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Magnum is a kind of dream world, I imagine it as a real community… It’s a photographic agency with a strong humanistic ethos, which keeps inspiring and educating photographers and viewers for so many decades. A personal point of reference for rethinking photography, judging work and light up imagination.

Three new photographers were nominated for membership in Magnum this year, after a long deliberation during the AGM last June: Allessandra Sanguinetti, Michael Subotzky and Jacob Aue Sobol (The road to full membership passes through the succesfull completion of both, a nominee and an associate stage -lasting 2 years each).

Let’s highlight a brief instance in their personal trajectory.

Jacob Aue Sobol became known when moved from Denmark to Greenland in order to document an isolated fishing village, gave up few weeks after, but ended up to soon return back and create some captivating images of that society, and mostly his love affair with a local girl. Sabine, the resultant book was published last year. Photos from Sabine, as well as personal notes and reviews, can be found in his website www.auesobol.dk , or by clicking the picture above.

Alessandra Sanguinetti has been featured in many publications recently and achieved wide acclaim for her project The Adventures of Guille and Belinda and the Enigmatic Meaning of their Dreams. She met Guille and Belinda two young cousins, ten and nine years old respectively, while she was working in some remote Argentinean farms for another project. The final photographs, taken within a period of 5 years, portray a process of growing up, but through an innovative angle by focusing on the psychological world of those young girls. In her own words, “the time when their dreams, fantasies, and fears would fuse seamlessly with real day-to-day life are ending, and the photographs I have made intend to crystallize this rapidly disappearing very personal and free space” (read further in the website of Light Work, where ‘The adventures…’ were previously exhibited). And visit her website to view this and her other projects by clicking at the image above or following this link www.alessandrasanguinetti.com.

Mikhael Subotzky, 25 years old, has already made a great impression, especially with his final university project on the prison system in South Africa, Die Vier Hoeke (The Four Corners). The photographs from this project can be seen in his website, or by clicking the panoramic image below which is part of his work.

In the first picture of the presentation, Nelson Mandela is quoted: “It is said that no one trully knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.” It reminds me something that Zygmunt Bauman said in a recent interview, that we need to critically view a society, even if there seem to be only few weak points, the same as we judge a bridge by how strong all its pillars are and not the majority of them.

Leeds, Olympus OM-4, Zuiko 100/2.8 © 2006 Christos Stavrou

What are the clouds? An architecture of chance?

[...]

Maybe the cloud is emptiness returning,

just like the man who watches it this morning.

Jorge Luis Borges, 1996

London, Olympus OM-4, Zuiko 55/1.2 © 2006 Christos Stavrou

Flickr users seem to be upset with issues of copyright again. It was not long ago that one of the most popular Flickr photogs from Iceland found out that a company in UK was selling her pics in expensive canvas without her having any idea or any british pounds of course. Now, another user, from the States this time, found out that his photograph of his 15 years old young sister was part of a Virgin Mobile campaign in Australia… again without him having a clue or an australian dollar for it!… Well, at least Virgin attributed the pic to his flickr knickname…

I doubt, however, that the corporation is legally worried at the moment. They actually used a picture licensed by the photographer under Flickr’s Creative Commons Atribution Only license, which simply allows them to use for commercial purposes such released photos as long they credit the name of the photographer. Moral issues regarding the rights of the photographer to be informed, or of the involved model -who was after all a minor and had not provided a model release, might indeed complicate this case.

But overall, it becomes clear that many Flickr users have not fully realised yet what means to participate in the innovative licenses offered by Flickr. Neither do they really seem to suspect that even a rich big business might take something seemingly trivial (as long as it has an adequate for enlargement resolution), such as a casual snapshot of your little sister and her friend in the backyard, substantially crop it and manipulate it if needed (as in this case) and then happily include it to their national campaign with a specific message on it. “Happily”with emphasis for their advertising department’s budget of course.

Billboard (with or without Flickr’s help?) © 2007 Christos Stavrou

Someone might argue that the Creative Commons lisenses are not so bad especially because the photographer’s name and url are advertised. And yes, these relaxed licences could promote creativity and co-operation. However, personally I don’t particularly like Flickr. One of the reasons is exactly the pragmatic result of the current situation. I’m not fond of such ’sweet’ and free opportunities that it provides for corporations and other bussinesses, usually at the expense of the photographer.

