam Magazine, EXTRA, were mainly produced on the African emergencies director of Human British Journal of Photography, The continent. Rights Watch. PhotoBook Review, and others. His first volume of essays, The Photo- Rutger van der Hoeven is corre- Lewis Bush works across media graph That Took the Place of a Moun- spondent for De Groene Amster- and platforms to visualise forms of tain, was published by Fw:Books in dammer. He mainly writes about contemporary power. His projects 2018. international issues but also writes have explored topics including the columns, interviews and reviews. property development of London and Mads Holm is an artist and writer Van der Hoeven is Lecturer history the democratic deficit of intelli- obsessed with photography. He at Utrecht University and teaches gence gathering. He has exhibited, holds a Bachelor’s (Hons.), first about the history of photography and published and taught internationally class, in Fine Art Photography from the Vietnam War. In June 2019 he and lectures about documentary The Glasgow School of Art and is defended his PhD thesis The Global photography at University of the Arts currently enrolled in the Master’s of Visual Memory. A Study of the Recog- London. Photography & Society programme nition and Interpretation of Iconic and at The Royal Academy of Art in The Historical Photographs at Utrecht Walter Costa is a photographer, inde- Hague. He’s represented by Selected University. pendent editor and teacher special- Artists’ Works. ising in photobooks. After five years Wilco Versteeg is a writer, photogra- in São Paulo, he’s now based in The Dr. Steven Humblet is an art critic, pher and researcher/teacher Hague, working between Europe and docent, researcher and curator. His at Université Paris Diderot and Latin America while attending the PhD dealt with the Changing New Radboud University. His photo- Master’s in Photography & Society York project and book by Berenice graphic work is represented by De programme at KABK. Abbott. He teaches the history of Beeldunie. He’s the Paris corre- photography at the Royal Academy spondent for HP/De Tijd and a Savannah Dodd is an anthropolo- of Arts Antwerp and is chair of the regular contributor to Aperture, gist and photographer. She places research group Thinking Tools. Katholiek Nieuwsblad, and Rekto particular importance on process, He’s currently involved in a research Verso. Versteeg holds a PhD on modes of access and engagement project on the relationship between contemporary war photography from with the people and places she photography and sculpture. Université Paris Diderot. photographs. In 2017, she founded the Photography Ethics Centre with Andrew Jackson is interested in Oliver Vodeb is an extradisciplinary the aim of increasing ethical literacy exploring the challenges of selfhood, designer, pirate researcher and across the industry. Savannah is representation and narration. His educator. He is senior lecturer at the pursing her PhD in photography works focus on memory, transna- RMIT School of Design in Melbourne, ethics in the archive at Queen’s tional migration, belonging and teaching in the Master of commu- University Belfast. relatedness. They’re held in both nication design. Oliver co-founded international and national collections Memefest in 2002 and is the prin- Dr. Sara Dominici is a writer, and, most recently, works from From ciple curator of the Memefest festival scholar and the course leader for a Small Island were acquired by the and facilitator of the Memefest the Maseter’s of Art and Visual UK Government Art collection. He international network. He’s latest Culture programme at the Univer- currently lives and works between the book is Food Democracy, published by sity of Westminster (London, UK). UK and Canada. Intellect Books, UK. Her research interests include photographic history and theory; M. Neelika Jayawardane is an Donald Weber, prior to photography, the historiography of photography; associate professor of English at was originally trained as an architect the relationship between cultural the State University of New York- and worked with Rem Koolhaas’ technologies, media and modernity; Oswego and a research associate OMA. His work is concerned with and the interplay between mobility at the Visual Identities in Art and making visible the technological, and visuality from the nineteenth to Design, University of Johannesburg. spatial, legal and political systems mid-twentieth centuries. She received a Creative Capital | that shape our current condition – the Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers infrastructures of power. He serves Alberto García del Castillo is an arts Grant (2018) for a book project on on the faculty of the Royal Academy writer and curator born in Guadala- Afrapix. of Art in The Hague, and is a PhD jara, Spain. With Marnie Slater, he candidate at Leiden University. runs the Brussels-based queer arts Simone Kalkman defended her initiative Buenos Tiempos, Int. He PhD thesis entitled Worlding Rio has published three books, Merman, de Janeiro’s Favelas: Relations and Midpoint and Retrospective, and Representations of Socio-spatial written for periodicals such as Girls Inequality in Visual Art at the Univer- Like Us. sity of Amsterdam in 2019. She is currently a guest researcher at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis.