Category Archive

Soon after I took this photo above, standing by the entrance of Leeds University, and as I was waiting for a sudden wave of rain to pass - among shiny bikes and a man whose posture and reflection had intrigued me… well, very soon after that a security guard came out from his box running quickly towards me.

He bombarded me with questions, who I am and what am I taking pictures of… My mind was still wandering in search of aesthetic pleasures; how to find the best angle, selecting shutter speed and aperture. I was not prepared and got surprised from his sudden attack. I simply said, I take a photo of bikes and a back-lit silhouette… (Should an aspiring conceptual photographer ever admit these casual things, I thought…)

But the security guard was not friendly. He insisted making questions. I noticed his threatening body language and persistent eye-contact in order to intimidate. Later he revealed that he used to work for some kind of special forces. His glorious and authoritative past, who knows why he was dismissed, was obviously filling him up with pride and nostalgia.

The treatment was unacceptable. After all I had been running the University’s Photosociety for two years in the recent past and we always used to practice making rounds in the campus. Not to mention the hundreds of graduates taking pictures of each other around those areas very regularly. Maybe it was about the beard in my face and my foreign accent didn’t help either… (Should I start shaving every time before using my camera outdoors, I thought…).

But he even used all sorts of lies and excuses trying to intimidate me, about how a special licence is required from the media services (something they denied later when I asked them), about his official orders to follow this procedure with everyone, even threats about calling the police were thrown to me… I replied that yes, he’s welcomed to call the police and look very silly when try to explain the reason of calling them. But the whole incident was not simply redicilous and patronising, it was also offending and very upsetting.

This happened two summers ago. I’m afraid though things don’t get better rather worst. The Metropolitan Police (click at the poster below) has just launched its five-week counter-terrorism campaign asking members of the public to report any suspicious behaviour. Yes, you guessed well. Taking photographs is a suspicious behaviour.

It seems that now you can - or have to - call the authorities every time you feel reporting a suspicious photographer. What exactly is suspicious, what is an ‘odd’ photograph? Well, not easy to answer… Sometimes an act appears odd just because someone looks odd and different, or because of our own preconceptions. And anyway, everyone has their own ideas about it, it cannot really be defined… But, in fact, this is probably the point: To spy and report each other! The poster states it clearly: Report it and “Let experienced officers decide what action to take.”

I know. Many readers have already began wondering in despair: Isn’t this campaign an open invitation to arbitrary and/or selective abuse? Isn’t this another badly disguised excuse for further erosion of our freedoms? Actually, isn’t this quite naive in its assumed counter-terrorist potential, when considering its adverse social effect by increasing fear and paranoia, and posing a high risk of weakening the social bonds, is therefore rather undermining than strengthening the sense of security?

Fear and paranoia.

Remember these words. These were the underlying forces of the security guard’s over-reaction against me, and that was what in turn he wanted to install upon me. Now, with even a seemingly official support in place, the absurdity is reinforced… Photographers of this country be aware and prepared. And resist the identification of terror.

The scary, and final, thought is that these practices remind how the Gestapo used to operate in Nazi Germany. Unlike the general belief, the Gestapo was not a huge and omnipotent organisation. As historian Robert Gellatel (see wikipedia) has shown, it was mainly made up by clerical workers and bureaucrats, who “were for the most part dependent upon denunciations for information about what was happening in German society. The willingness of ordinary Germans to denounce one another supplied the Gestapo with the information that determined who the Gestapo arrested.”

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On Tuesday 11 March 2007, 6pm, there is a relevant and interesting public talk taking place in the Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, University of London, Senate House, Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HU.

