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“In the modern way of seeing, reality is first of all appearance - which is always changing. A photograph records appearance. The record of photography is the record of change, of the destruction of the past. Being modern (and if we have the habit of looking at photographs, we are by definition modern), we understand all identities to be constructions. The only irrefutable reality - and our best clue to identity - is how people appear.”

 

“Photography is, first of all, a way of seeing. It is not seeing itself.

It is the ineluctably ‘modern’ way of seeing - prejudiced in favor of projects of discovery and innovation.

This way of seeing which now has a long history, shapes what we look for and used to noticing in photographs.”

 

“The modern way of seeing is to see in fragments. It is felt that reality is essentially unlimited, and knowledge is open-ended. It follows that all boundaries, all unifying ideas have to be misleading, demagogic; at best, provisional; almost always in the long run, untrue. To see reality in the light of certain unifying ideas has the undeniable advantage of giving shape and form to our experience. But it also - so the modern way of seeing instructs us - denies the infinite variety and complexity of the real. Thereby it represses our energy, indeed our right, to remake what we wish to remake - our society, our selves. What is liberating, we are told, is to notice more and more.”

[Excerpts from Susan Sontag's essay 'Photography: A Little Summa' found in her recently published book At the Same Time (2007), New York, Farrar Straus Giroux]

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The British soldiers first saw the lights along German trenches on that Christmas Eve in 1914. Then they heard the music and the songs. Although they might not have known the German language, they recognised the “Silent Night” and responded by singing carols in English that crossed the few hundred feet of No-Man’s Land dividing the two enemies.

And on Christmas Day the British troops learned the flickering lights they’d seen the previous night were burning candles on fir trees. Before long, the two groups of soldiers were exchanging holiday greetings, cigarettes, food and gifts. They collected and burried the dead, they were introduced to each other, took photographs and in one place they even played a football match.

A Christmas truce had broken out.

The term ‘Christmas Truce‘ refers not to a single event but rather to a number of spontaneous expressions of comradeship between the front line soldiers of both sides in December 1914.

This spontaneous truce, which was initiated and apparently confined to the more friendly German units made up by Saxons; which occurred in several and not a sigle place; and was arguably influenced by the proximity of the fighting forces and the uncomfortableness of the trenches; was definitely frowned upon by the higher authorities. Horrified by the news of fraternisation , the leadership on both sides issued orders of condemning and forbidding such tendencies, threatening direct penalties. Such acts were not repeated in subsequent Christmases.

[Sources: i) Christmas Truce: The Western Front December 1914 by Malcolm Brown & Shirley Seaton, Macmillan, London, 1994. ii) Freepress.com iii) H.B. Lee Library of Brigham Young University ]

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The caption of the above photograph, from The Illustrated War News, January 20th 1915, reads:

“A SCENE OF FRATERNISATION : BY ONE OF OUR TRENCHES

Much publicity has been given to the fraternising, at Christmas-time of British officers and men and German officers and men facing one another in the trenches: the German authorities are said to have issued strong orders against such friendliness between enemies. In a letter accompanying our photographs, a private of the London Rifle Brigade writes, from the Ypres-Armentieres neighborhood : “No. … Company went into the breastworks (which have, in most places, round here superseded the flooded reserve trenches) on Wednesday night. Soon after dusk on the 24th the Germans put up lanterns on the top of their trenches and started singing; and their shooting practically ceased. Firing ceased on both sides, and both Germans and English ventured out on the top of their trenches. After daybreak on Christmas Day small parties on both sides ventured out in front of their trenches, all unarmed, and we heard that a German officer came over and promised that they would not fire if we did not.

Apparently during the morning small parties of Germans and English fraternised between the trenches, and when … and I and some of our pals strolled up from the reserve trenches after dinner, we found a crowd of some hundred Tommies of each nationality holding a regular mother’s meeting between the trenches. We found our enemies to be Saxons.

One of the Germans had been a waiter at the Savoy; and another a West-End barber’s assistant. Talk and souvenirs were exchanged. There are those who did not appreciate this cessation of hostilities, even on Christmas Day !”

(source: ‘The Great War in a different light’ website)

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The Imperial War Museum London will commemorate the 90th anniversary of the Armistice (11 November 1918) with a major exhibition during the next year (September 2008 to March 2009).

