City of Shadows
The City of Shadows, compiled by Peter Doyle, brings us a selection of Sydney police photographs from 1912-1948.
Many of the book's images have no accompanying details and so Doyle might gladly be excused for therefore attaching them to the art world. However, is this premise enough for a book, and by making them objects of meditation are we not losing something?
Take photograph #4 and its caption for example: Probably 1930's, details unknown
Some pleasure, I concede, in the mystery, but was it taken to give us pleasure and does it not raise more questions than it answers?
Particularly with these images, taken as crime photography, the argument that the absence of context brings alive ones own imagination feels like a defilement of the police department's intentions, their purpose, I would presume, to document for the purposes of evidence.
In many cases, though, as in the photo #1, I see shades of character behind the eyes, a wary, withdrawn or even slightly defiant look. I see, clothes and indications that provoke my detective spirit. Here we have a phychological document, though soon we're back again to the, who, why, what, where, when? How can I make a case, or be judge?
It's easy to dump these images at the door of art, like the recent flurry of homeless vernacular photography turned arty-fact, ie into art books. Images of these sorts appear so well composed or anti-composed, even modern (save the sepia) and they all contain the holy grail of 'documentary' photography: authenticity, precisely because they were made without artistic intent... we think anyway.
One or two further observations: The book is 233 pages long, many pictures take on the double spread, some are full page. The question is, considering how many pictures there are in the archive and how difficult it must have been to break down to the final choice, why were so few images chosen and expanded over so much page spread? There are other petty niggles, but otherwise, there is pleasure in at least partial knowledge of an old criminal world, a shiver or two at the thought of what might have happened. There is some gain too, for the photograhers eye, for an artistic intention.
Most of the images can be dug out here: http://www.pictureaustralia.org
17 September 2008 - 8:35am — Philip CartlandCristóbal Hara - The Imaginary Spaniard
Cristóbal Hara has published two books of an intended trilogy 'The Imaginary Spaniard' and 'Autobiography'.
Bloody scenes (like the pictured car accident), funerals and images of dead animals may be discouraging at first, I must admit it took me a couple of goes before I was hooked, and, one could easily be forgiven for mistaking Hara for just another photojournalist with what at first may appear fairly straight forward images, but on closer inspection a specific symbolic sequencing of images emerge, giving the books their own particular meaning.
'The Imaginary Spaniard' consists of 100 or so pages of both darkness and humor. A priest stands holding forth a crucifix while a wooden penis hangs out from beneath his robe. Another's robe is adorned with a topless woman more likely to be found in a cheap men's magazines. Catholicism is defiled, it seems, but by the costumed faithful themselves.
Bullfighting, another theme, is far from glorious and heroic. The bullfighters are neither tall nor handsome nor caught in perfect posture. The bulls die ingloriously, hampered by a pack of snapping dogs, and then their bodies are dumped by bulldozer. Death, sex, power, nature and religion entwine in this fiesta-like setting, broken only by the dullest of street scenes, empty of people, interludes, like chapters.
The parting image is sad, under the baking sun a downtrodden dog looks back at us, perhaps it is on the brink of starvation.
'Autobiography', the second of the books, raises the temperature a little. Horses feature throughout, often in panic mode, while shirtless handlers display their power over them, tender only with the foals. Among this apparent chaos a picture shows two horses in private and tender fornication.
Jesus appears frequently, mirrored by wild trees or celebrated by white cloaked people from the holy processions of Easter, either look ominous or dishevelled, certainly not as the tourist would wish to see. Death and sex, religion, violence all the same themes hit the stage as the book builds to a crescendo of horses leaping through flames during what appears to be the traditional 'Luminares' fiesta on the eve of Saint Anthony's day, the patron saint of four footed beasts. Riding the horses through the flames purifies them.
The final series of the book leave us with burnt out effigies, paper mache and plastic cartoon like dolls, with super sexualised parts burnt, smouldering into the night. Again we are led to find out for ourselves that these effigies are burnt after March 19 celebrations, St. Joseph's Day, eve of the vernal equinox, and the beginning of Spring. This is all leading me to believe the book is modelled loosely around the various seasonal festivals.
I really like these books, but too much is spent on the burnt out effigies and throughout the carved images of Jesus, both which may have been best applied in small amounts.
I'm looking forward to the 3rd in the series.
