Night

All images and text: Eli Regan

Madrid; cameraless

It’s funny to be a photographer without a camera. You can’t help 
seeing the experiences before you photographically even though you 
curse the fact that it is broken. Still, maybe the experiences ring 
truer in your head because you’re not allowed to mystify the moment 
into a single photograph or succession of shots.

Madrid, especially the centre exists as a fluctuation of the same 
people, same faces. They appear, as if by osmosis long walks away from 
where you originally saw them, just as you do for them.

And then its stationary people make their mark - the man with the White Afro in 
a self-styled navy uniform sits outside the McDonald’s of Sol for hours observing 
people, but only the ones that meet his gaze straight on, like a 
focused camera or automaton war photographer. He does not beg, only 
sits there. The armless men shaking their plastic glasses with their 
mouths, making self-mocking rhythms out of their misery and desperate poverty.

You feel an urgent surge to ignore them and you revile your first reaction.

The gypsy women with romero in the Retiro, accusing you of having a 
friendly face and not living up to it. Americans with 
heavily accented tones shout ‘Plaaaasai Meiiiyour’ to denote Plaza 
Mayor, an Irish woman precisely and politely answers a Spanish 20 
something old boy with a hair bun’s questions, a couple get mugged at 
night 50 metres before us - the perpetrator snatches the bag so fast it 
is almost invisible to the naked eye. (If we hadn’t bought that barra 
who knows what could have happened… we ponder rather smugly).

On the first night Mark and I sit in Plaza Mayor and this South American chubby woman

in her fifties sits next to us, all dolled up with red top, white tight jeans and red heels.

This bald guy starts leers at her from a few metres away,  a 
Spanish equivalent of Grant Mitchell. She goes Niño, ven pa’ca
Realising that the older-than-Mitchell lookalike has been in the same 
spot for about a minute, I make awkward hand-gestures, trying to make Mark

 realise we need to leave. He innocently asks ‘why?’.

The fact that this conveniently rouged lipped woman is a whore doesn’t 
strike me with the poignancy of ‘The Boxer’, a Simon & Garfunkel song… 
Rather, I feel like belly laughing! She isn’t after all Iris in /Taxi 
Driver/, she in her 50’s, or at the very least in her 40’s… She enjoys 
the role too much for it to be anything other than funny. The strange 
man is after all, not a stranger, but more likely to be one of her regulars.

I can tell by the way they sit closely and chat amicably, 
like friends, and not two people about to strike a bargain.

Another day, I think the next, we’re waiting for the Metro to arrive 
and I can feel this strange, persistent and painful poking in the same 
area of my back, but I keep turning back and I can’t see who the 
culprit is. I finally clock him and expecting him to be a child, 
unwittingly glare at him. The culprit is in fact a man in his 80’s and 
the owner of bright green neon trousers. He declares: “Qué pase el 
ciego, hombre!” I quickly get out of the way to make way for the blind 
man. The old man treats his role in the situation gravely with a  knowing sigh 
and look in his eyes, as that of saviour, as if this simple, irritable but charitable gesture absolves him forever of all wrong-doing in his long and full life…

Madlove (part of the overall exhibition Group Therapy: Mental Distress in a Digital Age at FACT, Liverpool 5 Mar – 17 May).

Described by the artist and activist the vacuum cleaner, as ‘a desirable and playful space to go mad’, is Madlove, an installation showing as part of the overall exhibition Group Therapy: Mental Distress in a Digital Age at FACT, Liverpool. Perhaps the most notable aspect of Madlove is its position. It welcomes you immediately with its colourful, crazy arms, beckoning you as you enter FACT from the street. Whereas psychiatric hospitals are shut away from society at large, this is in an open, public space – proud, loud, unabashed, challenging notions of mental illness as ‘other’.

A makeshift bookcase painted bubblegum pink with the absurdist title Staircase to Nowhere entices me with its copy of Roger Ballen’s photobook Asylum of the Birds. I make my way to the coquettishly entitled Turkish Delight, a small tent-like structure, whose red-cushioned insides remind me of the hallucinatory red room in Twin Peaks and its outside of the cartoonish tent in Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums. The atmosphere is cocooned, almost womb-like and I look at Ballen’s surreal, primitivist black and white pictures, eerily aware that this is not the sort of book that would be typically on offer to psychiatric in-patients.