According to the museum’s website, In Memoriam: Remembering the Great War will focus on the individual experiences of men, women and children: the front line soldier, sailor and airman; the munitions worker and the nurse; the prisoner-of-war and the internee; the artist and the writer; the disabled and the shell shocked; the widow and the orphan. Their stories will be told through personal objects ranging from a bierstein which was presented to the British captain of a winning football team in the Christmas Truce of 1914 to a rosebud from a wreath which lay on the tomb of the Unknown Warrior in 1920.

Photo by Christos Stavrou © 2007 All rights reserved

Photograph from a degree ceremony in Leeds University.

So, we are removing the barriers. We build special ramps by the side for all those who can’t walk the stairs. We reserve special spaces for those who were traditionally deemed as the unworthy surplus of educational systems… We publish books in braille and use complicated devices to communicate with all those who were thought incommunicable for us…

We publish even more useful, and colourful, prospectus and reports and photographs that proudly demonstrate our achievements… And now that all these newcomers are arriving to receive their diplomas and awards, still very few but they are coming, and still our awards indeed, we count their faces as the face of our own new progress…

But I wonder, did anybody tell them, those in the safe and proud side, that they should count instead all those who could not come, those who couldn’t make it… all those who actually are not here to be counted?…

Photo by Christos Stavrou © 2007 All rights reserved

People write poems while walking between bus stops. I take photographs. While waiting, the air becomes cold or a soft breeze, the light is changing, the day is passing. While waiting, you notice things. People’s faces, their tireness or anticipation. Maybe they come from work, probably they go home. And the camera behaves the same sober or drunk, playful or insular like its owner. Photography is a performance while waitng.

All photographs by Christos Stavrou © 2007. All rights reserved.

Influential photographer Martin Parr has presented a list of inspiring photography books, published in 2007 (The Sunday Times, 2 Dec 2007). His focus on monographs, artistic creativity, originality and small independent photography publishers distinguishes by far his list from other similar ones appearing these days (such as The Guardian’s poor fixation with fashion and ‘national geographic’ aesthetic, no link provided!).

So here’s what Martin Parr has singled out:

• Hackney Flowers by Stephen Gill, is Martin’s favourite book of the year and Gill’s fourth book on his neighborhood area. He has collected various discarded photos found in the local flea market and combined these with some of his own images interspersed with ones of pressed flowers and berries, also derived from Hackney. View one of these photos at the left or the whole fascinating work in the artist’s website here.

• The Genius of Photography by Gerry Badger, a book written to accompany the BBC series, presents a comprehensive account of the complexities and history of photography. It examines the wider, social, political, economic, technological and artistic context of its evolution.
• I’m a Real Photographer by Keith Arnatt, a highly respected conceptual artist of the 60s and 70s, who changed direction and the following decades concentrated on working in obscurity as a photographer. This book tells the story of this journey in 19 series of photographs. Each series features prosaic subject matter - his dogs, the local rubbish tip, everyday objects photographed in his studio, notes that his wife Jo left for him - exploring the conventional with a distinct edge and humor. Seen together, for the first time, the threads and themes of Arnatt’s work connect to make a coherent statement about the act of photography and its relationship to the history of art, as well as produce a moving and profound documentary of everyday life.
• The Mother of All Journeys by Dinu Lee, maps the journey of the photographer’s mother from Hong-Kong to Manchester and reconstructs her memories after several intervening decades. A sensitive and emotional work about personal experience, diaspora, and the gap between memory and reality. Read more and see photos in my review of the exhibition in Leeds here.
• Welcome to Pyongyang by Charlie Crane, is a collection of formal looking portraits of a huge range of people from North Corea, after the photographer managed to get the blessing of the authorities with the help of a tour guide and local guides. But as Martin Parr points out, that these guides were later invited to write the captions and they have composed them in true propaganda style, is what gives this book its edge.

• A China Chronicle by Zeng Li, is a documentation of contemporary China. Zeng Li comes from Liuzhou, Guangxi, and is a well known stage designer working for theatre and film productions. The photographs deal with a country being transformed in one of the most dramatic building booms in history. Documenting change and visually preserving a quickly disappearing urban fabric is the main theme of the book. “My wish is to become an author of ‘images’ and to construct an image ‘museum’ archiving and presenting our history of today and yesterday writes Zeng Li in the book’s introduction. (For a similar historical approach see Sze Tsung Leong’s work in this blog here). Hutong lanes, standardized blocks of flats, factories and polluted rivers resist the ideals of the country’s tourist board, or give way to soaring residential towers and glittering shopping malls. This book shows “what China really looks like now” according to Martin Parr.

