BAGnewsNotes

Before The Heartbreak

I was struck by this image of RFK in VF's new article and slide show, The Heartbreak Campaign.

At first, I thought my reaction involved a fairly straight one-to-one connection between Bobby sleeping with his dog on the floor of this plane, and that fateful image burned into my memory from the floor of the Ambassador Hotel.

On reflection, though, I think there is more to it than that.  Nobody symbolized the politics of hope more than RFK (if the term even bears credibility anymore).  And then, this photo is so syrupy innocent (sleeping on the airplane floor!  curled up with his dog! THE AMERICAN WAY!), it makes the vibe of the current Presidential race feel about as dank as that ashtray compartment.

The Heartbreak Campaign slide show (Vanity Fair)
Article/book excerpt: The Last Good Campaign (Vanity Fair)

(image: Bill Eppridge)

Philip Jones Griffiths

The photographer Philip Jones Griffiths, famous for his singular focus on the war in Vietnam, passed away earlier this week.

Of the various themes in Griffiths' work, one of the most central dealt with his understanding of the war as a mission to turn the Vietnamese into consumers of the American brand.  Given Griffiths' long time dedication to following the aftermath of the war, his contribution, as much anything is, was a portrayal of the long-term effect of the conflict on the consciousness of that country. 

If a sense of irony passes back-and-forth here between Griffiths and the viewer, I don't get the sense that this passerby registers, in any way, how much these Western figures evolved, over decades, into such a normative model.

It's both strange and curious that the photographer would die on the five-year anniversary of the Iraq War.  Is part of the resonance here the possibility of observing a similar phenomenon in the shops in Baghdad in, say, 2038?

The Vietnamization of Philip Jones Griffiths (Digital Journalist)
Presence Of Mind: The Photographs of Philip Jones Griffiths (Aperture)
Magnum: Wars (Vietnam) - (Magnum video)

(image © Philip Jones Griffiths / Magnum.  February 5, 1996.  from: Vietnam at Peace / Trolley Books)

More Exiles

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It was gratifying to hear Obama and Clinton mention the plight of Iraqi exiles in their LA debate.  Otherwise, how often does one hear about the four million?

About three weeks ago, I introduced you to a project  -- by BNN contributer Lori Grinker -- to profile the stories of particular Iraqi refugees.  At the time, we told you about Amer, a young Iraqi -- now living in Jordan -- recovering from burns from an explosion.

Today, we introduce you to Mike.  Before fleeing to Jordan, he worked as an interpreter with an American contractor, and also with US Forces.  This photo was taken last April.  Lori writes:

Mike is living in a new apartment with Iraqi friends. He applied to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and says the case is now with the IOM (International Organization for Migration—who are working with the UNHCR helping translators). He applied for a visa on June 18, has had two interviews and, last I spoke to him, was waiting on a third interview to be scheduled.

He is concerned that it is taking so long.  They told him that he has to wait until his name comes up on the list from the USA.  With no legal status, he is unable to work in Amman. He is desperate to find a job but will not work illegally for fear of being deported from Jordan and thus, sent back to Iraq. He is given 80 Jordanian dinars per month from CARE International. His rent is 100JD per month and he needs another 50JD for food. He has borrowed over 200JD from friends and does not know how he will get by next month.

John Edwards: Parting View

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Yesterday, I had my say on the Edwards withdrawal.  Today, I want to share this photo by Alan Chin taken at the announcement in New Orleans on Tuesday.

Chin writes:

The scene was cold, and the ground wet and muddy. The Habitat For Humanity staff and volunteers were expecting Edwards to make a "major speech on poverty," as had been billed, but instead he came to throw in the towel. He did so with a certain dignity and eloquence: "It’s time for me to step aside so that history can — so that history can blaze its path."

Having covered him often and having been here so often, I was impressed, despite my usual cynicism, with the deliberate choice of both beginning and ending his bid for the Presidency amidst houses still destroyed from Hurricane Katrina.  By the contemporary standards of American political life, he had run a decent and spirited campaign.

