With no hunger for the real
November 19, 2015 7:33 PM Subscribe
Photojournalists put their lives on the line every day, after all, and a photograph is less likely to contain bias, right? "With his new photobook War Is Beautiful: The New York Times Pictorial Guide to the Glamour of Armed Conflict, David Shields is taking aim at what he characterizes as the “war porn” routinely seen on the front page of America’s most respected paper of record."
"And these pics are always so exquisitely tasteful, and great art pushes way beyond good taste. I think of the picture on Sunday, just yesterday, that front page pic of one broken wine glass and one unbroken wine glass in a Paris restaurant. This was their, to me, terribly tasteful representation of the Paris bombing. It was sending all sorts of encrypted cultural messages, many of which, to me, are relatively problematic."
Salon talks to David Shields about the Times' "jingoistic flag waving" in its "war is heck" photography
"But above all, photographers and photo editors, in my view, are less observing the war in front of them — which is probably a complete bloody mess — and instead, trying to produce photographs, that first of all, are beautiful footnotes to say, abstract expressionism. And secondarily, perhaps more importantly, are palpable to the American and specifically, the New York Times reading public."
"Shields frames his argument through analysing 1000 photographs from the Iraq and Afghanistan incursions that have appeared on the front page of the NYT since October 1997 when the paper first began publishing colour images on page one. In “War is Beautiful” he codifies these images into ten chapters – Nature, Playground, Father, God, Pietà, Painting, Movie, Beauty, Love and Death – claiming images easily slot into each of these categories."
"And these pics are always so exquisitely tasteful, and great art pushes way beyond good taste. I think of the picture on Sunday, just yesterday, that front page pic of one broken wine glass and one unbroken wine glass in a Paris restaurant. This was their, to me, terribly tasteful representation of the Paris bombing. It was sending all sorts of encrypted cultural messages, many of which, to me, are relatively problematic."
Salon talks to David Shields about the Times' "jingoistic flag waving" in its "war is heck" photography
"But above all, photographers and photo editors, in my view, are less observing the war in front of them — which is probably a complete bloody mess — and instead, trying to produce photographs, that first of all, are beautiful footnotes to say, abstract expressionism. And secondarily, perhaps more importantly, are palpable to the American and specifically, the New York Times reading public."
"Shields frames his argument through analysing 1000 photographs from the Iraq and Afghanistan incursions that have appeared on the front page of the NYT since October 1997 when the paper first began publishing colour images on page one. In “War is Beautiful” he codifies these images into ten chapters – Nature, Playground, Father, God, Pietà, Painting, Movie, Beauty, Love and Death – claiming images easily slot into each of these categories."
We've talked about war photography before here on the blue.
I doubt that there's been a moment since the advent of photography that it hasn't been used to promote a position/agenda, this isn't surprising, it isn't new.
posted by HuronBob at 8:00 PM on November 19, 2015
I doubt that there's been a moment since the advent of photography that it hasn't been used to promote a position/agenda, this isn't surprising, it isn't new.
posted by HuronBob at 8:00 PM on November 19, 2015
Personally I feel he's overgeneralizing his own personal feelings and reactions to photography. I'm not sure this feeling he describes is as universal or true as he says it is. For generations, the vast majority of newspapers (big and small) won't publish gory pictures on page one as an unwritten rule, but he seems to imply that this only something the New York Times does.
posted by girlmightlive at 8:19 PM on November 19, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by girlmightlive at 8:19 PM on November 19, 2015 [2 favorites]
Funny . . . in that first link, at least, he takes what sounds like an incredibly interesting and kind of damning book and talks about it in a way that strikes me as really obvious and uninsightful. I would actually be less interested in the book now if it wasn't for the fact that there's apparently very little text in it!
posted by ostro at 8:37 PM on November 19, 2015
posted by ostro at 8:37 PM on November 19, 2015
Wow. This looks amazing. You know when you read something and it instantly resonates so much that you can't belIeve you got this far without knowing it? That's what happened to me reading that first link. So smart. I am buying this because I want to keep thinking about it and share it with others.
posted by latkes at 9:00 PM on November 19, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by latkes at 9:00 PM on November 19, 2015 [2 favorites]
We've talked about war photography before here on the blue...this isn't surprising, it isn't new.