When I venture out after that delightful respite, I’m greeted by Weather Station, a series of white, large umbrellas hanging upside down from the ceiling instantly making me recall the ‘I love to laugh’ scene from Mary Poppins. The soft furnishings and manic, child-like, almost psychedelic colour scheme might seem at odds with its desire to present itself as a comforting space to ‘go mad’ and yet Madlove is both zany and soothing.

Although very much a public project, informed by the artist’s own experience of mental distress and his stay at psychiatric hospitals, as well as the public – service users, mental health practitioners, artists etc, Madlove is not immune from echoes of vast swathes of conceptual art and Pop Art. Abstract painter Bridget Riley springs to mind, which is particularly interesting given that her trademark stripes recently have adorned the corridor of St Mary’s hospital in London. In this way, the art world and health world seem to be engaging a lot more lately, as if playing a mutually beneficial, unending game of ping-pong.  

It is telling that in an arts venue renowned for its indelible relationship to technology, I’m drawn to the most organic artwork on show. The rest of Group Therapy is provocative, almost overwhelming as it successfully tackles our difficult relationship with the digital and its effect on our communal mental health. The darkened, enclosed, encased galleries offer the viewer a dystopia which is disconcerting and challenging. They prey on our vulnerability reflecting our addictions and discomfiting relationship to technology.

Finally, I pay a visit to Cooling Tower, a tall structure painted in the brightest yellow and orange stripes. The note accompanying the work urges the viewer to Let off some steam and scream. In its padded, red, cushioned insides I don’t feel I need to. I’m suitably lulled.

Exhibition Review: DPRK by Philippe Chancel at the Open Eye.

Eli Regan

Exhibition Review

Location: Open Eye Gallery, Wood Street, Liverpool.

Photographer: Philippe Chancel.

Subject: Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK); the last Stalinist regime

Population: Approximately 23 million

Title of the show: DPRK

And so on, and so forth. The facts could continue in this deconstructed manner and they would be a truer reflection of the eerily symmetrical, highly stylised photographs on display by French photographer, Philippe Chancel.

Chancel was born in 1959 at Issy-les-Moulineaux. He became a photographer at 22, after studying Economics and Photography. It was around this time that he started photographing Eastern Europe, in a reportage fashion. Since then, he has developed a very neutral, balanced style for which he is known. He regularly photographs other artists and their studios, such as Anselm Kiefer and Christian Bolstanki. There is certainly some of Bolstanki in ‘DPRK’ (e.g. Dead Swiss), though perhaps less personal and presented on a larger scale, and formally as Lambda (similar to LightJet) prints on Diasec.

As I enter the gallery, I’m instantly overwhelmed by the seamless geometrics. Muffled sounds emanate from the back room so inevitably I venture into it, hoping it does not contain any eminent North Korean officials. The muffled sounds materialise as footage shot by Chancel entitled ‘DPRK sequences’, a 12 minute video, reminiscent of Amber Films. We are presented with the first scene in which the camera stands motionless as a witness, focused on the statue of Kim Il-Sung and slowly people start entering the picture, transfixed and hero-worshipping the statue, celebrating one of the state’s endless ceremonies. We are presented with footage of people crossing a bridge, and after that the focus is on ‘the changing of the guard’, except in this case they are female traffic wardens. Chancel then focuses on another ceremony, one of many state-choreographed dances, with ladies adorned in fuchsia, neon green and yellow garments. There is a man in the middle constantly waving a North Korean flag and as they dance we hear operatic, shrill music, no doubt chanting of the immortality of the Great Leader.

