light leaks violence

Photograph: Johnny Nguyen/AP

"The camera is a superb liar. It only shows one moment, and has no obligation to explain the bigger picture behind it. The selective use of photographs can therefore replace truth with whatever visual detail we choose to fix on. Horror or schmaltz, the effect is the same, to simplify reality and turn a story into a deceptively straightforward image... In the context of the completely unresolved and immensely troubling situation, not just in Ferguson but across the United States, where Ferguson has opened wounds that go back centuries, this picture is a blatant lie...

... Liking this picture as a definitive image of America’s race crisis is the equivalent of locking yourself in and turning up the volume to weep at Frozen while the streets are burning outside. Which is exactly what white Americans apparently want to do. Truth is a flimsy thing. It can be destroyed by a hug."

"How to face a camera"

An excerpt from the film "Images of the World and the Inscription of War" by Harun Farocki (Germany,1988). [EMBEDDED VIDEO REMOVED FROM YOUTUBE, SORRY. YOU MAY BE ABLE TO FIND THE FILM HERE.] 

The vanishing point of Images of The World is the conceptual image of the 'blind spot' of the evaluators of aerial footage of the IG Farben industrial plant taken by the Americans in 1944. Commentaries and notes on the photographs show that it was only decades later that the CIA noticed what the Allies hadn't wanted to see: that the Auschwitz concentration camp is depicted next to the industrial bombing target. (At one point during this later investigation, the image of an experimental wave pool - already visible at the beginning of the film - flashes across the screen, recognizably referring to the biding of the gaze: for one's gaze and thoughts are not free when machines, in league with science and the military, dictate what is to be investigated. Farocki thereby puts his finger on the essence of media violence, a "terrorist aesthetic" (Paul Virilio) of optic stimulation, which today appears on control panels as well as on television, with its admitted goal of making the observer into either an accomplice or a potential victim, as in times of war.

-- Christa Blümlinger

One must be just as wary of pictures as of words. There is no literature without linguistic criticism, without the author being critical of the existing language. It's just the same with film. One need not look for new, as yet unseen images, but one must work with existing ones in such a way that they become new.

-- Jörg Becker, TAZ, 1989

Although content can be quantified and evaluated in a systematic way… a deeper, contextual understanding is dependent on a network of encoded structures in representation… ‘Interpretation’ can equally be an expression of presupposition based on historical distance and modern disciplinary preoccupations. Although strands of representation and interpretation can certainly be identified, they cannot be neatly disentangled, for they are largely contiguous. Meaning shifts in a delicate and possibly indeterminate balance between creator, consumer, and occasionally subject…  While this leads to interpretive complexity, it points also to the richness of the photographic record in both theoretical and evidential modes.

Margaret Bourke-White's iconic 1950 photographs of miners underground in Johannesburg. In 1949 and 1950, the pioneering female photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White spent five months in southern Africa, producing four photo-essays for Life, one of America's most widely read magazines. Two of the essays, which dealt with South Africa in particular, were Americans' visual introduction to apartheid. The first essay depicted the dedication of the Voortrekker Monument and naively reproduced Afrikaner nationalist ideologies. Appearing several months later, the more substantial of the two essays was a surprisingly vigorous condemnation of racial oppression and labour exploitation at the beginning of the apartheid era. While it remains one of the most compelling photo-essays ever to appear in Life, the decision that Bourke-White and her editors made to avoid showing or mentioning black activism undermined its analysis. The close ties between labour unions, black political groups, and the Communist Party of South Africa made the subject taboo in the strongly anti-communist political climate of post-war America.

This is what a stereoscope looks like - it's the Victorian version of a View-master.

Stereographs were placed in the holder and then adjusted until the viewer experienced a three dimensional effect. A stereograph is made from two photographs of the same subject taken from slightly different angles, and an illusion of perspective and depth is achieved when the two images combine when viewed through the stereoscope.

This particular example dates back to 1901 and was based on a design by the inventor Oliver Wendell Holmes. Find out more about stereoscopy here.

Stereographs of miners in Johannesburg mines around the turn of the 20th Century. Unknown photographer and provenance.

These were found in an antique shop off Long Street, Cape Town, and came with the viewing apparatus needed to experience them in 3D.

If you look through enough old photographs, you might notice that many from around the turn of the last century come in seemingly-identical pairs. What you may not realise is that these pairs were meant to be viewed together, each side lending the other a sense of depth that a photograph alone cannot possess.

Using stereoscopes, the entertainment-seeking Victorian public immersed themselves in these 3D photographs in a manner akin to how we now view movies, video games or cellphone screens.