This sounds like a rather abrupt dismissal of what looks like a great piece conceptually; it's a topic that's worth revisiting again and again, especially since now we're in seemingly endless conflict, this is a permanent part of our lives.
I think, when it comes to human issues and not say, the environment, photography is inherently problematic because of course you can't control how someone consumes an image, and I use the word consumes deliberately. Not just the perception, but the visceral experience of a detached experience, if that makes any sense. Sure a picture says a thousand words but, which ones in particular? Any? How do you control what the viewer takes from it- this same problem is inherent in any kinds of depictions of violence, especially sexual violence. How do you prevent it from just being another piece of lizard-brain stimulus?
How do you, with only an image, convey the human subject's experience beyond just adrenaline rush (even if you're not comfortable with admitting to it--Sontag talks about a sometimes almost sexual attraction toward suffering)? I don't think you can. Which is partly why we seem to be awash in torture porn, because we fought so hard against any kind of 'censorship' (which was really mainly criticism) that we forgot to evaluate intent and effect. We stopped asking that question; we thought extreme culture was heroic, apparently. We thought any random 'free speech' would just sort itself out, I guess, in the marketplace of ideas. Ironically, during that time (early 90s) we saw the rise of embedded journalism which reduced war journalism to cheerleading. Showing violence, for any reason whatsoever, became linked with the 'free speech, bro' thing. It ends up becoming images & stimulus devoid of any context; reminds me of going (regrettably) to the Museum of Death in LA and seeing two young hipsterwhateverkids snuggling while watching some kind of Faces of Death footage of dismemberment in Central America. One of the idiots I was with thought this actually had value because you know, Tipper Gore...but I digress.
It's also very interesting that photojournalists have been banned previously from photographing coffins, right around the time of embedded journalism. Allegedly out of respect, but they're anonymous closed coffins with flags draped across, so how could it be insulting or invasive to the deceased?... But the real thing is that these photos make the viewer confront casualties while taking the 'Boy's Adventure Stories' angle of war reporting literally out of the picture altogether. This has nothing to do with gore; this has to do with propaganda as far as my conspiratorial mind can see.
Maybe my brain overconnects (it does), but this reminds me of the thread about political art and its limitations. People used to (and still do) do a lot of photography of homeless people (often in picturesque black and white, because they want to be Diane Arbus or Dorothea Lange) yet what purpose do those pictures serve? What stories, if any, did they tell? That homeless folks often look grizzled and weatherbeaten? Many stories intersect with homelessness (as in war) yet all we see and know is 'unwashed, grizzled'. What does that really tell us about the specific person, about the larger issue? Not much, because it just can't do that. Only news reporting, analysis & essays can; same applies to war reporting.
posted by GospelofWesleyWillis at 9:18 PM on November 19, 2015 [18 favorites]
This sounds like a rather abrupt dismissal of what looks like a great piece conceptually; it's a topic that's worth revisiting again and again, especially since now we're in seemingly endless conflict, this is a permanent part of our lives.
I think, when it comes to human issues and not say, the environment, photography is inherently problematic because of course you can't control how someone consumes an image, and I use the word consumes deliberately. Not just the perception, but the visceral experience of a detached experience, if that makes any sense. Sure a picture says a thousand words but, which ones in particular? Any? How do you control what the viewer takes from it- this same problem is inherent in any kinds of depictions of violence, especially sexual violence. How do you prevent it from just being another piece of lizard-brain stimulus?
How do you, with only an image, convey the human subject's experience beyond just adrenaline rush (even if you're not comfortable with admitting to it--Sontag talks about a sometimes almost sexual attraction toward suffering)? I don't think you can. Which is partly why we seem to be awash in torture porn, because we fought so hard against any kind of 'censorship' (which was really mainly criticism) that we forgot to evaluate intent and effect. We stopped asking that question; we thought extreme culture was heroic, apparently. We thought any random 'free speech' would just sort itself out, I guess, in the marketplace of ideas. Ironically, during that time (early 90s) we saw the rise of embedded journalism which reduced war journalism to cheerleading. Showing violence, for any reason whatsoever, became linked with the 'free speech, bro' thing. It ends up becoming images & stimulus devoid of any context; reminds me of going (regrettably) to the Museum of Death in LA and seeing two young hipsterwhateverkids snuggling while watching some kind of Faces of Death footage of dismemberment in Central America. One of the idiots I was with thought this actually had value because you know, Tipper Gore...but I digress.
