Exercise : The decisive moment

The Decisive Moment

Above are two pictures by Henri Cartier Bresson and we are talking bout the decisive moment.

The timing on the first picture is good the bike fits nicely into the gap, the bike is clear and you sense the motion and the staircase is clear to look at.  Had it had been a couple of seconds earlier then the image of the cyclist may have been unclear you may not even have got the sense of direction.  The definition of the railings would also have been less clear.  It also feels weighted correctly having the stairs one side and the bike on the left.  

The second picture of the boy ( Little Boy Paris - 1954 ) - to me he looks happy and has a spring in his step, he is looking up with his chin up which expresses his demeanour. 

The focus is on him and singles him out in the image.  He is carrying two large bottles of wine - he looks quite proud of himself.  He is walking along with chest out.

Had the timing been different or his facial expressions different, sad maybe, or worried you could have read a whole new meaning to the activity of the boy and what he was up to. 

My own decisive moments below, the first picture here of Otis shows him calm and willing to have his picture taken.  The truth is he was being very naughty.  He walked out of shot, stole my hair tie, and was persistent trying to eat the treats I had. 

Having the camera in manual you have to be careful that your settings are OK and there is no pause or delay in focusing - ( shutter lag time ) - if you have any delay then you could miss your exact decisive moment.  Then you would have a whole different picture.  

Modernist Practice

Henri Cartier-Bresson  1908 - 2004

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVaD1moHtpc



Graham Clarke - The photograph 

Read chapter on documentary ... page 145 - 87


The Americans 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHtRZBDOgag

Exercise : Positive and Negative Spin

Look at some different newspapers and note how racial issues are covered in the modern press..

Here I chose to look at 'The Times' and compare todays edition with 'The Sun' on the same day. The story today was a very moving and world changing image of a three year old boy drowning in the sea trying to escape to Europe.  His Mother and brother died too. It was a very sad day, truly awful.

The Sun paper always looks cheap, regardless of the story, even here its page is cluttered.  It urges the Prime minister to deal with the crisis, the biggest since world war two..

The images are matching the headline, It's Life and Death, the page is split between the two images.  On the left is Life .. the picture shows a baby born that day in a Hungarian station, wrapped in foil blankets to aid its survival, the picture isn't clear or particularly nice to look at.  The baby called Hope - Hope for its future - but not the gooey baby pictures we are used to with our babies laden with luxuries and wrapped in soft warm blankets.

The second image is of the three year old boy who has drowned, I feel the way these two pictures are placed together doesn't give him the respect he deserves.   However it does tell the whole story - from birth to death, you can feel the mess these people are in, as both of these situations are wrong.

The Times by contrast has the same picture but is just the dead boy on his own being carried from the water.  Your attention is solely on this situation, you think of nothing else accept the dead boy.  It is a haunting image and is sharp and uncomplicated, tells the whole story.
Much more sophisticated than the Sun.

The headline is .. Europe divided .. I think everyone is divided.  We all would do the same for our families, but also know our own countries are full of their own problems already.

Although the Sun and the Times are telling the same story, the Sun has chosen a contrast, the two extremes of an awful time.  The times for me is a more powerful image and story as it focuses just on the tragedy which I think its too awful to make it part of another story.

This story is something horrific which we do not see thankfully all the time and both papers are making the same point.

The headlines :
Times - Europe divided
The Sun - Its Life and Death

I think these headlines are appropriate for the pictures but seen alone could mean anything, when seen with the images, they make more sense.

These images have influenced and manipulated the viewer - very much so - sadly these pictures changed the whole world.  Lets hope for the better.

Social Documentary & Race

Gordon Parks  ( 1912 - 2006 )

Story of parks ..   http://layersofmeaning.org/archives/000246.html  ( cant find link )

http://www.gordonparksfoundation.org


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Parks

gordon parks   - images


More on Malthusian eugenics and the Harlem Project.

http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/list3.pl

http://citizenreviewonline.org/special_issues/population/the_negro_project.html  ( cant find )

http://www.princeton.edu/president/tilghman/speeches/20100309/


SCIENTIFIC RACISM : The Eugenics of social Darwinism


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FmEjDaWqA4

The Eugenics of social Darwinism

Millions over the years have died.  In the 1830’s Britain brought a stop to slavery in the Caribbean sugar plantation hoping that this would lead to the workers to integrate and become more Christian like, this was lead by the Christian alliances. Even though they were fellow men and brothers, there was still an unequalness about them.  The Christians still thought they were better.

In 1803 the British began to settle in Tasmania, Australia where there were 5,000 aborigines – they thought them to be culture less, with no religion, godless brutes.  Savage and violent.

They began to fight amongst themselves, the British built a new capital and they displaced and abused the aborigines. 

The Black War was a hidden conflict and it was OK to kill aborigines and whole groups were destroyed.  It was the savages versus the Europeans, the hatred was extreme. The aborigines had to fight back to defend themselves.

The Christains managed to replace themselves but the aborigines were not capable of this so their numbers diminished. They were at risk of annihilation by the end of 1820’s.

Colonial Governor George Arthur set about to save them.  Not doing so would have been disastrous for his career. He produced a poster showing an inter racial community living happily together and saying not to kill and if they killed each other they would be hanged. But sadly this didn’t have the desired effect.

In 1830 he offered a bounty to bring in all the aborigines alive but only two were caught.

George Augustus Robinson was hired to bring in all the aborigines in a government agreement – peace treaty – it was negotiated that neither side could win so the Aborigines were gathered and taken to an island, with the understanding they would be able to return one day.

300 or so were taken to Flinders Island where they were fed and watered.  Robinson was the chief protector and was paid £8000 to do so. The island had a settlement with chapel and school and it was the idea to civilise them.