• A Shimmer of Possibility by Paul Graham, a British documentary photographer now living in America. The images “depict a slightly downbeat view of America, and tantalisingly, very little appears to be happening” writes Martin Parr. He goes on that this is a bold and successful attempt to rewrite the rules of documentary and the ways that photographs are presented, by a very innovative photographer.

• In England by Don McCullin, a photojournalist who began as a dyslexic child with talent in drawing -growing in London’s poor areas, and established a career scattered with amazing stories, such as having his life saved by his Nikon camera stopping a bullet intended for him. He became well-known recording war-zones and humanitarian catastrophes, such as the Vietnam War, the conflict in Ireland and the AIDS epidemic. In 1982, his work was considered so powerful and evocative that the British Government refused to grant him a press pass to cover the Falklands War. In an interview given in 1987 he announced his change of direction: “I have been manipulated, and I have in turn manipulated others, by recording their response to suffering and misery. So there is guilt in every direction: guilt because I don’t practice religion, guilt because I was able to walk away, while this man was dying of starvation or being murdered by another man with a gun. And I am tired of guilt, tired of saying to myself: ‘I didn’t kill that man on that photograph, I didn’t starve that child.’ That’s why I want to photograph landscapes and flowers. I am sentencing myself to peace.” The book combines forty years of shooting, iconic early images with shooting from 2006, which highlight his thematic return to the cities and landscape he knew as a young photographer. In the introduction McCullin points out his fading away “tolerance or stamina to continue much longer… I am not at the end of my work, but I’m close to the limits of what I can accomplish.” And he continues ‘This is not the England of 1955 … there are new phenomena sweeping the land: obesity, selfishness and the hand gestures and postures of the young that I cannot understand.” It is interesting, however, how many of these new images could have been taken thirty years ago and that McCullin’s lens shows us, with humor and lyricism, a perpetuating and clearly defined social division between the affluent and the impoverished. Martin Parr remarks, “black and white, grainy images of people at either end of the wealth spectrum offer an almost cartoon like rendition of the English”.
• An American Index of The Hidden and Unfamiliar by Taryn Simon, presents photographs from strange places, such as the missile-control centre on the USS Nevada and the death-row cage at Mansfield correction institution. These are places which normally we would never see in person unless we are in some big trouble, writes Martin Parr.
  
• Nein, Onkel (Snapshots from Another Front 1938-1945) edited by Timothy Prus and Ed Jones, is an archive of war imagery and specialises in snapshots taken by soldiers. This compilation shows Nazis having parties, dressing up and generally entertaining themselves in ways that we have not customarily associated with Nazis, thus questioning our assumptions of evil.
• Fashion Magazine by Alec Soth, who is the third Magnum photographer (after Martin Parr and Bruce Gilden) to produce the agency’s annual ‘Fashion Magazine’, with this one entitled Paris Minnesota. Here Soth explores the world of French high fashion and photographs ‘high-style’ Parisians as well as the ‘gentle folk’ of Minessota in the latest creations. (Notably, similar space is devoted to photos of winter snow across a JC Penney parking lot). The juxtaposition and contrast is what makes this compilation irresistible. “What is interesting is the space between us” writes Alec Soth about his work Paris Minnesota. A wider view of this portfolio can be found here, accompanied by two interviews. In one of those, Alec Soth talks about his out of desparation, but hugely successful, approach in creating advertisements. He acquired various top brand items which he planted in the landscape inviting the viewer to engage in a Where’s Wally game. For Martin Parr, these are the most ‘oblique’ advertisements you’ll ever encounter, differentiating themselves from the pretence world of fashion industry, which would never hold your attention for so long.
• Magnum, Magnum, is a huge tom celebrating the 60th anniversary of the famous co-operative photo agency, in which Martin Parr is a member. Interestingly, the photographers have chosen to select not their own but other members’ photos for presentation, writing also the commentary. As Martin Parr points out, the book weighs 6.5 kilos and costs £95 which works out at £14.62 per kilo: about the same price as cod.