The film plays incessantly and is reflected on a particularly striking photograph, perhaps strategically positioned so you can absorb both realities at once. The photograph in question bears the caption: ‘Lips, uniform, and pin badge’. It is an arresting image, presenting us with a close up view of a female guard, possibly belonging to the army. The lips are full like those of a filmstar and yet she remains embedded in the mass anonymity with uniformed bodies extending beyond her, in a sort of Matrix reality. Chancel reinforces the obscurity of the person presented to us by narrow depth of field, focusing on the badge, highlighting her belonging to DPRK. Periodically, I catch glimpses of the dancers of the film reflected onto ‘Lips, uniform and pin badge’, strengthening the importance of ritual. While this back room is the stronger of the two rooms, my attention turns to what the leaders of the nation would say about this gallery. They would surely turn their nose at such a small, inconsequential gallery. And while the latter is not necessarily my view it does seem ironic that a minute gallery would contain such a grandiose subject like DPRK. There are slight problems in this back room like a damp patch on the ceiling and chairs stacked on a higher part of the subdivided wall, nothing too concerning and yet it this is slightly at odds with such precise, monumental imagery. There are 129 photographic illustrations in the book accompanying the exhibition, of these very few images can comfortably fit in the Open Eye. Having said that, the curator seems to have made the right decision in selecting the photographs we see on display.

In them, we find clear themes emerging, such as surveillance, the aesthetics of horror, idolatry, ritual as commodity and the importance of institution. Still in the back room, we find a photograph of a ‘War Museum Tour Guide, Pyongyang’. A female tour guide stands outside the entrance in an immaculate, military-like uniform. She stands in almost perfect symmetry in relation to both sets of open doors. However, her hands grasp onto each other slightly awkwardly, and there’s a shy, diffident look in her eyes, as she places one foot somewhat further than the other. Even though we can see her whole person, she remains as anonymous as the girl from ‘Lips, uniform and pin badge’, another machine cog employed by DPRK to encourage institutionalism and idolatry, as perpetuated by the state.

To gain some idea of how extreme this totalitarian regime is, you only have to log on the Korean press website and read some of nonsense: ‘They are full of optimism and firm resolution to perform feats in the hopeful New Year’. In reality, 2006 was the 11^th year of food shortages in North Korea. Another article declares: “The great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung is immortal. The participants paid humble reverence to the statue”. In many of the images Chancel took, framed pictures of Kim Il Sung (d. 1994) and his son, present leader Kim Jong Il, are displayed, framed equally and positioned next to each other, like an all pervasive diptych, existing even on their underground carriages. Frankly, I am disturbed by ‘DPRK’. ‘DPRK’ and Chancel’s style of photographing seem the perfect marriage. Other Chancel subjects (including his London pictures) suffer from being too neutral and dispassionate. ‘DPRK’ is ideally rendered by Chancel, in that he manages to at both please DPRK’s officials and propaganda and horrify the rest of the world by confirming our suspicions and prejudices against this dictatorship. His pictures therefore exist in an awkward duality and irony that would have escaped other straight documentary practitioners. We are as horrified by what we see as by what we cannot see. Chancel himself says: ‘In North Korea I often had the impression of being in an immense open-air museum of communism.’ His impression of course is not a mirage at all, but North Koreans’ everyday reality. Chancel also remarks: ‘I constantly felt that I was living in a non-reality, a virtual world straight from video games’. I can relate to that in the photographs, but as I said before I constantly remind myself that this is their truth (or not, depending on the propaganda they are relentlessly being spoon fed). One photograph that stands out as being from ‘video games’ is ‘Singing rehearsal, Children’s palace’. Girls in uniforms of white, blue and red (uniform also worn by their Cuban contemporaries) sit rigidly while a fellow classmate dances. In the background swans are painted into the brick, flying and I can’t help equating the girls with these ‘bricked swans’, unable to flower, unlike the kitsch flowery floor. This interpretation might be ridiculous in itself, but it is the only photograph that can be read in such a way.

Another photograph stands out for its seemingly normal subject matter.

You can be forgiven for thinking that ‘Avenue’ or ‘Workers erecting scaffolding’ (as entitled in the book) has a more humanistic aspect to it than the other photographs on display. In reality it serves to confirm this autocracy more than most pictures. It shows the workers looking towards the sky, one in particular smiling, all of them transfixed as if smiling to their Leader, holding a rope. Of course, they are only working, but this is crucial to the communist regime. They are symbols, in the same way that Rosenthal’s victorious American soldiers erecting their flag were in the iconic picture. The gray smog that is the sky is ever present in every picture appears here too, and while people go about their business, I focus on a sign, of a man descending stairs. This is a contrast to the men looking up, but is more suggestive of their reality with no hope of ascending ranks.

