Landscape As a Witness to History

by Cecilie Oedegaard

Currently residing in Tel Aviv, Israel I recently visited the garden of Gethsemane in Jerusalem’s Ancient City, claimed by Christians as the place where Jesus Christ prayed before he was crucified. The garden is located close to the Mount of Olives and the feeling of being amid history is palpable. In 2012 carbon dating of samples taken from olive trees that can be found in the Garden of Gethsemane, showed that they are at least 900 years old making it likely that these trees are in fact the very trees that were sheltering Jesus at the site where the Bible says he was praying and later betrayed by Judas.

The land of Israel is pervaded by history whether ancient, modern or more recent. Being truly fascinated by the idea of nature as a quiet observant of history led me to the discovery of Israeli contemporary photographer Ori Gersht’s body of work titled Ghost (2004). Socio-political concerns underpin most of Gersht’s work and Ghost is no exception. With this body of work he simultaneously explores the symbolic power and vulnerability of the ancient olive trees in Israel which have been invested with political and cultural significance.

The olive trees Gersht photographed were located in Arab villages throughout the Galilee, the war-torn region in Northern Israel, bordering on Lebanon. The trees represent the Palestinian people, the Arab culture and they signify the bond between the people and the land, and thus the continuity of history. Gersht explains in an interview that the trees actually lived through the Ottoman Occupation, The British Mandate and they are entangled in the current Israeli-Palestinian territorial dispute, spreading indiscriminately, as they do across a physical and symbolic divide. During the Six-day War in 1967 Arab land in the Galilee was claimed by the Israelis and the ancient trees where destroyed in the process of reclaiming land and establishing identity.

Gersht states that he wanted to photograph the silent and beautiful trees and at the same time capture the violent environment they grow in. The violence is expressed through the photographic process, as Gersht intentionally overexposed the photographs in the bright light of the midday sun, bleaching the film and fading the images of the trees. The photographic process hence serves as a metaphor for the fading presence of the majestic trees as they appear both ghostly and delicate, almost dissolving into the earth and sky.

In the artist statement Gersht writes:

"My practice investigates the themes of history’s violence, the poignancy of time’s indifference to what passes and the cyclical relation between past, present and future."

Although the olive trees in Israel as Ori Gersht beautifully captures remain at the centre of an ongoing conflict, in other parts of the world the so-called Witness or Survival trees are offering hope to the ones left behind in tragic events.

In October 2001, a tree was discovered at Ground Zero severely damaged, with snapped roots and burned and broken branches. The tree was removed from the rubble and placed in the care of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. After its recovery and rehabilitation, the tree was returned to the Memorial in 2010. New, smooth limbs extended from the stumps, creating a visible demarcation between the tree’s past and present. Today, the tree stands as a living reminder of resilience, survival and rebirth.

In North-East Japan a single Pine became the observer and survivor of a natural disaster when a tsunami killed 1 700 people in the town of Rikuzentakata. It grew into a symbol of hope for the people left behind in this tragic event. The 250-year-old "miracle" pine – was the only one among 70,000 trees left standing along the town's coastline after the disaster.

Throughout history, from the crucifixion of Jesus Christ to our modern times’ Israeli-Palestinian conflict the olive trees of The Holy Land have witnessed endless violence and bloodshed. Are we ever going to see peace in this region? Well, if any get to experience that, it might be the olive trees.

References:

The Edges of Trauma, Explorations in Visual Art and Literature, Tamas Benyei, page 182-183

http://www.thegundgallery.org/2013/02/ghost-olive-olive-4-mark-01-from-the-series-cypresses/

www.reuters.com (Olive trees of Gethsemane among oldest in world,  October 2012)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/arts/design/ori-gersht-history-repeating-at-museum-of-fine-arts-in-boston.html?mcubz=1

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/280390/beauty-tender-fleeting.html

http://www.inglebygallery.com/exhibitions/ori-gersht-jan-brueghel-the-elder/

http://adventure.howstuffworks.com/-witness-trees-testify-history-hope-visitors.htm

Ruins Porn: The line between fascination and exploitation.

by Shannon Polugar

Eric Holubow's "Shedding Stairwell" shot in 2008 at the Hyde Park Hospital in Illinois.