It's also very interesting that photojournalists have been banned previously from photographing coffins, right around the time of embedded journalism. Allegedly out of respect, but they're anonymous closed coffins with flags draped across, so how could it be insulting or invasive to the deceased?... But the real thing is that these photos make the viewer confront casualties while taking the 'Boy's Adventure Stories' angle of war reporting literally out of the picture altogether. This has nothing to do with gore; this has to do with propaganda as far as my conspiratorial mind can see.
Maybe my brain overconnects (it does), but this reminds me of the thread about political art and its limitations. People used to (and still do) do a lot of photography of homeless people (often in picturesque black and white, because they want to be Diane Arbus or Dorothea Lange) yet what purpose do those pictures serve? What stories, if any, did they tell? That homeless folks often look grizzled and weatherbeaten? Many stories intersect with homelessness (as in war) yet all we see and know is 'unwashed, grizzled'. What does that really tell us about the specific person, about the larger issue? Not much, because it just can't do that. Only news reporting, analysis & essays can; same applies to war reporting.
posted by GospelofWesleyWillis at 9:18 PM on November 19, 2015 [18 favorites]
Today I stumbled across a Cracked article on Dabiq, the slick English-language propaganda magazine for Daesh. Which led me to find PDFs. And in the context of this post, the photographs are interesting. In a magazine dedicated to propaganda, the photos of battle and the aftermath are usually unsentimental.
With the composition skills of Uncle Bob at the Grand Canyon, these are basically snapshots. Here's heavy fighting with dead bodies everywhere. Here's the victorious warriors standing over the infidel fallen and about to execute the survivors. Here's one of our fallen heroes: we want to commemorate the guy but this snapshot just shows a face already going gray with a less than tranquil expression for someone on their way to paradise.
Despite the complete artlessness, these photos convey the horrors quite well. Maybe that's the secret. Less artful composition, more wide angle snapshots showing the scene honestly. The fear and the waste in broad daylight.
posted by honestcoyote at 9:43 PM on November 19, 2015 [5 favorites]
With the composition skills of Uncle Bob at the Grand Canyon, these are basically snapshots. Here's heavy fighting with dead bodies everywhere. Here's the victorious warriors standing over the infidel fallen and about to execute the survivors. Here's one of our fallen heroes: we want to commemorate the guy but this snapshot just shows a face already going gray with a less than tranquil expression for someone on their way to paradise.
Despite the complete artlessness, these photos convey the horrors quite well. Maybe that's the secret. Less artful composition, more wide angle snapshots showing the scene honestly. The fear and the waste in broad daylight.
posted by honestcoyote at 9:43 PM on November 19, 2015 [5 favorites]
sorry about the fucked link to Susan Sontag's 'Regarding the Pain of Others'; essays on war photography.
posted by GospelofWesleyWillis at 9:47 PM on November 19, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by GospelofWesleyWillis at 9:47 PM on November 19, 2015 [1 favorite]
It's a fair observation, but really what else should one expect from a mainstream newspaper? No one wants to be standing in the check-out line looking at the cover of the NYTimes showing graphic photographs of mutilated bodies. Sure there is an editorial bias, but there is also just practical reality.
posted by three blind mice at 1:58 AM on November 20, 2015
posted by three blind mice at 1:58 AM on November 20, 2015
It's a fair observation, but really what else should one expect from a mainstream newspaper?
Continual cheerleading for endless wars, that's what I expect.
posted by el io at 2:17 AM on November 20, 2015 [6 favorites]
Continual cheerleading for endless wars, that's what I expect.
posted by el io at 2:17 AM on November 20, 2015 [6 favorites]
Today I stumbled across a Cracked article on Dabiq...
Well worth the time to read it; the author is pretty convincing that most of what we are told about ISIS is nonsense, based on their own propaganda; see also Charles Pierce on how turning away refugees is playing right into ISIS's hands.
