Book review: "Witness in Our Time"

In October last year while taking an online course in documentary photography from ppsop.net, I came to read a 2000-release entitled Witness in Our Time: Working Lives of Documentary Photographers by Ken Light. The back cover tells us what this book is about:

“Documentary photographers explore the crucial issues and events of our time. Building on the traditions and passions of their predecessors, they are devising new strategies to address the obstacles and opportunities created by rapid media changed and intensified cross-cultural conflict. Witness in Our Time traces the recent history of social documentary photography in the words of twenty-two of the genre’s best photographers, editors, and curators, showing that the profession remains vital, innovative, and committed to social change.”

The author, Ken Light, is a documentary photographer himself and teacher at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. The book he has come up with is a labor of love, the result of years of work in interviewing “a small part of the documentary family. The choice was often predicated on accessibility to the photographers and my person knowledge of their work. I wanted to include both the well-known and those less recognized.” (p. 196)

Light includes work by Hansel Mieth (The Depression; the early days of “Life”), Walter Rosenblum’s reminiscences on Lewis Hine, Paul Strand and the Photo League; Michelle Vignes and the formation of the Magnum Photo Agency; Wayne Miller; Peter Magubane’s fascinating and challenging work as a black photographer in Apartheid South Africa; Matt Herron’s coverage on the civil rights movement; and others including Jill Freedman, Mary Ellen Mark, Earl Dotter, Eugene Richards, Susan Meiselas, Sebastiao Salgado, Graciela Iturbide, Antonin Kratochvil, Donna Ferrato, Joseph Rodriguez, Dayanita Singh, and Fazal Sheikh. To round out a fuller picture of the photographic process from concept to print, Light also interviews editors and curators associated with the EPA’s project “DOCUMERICA”, Peter Howe of “Life” & “Outtakes”, Colin Jacobson from “Independent Magazine” & “Reportage”, and Ann Wilkes Tucker’s work on using the power of photography in a museum context.

Naturally, I found this book fascinating and, as you would expect, I found myself drawn more to the life and projects of some photographers than others. Mary Ellen Mark (p. 79) took on many challenges in her early career from a 1970 feature on heroin addiction to an in-depth look at life for the mentally ill at a maximum security mental hospital (1979). She has covered Mother Teresa’s work in Calcutta and the difficulties faced by homeless teens on the streets of Seattle. Mark believes that “documentary photography is about reality, both in it’s authentic sense and it’s surreal sense. For me, nothing is more imaginative, or fascinating, than reality. Great pictures are the images that transcend time and content. That’s what all of us strive for.” (p. 83)

“Witness” is full of advice. Words to the wise from those who have been there and done that.

“If one of my books really sucks, it’s because I did a bad job. If the book upsets people, it’s because I intended it to. I’m responsible, not somebody else. Photographic books reveal you. If you’re a wonderful photographer but an egotistical asshole, it’ll show in the book and it’ll show in the design of the book. If you’re confused–and a lot of us are a lot of the time–that’ll show in the book. It’s a good self-study. When it’s all done, you know who you are.” –Eugene Richards (p. 97)

Susan Meiselas offers interesting insight into the ongoing challenge for documentarians (p. 105-106), to

“continue to be committed and engaged, while at the same time innovative. I fear we have deadened out. You see this in exhibitions, which are often handled in precisely the same manner, or with similar variations. The same is truer in magazines…

A lot of people buy cameras and film, and a lot of people buy photo books of a certain kind. The obvious example is the ‘Day in the Life of’ series. Now, what’s the problem? Why aren’t people interested in what we documentarians are passionate about? Why are we in such a small ghetto?

Doing documentary work is not just building the relationships and shooting. It’s also finding the spaces, be they magazine pages, books, or exhibition spaces, to transform and present the world we see differently. To get work into a public space is not easy. But we have to figure out how to do that effectively, not to mention the biggest problem, which is finding the sponsorship and the support.

We cannot always assume people are going to be interested in what we are involved in. We have to find ways of taking people someplace they don’t expect to go.”

Without a doubt my favorite photographer here, judging at least by the photos featured in this compilation of wisdom, is Brazilian-born Sebastiao Salgado. It could be the fact that he has shot extensively in Mozambique. Or his Brazilian origins. Or the work he has done on behalf of the International Coffee Organization before becoming a photographer (I just assume he shares the same love for coffee as I do). Whatever it is, I found his philosophy on “provoking discussion” through photography something to grapple with and a reminder of how much of an impact photography can have on the world around us.