Abandoned places fascinate us and fill us with a variety of emotion: nostalgia for times gone by, a bit of fear, loneliness, awe. When photographs of these abandoned or destroyed places are done well, I think about this fascination in terms of a good amusement park. The nostalgia is the antique carousel. The tempered fear is the dark, haunted house. Loneliness is the ride you love but no one else will ride with you. Awe is taking the ferris wheel just to stop at the top to see the view.

However there is also a side of ruins porn photography that is darker. It is the old, seedy side-shows where some charismatic hustler is making a pitch in front of his booth, enticing the viewer into see some poor “different” person, and making a profit off their suffering. 

The term “Ruins Porn” is credited to being first used by photographer James Griffioen, who used the term when he described how photographers would flock to the abandoned and derelict places in Detroit, not to show the story of the locations but to use the locations for their own entertainment, or to make a point about an unrelated topic. Of course he too photographed these places, but it was the intention that mattered to him.

Part of a short series by James Griffon, this is one of the images that helped to triple traffic to the Vice UK website

I however use the term more liberally. I don’t think it needs to be a term only used to describe those who some may find disrespectful to a place and its history, but as a term for the genre of taking photographs of abandoned places in general. Regardless of the photographer’s intent, the viewer still views the images because there is a quality to them that is fascinating. In his interview with Vice UK, their editor noted that Griffioen’s short series shot inside an abandoned Detroit school tripled the website’s traffic. So to the viewer, at least initially, it still deserves the ‘porn’ descriptor.

While Griffioen considered those using the long abandoned places for their own entertainment in terms of photography as bad apples, on the spectrum of ruins porn, I would argue they were the kids playing pranks: tasteless, but not inherently harmful.

There are far worse versions of ruins porn, and the debate is not a new one, though with the recent destructive forces of Hurricane Harvey in Texas and Hurricane Irma in the Caribbean and Florida, it is a topic ripe to be readdressed. Just as Griffioen complained about people flocking to his hometown in his interview with ArtNews in 2013, “with $40,000 cameras to take pictures of houses worth less than their hotel bills,” people also flock to natural disasters to do the same.

So what is the difference? It is the immediacy of human suffering. While in Griffioen’s Detroit the community has long suffered, the places photographers are flocking to for their fix of ruins porn are long detached from the individual. The abandoned Packard plant hasn’t been anyone’s place of work since the 1950s. The abandoned schools he muddles through haven’t seen a student since the late 1980s.

But the hurricanes and other natural disasters bring fresh destruction. Deaths are still being mourned. People are far from ‘moving on.’ In these cases if a photographer chooses to go, one has to be far more careful in their subject matter and intent. Their goal should be documentation, telling the story of the disaster and situation for what it is rather than entertainment value.

Victims of Hurricane Irma pick up the remains of their family business, but did they have any choice in their lives being photographed for the view of others?

Just this morning I came across the photograph above, and the attached article. At least the article helps get across the story of the people in the image, but one also can’t help but feel uncomfortable by it either. The reporter likely asked permission in this situation to photograph them as they pick of the pieces of their lives, but there it is also a hard situation to back out of. People want to be polite and helpful, and saying ‘yes’ could be easier than the perceived stress of someone asking again if you say no.

Some may argue that to documentary value wins out here, but I think if one asks themselves if they would want to be photographed in the same situation. The answer may change. Imagine the same scenario Griffioen described with the $40,000 cameras and outrageous hotel bills, and those people coming to photograph the mere fact that you just lost everything. You are suffering, without a home, without a business. They get to go back to their lives and livelihood. Where do you come out ahead by being their muse? Now imagine even worse that they aren’t a reporter for a non-profit news organization as with the photo above, but are profiting directly from your suffering? Not so nice.

This isn’t to say ruin porn in relation to disaster photography doesn’t have a necessary role, but the photographer should not be there because it is ‘cool’. It should be in service to the community in suffering.

Image 12 in the Silent Existence series, taken of the aftermath of the 2011 Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami, in city of Ishinomaki. Hyakutake presents the images as a ‘new page in Japanese postwar history’.

Tetsugo Hyakutake’s series “Silent Existence”, taken of the aftermath of the 2011 Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami is a good example of how one can document in the realm of ruins porn without taking advantage of the people who are suffering. He took the images with no one else around, the people had left. Their suffering while recent was not immediately present in the images.

Back to James Griffioen. He doesn’t go traveling across the country to the latest and greatest site that has been ‘found’ to photograph the abandoned remnants of society. He stays in his own area, a place where he is personally invested, and a place where he feels that his voice as a photographer can add to our understanding of the predicaments his city has faced.