By the way, I would advice everyone ready to upload photos online to be sceptical and clear about understanding the consequences and differences between an ‘all rights reserved’ and ’some rights reserved’ release. Also to check the resolution/size of their photo, as well as the policies of different websites. For example, I would never upload/post a photo of mine in the BBC website, because that media corporation has a policy to gain automatic copyright upon anything posted there. If you think this is a small issue, consider that from the moment someone else has the copyright of your image then it might be quite problematic for you to use again your own… ‘not-any-more’ picture.

Leaving behind the No Idea bus in the borders of Queensland © Christos Stavrou

One further implication that I feel is lurking somewhere between these issues is the fear of trivialisation. In two different ways: First, I feel that there is a tendency, in what we have analysed so far, for the weakening of the role and value of the photographer in general. For example, in our case, the photographer was not informed, neither had any control and participation in the process of his photo’s commodification. Of course this is not so new, but is not desirable or unavoidable either.

Setting apart all the increase in expressive means offered by Flickr, as such websites keep growing from a pool of visual artifacts to a flood of available photos, the particular author or creator is not necessarily more, but maybe less important; the creative unique force rather tends to be surpressed under immerse productivity. Over-productivity does not necessarily mean higher creativity, originality and artistic investment. In fact, it’s rather that the commercial interests have been fast to gain benefit from the new conditions, and although some new talent will be expected to try to differentiate itself, the issue of who really makes the image (and what is this image) risks to become increasingly burried under a use-capacity, especially the business-oriented functionality of a photograph.

Watch this continuous production of available images, the numbing waves of imagery, by clicking at the picture below, which will transfer you to FlickrVision website.

And here I might touch the surface of another little fear, the second facet of a perceived trivialisation. This is a fear which is not new to our times, it has been addressed again and again, every time that technological advances have made photography accessible to a bigger mass of people. The fear relates to a perception that photography itself loses its value, under the strain of overproduction and nonetheless overconsumption. The questions and balances are subtle. In brief, we may ask, is this another moral panic, springing from the ubiquitous clicking of digital cameras around us, or a realistic threat of losing the really creative aspect of photography; and maybe even more, the opportunity to stop, watch and meaningfully interact, thus of losing the ‘traditional’ creative viewer as well?

‘A smile every time’ by Adam Horgan © 2007

After few weeks of a blogging fast and lack of any writing… I’d like to return back to the exhibition “Do not Refreeze. Photography behind the Berlin Wall.” It will be touring the UK during the next months and it showcases the -unknown so far to West- work of a group of innovative and subversive photographers working in East Germany for more than 40 years after the War.

Crop (above) from the relevant article published in Black & White Photography (Issue 72, May 2007) . At top a photograph by Gundula Schulze Eldowy. She photographed a neighborhood of Berlin documenting a community’s permanent melancholia; as she put it “they had lost their ability to dream.” The photography of the era offers a dynamic, critical and democratic documentery of the human and social condition during the socialist regime and through political change. Although, these photographers are coming from different backgrounds, they have created a superb photographic reality which highlighted an ideological and emotional conflict.

As shown in our previous post, the GDR authorities were aware of the power of the image and were highly tuned to pass their messages, for example censoring and manipulating a public photo in order to reinforce their normative image of happy people and social consensus.

However, the curator Matthew Shaul (who was fundamental in the conception and materialisation of this exhibition) has posed this intriguing question: How did such an extraordinary visual work, with its obviously subversive and critical character, came into being in a society that was not going to allow any opposition? In other words, how did the authorities fail to see that photography could be constructed to turn against them?

And he answers this question: “Because photography wasn’t considered to be art.”

crop from an exhibited photograph by Sybille Bergemann, Hoppenrade, 1975

The general perception of photography at that time was vague with no written definitions of what should be or should do, escaping any perception of dangerous or critical potential. Notably, photographers after graduation were to become general members of the Artists Union, but without being in a separate section no official supervision and control was excerted. So unlike, let’s say, painting, literature, theatre and other arts, photography enjoyed a comparative freedom and even a public promotion or at least without official interference, despite its dynamic critical stance (B&W Photography 72/2007).

More information about the touring days and venues here

This photograph above (Seelin 1981, by Sybille Bergemann) is part of the sensational exhibition ”Do not Refreeze: Photography Behind the Berlin Wall’ which I visited recently in the Gallery Cornerhouse in Manchester. This touring exhibition (which will be visiting Hartfield, Southend-on-Sea and Wolverhampton during the next winter and spring) brings together 9 artists who developed their practice in the former East Germany during the Cold War.