“I’ve seen many difficult things, many hard things. It is important to have the capacity to adapt… You see yourself acting, photographing to show something to the other side, to people who did not have the opportunity to be there… In the end you see documentary photography more as a vector than anything else…

I have never put myself in a situation where I have a moral questions about whether or not to photograph, such as, ‘ Do I have a right to photograph when the death is there in front of me?’… I never ask myself these questions, because I asked myself the more important questions before I arrive there. Do we have the right to the division of resources that we have in the world? Do I have the right to have the house that I have, to live where I live? Do I have the right to eat when others don’t eat? These are the basic questions.

I believe that there is not a person in the world that must be protected from pictures. Everything that happens in the world must be shown and people around the world must have an idea of what’s happening to the other people around the world. I believe this is the function of the vector that the documentary photographer must have, to show one person’s existence to another.” (p. 111)

Salgado shuts down any notion that this business can be a come-and-go whim. It “must be your life one hundred percent. If you find you cannot do this, you must find where your passion really is. But if your passion is in photography, documentary photography, that must be your way of life.” (p. 116)

I also appreciate New Delhi, India-born Dayanita Singh’s work on “a truer India” (starting on p. 148). A product of the upper middle class, she saw that work from India rarely showed Indian families from such a background. Editors in America couldn’t believe that these were real families in India, convinced instead that they were living in the U.K. or U.S.. Frustration set in for Singh and she began a personal project to photograph Indian families from her socioeconomic background. While it doesn’t pull on the heart strings like projects of young girls being sold into prostitution (which she had already covered loads of while researching and shooting for AIDS-related work), she really wanted to show reality and break stereotypes.

Singh “find(s) it harsher in the American media than in the European media. The British are going to have a different view of India, of course. They always want the colonial touch, they always want the Raja stories or the last tea planter in Darjeeling and stories like that.

The Americans like either the exotic or the disaster. But I think it’s because we have been catering to that and presenting that again and again. Already there’s a small shift from when I met the photo editors at the beginning of my project to now. People are able to look at my work and say, ‘Great, we must put out this different aspect of India.’

I get furious when foreign photographers reduce India to blobs of color and exotica. But photographers who work longer and are more specific in what they are seeking have amazing bodies of work. I admire them for being able to enter this alien culture, which often baffles me as well, not knowing the language or the nuances and coming away with such in-depth work. It’s the fly-by-night photographers who succumb to that superficial vision of India all in color and chaos. I do not mean this for foreign photographers alone; we in India do this ourselves.” (p. 151-152).

Finally, Fazal Sheikh (born in NYC to a Kenyan father and American mothers) tells the story of heading to the Kenyan coast in 1992 to document the refugees from Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia who gathered in northern Kenya seeking peace from the wars raging around them. As he landed in a Sudanese camp he remembers being with other photographers who

“seemed to know exactly what they wanted. I experienced a kind of paralysis and had no idea how to begin working in the midst of such turmoil. The spokesman’s description of how I should meet this place and the throng of people in the camp seemed to banish thought. Now, as I look back upon that time of unknowing, I see what a turning point it was for me.

I decided to stay on in the village, giving myself time to sift through the initial impressions. During the first few days, I wandered throughout the camp without photographing. Eventually, I approached Deng Dau, the elder of the community. He greeted me generously, and we sat together in his home. During the course of our conversation, I asked his permission to begin working in his village. He turned to me and said, ‘Why do you ask me? I am only a refugee.’

The meaning of the words was clear–’If I am a refugee, you may do as you like, and it is not my place to give, or withhold, consent.’ But the tone of his voice held another, latent meaning. Its tenor laid bare the irony the irony of those words. It had been a trespass for people to storm through the camp without consulting those whom they were photographing. In the following moments, he agreed to the collaboration, and we began a work of documentation, which continued on for two years.

With this approach, I discovered a way of working that I have retained on other projects. Now, I recognize the initial sense of unknowing when first visiting a community and embrace it as part of the process. I see it as a sign of receptivity to what the place and the people have to offer. I begin by asking the members of the community for their willingness to collaborate in the documentation…” (p. 156)

After digesting this compilation, I feel like I’ve received a rich cross-section of insight and history on documentary photography. May we not become those fly-by-nighters. May we seek out mutual understanding, where possible and in culturally-appropriate ways, of those whom we photograph; lending them the dignity they deserve no matter their life situation at the moment.

March 14, 2010 | Categories: book reviews | 1 Comment »