His approach should be the goal of ruins photography: adding meaning to the places that remain even as we seek out the photographs because of our own personal attraction to the emotions they bring forth.

http://ebow.org/section/76239-Hyde-Park-Hospital.html

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ppzb9z/something-something-something-detroit-994-v16n8

http://www.jamesgriffioen.net/index.php?/photography/vacant-schools/

http://www.artnews.com/2013/02/06/the-debate-over-ruin-porn/

http://www.npr.org/2017/09/13/550640402/-looks-like-a-bomb-went-off-returning-home-to-a-trailer-park-leveled-by-irma

http://www.tetsugohyakutake.com/Silent-Existence

Portfolio: Teresa Meier

Teresa Meier graduated from AAU with an MFA and now is teaching classes of her own. This fall, you can join Teresa at "Making Meaningful Photographs," Sept 14-15 in the nature reserve at Sitka Center. She says she has a couple of spots left!

On October 21st she is giving an artist talk at SPENW in Corvallis, OR entitled "Image Maker: The Artist Within."

Below you can see some of her work from The Witness Within.

“You have to understand, my dears, that the shortest distance between a truth and a human being is a story.”  ~ Anthony de Mello, One Minute Wisdom

In the words of Frida Kahlo, these images are the most honest expression of myself that I can show you. They represent all the things that I saw, all that I witnessed and experienced, disassembled, an-alyzed, and meticulously rebuilt into my own personal mythology. I sought out landscapes I’d ven-tured through, mimicked the unnerving symmetry of the suburban neighborhoods from my child-hood, remembered my constant cat companion, and realized that vivid pink skies will always signify home to me. I carried around a box of family photos that as a child I had spent hours poring over, trying to make all the pieces of family fit together into some kind of whole.  I thought about the reli-gion and father that damned me before I was born. I packed it all up, carried it with me, and let each place tell a piece of the story as I came to know it—slowly, in bits and pieces, out of time, and from many different points of view.

This series continues to be a cathartic journey of self-exploration and identity, investigating and de-ciphering place and personal history, and its effect on my visual style as an artist. Aesthetically, the work is inspired by magical realism, the universally understood characteristics of fairytales, as well as my own personal history. Narratively, it is influenced by the classic hero-quest literary structure. The final images are presented quite large at 48”x72” due to my penchant for detail, and are con-structed with a super computer named, Thor. As I continue to work on the series, I have begun to reconstruct my childhood family home from memory, both digitally and in reality, adding yet an-other layer of intrigue into how we construct fact and use it to navigate the world.

See the completed body of work at: https://www.teresameier.com/

We're Back! It's Fall Semester, 2017

It's fall again, and the School of Photography is in a flurry of activity! We have some exciting announcements:

• Don't miss the newest exhibition at 688 Gallery. This month, the gallery hosts work from the School of Photography's prized faculty. The exhibition opens tonight, September 7th, from 5:30pm to 7:30pm, and runs until October 2nd.

• Students enrolled in PH325 Advanced Digital Capture will now be eligible for Phase One certification! Phase One products mark a new industry standard; our students will now meet this popular demand.

• The MFA program rolls out new classes this semester -- take a sneak peek here:

We hope to see you all in the classroom or in the field!

Norman Maslov Agent Internationale

by Heidi Volpe

Who printed it?
The Agency promo catalog was printed in Asia in coordination with The Workbook.

Who designed it?
Designed by Anita Atencio at the Workbook and our upcoming promo-catalogue has been revised by the Workbook’s new designer, Andy Carey. The booklet is an expanded extension of our Workbook directory advertising.  

Who edited the images?
My photographers submit images to me and we discuss what we want to showcase each year. I edit the order. 

How many did you make?
2500 copies each year. Mailed to creatives nationally and given out at portfolio shows. 

How many times a year do you send out promos?
This is the one full agency group mailing we do once a year. The only one that includes all of our talent. Other mailings throughout the year are separate pieces from the individual artists. 

Where did you get the buttons made?
Buttons made by the Busy Beaver Button Company in Chicago. Designed by Scott Miller

What photo is on that button and why?
The photo is an image that has been a primary part of our identity for over twenty years. We have modified its use over time depending on the application. Hats are an ongoing part of the Agency’s image identity. The round button version was adapted by designer Scott Miller. 

