History of Photojournalism Francis Robinson
The Minotaur Origins of Minos and The Minotaur
In Greek mythology, Minos was a king of Crete, son of Zeus and Europa. Every year (or every nine years in some sources) he made King Aegeus pick seven young boys and seven young girls to be sent to Daedalus' creation, the labyrinth, to be eaten by the Minotaur. After his death, Minos became a judge of the dead in the underworld. After he ascended the throne of Crete, Minos competed with his brothers to rule. Minos prayed to Poseidon to send him a snow-white bull, as a sign of support. He was to kill the bull to show honor to Poseidon but decided to keep it instead because of its beauty. He thought Poseidon would not care if he kept the white bull and sacrificed one of his own. To punish Minos, Aphrodite made Pasiphaë, Minos' wife, fall deeply in love with the bull from the sea, the Cretan Bull. Pasiphaë had the archetypal craftsman Daedalus make a hollow wooden cow, and climbed inside it in order to mate with the white bull. The offspring was the monstrous Minotaur. Pasiphaë nursed him in his infancy, but he grew and became ferocious, being the unnatural offspring of man and beast, he had no natural source of nourishment and thus devoured man for sustenance. Minos, after getting advice from the oracle at Delphi, had Daedalus construct a gigantic labyrinth to hold the Minotaur. Its location was near Minos' palace in Knossos
The Minotaur and Theseus
The Minotaur is commonly represented in Classical art with the body of a man and the head and tail of a bull. One of the figurations assumed by the river god Achelous in wooing Deianira is as a man with the head of a bull, according to Sophocles' Trachiniai. Androgeus, son of Minos, had been killed by the Athenians, who were jealous of the victories he had won at the Panathenaic festival. Others say he was killed at Marathon by the Cretan bull, his mother's former taurine lover, which Aegeus, king of Athens, had commanded him to slay. The common tradition is that Minos waged war to avenge the death of his son and won.
Catullus, in his account of the Minotaur's birth, refers to another version in which Athens was "compelled by the cruel plague to pay penalties for the killing of Androgeos." Aegeus must avert the plague caused by his crime by sending "young men at the same time as the best of unwed girls as a feast" to the Minotaur. Minos required that seven Athenian youths and seven maidens, drawn by lots, be sent every seventh or ninth year to be devoured by the Minotaur.
From Classical times through the Renaissance, the Minotaur appears at the center of many depictions of the Labyrinth. Ovid's Latin account of the Minotaur, which did not elaborate on which half was bull and which half man, was the most widely available during the Middle Ages, and several later versions show the reverse of the Classical configuration, a man's head and torso on a bull's body, reminiscent of a centaur. This alternative tradition survived into the Renaissance, and still figures in some modern depictions, such as Steele Savage's illustrations for Edith Hamilton's Mythology (1942). When the third sacrifice approached, Theseus volunteered to slay the monster. He promised to his father, Aegeus, that he would put up a white sail on his journey back home if he was successful and would have the crew put up black sails if he was killed.
In Crete, both Minos' daughters, Ariadne and Phaedra fell madly in love with Theseus. Ariadne, the elder, helped him navigate the labyrinth. In most accounts she gave him a ball of thread, allowing him to retrace his path. Theseus killed the Minotaur with the sword of Aegeus and led the other Athenians back out of the labyrinth. On the way home, Theseus abandoned Ariadne on the island of Naxos, and continued with Phaedra, his future wife. He neglected, however, to put up the white sail. King Aegeus, from his lookout on Cape Sounion, saw the black-sailed ship approach and, presuming his son dead, committed suicide by throwing himself into the sea that is since named after him. This act secured the throne for Theseus.
Photographic Timeline
Kodachrome 1936
Daguerreotype 1839
Camera Obscura 1604
Adobe Photoshop 1990
Three Colour Process 1855
Camera Lucida 1807
Image Manipulation
Image manipulation, being quite a wide title, i have decided to focus on one of my favourite photographers, Brassaï and his method of ‘image manipulation’ which he called; ‘transmutation’. In 1932 Brassaï started collecting images of Graffiti that he discovered all over Paris and catalogued these images for twenty years. In 1960 he published these images in a volume but these earliest publication to contain them was am article in Minotaure accompanied by an article written by Brassaï himself ( who happened to be an accomplished author as well as Photographer, Sculptor, Painter and Draughtsman) called ‘From cave wall to factory wall’.