17 September 2008 - 8:32am — Philip CartlandMala Noche - by Antoine D''AGATA
If by participating in life, somehow, regardless of your intentions, you inevitably participate in its decline, what can you do to transcend it? My answer: you can describe it. In this sense I feel the images below by Antoine D'AGATA, as presented in threes and fours here on the web do exactly that.
When finally one tires of scientifically defining life (who knows we may at last come to know this is impossible), and projecting its future (we already know the universal answer to that) all that is left that works for me is visual poetry, and these photos are bitter-sweet poetry.
The series "Mala Noche" shows life in the Mexican slums.
17 September 2008 - 8:27am — Philip CartlandThe frontline
One of the things that interest me about 'weeds' is that they are like rebel plants. You'll find them taking root in the most obscure and remarkable places throughout London. They are living evidence of nature in defiance against management.
There are very few aspects of the British landscape that are not 'managed.' One weird consequence of this is the abundance of funny shaped trees everywhere, trees that have had their branches lopped off to keep them within the urban safety requirements.
Lakes and ponds are particularly well managed. I was once very disappointed to learn that the fish in a lake I was fishing were restocked annually and, furthermore, were infertile.
Nature management is as old as the hills in England and spread far beyond its own borders. When England carried its mastery over nature to Africa through the colonies, suddenly the wilderness was defined, and ownership of its creatures established. Locals who had hunted as a livelihood became poachers and so started the whole african wildlife legacy we have today.
Perhaps this legacy began in such a place as Epping forest (that is if we don't go back into the psychology of the Garden of Eden) where, in the 12 century, Henry III asserted royal ownership and hunting rights over all the wild deer. The forest commoners where allowed to gather wood and foodstuffs, and to graze livestock, but the wild part and the right to destroy it, the valuable part, was Royal.
In Tudor times Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth I hunted in the forest from the Queen Elizabeth's Hunting Lodge which still stands today as a museum.
The forest was saved from encroachment by the Epping Forest Act passed in 1878. The act stopped all illegal enclosure, halting the shrinkage of the forest that this had caused, and the Crown's right to deer and venison was terminated.
Until the outbreak of BSE in 1996 commoners still exercised their right to graze cattle and every summer herds of cattle would roam freely in the southern part of the forest.
Long horn cattle were reintroduced in 2001, to restore the balance that grazing had provided, but their movements are tightly restricted or should I say managed (as are the deer of the forest) to reduce conflict with traffic resulting from the increased urban population density.
It is extremely presumptuous of us to believe that 'nature', in its entirety, can be managed, especially against the sheer human weight that lies on its borders. The need to define, categorise, measure, control, conserve, contain has done little to prevent our awesome impact on the environment as a whole. Those nations with the greatest ethic of conservation have actually contributed the largest part of that global impact.
Maybe we shouldn't despair; as much as we feel that we have control over nature, it'll still live on, in its wild state, taking seed in the darker recesses of our world and mind, and I guess will choose to appear in the most unlikely and unexpected of places, the moment we run out of steam.
17 September 2008 - 8:26am — Philip CartlandFatal impact
The following story was bought to my awareness by Blaine Harden's book, Africa - Dispatches from a fragile continent, and appears to be corroborated by many other bits and bobs of info, reports and research articles, that I've found dotted over the net. The story remains one of the classic examples of do-gooders, with the best of intentions, messing up. I've included a few images of my own taken in the region. You should also click on the satellite image thumb below for an awesome view of this desert lake.
The oil rich Norwegians, being a seafaring nation and rather good at fishing, were asked by the Kenyan Government to help the Turkana turn a virtually unexploited fish resource into hard cash. Lake Turkana is a ecologists paradise, with 47 species of fish, seven being endemic, but the Norwegians were interested mainly in the Nile Tilapia, a fish that breeds in the shallows of Ferguson's Gulf by the ton.
Once the Norwegian International Development Agency (NORAD), had completed the appropriate investigations and plans, the Turkana Fishermen's Cooperative (TFCS, 1965) in Kalekol was called into action to begin the first commercial fishing scheme on the lake by enticing more pastoral Turkana with promising incentives. They were encouraged to take up donated fishing nets and boats and taught the best modern way to fish. A research vessel, transported all the way from Norway to Mombasa was hauled overland to Ferguson's gulf.
Then came the road , an all weather road, connecting the main highways of Kenya with Lodwar, the nearest town to Kalakol on the lakes shore. By the early 80's NORAD had also completed their crowning achievement, a Ksh30 million fish processing factory to assist the TFCS.