I like photography because it is open to silence. A waiting place, unnamed and inviting. In the last meetings I don’t hear much, like it’s never really my turn to talk. I miss the warmth of a colder and simpler stare. When we both know, (we all know). When we don’t repeat. Why use mouths to make so much noise? I wish I could leave but can’t think of another place. So, I’m waiting.

Untitled photograph by Christos Stavrou © 2007 All rights reserved

 

“There is nowhere but here. There are not two places, there are not two prisons. It’s my parlour, where I wait for nothing. I don’t know where it is, I don’t know what it’s like. that’s no business of mine. I don’t know if it’s big, or if it’s small, or if it’s closed, if it’s open… Open on what? There is nothing else, only it. Open on the void , open on the nothing… Open on the silence, looking out on the silence, straight out - why not?”

 

Untitled photograph by Christos Stavrou © 2007 All rights reserved

 

“All this time on the brink of silence, I knew it! On a rock, lashed to a rock, in the midst of silence. Its great swell rears towards me, I’m streaming with it. (It’s an image: those are words.) It’s a body, It’s not I - I knew it wouldn’t be. I’m not outside, I’m inside, I’m in something. I’m shut up: the silense is outside. Nothing but this voice and the silence all round. No need of walls? Yes we must have walls: I need walls, good and thick. I need a prison (I was right), for me alone. I’ll go there now, I’ll put me in it.”

From Samuel Beckett’s novel The Unnamable (1953)

Photograph by Camilla Hill, Portobello, London © 2007 All rights reserved

That time has come again, at the end of the year, when people buy presents to each other… So, I thought to look at some of the recent photography publications. ‘New’ is not necessarily better, but certainly can tease our senses. And there is one book that has fully captured my attention.

Andre Kertesz: The Polaroids was published just last week. The Hungarian photographer (1894 - 1985), one of the most influential masters, with the poetic vision for the ’simple’ and ‘everyday’ subject, was hardly recognised in public during his lifetime in Paris and New York, but only after his retirement. Actually, this work comes from that later stage of his life.

Kertesz got a Polaroid SX-70 camera after the death of his wife. And he managed “to generate a whole new body of work through which he transforms from a broken man into a youthful artist” as Robert Gurbo, the curator of the André Kertész estate writes about The Polaroids.

“Taken in his apartment just north of New York City’s Washington Square, many of these photographs were shot either from his window or in the windowsill. We see a fertile mind at work, combining personal objects into striking still lifes set against cityscape backgrounds, reflected and transformed in glass surfaces. Almost entirely unpublished work, these photographs are a testament to the genius of the photographer’s eye as manifested in the simple Polaroid. 80 color photographs.”

 

“Andre Kertesz nearly always seems to have had a genuine affection for what he photographed” is Tim Atherton’s subtle comment in his blog Muse-ings. It is a comment that surely finds most of us pleased to agree with.

 

 

Many of these window compositions remind me - in a way - another of the 20th century great photographers, Sudek, when he was forced to stay home during the period of the second world war. He had also focused all his creativity to the simple settings of his window and mere personal possessions. Compositions of glass, eggs and paper, and views of the garden, under reflections and shadows, and through a special quality of light.

 

 

These images, however, use colour, vibrant tonalities and rich warm daylight to indicate an affective mood. They make full use of the polaroid effect. The images are often nostalgic, refer to the past, shared moments and places (somewhere there is Eiffel Tower), or more often to the beloved lost person. But they also become reflections of the lonely individual, which we assume is Kertesz himself, although his overall stance appears reflexive, connected with life, both its melancholy and its small pleasures.

 

 

The shapes tend to clarity and the compositions retain a realist form, as ‘’slices of life’ in the modernist tradition which Kertesz had been foundational to establish himself. Yet, this time the sliced life is his own, the reflection is personal. There are several self-portraits and references to a photographer within the collection.

 

All the same, however, the images captivate us with a dim emotional power and a kind of dreamscape quality. Even the subject - not the rather lucid subject-matter - is never clearly established, if it is about himself and his own literal experience or a wider concept and a product of his mind. I believe it is true that Kertesz was so much a modernist as much he expresses a strong surrealist side.

These photographs and all the Polaroids portfolio is property of the Andre Kertesz Estate and can be viewed there.