Tell us about the Hat theme.
We’ve been doing the Hat Cover theme on our promotional catalogs for about 12 years. Each year I select one of my photographers to create the wrap around cover/back image. I send them a selection of my hats and they can concept and shoot anything they want with any of the hats as long as it fits the booklets design and front and back cover needs.

This article originally appeared on May 15, 2017 as part of The Daily Promo on aPhotoEditor

Susan Mah's Loss Project Finds New Home

Los Angeles-based support organization HealGrief.org will now host Loss Project, an ongoing body of work by AAU graduate Susan Mah. Loss Project is "a merging of psychology and photography, an artistic exploration of the human condition as it relates to loss." Says Mah,

"My images, along with stories from those who participated, are there as an empathic display of grief and mourning. Additionally, there is a "call for entries" to the public, i.e., an invite for others to share their own imagery about their losses. Thus the Loss Project becomes a therapeutic intervention, so to speak, wherein anyone in the world can share their story, whether or not he or she identifies as an artist."

To view more of Loss Project or participate in the online community, click here.

Photography In An Evolving Media Landscape

by Kris Davidson

SOCIAL MEDIA AND COLLABORATIVE DOCUMENTARY WORK
It is only natural that a shift between how photographers and subjects collaborate on documentary work is underway—manifestations of collaboration are increasingly visible. “Citizen journalism” is made possible by the widespread availability of smartphones and other digital recording devices—yet, the question of what defines a photograph as effective amid the incomprehensible volume of images flooding the world remains. As a result, many documentary photographers are assuming a multifaceted role of collaborator/mentor/curator/director, working with their subjects to cultivate and distill subject-created work and incorporating it in a larger commentary.

A screenshot of the Everyday Africa Instagram feed. Photographer Peter DiCampo and writer Austin Merrill had a simple goal when they launched Everyday Africa in early 2012: to provide another alternative to the tragic narrative that defined so much of the reportage from the African continent. The two men never imagined that they might start an international movement, but that is what transpired, thanks to the power of social media. Today Everyday Africa is a thriving Instagram (@everydayafrica) and Tumblr feed with content delivered from a growing group of photographers (both Africans and expatriates alike) that reveals daily life on the continent from multiple perspectives, moving beyond the visual clichés and stereotypes about war, poverty, and disease that permeate conventional media coverage of Africa. The group’s mission statement articulates their motivation: “As journalists who have lived and worked on the continent for years at a time, we find the extreme not nearly as prevalent as the familiar, the everyday.”

Academic and researcher Mandy Rose, who looks at the intersection between documentary and networked culture, has identified four specific areas of collaboration in documentary work:

The Creative Crowd Model: This model includes multiple participants who contribute fragments to a highly templated whole, analogous to the separate panels within a quilt. The units of content may not make much sense on their own, but value and meaning accrue as they come together, producing a distinctive aesthetic that’s about energy and repetition.

The Participant Observers Model: This model utilizes distributed (in differing locales) documentarians who each contribute to a work that’s concerned with contrasting experiences of place. The participants decide when and what they shoot and what story they want to tell, but their role in the final contextualization of that content can vary dramatically.

The Community of Purpose Model: In this model, a group of participants take part in a production with a shared objective around social change.

The Traces of the Multitude Model: The projects that fall under this model introduce a new aspect to collaboration by drawing on social media content—linking to a multitude of potentially anonymous contributors. Here we can start to see documentary that is continually live and updating, with static video linked to live web data.

Every age brings forth its own attendant visual vernacular; the current technology-fueled era is especially defined by a rapidly evolving visual literacy. With the rise of social media—especially visually driven social media such as Instagram—there has been a discernible shift from a professional photographer-led visual vernacular to a new expression that is heavily influenced by the manner in which social-media platforms organize (or rather, disorganize) images. With more than a billion smartphones sold each year, cameras are now among the most ubiquitous technologies on the planet. Reportedly, a trillion images were created last year, more every minute than in the entire 20th century combined. Everyone is a photographer. Everyone has a unique point of view, a story to tell, a version of truth to share with the world. One thing is certain: It’s a fascinating time to be making and consuming images; as a society we are redefining the fluid parameters of objectivity, subjectivity while reframing all-too-human quest for some larger ephemeral truth.

Kris Davidson is a Part-Time Instructor at AAU. This feature is an excerpt of the full article, which can be found on Davidson's blog: http://blog.krisdavidson.com/2017/07/13/the-subjective-gaze/