I invite you to open the image and really look at it.  I find it a fitting portrait and parting view.

The weathered look not only contradicts the ascribed pretty boy aura, but seems to capture the edge of a weariness guaranteed to descend after unplugging from of the perpetual adrenaline rush of the campaign.  I have to also say, he looks like he really gives a damn, above and beyond any shallow debate regarding any need or reflex to continue to look like he does.

I think there are a several other elements here that are also powerful, which I leave to you to excavate.

(image: © Alan Chin.  Ninth Ward of New Orleans, La.  January 30, 2008.  Used by permission)

Outside Heath Ledger's Apartment

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"For the illusion of credibility, it had to be framed as a tribute to a legacy,
instead of about earning money and ratings."

Deviating a bit from our usual, Peter van Agtmael forwarded these images to The BAG.  (If you remember, Peter offered us photos, two months back, of soldier's graffiti from a U.S. staging facility in Kuwait.)  As Peter relates:

These are pictures I snapped outside Heath Ledger's apartment on the night of his death. By the time I got there, the media hubbub had died down a bit, but I think these still represent the bizarre scene that ensued.

In this first image, with the photographers gathered, I could see this being made to look bigger than it was.  But this memorial of flowers was just a small tribute set up by one person -- like something you might see on the roadside for the victim of a car crash.  Because this was not an event of public grieving, the little memorial speaks to that.

Overall, there hasn't been much appreciation for the guy, and there has been little celebration for his work as an actor.  If anything, it seems there has been much more of an interest in his toxicology test.  Its been a pretty negative, if unsurprising reflection on media and humanity.

I think this second photo is the best one I took that night.  Posing for a picture, these two girls are clearly smirking but pretending to cry.

*** ** ***

Part of the reason I decided to go down to photograph the scene was a certain feeling of bitterness.  Last year, I shot a story about the life and death of a friend, a young army medic I met in Baghdad, who died of a drug overdose.  The circumstances of his death were equally ambiguous, but there is no doubt that his life was a mess, with severe PTSD from two tours to iraq coupled with the disintegration of his marriage.

When I heard about Ledger, the two stories seemed to fuse in my mind, saying something about how lives are valued in this country.

>> If you have questions or comments for Peter, he'll be available to respond in the discussion thread. <<

(images: © Peter van Agtmael/Polaris Images.  New York.  January 2008.  Used by permission.)

Painted Construction Markings

Last week, I had the pleasure of hanging out a bit with photographers Spencer Platt, David Butow, and BNN contributer Nina Berman.  As winners in last year's World Press Photo competition, the three were participating in a two-day program at USC's Annenberg School in conjunction with the WP exhibition.

Spencer was the "Photo of the Year" winner, and Nina earned first place in the portrait category for her "Marine Wedding" image -- which I posted after the announcement, and which we discussed extensively here at The BAG.  It's David's shot, however -- the second place winner in the "Daily Life" category, behind Spencer's -- that I've spent a good bit of time looking at, and am pleased to finally share with you.

My meeting David though, besides being a pleasure, also offered a healthy reminder about the subjectivity of social and political imagery.

To set the table, you have to understand that most people who see this photo -- including the World Press judges -- are also provided the following description:

Pedestrians cross a section of Wall Street covered in painted construction markings, near the New York Stock Exchange, shortly before the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attack on the city's World Trade Center. The former WTC site and parts of lower Manhattan were still in the rebuilding process following the attack.

Because my knowledge of the picture has been so interwoven with the description, I wouldn't know how to separate the two.  That being said -- and I've seen the same interpretation made by a few other visually and politically oriented people I know -- whenever I look at this photo, those construction markings remind me of Arabic.