In another photograph, we spy a tasteless mural, another permanent advertisement of the regime. In ‘The Grand Theatre, Pyongyang’, the overly sentimental mural resembles a sort of Sound of Music theme with military, dancers and children celebrating the regime with flags, while below real kids, women and men go about their daily lives. This mural is yet another reminder of the all pervasive despotic regime. Chancel contrasts the bright and brash mural with its drab surroundings and reminds us again of the human element subjugated under DPRK.

DPRK is the last Stalinist regime on Earth. Until it was occupied by Japan in 1905 as a result of the Russian-Japanese War, Korea was an independent kingdom. After World War II, Korea was divided with the northern half becoming Soviet ruled. It failed to vanquish the South (Republic of Korea- ROK), DPRK’s founder Kim Il-Sung took on ‘Juche’- a course of action meaning self-reliance as a counteraction to Soviet and Chinese influence. In 1994, after the death of his father, Kim Jong Il became his father’s successor.  Since the mid-nineties DPRK ‘has relied heavily on international aid to feed its population while continuing to expend resources to maintain an army of 1 million.’ With a population of 23 million, this seems not only excessive and criminal, but perceived as dangerous by the Western world. Its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programmes are viewed by the US especially with increasing trepidation.

It is therefore, seemingly miraculous, that Chancel had this unprecedented access to DPRK. I am rather uncomfortable with the thought that photojournalists and film crews risk their lives to secretly document such a closed regime as DPRK is and Chancel, through knowing someone connected to someone in high places in DPRK is granted permission to authenticate its realities (albeit the more superficial realities).

Here we are confronted with an important issue, access. To a certain extent, every photographer has to tackle the issue of access, but Chancel’s dealings with it are more profound than most because it is a subject that for most would be restricted. Chancel says: ‘Photography has always been an excellent pretext for being wherever I was. In North Korea I wasn’t supposed to be there, but I was.’ In Chancel’s statement we recognise an admittance of pure luck. His access is indeed limited, and he was accompanied all the time by guards or ‘guardian angels’ as he jokingly refers to them. As stated earlier, in some way this is the strength of Chancel’s document, that he only records state approved subjects: the dances, parades, ceremonies, monuments, institutions, workers, train stations, most of them presided by statues, murals, or photographs of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. The horrors of the regime are absent except the silent horror of omnipresent orchestration of the citizens’ lives. There is a sense of utter compliance in the people; they are robotic with no room for any other ideology but DPRK’s. In ‘At the Revolution Martyr’s Cemetery’, one of the men carries a chrysanthemum while he looks warily at the camera, as do two of his companions. Chancel has captured in this otherwise unremarkable photograph, a reality less represented in the rest of the work. Those glowering looks speak of prohibition and the regarding of anyone foreign as alien, a spy, objectionable.

In this exhibition more than most we are challenged with the subject of state museums containing history and what this represents. The Open Eye Gallery no matter how small is state funded and as such is an emblem of the UK, just as much as its museums are North Korean symbols. In the book accompanying the exhibition there are far more photographs and one of these shows a sound library. I think this print should have been included in the exhibition. In the front of the room we notice the omnipresent portraits of Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong Il. In this picture endless radios/cassette players are shown, with people slouched over, as if giving into historical amnesia. To me, this picture is more chilling than any containing the statue of Kim Il Sung.