As many as 20,000 fishermen were employed by the early 1980s, including a large component of migrants from shores of Lake Victoria who came to partake of the boom. But the refrigeration unit didn't last long, a couple of days in fact before it was closed down. Bringing the temperature down from 100 degrees required far more expense in diesel generated electricity than frozen fish fillets could bring in return, and far more clean water was required than was available (Lake Turkana is extremely brackish, drinking it is like drinking soapy bath water)
Then came the drought that was already causing hunger on a mass scale in Ethiopia. The Omo river fed by the now failed rains of the catchment area in Ethiopian highlands, reduced its input dramatically. The Ferguson gulf shallows promptly dried up, the shore receded 2km away and the fish moved to deeper waters or moved elsewhere to better breeding grounds. Out of practical reach without more mechanisation, further proper storage facilities and yet more revenue to compensate for the increased difficulties! In 1986 the processing plant was shut down completely and has not been used since.
Fishing had enforced a settled way of life. Those who couldn't leave to resume their pastoral existence were stuck without a renewable resource. Their livestock had grazed the land in the reachable vicinity to the roots while trees had been chopped down for firewood. They were left little alternative but to accept food aid or scrape by on fish which traditionally was a last resort anyway and considered the livlihood of a failure. When I went to Kalekol in the 90's they were selling trinkets made from fish bone to a trickle of tourists passing through to view the 'traditional' Turkana village.
In the review of their failures, NORAD belatedly discovered in the records at Lodwar, evidence that this was not the first time the bay had dried up. But more importantly, the Turkana, who had never actually been asked in the first place, revealed that their interest in cows (like the Masai they believe all cows of the earth to be their own) was a well founded, tried and tested, survival adaptation, finely tuned to the whims of spotty rainfall and regular drought. Already the best solution to a crap situation.
Besides the fact that Turkana livestock are extremely hardy, the Norwegians learned, further, that cows link family (dowry being the most basic of example) to family, clan to clan, that in time of drought they might shift their herds away from affected areas, to relatives in less affected areas, responding to the whim of the rainfall, thereby watering down the risk. Mobility in harsh environments is key, any semi desert region will show just that, and Turkana cows are a highly efficient way of extracting available energy and storing it.
And so this ambitions plan to pull the Turkana out of their misery, was a flop. Planning and organisation and an insurmountable number of consultations and Nordic knowhow, all went to nothing before two very basic and crucial facts, that the lake dries up and Turkana live for their cows (literally).
This legacy continues too, with irrigation schemes and their unconsidered effects. I also discovered that a new plant, Prosopis juliflora was introduced and now there are many negative reports, one being that the bush is over running Northen Kenya and causing causing teeth problems among livestock that eat it, ie their teeth are falling out (see: Mwangi, Esther & Brent Swallow, June 2005, Invasion of Prosopis juliflora and local livelihoods: Case study from the lake Baringo area of Kenya. ICRAF Working Paper - no. 3. Nairobi: World Agroforestry Centre). Again, the Turkana have their own way of managing trees, as revealed by this study. Finally, as of 2003 NORAD has been funding the Turkana Livestock Development Program (PDF) the main input being vetinary services, I'd really like to investigate this one.
Judging by the sheer number of research papers and complex reports spouting out of Africa, many of them turning over the same old ground, it is hardly surprising that more harm is being done than good.
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Notes: I have tried in the post above, short and webloggy as it's meant to be, to cross check facts from as many sources available to me, but with my limited access and time there are questions that I cannot answer. Consider this a work in progress which I'll add to over time, after all this is just one piece of a long story.
Finally as a point of interest, while digging through all the info I have, I came across this snippet from a letter (RTF file) which appears to have been written to send to the Human right commission and posted on a minority right group website.. Demands include include:
"The natural resources that exist in the district have not yet been exploited. (There are mineral water sources at Elliye springs, precious stone such as gypsum in Napusmor and green garnet in Horiu, including Lake Turkana's fishing grounds). A Norwegian fishing venture was abandoned in the 1980s due to political disagreements between the Kenya and Norway and the government to date has not done anything about the structures that were put in place by the Norwegian government."
The political disagreement bit is true, but not the primary reason why the plant was closed, I believe the Kenyan government felt Norwegian aid was in fact aiding the opposition and the Government wanted all cash through them and only them. But the desire to have the fish factory thing restarted is ludicrous.
