Zemni Images

Photography, moving image, design and illustration of Linda Mayoux

Joel Meyerowitz

Category: Politics and Activism

  • Joel Meyerowitz

    Google Images for Aftermath

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    Reflections on Ground Zero : BBC Documentary

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    Compare with the way another photographer – a policeman John Bott whose health was seriously damaged by the photography work he did. Unlike Meyerowitz he did not profit from the photos he took.

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    Discussion Exercise 3.3 ‘Late Photography

    Biography Wikipedia

    Joel Meyerowitz (born March 6, 1938) is a street photographer and portrait and landscape photographer.

    He began photographing in color in 1962 and was an early advocate of the use of color during a time when there was significant resistance to the idea of color photography as serious art. In the early 1970s he taught the first color course at the Cooper Union in New York City where many of today’s renowned color photographers studied with him.

    In 1962, inspired by seeing Robert Frank at work, Meyerowitz quit his job as an art director at an advertising agency and started photographing streets of New York City with a 35 mm camera and black-and-white film. Garry Winogrand, Tony Ray-Jones, Lee Friedlander, Tod Papageorge and Diane Arbus were photographing there at the same time. Meyerowitz was inspired Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank and Eugène Atget.

    After alternating between black-and-white and color, Meyerowitz “permanently adopted color” in 1972, well before John Szarkowski’s promotion in 1976 of color photography in an exhibition of work by the then little-knownWilliam Eggleston. Meyerowitz also switched at this time to large format, often using an 8×10 camera to produce photographs of places and people.

    Meyerowitz appears extensively in the 2006 BBC Four documentary series The Genius of Photography and in the 2013 documentary film Finding Vivian Maier.

    He is the author of 16 books including:

    Cape Light, considered a classic work of color photography.

    Aftermath: World Trade Center Archive (2006) – he was the only photographer allowed unrestricted access to its Ground Zero immediately following the attack.

     

     

     

  • Industrial and post-industrial landscapes

    Some activist photographers have been mainly concerned with industrial and post-industrial landscapes. Here big industry becomes the ‘new sublime’ to be feared and confronted in the hope of change and avoiding disaster.

    Other photographers have avoided any overt messages, rather asking questions to which the viewer may have different answers. These take a gentler, more ‘picturesque’ approach.

    Post-industrial spaces have also inspired a new kind of tourism: urban exploration of derelict factories and warehouses, abandoned hospitals and asylums, any kind of space that is shut up, difficult to get to (eg below ground) or in any other way off-limits or hazardous. “Leave nothing but footprints. Take nothing but photographs.”

    There are dedicated websites and chatrooms, such as

    A film discussing urban exploration: https://vimeo.com/26200018

    This has been echoed by increasing interest in ‘dark tourism’

    Urbex

  • Landscape as a Call to Action

    Photography, and the manipulation of photographs, is often used to highlight and raise political questions. Landscape photography in particular is often used in environmental activism – images of environmental degradation, urban squalor. In NGO advertising (eg GreenPeace) photographs are often manipulated to juxtapose elements that are then countered by a caption.

    • Peter Kennard produces explicit political photomontage in the dadaist tradition linked to political campaigning organisations – for example his ‘Hay Wain with Cruise Missiles’ (1980)
    • Edward Burtynsky produces large-format photographs of industrial landscapes altered by industry – an ‘industrial sublime’ creating tension between awe-inspiring beauty and the compromised environments he depicts.
    • Mitch Epstein also uses large format, but less ‘beautiful’ images that do not aim to convey a specific message, and are more documentary in juxtaposing complex narratives.
    • Dana Lixenberg in works like the Last Days of Shishmaref uses landscape and portrait photography alongside working with environmentalists and local activists to produce powerful participatory social documentary.
    • Ikka Halso uses digital montage, including 3D, to build dystopian landscapes that raise questions about the ways in which human beings are attempting to control nature.

    Exercise 3.4: A persuasive image

  • ‘Late’ photography’

    In his 2003 essay, David Campany comments that:
    “One might easily surmise that photography has of late inherited a major role as undertaker, summariser or accountant. It turns up late, wanders through the places where things have happened totting up the effects of the world’s activity.” (‘Safety in Numbness: Some remarks on the problem of “Late Photography”’ (in Campany (ed.), 2007)

    This ‘aftermath’ approach dates back to the war photographers of the American Civil War and the Crimean War (1853–56), because of technological limitations of the time. Because of the large plate cameras and slow emulsions, it was not possible to photograph actual combat. Their images focused instead on portraits of soldiers, camp scenes and the aftermath of battles and skirmishes. Their images could not yet be reproduced en masse in the illustrated press, but some of these photographs were used as the basis for woodcut engravings for publications such as The Illustrated London News and Harper’s Weekly.