Now, I don't know if I saw it that way on first look, or it was prompted by the description.  Either way, I now tend to take those street markings; combine them with the guy in the foreground in the turban (although likely Sikh, not Muslim);  add in the Semitic-looking guy pulling the bag while crossing the street; combine that with the known proximity to the WTC site and the anniversary, and I get a powerful sense of those attacks having left a psychic fingerprint on the city, creating an emotional floor under the otherwise everyday comings and goings.

So, what was really illuminating was the opportunity to share this association with David Butow.  After giving him the quick sketch, however, despite the smile and his obvious interest, he related that nobody had ever offered this take about Arabic writing before.

Your Turn: Rites Of Passage (Nina Berman's Marine Wedding (BAGnewsNotes)
2007 World Press Photo of the Year - Spencer Platt/Southern Lebanon (World Press)
Photojournalists honored at Annenberg reception (Daily Trojan)
World Press Photo exhibit opens at USC Annenberg
DavidButow.com

(image: © David Butow/Redux.  New York, August 1, 2006)

Campaign Visuals In the Age of Facebook

I wanted to mention my new piece at American Photo, an interview with photographer Stephen Ferry.

Specifically, it's an analysis of an image Stephen shot just before the New Hampshire primary, and a look at how recent campaign coverage can be seen to reflect a "Facebook aesthetic."

If Ferry is more well known for his civil war coverage in Columbia, the part of his bio that stands out for me is the time he spent as White House photographer for Ronald Reagan.  More than anything though, Stephen has a deft ability to culturally and politically read a photograph.  I hope to bring more of his analysis to The BAG in the near future.

Campaign Visuals In the Age of Facebook (American Photo/State of the Art)
Stephen Ferry website

(image: © Stephen Ferry/Redux.  January 7, 2008.  Rochester, New Hampshire.  Used by permission)

A Swipe At Community Organizing

Last weekend, Black Entertainment President Robert Johnson, comparing the social commitment between the Clinton's and and Barack Obama in their earlier lives, stated that...

"Hillary and Bill Clinton ... have been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues since Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood and I won't say what he was doing, but he said it in (his) book ...."

In the controversy that followed (based on the inference that Obama's activity "in the neighborhood" revolved around drug use), Johnson issued a clarification, stating:

My comments today were referring to Barack Obama's time spent as a community organizer, and nothing else. Any other suggestion is simply irresponsible and incorrect.

When Hillary Clinton was in her twenties she worked to provide protections for abused and battered children and helped ensure that children with disabilities could attend public school.

That results oriented leadership even as a young person is the reason I am supporting Hillary Clinton.

In the furor ignited by the initial statement, what is overlooked -- and left to resonate in the public square -- is the fact that "community organizing" is somehow an inferior activity, certainly as compared to Hillary Clinton's efforts on behalf of abused and disabled children.

In response, The BAG offers you an excerpt from a photo-narrative by Chicago-based photojournalist Jon Lowenstein, entitled "The South Side." Jon's introduction is just below the selection of images.

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Driving down Martin Luther King Boulevard on Chicago's South Side, change is evident everywhere. Signs advertising new condominiums dot the landscape and city blocks that once stood vacant are being completely replaced with new prefabricated housing and recently opened chain stores.

To the outside eye, this infusion of housing appears wholly positive, but the truth behind neighborhood transformation is far more grim. Poor communities across the country are going through similarly wrenching change as their once isolated neighborhoods are being rapidly gentrified, and few longtime residents will remain when the change is complete.

These once proud industrial communities fell into hard times during the 1970's and 1980's, changing from thriving areas to places far removed from local and federal resources and rife with unemployment, poverty, drugs and gang violence. Despite this adversity, many residents have stayed and have deep feelings of affection for their home neighborhoods. More recently, though, another challenge has reared its head. Residents in each of these communities face the very real possibility of being displace from the communities they love because they can no longer afford to live there.

In light of Johnson's statement, Jon's images, and particularly, the overwhelming power gap between rich and poor, the question is: what could be more essential -- and democratic -- than community organizing?