Other notes: The water level of the lake has been dropping steadily for some years: a decline of 10m was recorded between 1975 and 1993, primarily due to reduced inflow from the Omo River in Ethiopia due to irrigation and drought upstream
However, following the El Nino rains in the Ethiopian Highlands in the last two years, the Ferguson's Gulf - a protected cove to the North-west of the lake has again filled up and fish catches have suddenly increased, making the lake the main source of fish in the country. (1999 Nation). No sign of the processing plant coming alive.
Other great sources:
17 September 2008 - 8:24am — Philip Cartland"Projects are frequently based on the assumption that Western ideas and behaviors form appropriate models for the pastoral situation or that what pastoralists say they do ("ideal behavior') and what they have been observed to do ('ideal behavior') are accurate representations of the pastoral system."
But, what does it mean?
I'm interested when photography falls off the literal radar into the subjective. Part of looking at photography requires something to meditate on. But, I suspect, it's here that the common (in fact not so common as we commonly might think) audience jumps ship. Particularly reflective of this 'jumping ship' is a
recent comment on a blog by Tim Atherton regarding Fumimasa Hosokawa's conceptual project, where,
"...the artist researches public records going back 100 years to find obituaries of people who died on the streets in and around Tokyo in accidents, fights or from illness. Hosokawa visited the locations--determined from the descriptions and addresses in the obituaries--and photographed the sites in black and white in an "official-looking" documentary style."
Denizen's comment says:
"Can you tell me what's the connection between the fact that somebody happened to die in these surroundings a hundred years ago and a b&w picture taken today when even the oldest trees are unlikely to have been around at that time?"
At what point does the conceptual become so remote that it loses touch? Judge for yourself among some of my favourites below.
Nadja Groux says, regarding her pictures:
"...in my work the birth canal relates to the birth of oneself. The bruise and scars on the body are a metaphor of the difficulty of this process and show the element of madness in an apparent peaceful environment of floral wallpapers."
Roni Horn's images of the Thames cause us to reflect on the darker side of the river:
"The Thames attracts a very high number of suicides, many from other countries, and a significant number of so-called deaths by misadventure and death by extremely violent means - lots of dismemberment and so on."
Invisible structures by Xavier Ribas
"At first glance, these images make us think of a wild space, natural, undefined, as if without motif. However, this disorganised and entropic space is, in fact, a historical site, the site (niche) of a buried city beneath the rainforest floor...The memory that is represented in these images is not the monument, but a projection, a threshold, a memory 'which is not yet', or that is as yet 'unthought', as in a state of 'inversion' (Robert Smithson). Or, a memory which, simply, does not let itself be thought, as if the rainforest was not only the direct consequence of the desolation and the crumbling of a civilisation, but also the necesary strategy for the preservation of its fragments: we could say that it hides itself, that it buries itself and that it eludes us."
Reflections on Frankenstein, The Arctic Circle, and The History of Science, an exhibition of a new three-part series of large-scale photographs by Catherine Wagner that examines the synthesis of science, nature, and humanity in contemporary society and is inspired by Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
Final notes:
Maybe photography has run out of space, forcing photographers to dig deeper, to squeeze every ounce of use from it, or, perhaps photography is a useless story telling medium, with nothing like the fluidity of film, where gaps must be filled by metaphorical linkages.
17 September 2008 - 8:23am — Philip CartlandThe Quiet Naturalist
It should be common knowledge now that around the time when Darwin was thinking about the origin of the species by natural selection (1850s), Alfred Russell Wallace, who was collecting specimens in the Malay Archipelago had already sent a letter to Darwin putting in very succinct terms the 'survival of the fittest' idea. Perhaps because of Wallace's quiet and shy manner and his poor background, his emergence as an unsung hero is additionally emphasised. And so we have books, such as the Spice Island Voyage by Tim Severin, which traces Wallace's travels around the Malay islands.
One of Severin's missions was to observe how the natural environment has changed since the time of Wallace. Wallace's own much quoted words, referring to the King Bird of Paradise which he had seen, are cited:
'I thought of the long ages of the past, during which the successive generations of this little creature had run their course, year by year being born, and living and dying amid these dark and gloomy woods, with no intelligent eye to gaze upon their loveliness; to all appearance such a wanton waste of beauty. Such ideas excite a feeling of melancholy. It seems sad, that on the one hand such exquisite creatures should live out their lives and exhibit their charms only in these wild inhospitable regions, doomed for ages yet to come to hopeless barbarism; while on the other hand, should civilized man ever reach these distant lands, and bring moral, intellectual, and physical light into the recesses of these virgin forests, we may be sure that he will so disturb the nicely-balanced relations of organic and inorganic nature as to cause the disappearance, and finally the extinction, of these very beings whose wonderful structure and beauty he alone is fitted to appreciate and enjoy. This consideration must surely tell us that all living things were not made for man.?