Brassaï tracked how they changed over time, graffiti was an entirely abstract art form for which Brassaï was one of its largest advocates which inspired his good friend Picasso to say; “it was a brilliant idea to collect these images… These walls are as rich as the façade of any cathedral! Your book connects our art with the art of these primitive peoples…” . Inspired by the graffiti he had discovered over the past two decades, Brassaï started to experiment with his own style ‘transmutation’ in 1934/35. He engraved onto exposed photographic plates, the result being a rather abstract surrealist artwork. ” I went at these plates mechanically, like a sculptor. It was strange to see how the nudes would change under the influence of this tool which wore away at their substance. A weird obsession took hold of me: I wanted to change these forms into those of a musical instrument: first woman, then guitar, then mandolin-woman. I was subject to a series of almost unconscious reactions, which smashed the photograph to smithereens…”
An Image that Freezes Time. I have chosen Eddie Adams’ ”General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a Viet Cong prisoner in Saigon” as my image, not only does this single image manage to capture and encompass the terrible consequences of the Vietnam war, but also speaks volumes about its two main models, which have more to tell than just what is seen in the picture. The General in said picture executed this specific prisoner for shooting multiple soldiers in his regiment. The General in question’s career was ruined, which Adams acknowledged and apologized for, as seen here: ”The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera. Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them; but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths. … What the photograph didn’t say was, ‘What would you do if you were the general at that time and place on that hot day, and you caught the so-called bad guy after he blew away one, two or three American people?” When Nguyen died, Adams praised him as a hero of a just cause. This image became the iconic image of the Vietnam war, for its brutality and representation of the loss of life throughout that crazy Asian war.
Adams as a photographer is known well for covering thirteen wars and being an amazingly accomplished artist, his influence inspiring not only many of his colleagues but also thousands of students that used the workshop he created and taught for many years. A man famous for wearing all black and a pork pie hat, he was just as striking in person as he was from looking at his work. As much as he managed to ruin the General's career, this shot also greatly influenced his own to the point of frustration for Adams. As well known as he was for his skill in photography and long, fruitful career, this shot shadowed over his career since its capture. Throughout his tours of Vietnam Adams was becoming more and more frustrated at the lack of independent work he was receiving. He was either going on missions with the marines that were uneventful or the missions he went on were not exclusive to him and other photographers who didn't work for the AP were getting the exact same shots. On the day that Adams took this shot he was on a routine trip to a small fire-fight with one or two other photographers when he saw a prisoner being pulled from a building. ' So we went there and it was really nothing, it was a nothing story. So we spent about fifteen minutes there, and we decided to head back.
We got maybe thirty yards up from the pagoda and saw Vietnamese troops pulling this guy out of a building.To backtrack a minute, any photographer news photographer, when cops or anybody grabs a prisoner in New York... you just follow them. I mean, its a picture. They call it a Perp (perpetrator) Walk.' What followed was the shooting of an unknown Viet Cong soldier by the National Police Chief of South Vietnam, who would several weeks later be promoted to General ( not for the shooting).
When Adams was processing the image he didn't think much of it and didn't for many years.' When i took the photo, I absolutely thought very little of it and said "I think I got this guy shooting somebody" Then went to lunch. When I saw the picture I wasn't impressed and I'm still not. it was not a great work of art in terms of photography. Number one its the wrong time of day, the light wasn't right. Its a news picture, The composition was terrible. As much as Adams disliked the picture it became the face of the Vietnam War then and now it is still revered as one of the greatest photographs of all time, and to this day encompasses his amazing career and reduces the War to a single frame of time.
Propaganda. Propaganda has been utilized over the past hundred years to greatly affect the mind of the troops who fought in the world's greatest wars and the civilians that sat at home relying on the information their governments supplied them about their nearest and dearest. While propaganda wasn't invented for the world wars, it was put into greatest affect before during and after them. An early example of propaganda is the images created by James Gillray. While this image on the surface seems relatively neutral, in fact is one of the many images drawn by the British to create the rumour that even now is regarded by many as true; that Napoleon was comically short. In truth, while Napoleon was only 5 foot 6", that was a perfectly respectable height in the 1800's in fact, he was taller than the average French-man of his age and indeed, taller than his British rival Nelson (who is not depicted in this image, the British man in this image is William Pitt).
