blog.imagemlatente

ahem…

it’s online

-> would not have been possible without Filipe. A BIG THANK YOU.

 

oporto week pt.1

 

 

prelude

 

.1 arrival

.2 os milagres acontecem a horas incertas

 

 

this is not a diary

 

.3  could be

.4 more like a narrative

.5 on masochism

.6

.7 secret access to my darkroom  - shhh

.8

.9

.10

.11

.12

.13

.14

.15

.16 drive

.17 imperial

lisbon weekend pt.2

 

 

.1

.2

.3 pyramid tops

.4

.5 kisses

.6

.7 bairro alto

.8

.9 portuguese “state” bank headquarters

.10 i’m always there

.11 fish head

.12

.13 saldanha

.14 wage slaves - just like us

.15

.16

.17 parallel universe

.18 

.19

.20 there are lens caps down there, yes there are

.21

.22 

.23

.24

.25 avenida

.26 bairro alto

.27 Eça ou “porque é que os escritores escrevem livros”

.28

lisbon weekend pt.1

 

 

.1 “there”

.2 “here”

.3 farewell Évora

.4

.5

.6

.7

.8

.9

.10

.11 catwoman

.12 |..|

.13 “don’t give up”

.14

.15 “there”

(or, how did photojournalism “got modern”?)

 
1936, Germany, Olympic diver © Leni Riefenstahl

The recent Martin Parr PDN interview seems to have unleashed the blogosphere pit-bulls - which, I’m sure, makes the author very happy. The statement “you have to disguise things as entertainment, but still leave a message and some poignancy” is where the dogs bite and it’s not hard to figure out why. It’s quite an easy accusation, too easy even, but I’ve heard nothing but random barking.

The statement itself is after all pretty banal, there’s nothing new in it - in essence. It’s in the very nature of photography to “disguise things as entertainment”, there is no specific ideology attached to this, so I even agree with it from that perspective. It’s simply not worth of commentary, as such. Oliviero Toscani is a good example of entertaining, extremely appealing images that deliver quite a message and loads of poignancy. But it is conceived as advertising - expensive, profitable advertising which happens to successfully subvert the language of photojournalism (that’s the interesting message actually). Business as usual, nonetheless.

“Bosnian Soldier”, 1994 © Oliviero Toscani

It gets confusing, though, in the context where this is proposed - one of the decline of the photojournalist as a freelance, independent author facing the triumph of the cheap, innocuous, voracious stock-photography market. The problem with this proposal is that in its detachment from any ideology (”I’m not preaching”, says Parr), it suggests that it is possible to satisfy certain pop corn editorial hunger and still retain an author’s dignity, when in fact it is nothing but a surreptitious justification for selling out to yet another liberal-capital byproduct. A sort of erudite pornography without nakedness, so to say.

This is the exact same strategy traditional hardcore photojournalism applies, an alleged detachment from ideology by claiming a pure witness status - an ontological impossibility - no matter who truly profits with it, but with an ironic adjustment to this new depoliticized world. What truly fascinates Mr Parr is not the “new world order”, which is not about car shows in China and art fairs in the Middle East, but the very profit he refers to in the interview. It is, in the end, a ridiculous, desperate attempt of survival.

One might very much prefer the position of the classic humanist photography - which evokes the mission of exposing the miseries of the world no matter how unpleasant, unentertaining they might look like - despite how hypocrite and naive it usually is, than this proposal to finally accept an almost total submission of authorship to mercantilism. At least the first one retains a certain awareness, a certain sense of guilt of how inadmissible it is to disguise information as info-entertainment. One actually should even prefer the cheap, innocuous stock photography to this alternative for at least it is what it is and not something that pretends to be.

The impressionist painters would make all kinds of graphic design incursions to earn some extra. It is known that several early french photographers would anonymously shoot pornography to earn some extra. It is very well known that Nobuyoshi Araki very non-anonymously shoots for pornographic magazines to earn some extra while he might be shooting to an art book at the exact same time, with a different camera. The difference in all these cases is the authors make a clear separation between the nature of things.

The shocking fact such statement avoids is not that it’s the poignant message that gets disguised as entertainment, it’s the entertainment that (still) gets disguised as a poignant message.

vintage pornography, unknown author (via Vintage Pulchritude )

If Leni Riefenstahl aesthetic ideals were so ridiculed as fascist inspired, if she was so openly criticized for her creative and financial relation with the Third Reich to the point of turning her career after the war into ashes, how should one react to this new kind of submission?

Delivering disguised poignant messages within the context of totalitarianism is the only possible way to deal with censorship, precisely because there’s no other alternative. Ironic, to say the least, is witnessing a democratic society mimicking the exact same process. What is at stake here is not photojournalism versus “stock photography”, it’s a new kind of capital driven censorship.

2008, USA, Olympic divers, “Swifter, Higher and All That” © Paolo Pellegrin