And more on topic, I have noticed that war photos have definitely become more sanitized over the years; for example, 2 well-known photos that were published in Life Magazine when it was a major media player:
Robert Capa
George Strock
Published with the last photo:
Life editorialized that “we think that occasional pictures of Americans who fall in action should be printed. The job of men like Strock is to bring the war back to us, so that we who are thousands of miles removed from the dangers and the smell of death may know what is at stake.”
posted by TedW at 5:19 AM on November 20, 2015 [2 favorites]
Well worth the time to read it; the author is pretty convincing that most of what we are told about ISIS is nonsense, based on their own propaganda; see also Charles Pierce on how turning away refugees is playing right into ISIS's hands.
And more on topic, I have noticed that war photos have definitely become more sanitized over the years; for example, 2 well-known photos that were published in Life Magazine when it was a major media player:
Robert Capa
George Strock
Published with the last photo:
Life editorialized that “we think that occasional pictures of Americans who fall in action should be printed. The job of men like Strock is to bring the war back to us, so that we who are thousands of miles removed from the dangers and the smell of death may know what is at stake.”
posted by TedW at 5:19 AM on November 20, 2015 [2 favorites]
The Atlantic's article on Kenneth Jarecke's photo of an Iraqi burnt alive might be relevant to this conversation: The War Photo No One Would Publish.
I'm a photographer so I'm probably biased. I don't shoot conflicts, but do shoot a fair amount of NGO work having spent over 3 months in the last couple years in Cambodia, Nepal and Haiti working with several organizations. In doing that work there's often concern with shooting what some call "poverty porn" (though that term is sometimes considered problematic on its own.) Anyway, I do think that he is somewhat generalizing his personal reaction and feelings to some of these images as more universal than they really are, as mentioned above by girlmightlive. Personally I don't think that something that's well-framed and well lit is automatically glamorizing something. Aesthetically pleasing doesn't equal endorsement. In fact, the contrast between an image that is "exquisitely tasteful" yet showing something horrific is more of a gut punch to me.
Also as mentioned above, there's the simple fact that the true blood and gore of war is something that the public as much as the Times won't allow on page 1. I do think Jarecke's photo and similar should be published more, but since newspapers really can't show horrific dismemberment and death photos, there's a degree of abstraction built in that they don't have much control over. And if they could show it, would that just inure and numb the public to the atrocities of war?
And while there's certainly some photographers who shoot conflict for the thrill and the glory, I would say they are in the minority. Most that I know are there to document the horrors, not glamorize it. James Nachtwey, Ben Lowy, Tyler Hicks, Tim Hetherington (RIP), etc. may take beautiful pictures, but it's in the service of informing the world of the awfulness of war.
Richard Avedon's quote might also be relevant: "All photographs are accurate, none are the truth."
posted by chris24 at 5:53 AM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
I'm a photographer so I'm probably biased. I don't shoot conflicts, but do shoot a fair amount of NGO work having spent over 3 months in the last couple years in Cambodia, Nepal and Haiti working with several organizations. In doing that work there's often concern with shooting what some call "poverty porn" (though that term is sometimes considered problematic on its own.) Anyway, I do think that he is somewhat generalizing his personal reaction and feelings to some of these images as more universal than they really are, as mentioned above by girlmightlive. Personally I don't think that something that's well-framed and well lit is automatically glamorizing something. Aesthetically pleasing doesn't equal endorsement. In fact, the contrast between an image that is "exquisitely tasteful" yet showing something horrific is more of a gut punch to me.
Also as mentioned above, there's the simple fact that the true blood and gore of war is something that the public as much as the Times won't allow on page 1. I do think Jarecke's photo and similar should be published more, but since newspapers really can't show horrific dismemberment and death photos, there's a degree of abstraction built in that they don't have much control over. And if they could show it, would that just inure and numb the public to the atrocities of war?
And while there's certainly some photographers who shoot conflict for the thrill and the glory, I would say they are in the minority. Most that I know are there to document the horrors, not glamorize it. James Nachtwey, Ben Lowy, Tyler Hicks, Tim Hetherington (RIP), etc. may take beautiful pictures, but it's in the service of informing the world of the awfulness of war.