Bergemann took this picture for GDR’s fashion magazine Sibylle. She asked the models to appear as if they were annoyed by the weather. The photo was published in the magazine but was retouched showing the girls loughing. The editor had said, “Our girls don’t look like that”. The GDR authorities, ”insisted their citizens always had to be depicted happy and smiling” (’Black & White Photography‘ May 2007, issue 72)

PS: On the other hand, remember: no smiles are accepted if you appply for a passport. Ironically, you need to pose with a neutral expression so new biometric scanners can accurately read your facial features.

Mykonos, from a trip few years ago (Above & Below: 2004 © Christos Stavrou)

I want to wake up tomorrow morning, open the door and have a coffee at one of the coffee-shops in the port.

Then, let the breeze and the heat touch my face, maybe have a cigarette or two, and order a beer with seafood, probably octupus cooked in the sun. Perhaps a fresh spinach-pie with feta cheese from the local bakery as well… and much later a parfait ice cream reading the boring news in the paper.

The first days of the smoking ban in UK [edit: in fact, England] have gone and life goes on… It’s not surprising; people adapt as they always do, almost in any conditions, they rationalise and go on. People working in a nearby building told me that according to the new rules, they need to go 25 meters away from the building’s entrance in order to smoke. ”But isn’t there another building?” I asked…

Smoking is associated with living 10 years less and is considered a major contributing factor to health problems. And yes, at last we can fully provide for non-smokers now, but the question remains, why are there not any, just few, places to serve smokers? First we suffocated the non-smokers, now let’s suffocate the smokers?

Unfortunately, following the recent UK political trend: one more liberty is to go. And none seems to pay attention. Difficult also here to ignore the highly patronising and selective mentality of the new measure and its followers, disguising the attack on personal choices to simple -even if unhealthy- things in life! (What about all other things that are killing us? Does the list end anywhere? Or we should forbid everything in the name of health and safety!?).

The question in personal level becomes even more painful; under an increasing barrage of normative rules, does self-determination lead to self-destruction?

A growing tendency. Cig break in the streets (© 2007 Christos Stavrou)

Interestingly, it was not long ago that the socially stigmatised smoking of the present was a socially promoted habbit and behaviour, from cinema heros to prime ministers. And now smoking is transforming again, to a vague and grotesque act of individual liberty…

Left: No smoking (© 2007 Christos Stavrou)

And it seems that a society creates problems , such as of the existing smokers, only when there’s a decided action ready to be imposed, within the crucial problematic of regulating populations. In other words, is the public service of few smokers such a social problem -that has to be totally denied? Or, smoking just became a problem, when governments realised that the huge income generated from cigarette taxes could be replaced and actually increased (plus higher productivity rates) by a new health prevention policy? In order to enforce the latter new social problems needed to be defined. Other similar ‘new’ problems will follow (for example, watch out for the growing discourse about obesity)…

Ok, let’s forget all this and enjoy an arresting photograph of the writer Andre Pieyre de Mandiargues by Henri Cartier-Bresson (Italy 1933)

I have just received an interesting email from the lovely and smiley Jessops’s employee, portrayed in the first photograph of my last post about Jessops. Apart of thanking me for his 15′ of fame, he also informed me that he is a music producer and photographer, and his website is jonstanleyaustin.com

Looking at his pictures I really liked this one below and asked to know more:

The image has an obvious Holga feeling, nevertheless it is a digitally made photo with a very interesting technique involving some.. gravy too, yes indeed! Here’s what John wrote to me:

“I’ve been experimenting with “texture layers” on photoshop, to give the pictures a bit more depth.

For this picture, there are two layers: the original image, and a texture layer.

For the texture layer i basically took a picture of some paper with gravy poored over it. I then took this picture and put it on top of my original picture, then set the blending mode to multiply, and reduced the opacity. The detail from the texture layer now shows through onto the image. Details like the creases in the paper, and the brown from the gravy. I believe it gives the image a sort of aged feel.

But other aspects of the image totally contradict this. Like the extreme blur and extreme vibrancy of the green in the grass. These aspects were applied within photoshop also, as they are two traits that a “holga” camera is known for. I have a Holga, and i like it alot, and i like the images that it produces. So i just tried to recreate its magic on my digital images.

It’s not exactly the same as a holga image, if i wanted that i would of used my holga. I just like experimenting with my digital pictures. There’s a lot of possibilities, so you may as well try them”

Does it make sense? Yes, I think so. And although there might be other, digital ways to recreate texture within a picture, I find his technique fascinating.