The title is: “How Safe Do You Feel: Surveillance, Photographers, and the Privatisation of Public Space Post 9/11“

It is presented by freelance documentary photographer, writer and researcher, Dr. John Perivolaris (click at his photo above to visit work from his recent documentary project). The seminar is open to everyone and here is the abstract of the seminar as published in the website of the hosting University:

“On the streets of cities in the United States and Europe we are witnessing a dramatic proliferation of surveillance cameras trained on citizens’ every move through increasingly privatised public spaces. For example, the average Londoner is daily caught on camera 300 times. But, while the citizen is constantly watched, they are increasingly restricted from photographing those same spaces. What is the place of independent photography and image-making of public space post-9/11? How are photographers to resist the plethora of restrictions to which they are now subject in the name of security? Is the right to watch swiftly becoming a monopoly of the state? Is democratic citizenship also now a struggle for the right to see as well as to be seen?”

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At the same time that these important questions are posed here, in another country Greece, left over surveillance equipment from the Olympic Games, costing over $250 million, has divided the country over its use to spy citizens. As reported by the BBC (see below), the emerging debate is around not only the question whether Greece will be following Britain’s example of spying its citizens, but whether it can resist the powerful march of the cameras. The costly surveillance equipment has taken its own reified form of existance. Note that Olympics are coming to Britain in few years time.

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.

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.

Talal Mohammed, Iraqi news reporter and photographer employed by the Associated Press, was kidnapped on 28 July near Baghdad. He was taken away by masked gunmen after he was stopped at an illegal checkpoint (AP, 7 Aug 2007 and RSF 8 Aug 2007) .

According to the Reporters Without Borders (RSF website, 10 September 2007) the number of journalists and media workers killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion in March 2003 has reached 201. Two more journalists are missing and 14 are kidnapped.

photo by Geert Van Kesteren, Magnum Photos © www.whymisterwhy.com

Journalists and media workers, whether foreigners or Iraqis, have become key targets in a climate of generalised impunity. The international organisation for press freedom reports some alarming news (RSF, 30 August 2007):

• No war has ever been as deadly for the press as this one since World War II.
  
• About three quarters of the victims (73%) were directly targeted, unlike any previous war, where media workers were usually victims of collateral damage or stray bullets.
• Most of the fatalities of journalists and media workers (88%) are Iraqis.
• These are singled out often because they work for foreign news media. (More than 70 such journalists have been murdered since the war began in 2003, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists in New York, AP 7 Aug 2007).
• At the same time, they do not receive the same protection as the foreigner correspondents visiting the country.

photo by Geert Van Kesteren, Magnum Photos © www.whymisterwhy.com

A second Associated Press photographer, Bilal Hussein, is currently in detention in a US military facility, according to British Journal of Photography (22 Aug 2007, p.4). He was imprisoned on 12 April 2006, accused of being a security threat, and since then has not been charged or permitted a public hearing. AP president Tom Curley has been petitioning for his release.

Note here that Bilal Hussein had so far provided the AP and the world with extraordinary photographs, often reporting the viewpoint of the insurgents. However, in a rather dubious response, and despite the full support provided by the AP towards their stringer photojournalist, some public commentators had explicitly attacked him, because they either doubted the veracity of his work, or thought that it was serving ”terrorist propaganda”

One story which I have read by Bilal Hussein, contained shocking, different and critical aspects of the war contrasting the mainstream representation of the war given by the US forces. For example, in this report published by the AP after the US attack in Fellujah in 2004 (click here for full story) Hussein reports the death of civilians, “helicopters firing on and killing people who tried to cross the river [...] a family of five was shot dead as they tried to cross.”

Yes, I just came back from our own Carnival here in Leeds, tired and smiling… As a friend says, it’s like Notting Hill just better!.. And of course I came back with few photographs to show you as well (please ask written permission for any use)

The history of Leeds West Indian Carnival goes quite back, first initiated in 1967 by a Leeds University student from St Kitts. It was the first Carnival of its kind in Britain.

The Carnival takes places in Chapeltown, a Leeds suburb and centre of the British Afro-Caribbean community, which during the years has experienced a range of social problems and stigma.

It’s probably worth noting here, that until the end of the 60’s racial discrimination in England was institutional and non-white immigrant populations were not allowed to freely participate in the house market.