Interestingly I found the same extract in the preface of my rare copy of, The Gardeners of Eden, by Alistair Graham a book analysing and laying uncomfortably bare the often aggressive motivations behind game saving.
Though Wallace shot his Bird of Paradise knowing it would be of value to science and worth money back in England as a stuffed specimen we do not take this action as a hypocrisy; a bird in hand can be worth two in the bush when it comes to preserving species. And so today Wallace is acknowledged as a pioneer of environmental awareness.
So what changes did Tim Severin find around a 150 years later? What is left of the Flora and Fauna in the islands where Wallace meticulously indulged his collecting? Well it's a mixed picture, thriving diversity here, and wanton environmental exploitation there. But most importantly there is still a chance. However, if Wallace had accompanied Severin on his spice island voyage, his worst shock would not have been in the teeming city streets nor in the forest. It would have been when he looked over the side of Severin's tradition sailing craft as he sailed into Ambon Harbour. The exquisite underwater coral garden, which Wallace had described with such enthusiasm, was irretrievably gone.'
17 September 2008 - 8:20am — Philip CartlandLife and Death in Eden
Imagine a pacific island.
Palms and blue sea, fruits and jungle-embraced mountains; a little island paradise.
Inhabit your island with 15 men and 13 women, 5 Tahitian men and 10 English sailors - the women: Tahitian. Men outnumber women, but bear in mind Tahitian women are quite 'liberal' and under certain cultural circumstance allow the indulgence of multiple sexual partners.
Our islanders have not simply appeared upon the stage out of nowhere, so let's allow them a ship in which to arrive. However, shortly the ship is set alight and all thoughts of return to whence they came are cancelled. Why? Well, because a return to the outside world would, for some of them, in all likelihood synchronize with a waiting hangman's noose; they are mutineers and have cast adrift their captain.
Now forget our mutineers for a while, say, 18 years.
At last, Captain **** is sniffing about the pacific. 18 years have passed and he stumbles across the island. He steps into a waiting canoe and once ashore discovers quite a few women and kids but only one man! He subsequently learns that the particular shortage of men arises, not by the hand of natural calamity, but largely by consequence of murder.
Idyllic!
Those of you who know the story will have guessed by now that I am talking about the Pitcairn Island occupied by the Bounty mutineers in January 1790. A true story quite well investigated by Trevor Lummis in his book 'Life and Death in Eden'; an intriguing and gripping account, apt to blow away any funny ideal of a utopian society in Paradise.
I have come across various other stories, differently flavoured, but which basically throw light upon similar themes: man against nature or man against man. One of my favorites is 'The outpost of Progress' by Joseph Conrad; two men trapped in the jungle of West Africa are waiting for a supply steamer that doesn't come. They end up killing one another over a bag of sugar! (Huuum, reminds me of my two bosses fighting over nothing!)
Anyway, I write only to pass on my enthusiasm.
17 September 2008 - 8:18am — Philip CartlandGoing backwards
I was looking at some vernacular photography some of which was so charming I began to feel a great loss. Where is the wonder and humor among the endless reams of obsessively 'placed' large format portraits and images of dumpy places, derelict buildings, vacant wastelands - the intentionally 'odd' or inexplicable or downright boring, stuff?
Perhaps its about temperament; I'm by nature a reductionist, who must get rid of all the clutter (coming from a cluttered mind no doubt), back to basics, who needs the sanity of the natural and the poetically 'real', who doesn't like the bombardment of modern culture and all it shiny junk, precision and flashy attention seeking - who wishes to seek the zen simplicity, the old, the rare.
The two images above came from the small book, "photo trouvee" with snaps collected by Michel Frizot and Cedric de Veigy. Its easy not to notice the cat in the second one.
The image below is one of my own, of my father at a agricultural show in Kenya. Humorous as it may be it also has a very sad streak, of course you wouldn't know from the image, but when I was 15 and away at boarding school, a car he was working on fell off its supporting jack (there were no safety blocks), onto his chest and he died.
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's 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.
17 September 2008 - 8:13am — Philip Cartland