    Although technology today makes it possible – though still difficult –  to capture the heat of war and atrocities, this is not necessarily the most effective way of portraying the horrors of violence.

    Examples of photographers using the ‘late’ approach in contemporary landscape include:

    • Joel Meyerowitz’s Aftermath images of Ground Zero in New York
    • Richard Misrach ‘s images of the American Desert show the aftermath of human activity but in a beautified distilled large format.
    • Sophie Ristelhueber ‘s aerial images of the Afghan conflict show the scars left on the landscape
    • Paul Seawright Hidden cold ‘objective’ images of battle sites and minefields in Afghanistan
    • Willie Doherty made very evocative images of the left detritus from conflicts during the Troubles and in the present day.

    Other photographers have focused on the precursors – the tension in anticipation of violence.  “not the ‘theatre of war’ but its rehearsal studio” (Campany, 2008, p.46). :

    • An-My Lê’s (to do) series 29 Palms (2004) documents US marine training manoeuvres at a range used to prepare soldiers ahead of deployment in Afghanistan and Iraq.
    • Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin in Chicago (2005) (to do) examine an Israeli military training ground
    • Paul Shambroom’s project Security (2003−07) studied the simulated training sites that are used by the US emergency services and Department of Homeland Security, nicknamed ‘Disaster City’ and ‘Terror Town’.
    • Sarah Pickering in UK has photographed training grounds for the fire and police service. Her images contain no people, aiming to seem like a film set ready for the action.

    3.3: ‘Late Photography’

  • The Tourist Perspective

    Before photography landscapes for mass market were available as etchings. Postcards were invented in the late 19th Century – objectifying places into commodities that could be consumed and collected for a reasonable price. People often collected postcards of places they could never travel to. By the 1870s Americans could buy photographic prints of faraway places in their local shop or mail order (Snyder in Mitchell, 2002 p179 q Alexander 2013 p89). Stereoscopic cards also became available. In order to create the 3D illusion these reinforced traditional views of separation of landscape focal planes into foreground, middle ground and background.

    See posts:

    More recently, with the development of mass tourism since the 1950s, postcards were mass produced as souvenirs of places people visited and to send home ‘Wish You Were Here’. The main emphasis is on enjoyment and selling particular places as destinations that yet more tourists will want to come. They include very cheaply produced and printed cards, sometimes with landscape as the backdrop to humorous pictures of people enjoying – or making fools of – themselves. Some are also ‘boring’ both in subject matter and treatment – and in this way become quite intriguing.

    There are also more expensive quality up-market colour images of sunsets, buildings and landscapes – particularly in more ‘exclusive’ destinations. Some of these follow ‘picturesque’ convention. Others seek to distinguish themselves from other postcards on the rack or nearby shopd by seeking new angles and composition. Some use new ways of digital processing that avoid earlier oversaturation and try to interprete views in a novel way for a more ‘discerning’ customer.

    Increasingly, standard photographic postcards produced by local photographers seem to be giving way to artists’ cards and a trend for self-processing where people produce cards from their own images so they can record their own personal impressions.

     3.2: Postcard views

  • Lake District photographers

    Photographers found from a Google Search on Lake District Photography.

    Brian Kerr

    These ones are my favourites from the search. Particularly the misty lakes and sunsets are beautiful. Colours have been altered but not over contrasty or just standard use of warm up filters. The images are very sharp. Subjects are often placed centrally using wide angle lens, instead of conventionally on rule of thirds. Probably done with a medium or large format camera?

    Matthew Priestley

    A photographer from Manchester who goes out fell walking with colleagues a few times a year. He uses a digital compact because of its portability and processes in Photoshop and Lightroom. He produces images focusing particularly on plays of light. Some of the views are very appealing, but the images are less sharp and sometimes over-contrasty. Possibly because of the use of a compact camera.

    Dave Lawrence

    These are picturesque postcard images, rather than beautiful.   Slow shutter speed waterfalls. Zig zag compositions of walls on dale hillsides with sheep. Blue lilac colours, and free use of warm up filters. Pretty touristy and unnatural colours.

    He is really strong on marketing with dowloadable screensavers. Photobox Pro Galleries. Zazzle for other merchandise eg mugs. Greetings Cards. Red Bubble for calendars etc.

    Heart of the lakes photography holidays website has a lot of rather standard sunny, but rather washed out panoramas of Castlerigg and well-known vantage points.