Oh and something else, (following a previous point made in this blog, that many film vs digital arguments are sterile and misleading), it’s so interesting to see how people mix and reproduce film, digital files, ideas, food.. Creativity is endless!

Jessops recently announced that will be closing 81 stores. This amounts to closing around a quarter of its stores and slashing 550 jobs. Jessops is re-organising and restructuring its business. The company blames the increasigly tough market conditions, especially the ’severe price deflation’ of memory cards and digital compact cameras, and ’shortages of key product lines caused by financial insecurity’ (British Journal of Photography, 154/7640)

So, whereas prices are fast-falling, chances are that many of us would soon be able to order more cappuccinos rather than cameras (and by the way, smokers could be served nowhere at all, following the brilliantly immature and stupid policies of our times: first suffocate those who don’t smoke, now suffocate those who smoke!…)

The photo above was taken from my last visit to one of Jessops’s local branches. My personal impression was that many items, such as SLR cameras, were understocked and the overall stock range was quite limited. For example, none of the three branches had available a Pentax K10D, one of the most highly praised cameras today, neither they had a single copy of the old or the new Olympus digital models E-410 and E-510. And although a delivery of a Pentax K10D was helpfully arranged for me to check it out in few days, there was no other than the kit lens available. In fact, if wanted to see the ergonomics and handling of any other Pentax-mount lens, I had to buy it in advance…

Jessops has a new strategy for the company’s recovery, according to the same source, and this involves concentrating at online digital printing and a new focus on the digital SLR market.

Few months ago, to change slightly the story, I was in York photographing the local cathedral (see photo below)

Soon some children came around and after pretending of posing for me they asked to see the pictures. When I showed then the black ‘pictureless’ back of my Olympus OM-4, saying sorry but this is a film camera, there was a moment of total surprise and silence from both sides!… ‘Why can’t we see them?.. Film, what do you mean!?’ they asked with their faces down.. In which I was simply speechless.

I tried to make sense of the disbelief, and the signs of doubt and contempt in children’s faces, when they came across a camera that does not display thumbnail images at the back…

Later that week I wrote a small note to an online forum of photographers about ‘the new digital discourse’, the fast-spreading and all-pervading digital ideology and practice of our times, with its own logic, economic interests and particular effects on people. In fact, I was disappointed that few people there were quick to defend the… functionality of digital photography; this was the only thing they could understand from a critical analysis of our context. But of course, a contextual analysis is much more than the sterile ‘film versus digital’ kind of argument, into which many online debates are so often reduced. (’Playing with reality and mirrors’, a photograph below by Ella Sujun Zhou)

Film and digital photography have their own strengths and weaknesses, they are often not mutually exclusive, and after all, this is not the main issue for someone interested to create a memorable and valuable photograph. I can’t emphasise more the last sentence!

Yet, the way photography is increasingly understood is predominantly digital and this is heavily influenced by the photographic industry and market. Although the phenomenon is complex (people do have own preferences as well, such as, for example, a desire for convenience), I believe that the rationale of photographic industry during the last years, reinforcing their own economic needs for profit and creating a new culture around us, has been to put it simply ‘everyone must get a digital camera.’

Accordingly, film has been heavily marginalised (and unfairly stigmatised as anachronistic and inferior), although, as we said, it could equally keep providing for many people’s photographic needs, for the development of their skills, and for a highly satisfactory visual result. It was Jessops, for example, the major street-level photography provider for the masses in UK, who decided a year and half ago to eliminate any film artifact from the display in its shops in favour of total digitalisation, and especially one oriented towards compact and low-end digital cameras.

It is very useful analysing the way the interests of photographic business for financial performance and profit have an impact on how we understand photography and our culture in general. They shape a new kind of ethos and a new type of individual. As George Carlin has put it recently “I’m a modern man, a man for the millenium… digital and smoke-free“ (Despite that, could someone say one day that the classic Olympus OM-1 doesn’t always look sexy!?…)

And here is probably where all becomes even more interesting. Because, as long as we realise that our individuality is not all that free-floating, full of personal choices, with flowers around us to taste as we fancy like a butterfly , it is intriguing to imagine how the average photographer of the near future might develop and look like… For example, taking into consideration the new Jessops strategy, we should expect a growing interest for SLR cameras and a ‘personal’ demand for more and more sophisticated equipment…

All rights reserved © 2007 Christos Stavrou