Essay on Considerations
Analysing my Role...
I am 59-years-old: I am not going to become a war photojournalist; I am
not even going to go where there is even the slightest hint of unrest. Linfield’s
pornographic book revolts me. I live in Zambia, and in Zambia it is pretty
difficult to find tension. Zambians are not aggressive and dissipate fast in the face of even the smallest sign of trouble, apart from
the troublesome.
I might chose to specialise in Aviation, for example, in which case I
will not be doing much in Zambia, and I do not wish to travel extensively; I
have done that already. In my second year, I studied social photography, so
whatever my role is, it has to be within the set of social activities occurring
in Zambia. There is plenty of game (wildlife) and exceptional landscape, these may
not appropriate, and of course people, what humanity is made of. There are not
many people, but broadly there is/are:
·
Rural
o
small-scale farming,
o
forestry
o
charcoal
o
firewood
o
artisan mining,
o
refugee camps from the warring countries that surround Zambia,
o
livestock
o
large cattle herds
·
transport
o
bus stations, ports
o
truck stops
o
customs
o
road transport,
o
ferry boats
o
airports
·
health:
o
orthopaedic centres,
o
Red Cross,
o
hospitals,
o
clinics.
·
labour
o
workers' housing,
o
child labour
o
markets and small-scale trade
o
graveyards,
o
and 'the street'.
The
simulacrum of the West asserts that Africa is at war, starving to death or
dying of disease; well, Zambia is not. I do not believe the only subject matter
for social photography is depravity and misery, so my role is to show the good
things in Africa. These are the dual strengths of the family and community. To
some extent the Western negativity pervades Zambia as well; something like
23,000 societies reporting that Zambians are starving to death, are oppressed et cetera. Actually, it is the misery and
reek of the West that is seeping across the borders.
Is it possible to
remove ‘neo-imperialism’ from photographs? Is it possible to remove race,
sex, power, etc?
Yes, but only if the subject is superior, or in some way more important
than the photograph and/or the photographer. In the case of photojournalism,
the emphasis is on the content of the image illustrating the text. If there is
no text, superiority can be shown by the camera's low viewpoint of the subject,
and/or the subject being emphasised by differential focus. (There are other
ways this can be accomplished including form and colour.)
If photography is
solely a part of the simulacra is there any chance of
disruption?
To
be part of the simulacrum - I suggest this interpreted differently by each
country, colour and creed - the media concerned, photographs, have to be
incorporated in that simulacrum, as journalism or advertising, both of which
provide entirely different interpretations and useage. Disruption of
advertising is easy but likely to be self-censored by the industry, unless you
are Benetton, who have used such a strategy on many occasions. Also,
advertising photography tends to be directed at a target audience of willing
believers: the best example of this is the iPhone, which is almost exclusively
used as a two-dollar phone, and only half as powerful as the Android, by user
and capacity. This however is more apparent in a communication hostile
environment, like Zambia, where phones are fully utilised as access points for
internet, wirelessly linked to LANs, file storage, music storage, et cetera,
because of the paucity of infrastructure. The iPhone is disrupted by its own
negative and abusive charisma; it doesn't need any help from anyone else.
Photojournalism
is more or less discredited by nearly everyone, Susie Linfield, Martha Rosler,
and every other woman, for some reason. In the press of the simulacrum,
pictures are usually illustrative and rarely need to be interpreted; nobody has
the time for interpretation. Photo essays have more room for disruption and the
consumers are likely to do so, while the photographer is likely to be labelled
an airheaded imperialist and patronising racist, and accused of being the
perpetrator of the problem in the first place, since he is photographing
it.
I
do not agree with this and I do not care either, sorry for the
permission-seeking worm. The problem for all this postmodern negativity is
there is a reaction, and that is the whole-scale rejection of it; and the
credibility of those who advocate it is shot. For feminism I care even less,
and I do not have any time for it: why do feminists always seek permission from
their male competitor? Just take it, because men are not interested. Of course
it has been possible to fake photographs right from the start of photography;
and some amazing trickery has been employed, and the programmes today make it
very easy.
I
am not convinced art photography, or even art, is part of the simulacrum, even
if it should be. Are the increasing numbers of unwashed proletariats really sensitive to
the arts, apart from destroying them? The socialist not-at-all-democratic very
rich bourgeoisie might be, because he has nothing else to do, and
there are an awful lot of them in Britain.
I am afraid that I do not rate the trivial and pedantic using of
cock-eyed, unnecessarily blurred and
badly-framed photographs, since all this can be imposed in post-picture
processing, and can be equally removed, so it would inevitably be fake, which,
for me, does not say much for the photographer. By such deviance, the faked
photograph detracts from the content of the image and means all future
photographs cannot be trusted. Not at all impressed, and never have been.
Who is my audience?
I would like my audience to the oh-so-generous, and rich, middle and
working class in Europe and the West. The problem is that they all believe that
they are saving poor little brown children; that the people of Africa are dying
from wars, AIDS, typhoid and every other misery known to man. The fact is the
West has no idea of what is going on and it is a most amazing
demonstration of the power of an ill-informed simulacrum to sell newspapers and
rivet eyes to TV screens, to reduce discontent, and of course to this can be
added that it is an example of Guy Debord's non-stop spectacle, of which Africa
is part. The argument that the Western target audience is fed-up with atrocity
photographs is nonsense; they revel in it, their
negativity and their guilt. Good, long may it continue! The question is how to
overwhelm the patronising, racist and imperialist myth created by Geldoff that
'conjures up an almost neocolonial ideology of failure, inadequacy, passivity,
fatalism, and inevitability' (Linfield, 2010, 40); no wonder the British decorated
him.
Where would you like
your photography to be shown?
I will publish it as a book, attached. The book is not a catalogue of negative
opinion of what the West believes is happening in Africa, but a positive
opinion about how Zambians really are. I will also print postcards. I am less
sure about the value of an exhibition in Zambia, but I may do one in conjunction
with the book launch in December 2012. The
overally objective is to try to make the people reject donor aid and belittle
the patronising neo-imperialists of the West.