With ‘DPRK’ Chancel has created necessarily cold and stark imagery. There is no room for escape from these photographs, as there is no viable escape route for DPRK’s inhabitants. The atmosphere created in the Open Eye is of claustrophobia, and the constant playing of the footage replicates the idea of incessant propaganda and torture chambers. Only two couples (in the thirties/forties) came to see the exhibition in the two hours I was there. Most of the comments didn’t show much engagement with the subject: ‘Nice pictures’ and some joker had signed himself Kim Il Sung and written ‘My beautiful country’. The amount of time spent by both couples was not considerable, a reflection of art as commodity. Derrick Price states: ‘It may seem strange that works created to comment on current events are shown, divorced from any serious text, in the contemplative space of the gallery […] it is also a consequence of a change in intention  on the part of photographers in response to the pressures of the structure of contemporary communication’. While certainly it is necessary to read more in order to understand Chancel’s photographs, he is able to communicate visually very successfully the radically different reality that is DPRK. He focuses in on repeated motifs: statues, the diptych of Kim Il Sung and son, ceremonies, etc to create an almost definitive account of North Korea at the start of the 21^st century. In presenting us with such calculating images we begin to unravel some of what it must be like to live in such a highly ordered, structured state with no room to manouvre. After spending a considerable time absorbing the photographs I decide I should leave soon. By the time I have left the exhibition, however, I am Winston Smith at the end of 1984.

Is documentary photography dead?

Is documentary photography dead? by Eli Regan (essay written in 2006)

The bigger picture does not exist. The nature of our existence in relation to the world around us dictates our capacity only to understand and see situations around us in fragments. The physical photograph allows us to revisit those fragments which were particularly memorable as we trapped them. The photograph is an isolated incident (however many situations/interactions are being shown within one photograph) free of context which represents our gravitas to subjectivity. However, to contradict the last statement or at least undermine it, it should be said that these rectangles and squares become in being trapped, liberated by constrictions of time and space and in their silence are able to provide the starting point for endless interpretations and possibilities.

This essay aims to begin to question and not necessarily resolve whether documentary photography is alive or dead in the 21^st century. It aims to create a thoughtful debate by discussing a few aspects in relation to documentary photography: 1) Documentary photography and truth, 2) Postmodernism and its effect on the documentary genre, 3) Recent critics’ views on documentary practice within photography and 4) A brief discussion of a photograph by 20^th century and 21^st century documentary practitioner, Donovan Wylie.

1.Documentary photography and truth

I remember an image of a woman in Sudan crying out in the heat, maybe mourning the dead or the living in the front of The Guardian, deeply affecting me. I remember seeing the same image printed in the front page of The Independent months later referring to Sudan . It’s strange how I could not muster the same depth of feeling as I had on my first encounter of the image. It is not that the situation was any less torturous for the Sudanese, but I felt betrayed by the lack of current pictures. The chances are that my first encounter with the image of the Sudanese woman crying, was an archive ready-made commodity. The association of documentary photography with truth is a contentious one, and one much criticised by many documentary photographers themselves. In David Levi Strauss’ book of essays, “Between the Eyes-Essays on Photography and Politics”, he refers to Richard Cross, a photojournalist who covered the conflicts in El Salvador and Nicaragua between 1979 and 1983, as stating:

“In photographs, the priority seems to be on getting good shots, so to speak, shots of the news moment. And it’s a sort of unwillingness to come to terms with what is going on down there in a systematic way... I would opt much more for telling the story with lots of images and text that tries to relate what has been going on in El Salvador with what has been going on in the last 50 years in the world- things like the decline of neo-colonialism and the rise of independent nation-states.”

Documentary photographs can be used just as powerfully as text as political propaganda. With the aid of captions, cropping and editing these images are interpreted in endless permutations by the viewer, and in turn the media and or government have achieved their aim of misrepresenting the work of even the most socially conscious of photographers.

This fractured, deconstructed, overanalysed world offers us the chance to mistrust absolutely every picture we come across. There appears to be no medium between the media employing either immediate grainy mobile phone footage or hopelessly outdated images obtained from internet stock photography companies such as Corbis or Getty Images. The result of this is two fold: a public who is understandably, increasingly distrustful of the “truth” in images (be they outdated, edited, digitally manipulated, etc) and the lack of opportunities for idealistic photographers who still believe in capturing the essence of truth of a situation in various images (whether it be war, homelessness, local news, etc). The Guardian photographer, Don McPhee, spoke about the lack of opportunities for young documentary and photojournalistic practitioners in a talk about his exhibition at Manchester City Art Gallery in 2005. It is not that these documentary opportunities have completely disappeared, but in an era that demands information faster than any other generation before, quality and truth are often disregarded in favour of cost-effective immediacy.  In this climate of crisis, our hunger for photographs grows, as our cynicism also increases. Historical amnesia can have terrible consequences, and our incapacity to understand the present is causing short term memory loss even in the most discerning of people. The Orwellian nightmare is upon us and yet technology, for its all retrograde authoritarian, surveying, all-knowing power, can also be a tool for subversion, so frequently an aim of documentary photography.