Stereographs of miners in Johannesburg mines around the turn of the 20th Century. Photographer unknown.

These were found in an antique shop off Long Street, Cape Town, and came with the viewing apparatus needed to experience them in 3D.

Victorian stereographs by an unknown photographer of miners in Johannesburg mines around the turn of the 20th Century.

Alien Invasion [or] burning people is as South African as braaivleis

An in(tro)duction video for the alien visitor to South Africa. This satirical video art piece by Nadine Hutton utilizes aspects of horror reflecting human nature not just to fear the unknown, but to assume the worst from superstition and prejudice specifically in relation to alien invasions. Aliens, foreigners, immigrants, and people who look or speak differently: The Other. Zombies - the mob, mindless automatons left with one desire - consume...consume... consume.

A new exhibition by up-and-coming photographer Sydelle Willow Smith opened at the AVA gallery in Church Street this evening.

Smith’s work foregrounds her intention to complicate the established body of representations of the relationships between migrants ("amakwerekwere”) and South Africans as inevitably steeped in xenophobia and violence, by telling photographic stories that don’t fit these flattened, stereotypical narratives.

The exhibition blurb reads:

Soft Walls seeks to deal with convivial relationships between migrated African nationals and South Africans; revealing the subtle ways in which individuals make sense of their experiences; forming relationships and bonds that can challenge dominant perceptions wherein difference is celebrated and prejudices towards “foreign” Africans are perpetuated.

With migrants settling in, marrying, developing friendships and building homes with South Africans, the question of identity and belonging has become central. While immigrant integration has fairly engaged and transformed South African communities, the process has not, necessarily, led to cohesive communities. This has, in turn, led to the perceived walls or restrictions and unfavourable relationship issues.

Smith’s Soft Walls figuratively investigates the subtle ways in which African nationals and South Africans, in relationships, make sense of their space, experiences and complexities.

Sydelle Willow Smith on the photograph I have featured:

I met Saabirah and Koura through Saabirah’s teacher, Cosmas, a poet from Zimbabwe. Saabirah, 14, is South African and grew up in the same street in Maitland as Koura who is 13. Koura was born in South Africa, her father is from Ivory Coast and her mother is from Mali. They do not attend the same school but do go to the same Madrasa and spend most weekends together. I asked them to write about their experience of doing the project.

Saabirah Karriem: “This project helped me learn a lot more about my friend Koura and her personality. It also allowed me to see that I can look past colour & race and take people for who they are. Friendship is loving and accepting someone for who they are and not caring about their skin colour or race. It is also about respect and honesty, because without that, a friendship is worthless. My dream for South Africa is to become a better and well-rounded country that stands together and cares about humanity. I want the country to respect everyone equally no matter skin colour or race”.

Koura Sissoko: “I liked this project as so many pictures got taken of me. I also think that this project will send a positive message through South Africa. The thing that friendship means to me, is that if your friends really care about you, they wouldn’t care about your race, colour, no matter what it is, black, white, pink, or purple. They will only care about your personality and your dignity. The changes that I would like to see happen here in South Africa, is that people should stop drinking, whites, blacks and coloureds should get along with one another. That’s what I would like to see happen here in South Africa”.

If you get the feeling someone is watching you, you may not be far off from the truth, though that "someone" may actually be a "something." As the popularity of drones for surveillance grows, so do privacy concerns for citizens just going about their daily business. 

Based on a hybrid of a hoodie and burqah, designer Adam Harvey has come up with a line of anti-drone clothing that is way more stylish than an aluminium foil hat. Thermal imaging shows how the clothing is designed to protect the wearer from the drone's mechanical gaze.

This is a photograph of a family I took with my cell phone at Milnerton Fleamarket about a year ago.

I have been thinking about it in relation to the “women who eat on tubes” discussion about photographing and sharing images of strangers online.

Even though I had asked for the family’s permission and shared the picture out of a joyful, sincere sense of wonder, I am not sure I would share a picture like this again.

The discussion that ensued under the picture made me feel uncomfortable. It was undertaken in the subjects’ absence - removed from them in time and space, where they could not defend themselves or participate in the interpretations. I felt like I had rendered them potentially vulnerable to criticism, even derision, that was not containable, over which neither they nor I had agency once it was “out there”, even though I had posted the photograph wanting to celebrate them, and they had given me their full permission.

---

This is the discussion, pasted from Facebook:

CAPTION: Amazing family I saw today at Milnerton Fleamarket

Justin F , David C and 26 others like this.

-