They became vunerable to human diseases and depression and they began to die.  260 were dead. In their 10,000 year history they were almost extinct.

This wasn’t a unique event, all over the world settlers were destroying the deciduous people. 

The sugar producers started to lose money and they blamed the black people for being lazy and having no drive. Also an inability to learn quickly.

The vision for civilisation was doomed.

In 1849, Thomas Carlisle called for a return to slavery. He said there was a necessity for inequality.

Men to rule women

The educated to rule the uneducated

Whites to rule blacks.

1865, rebels decided to fight at attack a court house in Marant Bay Jamacia .. the governor odered marshall law and killed 500 people, thousands of homes were torched.  The rebels didn’t fight back because they wanted a sense of justice.  The british anti slave parties called for him to be chaeged with mass murder, but he got off.  He saif they rebels were bruts and he was supported by many authors and writers all backing him.

The Victorian age suffered from scientific racism. 

1840 Robert Knox – wrote Races of men – said, Race is everything and the superior race will dominate.

Samuel George Moreton started to collect skulls to measure the eye sockets, features and brain size, figuring that the blacks had smaller skulls so smaller brains. Not fully human !

Darwin – the Origin Spieces  - the great british race were successful at expanding – and they would be encouraged to do so so the others diminished. He predicted a future without them hoping we would look back as we do with extinct animals.

Racism was also in India.  1870’s El Nino caused starvation amongst the peasants.  Whilst this was happening Lord Litton was celebrating queen Victoria’s Coronation and he was feeding 60,000 troops and friends of the British empire as millions died around him.

The British forced the indians to produce crops for GB and USA the global market and then had no food for themselves.

They were also cruel to them, made them walk miles for food, worked them to death, and the children were too weak to work or walk.

1870 – 8 million Indians died.

1880 – 1890 – 30 million died under British rule.

Different classes and regions were studied along with criminals to see what was happening and at one point they thought the lower classes were gaining strength.  They encouraged the middle classes to have more children to keep them strong. And the lower classes to have less.

This is called Eugenics …

1904 – Namibia – the hererro people under German rule – many were massacred.  The Germans turned these into concentration camps where they were worked to death, raped and beaten.

They had a death camp called Shark Island – you knew if you went here you were to die, 3,500 people were killed. 1904-9.

Shark Island now is camp site but the bones are beginning to show themselves. Mass grave sites.

Skulls were sold for racial science. There was a trade for them.  1908 Fisher made records and measurements of the inhabitants and kept books discussing the characteristics of races.

He noted that the black gene would always dominate the white gene.

The 20thC immigration to the USA encouraged eugenics.

Charles Davenport – if they found you genetically unfit in any way race or mental illness or deformities then your fertility was controlled.

They wanted no interracial marriages and 27 states passed the laws to stop it.  They wanted to protect the white race.

Mass sterilization was forced to try to extinct the races. A master race – Eugenics.

Germany was most receptive to this they began to sterilize the mentally ill and deformed.  1939. Which lead to adult euthanasia -  Nazi.

Mentally ill first – 70,000

Sick and infirm – 20,000 from concentration camps.

Which then lead to the killing of jews of Europe and Poland..

RACE HYGIENE ……..

THE SUBJECT AS OBJECT - Photography and the human body.

Read chapter four of the course reader.

Exercise : Analysing social documentary

Research at least two of the preceding photographers ..



LEWIS HINE

ANALYSING SOCIAL DOCUMENTARY

I have chosen two pictures to dicuss, one by Lewis Hine and the other by Jacob Riis.  Both pictures I like to look at.. and well the first one very familiar to me as I expect to many.

Lewis Hine was commissioned to photograph the building of the empire state building – my first thoughts are of how dangerous it all looks, my husband is in construction and the things they get up to are bad enough, but I don’t think they have had lunch balanced on a steel.

These pictures do as they say and really document the proceedings.  You feel like you are a part of it and it shows a proper insight.

The workmen having lunch are the subject of the picture, although so is the project as a whole the empire state building.  This is the context – this is the setting – which is very much part of the picture.

As I said before the photographer Lewis Hine was commissioned to do this.

Now did the workmen give their consent, I would say no as it may have been the photographer just saw this from afar and took the shot and they are all very relaxed and not looking at the camera.  However I’m sure they would have consented if asked but the picture may have had a much more staged look.

I feel this picture does have a ‘Hine’ feel about it and looking at the selection of pictures they have a similarity about them.  Most of them show a frieghteningly  lack of safety which makes you tummy churn.

The photograph is very successful  .. it is imfamous anyway but also shows the men relaxing having lunch in the most bizzare circumstances and is a comical juxtaposition.

I feel this picture is an example of social documentary as I feel its life events happening rather than a news event ( although the building of the Empire State would be a news event ) but I feel that these pictures are more about the workers.

The second picture ..  is by Jacob Riis – How the other half lives. – Bandits Roost. 1888.New York.

This book highlighted the conditions in the slums of New York – Riis was a photographer as a pasttime but also found it a useful tool when writing police reports on the New York slums – he was a successful police reporter.

The picture is in one of the dangerous alleys of New York, where all criminal activity took place.  The police would have accompanied the photographer on such outings and shoots so you wonder what the discussions would have been between them as to what they were trying to interpret from the photo .. There is a possibility that he was being paid as a reporter, although a large percentage was taken for his own self.

I feel the people did give their consent as they are all looking at the camera and also because of the long camera exposure you would have more movement in the image if they were not asked to stay still.  But mainly because they all look like they are participating.

I feel the photo does show the dirt and dinge, but maybe not how aggressive the people may have been .. or showing the danger.

These pictures were a social documentation of the situation and lives in the slums.

JACOB RIIS