2. Postmodernism and its effect on the documentary genre

There is a notion in postmodernism that refers to the concept of ‘partial histories’. To begin to understand this confusing social theory that so many discuss but not many comprehend, the concept of ‘partial histories’ is useful to grasp.

“Postmodern historians and philosophers question the representation of history and cultural identities: history as “what ‘really’ happened” (external to representation or mediation) vs. history as a “narrative of what happened”, a “mediated representation” with cultural/ideological interests… [As Walter Benjamin stated in “Theses on the Philosophy of History]: “every image of the past that is not recognised by the present as one of its own concerns threatens to disappear irretrievably.””

Once we begin to understand the idea of ‘partial histories’ as one of the hallmarks of postmodernism we see how much of an impact this has had on the documentary genre. Artists such as Willie Doherty from Ireland , are a clear exponent of this theory. His work, mostly filmic and photographic aims at understanding history through the blurring of reality and fiction, or his own political interpretation of Ireland ’s history. Doherty, in an interview with Tim Maul, says about his own work:

“ ‘The Only Good One’ drew on those cinematic clichés of the assassin and victim but attempted to not create a character but to try and assimilate or look at the mutual dependency of both of these positions.”

His work, therefore constitutes (as with Paul Graham) a blurring of the lines between documentary, propaganda and art, another recurring theme of the postmodern, the hybridization of cinema, photography, propaganda and surveillance into highly textured, complex pieces.

Doherty also explains:

“ I had a different kind of knowledge of the place [ Derry ] than most photographers, I wanted to try and use that insider information and try to work around the existing images… I didn’t want to be a Journalist and I didn’t want to try and make work for newspapers or magazines and I felt that if I could find a position within the art world it might be a more interesting place to have some kind of debate or discussion, and to allow the work to be part of it.”

This bastardization of various genres in order to get to the root of the various problems but not necessarily find any answers is the great impasse of postmodernism. It is also its beauty, in that for all its pluralistic values, and cynicism about absolutes, it questions, subverts and challenges the status quo, and in turn can overthrow seemingly steadfast truths with rabid interrogations.

3. Critics’ recent views on documentary photography

It is not only the artists and photographers that are questioning the established order; critics do through their appraisals of documentary practice.

Echoing what Willie Doherty believes, Brigitte Lardinois and Val Williams state:

“the view of Ireland in photographs has always been a partial and biased one.”

While this is true of most history, Ireland is the perfect example of complex issues of politics, religion, tradition and conflict that do not seem to be understood widely and are dismissed frequently. They go on to say:

“When attempting to place the work of Magnum photographers within a history of photography made in Ireland , one soon becomes aware of how fragmentary and unwritten both of these histories are.”

The word ‘fragmentary’ is perhaps one of the most useful, in order to understand the basis of postmodern thought. Everything is broken down, Tarantino style with little hope of a Hollywood straightforward narrative. Lardinois and Williams proclaim:

“We change and modify our concept of visual history. For many Magnum photojournalists, the editing process which their pictures underwent could also be a re-writing of history. Ian Berry remembers well how selective editing of his work during the 1970’s could entirely change its political significance.”

This view brings us into line to the earlier view that Richard Cross had of editing. So much depends on our power to interpret or see beyond what is in front of us. People misconstrue postmodernism with the notion of rejecting history and modernism. In fact, it often desires to understand history much more objectively, however fragmentary, it recognises, its attempts are.

Alicia Miller in her essay ‘Return to the Real’, in source view is:

“Experimentation in every artistic medium is what drives expression forward and there is a need to acknowledge the alternate forms of photographic expression that many artists are working with. It’s time to recognise this romance with the real for what it is- a nostalgic reminiscence with something we thought we knew.”