Jon Lowenstein website

(images: © Jon Lowenstein. 2006. Chicago, Illinois. Used by permission)

The Forgotten Iraqi Exiles

“The war in Iraq has killed hundreds of thousands, and caused the one of the greatest flights of people in the history of the Middle East. Sixty thousand people flee their homes each month.

But when they are reported on at all, they are seldom individualized. Rather than photographing hundreds of Iraqi refugees to illustrate the epic size of the exodus, I want to follow, for an extended period and in an intimate way, just a few - I want to take the journey with them, to live the aftermath of war with them, and to relate their experiences as if it were happening to me, to understand the experiences that drove them into exile, where they are often viewed with suspicion and even as the enemy.”

--Photojournalist Lori Grinker

In response to an inattentive domestic media and the lack of visual documentation, Lori Grinker has been pursuing the story of Iraqi civilians fleeing the war.

In April, and again in September 2007, she traveled to Amman to photograph Iraqis forced to leave their families, homes and livelihoods for a life of cramped, substandard living conditions, inactivity, and waiting for the time when it will be safe to return to Iraq, or hear that they have found sanctuary in another country. And those are the “lucky” ones. Many of her subjects are in Amman to repair their bodies, only to be to be repatriated to a war zone after they are “healed.”

In the case above, the young man (call him Amer) was burned in an explosion while walking past a fuel truck in Baghdad.  We see the 16-year old coming out of the recovery room after having surgery to fix the contracted fingers on his right hand. He faced the same surgery on his left hand a couple of month later.

For the past two years Amer's father has taken him to Egypt to treat his burns, then to Iran and he is currently in Jordan where he is having surgery on his hands with  MSF (Medecins Sans Frontieres) at the Red Crescent Hospital in Amman.

In collaboration with Lori, well known for her documentation of the effects of war, the goal of this site is to bring this situation to a larger, concerned audience.  Moreover, it is an opportunity to throw more light on the moral failure of the United States in failing to humanely and adequate assist the exiles, especially those who have worked directly for the U.S. occupation.

Since fiscal year 2007, only 1,608 of a promised 7,000 refugees were admitted into the U.S. The government has now set a goal of bringing in 12,000 Iraqi refugees in fiscal year 2008, with an additional 5,000 visas to be granted among the more than 100,000 Iraqis employed by the U.S. or U.S. Government contractors. Although the plan passed Congress, however, it has yet to be signed into law.

Over the coming months, The BAG plan's to apply the immediacy and the serialized nature of the blog medium to visually pursue this subject, as well as to personally follow the odyssey of specific refugees in the process of creating a new life.

In the meantime, when asked how he is treated by friends and acquaintances in Iraq, Amer said that everyone is nice to him…there are so many wounded people in the streets, it’s normal now.

It is fitting, given the invisibility of this issue, that Amer trains his camera on us.

Lori Grinker website
Afterwar: Veterans From A World In Conflict.  Photographs and Interviews: Lori Grinker

(images: © Lori Grinker.  Amman, Jordan.  2007.  Used by permission)

Our Man In New Hampshire #4: BarackOMania

This is the fourth in a 72-hour series of campaign dispatches from photojournalist and BNN Contributer Alan Chin.  These shots were taken on Sunday at Concord High School.

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In essence, it only takes two pictures right now to tell the New Hampshire Obama story.

 

   
For young people, the campaign seems to be generating an untold number of future "I remember when" moments.  As Chin writes:  "Thousands of intense young college students, and many coeds, it seems, flock to Obama's rally and cheer with a passionate intensity wholly lacking anywhere else."
 

Surely, the orientation is coincidental, but as everything else seems to be lining up, so too does the "Sportsmanship Award."

It seems the tone in the country is almost too jaded and polarized to believe in the kind of passion and inspiration being generated right now by this politician.

Next Up: John Edwards, then Hillary, I believe.  (...Have to see what comes through in the morning's email)

(All images courtesy Alan Chin.  Concord, New Hampshire.  January 5, 2007  Used by permission)