Richard Avedon's quote might also be relevant: "All photographs are accurate, none are the truth."
posted by chris24 at 5:53 AM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
I am so sick and tired of hearing conservatives condemn the NYT as biased and liberal. The bastion of liberal media sure seems to love war - they were the biggest boosters for the Iraq war, and continued this boosting even after the disaster of the war became clear to so many others who were fooled into supporting it. Perhaps only Leni Riefenstahl could do a better job than the Times of making war look beautiful. I appreciate the beauty of a well composed photograph, but don't deny the grit and grimace of the actual conditions.
posted by caddis at 6:26 AM on November 20, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by caddis at 6:26 AM on November 20, 2015 [2 favorites]
After sorting through more than 9,000 cover images, Shields has collected examples of what he sees as an overwhelming pattern to push for painterly photographs that hide the true costs of war behind a pleasurable aesthetic.
This lacks clarity. Did Shields look at 9,000 cover images that contained war photography, or 9,000 cover images (that may not have)? Either way, the final book contains 112 pages. 9,000 images edited to 100. As with all photo projects the final message is in the edit, not the bulk, and Shields could perhaps be accused of massaging his message just as he is accusing the NYT of massaging their message.
Give me 9,000 photographs from a single source on a particular subject and i could make an edit that says just about anything i want about your approach.
posted by lawrencium at 11:53 AM on November 20, 2015 [2 favorites]
This lacks clarity. Did Shields look at 9,000 cover images that contained war photography, or 9,000 cover images (that may not have)? Either way, the final book contains 112 pages. 9,000 images edited to 100. As with all photo projects the final message is in the edit, not the bulk, and Shields could perhaps be accused of massaging his message just as he is accusing the NYT of massaging their message.
Give me 9,000 photographs from a single source on a particular subject and i could make an edit that says just about anything i want about your approach.
posted by lawrencium at 11:53 AM on November 20, 2015 [2 favorites]
But above all, photographers and photo editors, in my view, are less observing the war in front of them
I believe his opinion to be wrong.
For a much better understanding of this I suggest a 2002 article by Susan Sontag (already mentioned) in the New Yorker - Looking at War, Photography’s view of devastation and death.
posted by adamvasco at 12:29 PM on November 20, 2015
I believe his opinion to be wrong.
For a much better understanding of this I suggest a 2002 article by Susan Sontag (already mentioned) in the New Yorker - Looking at War, Photography’s view of devastation and death.
posted by adamvasco at 12:29 PM on November 20, 2015
For a much better understanding of this I suggest a 2002 article by Susan Sontag (already mentioned) in the New Yorker - Looking at War, Photography’s view of devastation and death.
This was a great article, thanks for linking. It is much more wide-ranging in it's analysis than this project, and although she does seem to disagree with his core point, ("That a gory battlescape could be beautiful—in the sublime or awesome or tragic register of the beautiful—is a commonplace about images of war made by artists. The idea does not sit well when applied to images taken by cameras: to find beauty in war photographs seems heartless. But the landscape of devastation is still a landscape. There is beauty in ruins..." ) To Sontag, I guess the beautiful-making is an inherent quality in photography, where this project seems to put forth that the beauty making is an aesthetic choice which supports a certain problematic ideology.
Maybe I think there's truth in both perspectives.
posted by latkes at 9:22 PM on November 30, 2015
This was a great article, thanks for linking. It is much more wide-ranging in it's analysis than this project, and although she does seem to disagree with his core point, ("That a gory battlescape could be beautiful—in the sublime or awesome or tragic register of the beautiful—is a commonplace about images of war made by artists. The idea does not sit well when applied to images taken by cameras: to find beauty in war photographs seems heartless. But the landscape of devastation is still a landscape. There is beauty in ruins..." ) To Sontag, I guess the beautiful-making is an inherent quality in photography, where this project seems to put forth that the beauty making is an aesthetic choice which supports a certain problematic ideology.
Maybe I think there's truth in both perspectives.
posted by latkes at 9:22 PM on November 30, 2015
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posted by Dip Flash at 7:55 PM on November 19, 2015 [3 favorites]