I fundamentally disagree with the above statement. While I agree for the need for photography to go forward, I believe as stated earlier that the truth of a situation can still be represented by the hybridisation of photography with other art forms. Photographs or series of photographs can also stand on their own, real, or almost hyper-real as displayed in the recent work of Julian Germain and Donovan Wylie. 

Perhaps it is useful now to discuss various photographs from Donovan Wylie’s recent portfolio: Maze.

4. Donovan Wylie’s ‘Maze’

Donovan Wylie. The Maze Prison. Prison cell. H-Block-5, B Wing 3/25, 2003.

The caption to the photograph confirms the cell-like, incarcerating nature of the photograph. Yet that light. That screaming light. Under the relentless scrutiny of that light, I can sense the loneliness of the many who slept there, almost realise the desire for constant dark, so as to not experience the metaphor come true of light showing the grime of the crime they may or may not have committed. The tree shaped air freshener hung from the curtains echoing the curtains themselves with tree-like motifs makes me stop and look at this particular photograph, examine it slightly more than the others in the series. Maybe this person did prefer the light, maybe he preferred light, cleanliness, air freshener. Maybe his mother had been the most house proud in her street, instilled in him a sense of the ordered.

Speculation is part of the attraction of postmodernism. Wylie, born in 1971, falls into the category of Generation X, a generation without marked out beliefs trying to carve their own reality. I would say he is most definitely a documentary photographer, but I would also say he practices documentary photography in a different fashion to previous documentary practitioners.

Documentary photography, therefore is not dead. It has evolved, but in this evolution, something has been lost. Some argue, like Miller, that it was never there, we just thought ‘we knew’. I think, previous photographers, tried, in the best way they could, such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, to understand the essence of a situation and portray it as honestly as they could. This inevitably tended to be from the angle of a leftist political point of view, and therefore, biased, yet who could fail to admire their idealism and noble aims? Perhaps, many, but not me. We possess in our hands invaluable historical and social documents that teach us about wars and the working class man and family, more truthfully, I believe, than any other generation could have hoped for. History, as they say in postmodern circles, is always told from the victor’s point of view. Franco and Henri Cartier-Bresson. I know who I would rather learn my history from. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books

1.   Lardinois, B and Williams, V. 2005. Magnum Ireland. London: Thames & Hudson.

2.   Strauss, D.L. Between The Eyes: Essays on Photography and Politics. 2003. New York: aperture foundation.

Journals

1.  Miller, A. Winter 2004 (Issue 41). Return to the Real. Source: The Photographic Review.

Websites

1.    Irvine, M at Georgetown University, 2003.  The Postmodern, Postmodernism, Postmodernity: Approaches to Po-Mo. Available from http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/theory/pomo.html [accessed 07/08/2006]

2.    Haul, T interviews Willie Doherty. Available from http://www.jca-online.com/doherty.html [accessed 25/10/2005]

ADDITIONAL READING

1.  Barthes, R. 2000. Camera Lucida. Vintage.

2.  Bryson, T (ed). 2005. Making History- Art & Documentary in Britain from 1929 to Now. TATE.

3.  Cartier-Brésson, H. 1999. The mind’s eye: Writings on Photography and Photographers. New York. Aperture foundation.

4.  Godfrey, T. 1998. Conceptual Art. London. Phaidon.

5.  Howarth, S. 2006. Singular Images: Essays on Remarkable Photographs. Aperture foundation.

6.  Sontag, S. 1977. On Photography. Penguin Books.

Jonas Bendiksen - Satellites

My reader review on Amazon about Magnum Photographer's Jonas Bendiksen's photobook Satellites (2008) 

'Satellites' is a great collection of photographs, in terms of scope and political awareness. It's also a triumph on a pictorial level, in its use of frenzied angles and colour. Sometimes this is minimal like lone figures at the edge of photographs walking through snow or fog, and others strikingly rich: the garish pink of a heroin-addict's dress; the hell-like yellow of a busy commuter's bus.

As mentioned, it functions at the edges, its use of colour maddeningly good (reminiscent of fellow Magnum photographers Gruyaert and Pinkhassov), and its crazy angles not unlike Eugene Richards' work.

Thoroughly recommended. Pictures at the edge, from un-newsworthy places made vibrant through Bendiksen's lens.