Max Pam - Indian Ocean Journals

"It's a theme park for Europeans looking For exotica out of mainstream Tourism - not my Tea" ~ Max Pam in his Indian Ocean Journals (Steidl), referring to Lamu island

Writers and photographers alike have amply covered both the 'well trampled tourist trail' and the 'off the beaten track', but Pam is on another trail and his book, Indian Ocean Journals, guides us through his haphazard, non-linear journey.

But like Gracielle Iturbide (I wouldn't go much further in comparing them!), the success of his work depends on its ability to discredit exoticism, though, simultaneously depending on it. Pam travels extensively around the periphery of the Indian Ocean to compile his journals, and there is something of the travelers log in them, but he's mixed his encounters up, matching disparate images in pairs, linking elements of composition or gesture, confusing expectations, and therefore building a new and undiscovered micro world of poetically arranged shards.

Unlike, say Cartier Bresson, to pick the obvious, who is invisible, Pam does not hide his presence, necessarily, and often his subjects are reacting to him in a sort of east/west blend which has the effect of equalising the much frowned upon western relationship with the 'Other' (they are often looking in at him). But, then, beside the almost predatory male gaze, heightened by the buzz of hookah smoke, he brings out a girl, in half light, innocent or is it vulnerable!

Pam also made the classic book 'Going East', which unfortunately I haven't had the pleasure of seeing save in the hotlist of top collectibles by Martin Parr's book on books, but I'm far more enraptured with this one, it being close to home for me. I have read his conversation with Pablo Ortiz Monasterio, Conversations with Contemporary Photographers, where he confirms my suspicions that there was something of Peter Beard in his work, whose influence seems to have stretched far into the minds of quite a few contemporary photographers (I'm thinking of Bill Burke), however it's here that his work is at risk of falling, according to my sensibility, beneath too much decoration, though he has not smothered his book in it. Peter Beard might be a dangerous one to be influenced by, while artistic devises are easily carried between artists, using Beard's might easily become an imitation.

I'm solacing myself, while Christies sells books for 10's of thousands of dollars, that it is still possible to find unnoticed but valuable books buried and lost among the dusty shelves. And, I'm solacing myself, that while the over-interlectualised banal threatens in every corner of contemporary photography, there are still photographers like Max Pam fighting the good fight:

"Like, for instance in my town, right? In the Art Gallery of Western Australia they paid a quarter of a million for a Jeff Wall picture 2 years ago, and it's a picture of a guy polishing his shoes, and it's totally banal! You stand in front of it - I'll stand in front of it - and we will both - because i've had this conversation and because you can't be unaware of that, because it's on the front page of a newspaper - we both say, "What's it about? What's the point? You know, why? I polish my shoes as well, okay, tell me something I don't know."

~ Max Pam, from Conversations with Contemporary Photographers (Umbrage)

Submitted by Philip Cartland on 12 April 2008 - 8:48pm.

Final resting place - paradise...

In 1998 Tacita Dean set out for the '‘prim tax haven', Cayman Brac, a Caribbean island, in search of Donald Crowhurst's trimaran, the Teignmouth Electron. The Cayman net news outlines its history prior to Dean's journey as follows:

"After Crowhurst’s suicide, the Electron was taken by salvagers to Jamaica and bought from auction in 1969 by Kingston hotelier and businessman Larry Wirth.

The Electron stayed in the Wirth family until 1973, when she was purchased by Bunnie Francis, a charter operator based at Trelawny Beach Hotel, near Montego Bay. Francis adapted and operated it as a tourist boat.

By 1978, the Jamaican tourist trade had been hit by political unrest and the boat lay in dry dock up for sale. It was purchased by George McDermot, who was living in Jamaica at the time, in 1975. He later sold her to his brother Winston."

During Winston's ownership, when Ms Dean arrived. she found the yacht lying battered and weathered upon a beach, shadowed by a solitary palm, and looking, perhaps, like the washed up bones of Crowhurst himself. She filmed and photographed the wreckage, drawing on Crowhurst's loneliness, his manic time madness, his ‘'Sin of Concealment',’ his final countdown.

While on the island she also filmed another of her, particularly quirky, coincidental discoveries, the ruined ‘'Bubble House'’ built by a Frenchman who was imprisoned for fraud and therefore unable to finish it; Dean writes:

‘"Deserted, and half-completed, the bubble house stood like a futuristic vision; like a statement from another age. We thought it was a temple belonging to a sect, or a church constructed by the Mafia… We knew we had come across something other-worldly; the perfect companion to the Teignmouth Electron.’"