This was the second time that I visited the Carnival. My pictures and comments from the first time, back in 2001, can be found here in this photo-essay. Back then, I had found it the Carnival of no fun, of hardly anyone smiling… such an ironic contradiction. I was really sceptical, after all, if all this was anything more than a consumerist one-day firework without any real effect in understanding difference and emphasise commonality. I’m not sure how much things have changed. I did feel though that things were more relaxed this time, but maybe for real change we need more time and more work from all of us.

But there was one more reason for my good mood. I found out that ‘Honeydrum’ the music band of some old friends were playing their samba there. Well.. I honestly think that it was one of their best performances including some great dance improvisations!… I do recommend to catch up with them in another festival, you can find more details in their website here.

All images by Christos Stavrou © 2007 All rights reserved (written permission is required before any use)

I emailed this simple question to an old friend of mine in Athens. With some degree of black humor and mostly silent unuttered pain, I have become witness during the last days -through the media- of the ongoing apocalyptic devastation by fires of my other home-country Greece.

Satellite picture by NASA showing the fires in south Greece © Assoc.Press

The extreme heatwave, strong winds and arsonists are blamed. Over fifty people have died, several villages were burnt or keep burning, many other ones are evacuated. Some of the rarest virgin forests in Europe have disappeared for ever and even the ancient city of Olympia, the world’s cultural heritage, is threatened. The Olympia Museum is on fire at this moment, though other updated news say it was finally saved…

Multiple fire fronts across the country, over 100 at some point, have stretched the ability of the authorities to react effectively, whereas many blame it for a spasmodic and delayed reaction. A nationalwide state of emergency is declared. Help from other EU countries, such as France and Italy, is arriving. Anger, fear and tears. Nothing will be the same when this summer and the thick black smoke is gone.

The unprecedented ecological, cultural and economic devastation might be captured in the photos by the Athens News Agency and the Associated Press, such as this above with Athens’s red smoky sky, or the dramatic pictures which follow below. But how can you capture the effect on people who lost their own people, or all of their livelihood, the consequences for all of us in general? Do we really understand what all this means… My thoughts slowly travel not only to those who were tragically trapped by the fire, but also to some of the perished victims, who as it is said, they had refused to move and abandon their beloved houses, their gardens and animals…

And the battle goes on…

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.

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

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

There has been some interesting news for black & white enthusiasts, like me…

A significant problem to face with modern digital cameras is their limited dynamic range compared with what can be achieved by B&W film. Depending of course on what aesthetic result someone aims and is satisfied with, I believe that film is better suited for B&W photography, as it could capture a wider tonal range. Especially in the area of highlights, there is always the additional risk that any over-exposure would result to unrecoverable detail (which unlike with the case of negative film, we could not hope to regain by the process of ‘burning’ in the dark room).

So, it is welcoming news to read in an article by Steven Hynes in ‘Black & White Photography‘ (issue 73, June 2007) that expanding the dynamic range is now the aim of the digital industry, after the ‘megapixel war’ of higher resolution which we have all witnessed lately.

In fact, S. Hynes reports on the new Fujifilm S5 Pro, (a Nikon D200-based model), which is equipped with a new sensor and seems able to record more highlight detail. Fujifilm claims to extend dynamic range by two stops. Although the reviewer found in his tests that detail was held for about an additional 1.3EV, this dynamic range extension and also the overall darkening of the top third of the highlight areas made him conclude positively on this model.

Note, that as he adds, full frame digital SLR sensors might match the S5 in the captured dynamic range; yet, the latter is now more affordable.

On the other side, reading other reviews in the net, such as in Ephotozine, we come across tests which claim less detail for landscapes and some -though controlled- noise throughout all ISO numbers. The review there concludes, that in comparison with the Nikon D200, the S5 has the edge on portraiture and challenging light conditions, emphasising it then more as a tool for marriage photographers (i.e. shoting inside churches with strong window lights, combinations of dark areas and strong sunlight, white bride dresses, etc).

Interesting, you might say, but there isn’t yet one camera for everything.. the ideal camera! Nevertheless, it seems that the myth and search for it continues…