The show is immaculately curated. 55 images are printed on large scale panels with informative text on either side of the image (this saves that awkward wait for a reading fellow consumer to move). You may miss the routine of a normal gallery context where a linear viewing from start-to-end is the routine, but the double sided screens and seemingly random order allow you to wander and pick and choose at will. In this way it feels like your show - not the curator's.
Fred Ritchin says ‘The era of the photograph as automatically credible is over’, and although we cannot authenticate these pictures - cannot be there - the best have a raw power that shouts credibility. For some the adage ‘you couldn’t make it up’ seems appropriate, and for me at least it is this that makes me believe in them. The war images in particular are arresting and many are as powerful as you might find in the hallowed Magnum’ print room. However, they are not quite like Don McCullin’s pictures in the 80’s. Back then, the photograph was often the telescope, the single way that we saw through time and space. But now, with a mass of contextualising media that we cannot help but digest the photograph, is not burdened with polemic. It can be just witness. This freedom, and the ability to show imagery where the context is known, I think is helpful to the photojournalist.
It is very valid to celebrate the craft of the image makers who’s work is shown here - and I think the sensitivity and maturity of the curation dismisses any threat that this is making art out of tragedy. But exhibiting them does raise the question of how else they might be seen - how else they might be consumed. I am coming to photojournalism as a freshman - and for a short time at least this gives me a special objectivity (however hard I try I cannot see these shows as jaded professional might - I see them as a virgin). I am intelligent, well read, watch the news and consume the internet. And each and every one of these awarded images were entirely new to me. What place do these pictures have outside the merry-go-round of the business ? (When I have worked that out I will get back to you !)
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| Fausto Podavini |
Fausto Podavini has quite rightly been awarded for his brutal but not brutish images of a couple coping with Altzeimers. Each black and white image is carefully crafted - the natural light enhanced with post to create haunting chiaroscuro. These are like stills from a Bergman movie.
Maika Élan shot a series of same sex couples in Vietnam. The use of colour is amazing. It is not garish, it is not overwhelming but it is omnipresent and is used to bathe and caress the sympathetic imagery of the folk she has shot.
Aaron Huey’s images are powerfully observed and clinically edited images of native Americans on a reserve.
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| Soren Bidstup |
Paolo Patrizi lets us see some haunting distant images of African sex workers in Italy. Their meagre roadside existence is pitiful. Patrizi’s skill as an apparently objective reporter is not. He does not show the woman’s faces. I presume this out of respect for the women and to protect them and their families back home from humiliation. It also emphasises their hopeless position (as though they are looking away from us in shame) and is consistent with the contract they have with the men that use them, who after all are interested in their c**** not their countenance.
Frederick Buyckx presents images of a favela in Rio. They are beautifully shot groups and single portraits - all sharp focus in lush hues.The set is like a fashion spread for a trendy magazine - and and the images celebrate the characters. I felt more envious of their youth and beauty than I did pity for their poverty.
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| Fabio Bucciarelli |
Bernat Armangue is similarly up-close and personal. With him we become victims (or voyeurs) of the catastrophic war in Gaza. We see inside a morgue where four children are laid out dirty and destroyed. The picture is shot from the hip (thankfully - as a more lingering gaze would seem corrupt) and we have some small insight into the pain of the man who grieves next to them. One tiny detail adds curiosity and candour. The youngest child’s genitals have been covered with a scrap of cloth or nappy. Someone in the morgue has given this infant a breathe of respect and modesty that makes the brutality of the child corpse all the more horrific.
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| Adel Hana |
Sebastiano Tomada’s single shot is of a wounded child in an Aleppo hospital. Like others in the show this is a stolen moment - the photographer’s ability to mentally or practically edit out the surrounding imagery gives this image the ability to cut through. We look with disbelief at this image - and the child looks with disbelief at his hands (it is as though he is thinking ‘how did it come to this’). The kid's vulnerability is critically exposed by his naked bottom half - baring his tiny penis exposes his hurt and forces us as viewers to recognise that we are looking at something we should not be seeing.
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| Alessio Romenzi |
Ali Lutfi's picture is not one of war - but is pitifully sad nevertheless. He shows a monkey in Java wearing a doll’s head. One stolen moment that provokes a narrative - and although it is powerful itl is not dogmatic but open ended. It leaves unanswered questions for us to consider.
Ebrahim Noroozi presents some very powerful portraits of veiled women in Iran. As though he’s taken the photographers manual and tore it up he shoots them against incredibly detailed patterned cloth backgrounds. It is as though they are sinking into the background (is the veil’s intent this too ?). Finding them in the detail we are all the more persuaded to see what we can of their partially hidden faces.
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