To me her Teignmouth Electron work is an exotic memorial, if you like, to madness, folly and failure, as expressed in the Crowhurst tragedy.

One must know Crowhurst's story to fully appreciate Dean's work and if the story does catch you, like it did me, the essential viewing should be the documentary film 'Deep Water' directed by Louis Osmond and Jerry Rothwell.

While this film tells almost all there is to know - making, too, an interesting parallel with Bernard Moitessier who in contrast both mastered the sea, and more importantly, himself, while forfeiting the possible glory and media heroism of winning the race, to 'save his soul' - the essence of Deans exotic bone sifting archeology, besides the artified journalism, is her tangential personal journey to the island and her driftings through the works of JG Ballard and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, in search of the unknowable truth behind Crowhurst's predicament.

Sources:

Tacita Dean Synopsis

Brac's Land wreck makes TV fame

Submitted by Philip Cartland on 18 January 2008 - 8:35pm.

Saphir by Zineb Sedira

The photographers gallery has an exhibition by Zineb Sedira .

The exhibit, called 'Saphir', made me acutely aware how different seeing the clarity of a nice enlarged image, is, from viewing images online or in a book - the books and the catalogue were completely unsatisfactory; like they were just further coverage, on low budget, rather than exhibits in themselves. Here is a snippet about the series from the gallery's site:

"The exhibition contrasts Sedira's re-encounter with the sights and sounds of Algiers with an awareness that while she, like other people from France, is enjoying her return to the city, some of its other residents, disenchanted young men in particular, often dream of escape across the water to Europe."

I particularly like Sedira's idea and the mood evoked by the images, despite feeling there were simply too few images and some not of high quality (i.e. one was blurry, unnecessarily, I felt, though standing further back helped). In the same turn, perhaps, because there were so few, I was not overwhelmed. The scarcity increased the value.

The accompanying film, which is viewed on two screens, side by side, almost like two stills, was stunning, and probably this is where most of her energy was spent. Here's more about it:

This play of meaning is extended through two central characters. The first is an Algerian man who walks across town, with no apparent purpose, and silently watches the daily ferries arrive and depart from the port. His image is counterpoised by that of an older woman � a daughter of the pieds noirs (a term for European settlers who left Algeria after its Independence). She inhabits the Safir Hotel, one of the grand landmarks of French colonial Algiers. Whose imposing architecture is a powerful and resonant reminder of a past that still casts its light, and shadow, over the city. Gazing out to sea from its balconies, before withdrawing to the faded grandeur of its lobbies and halls, the woman echoes the man's movement and reinforces a wider sense of languor, inertia and enclosure. Both characters circle within their own separate but parallel worlds, their paths often appear to intersect but without any conclusion.

Despite my enthusiasm I've already forgotten the film. Film seems to move through me while stills hold me. The two images above grab me, enough to allow faults I find blow away.

I really like 'Saphir'. It's universal, in the sense that we are all looking across the waters, escaping to that dream world which, in all likelihood is not what we imagine.

Submitted by Philip Cartland on 27 October 2006 - 6:58pm.

How to make a living in paradise

The image above is the view from my Gran's house near Kilifi, on the coast of Kenya.

Historically this area has become a retirement place for white Kenyans who lease (there are probably some freeholds too) land along the beaches and cliffs.

Kilifi town was once only accessible by an unreliable car ferry, and before that a man powered rope drawn ferry, and now a bridge built by the Japanese. Urban development suddenly expanded tenfold. Speaking to my gran on the phone the other day I asked her how things had changed since I was last there. "The Italians have bought the place out," she said, "they are building multi-story shopping complexes and renting out apartments" The Mafia, she thinks.

The question for anyone - who is not a 'Mafioso', that is - wanting to live in this poverty stricken paradise, is how do you make a living? Tony Britchford, now deceased, came up with a pretty good plan. He got himself a radio and became the 'yachties' SSB connection within the western Indian Ocean.

For 18 or so years he guided passing yachts into the well protected Kilifi creek through a break in the outer reef, under the bridge (70'/21m, some yachts would drift backwards under it just in case they had to motor forward in the event it was too low) and also under the power lines spanning the creek soon after the bridge.

The anchorage was just below his and our house seen in the picture, from where he offered services and advice.

Submitted by Philip Cartland on 9 September 2006 - 8:03am.

Trophies

"Photography is clearly all that hunting is, except the bullet, even down to the jargon; and the photographs are treated exactly like stuffed heads." - Alistair Graham, Gardeners of Eden

Submitted by Philip Cartland on 23 June 2006 - 11:00pm.