Now this rumour is the perfect example of the strength of propaganda, that 200 years later, it is still common knowledge to many people that Napoleon was short, that these images could distort the minds of millions, and while this is a rather inconsequential use of it, is demeans and demoralizes its victim, which can be seen to be put to great use by Nazi Germany. At ďŹ rst propaganda such as this was posted all over Germany questioning the 'purity' of Jews. On November 8th an exhibition entitled Der Ewige Jude (The Wandering Jew) attracting over 150,000 people in its short three day showing. It portrayed Jews as communists, swindlers and sex-ďŹ ends. Propaganda under Joseph Goebbels (1933-1939) was when the propaganda of Germany began its campaign against its enemies inside and outside of Germany, discrediting Jews, Romani, homosexuals, Bolsheviks and the countries that created the treaty of Versailles. This sort of propaganda was what slowly brainwashed Germany into the supporting of Adolf Hitler, and the creation of Nazi Germany.
But Nazi's were not the only group of WWII to use propaganda to great effect. Possibly the most famous image ever created by America, Uncle Sam. I can almost guarantee that anyone over the age of thirteen in Britain or the USA knows this image. It has been replicated thousands of times, depicted in our television, newspapers and posters. Any idea or image has reached its peak when it is displayed in an episode of the Simpsons. The fact that this image can be recognised by almost anyone even in 2012, shows that it met its requirements, thousands of Americans signed up for WWII and while i cant say that it was all because of Uncle Sam, you can bet that it had a massive effect on the young Americans that gave their lives for Justice.
Modern Propaganda is of course delivered to us in different methods, most proliďŹ cally through Social Media. The advertising space and free market for propaganda that the 'Facebook Feed' offers is unending. Its hard to believe that in these days and times that the kind of propaganda that can be found online makes its way into what many would use of their main source of online interaction with friends and family that are easier to reach electronically. Images such as this display the stupidity and ignorance that still exists in many parts of the world, and I am ashamed to say, have seen crop up on my very own Facebook Feed with totally seriously, posted by a group that very quickly 'Unliked' . While this example does not show extreme hate the falsities that it instantly applies to all atheists is unacceptable by today's standards. I myself am atheist and while Its completely true that I am 'very grumpy and bitter' this cannot be said of all atheists and neither can it be said that I have ever lashed out and tried to trick Christian children into 'neglecting god's word.
This is where propaganda as a whole falls down, it can say many things, or very few but in all circumstances where it involves a certain group or religion or lack of, it projects feelings and actions onto everyone who calls themselves an atheist or a theist. While personally I ďŹ nd this sort of image disgusting and archaic, its almost certain that they will always be delivered to us in some manner, and social media seems to be the most effective in this day and age.
Social Comment Bruce Davidson's series; Subway, is a collection of images from the underground railway of New York City. During the 1980's Davidson spent a large amount fo time capturing the dark, dangerous world of the subway. Shooting in colour, Davidson saw himself as a hunter stalking his prey. He soon sensed that the subway had its own peculiar psychology. "People in the subway, their flesh juxtaposed against the graffiti, the penetrating effect of the strobe light itself, and even the hollow darkness of the tunnels, inspired an aesthetic that goes unnoticed by the passengers who are trapped underground, hiding behind masks and closed off from each other." One of the defining parts of Davidson's work is the contrast between the cold, dead eyes of passengers trying their best to ignore their fellow travelers and the face paced, closeness of public transport; the large amounts of graffiti that plagues the carriages is almost a metaphor for New York, Its hustle and bustle, its crime, poverty, affluence and spirit.
Davidson must surely have been aware of Walker Evans's own series of subway photographs, which the older photographer began taking in 1938 but did not publish until 1966, in a volume entitled Many Are Called. They make an interesting contrast, Evans made his name capturing the bleak, stark nature of the migrant poor during the great depression. On one level, his subway photographs can be read as a rejection of his earlier work, the carefully composed, formal photography to this down and dirty hidden camera photography. He traveled the subway with a miniature camera hidden inside his jacket, with the lens poking out the gap between the buttons. In Evans' work the subway appears to be a very different environment to Davidson's closed, bleak, violent subway. In Evans' series, there is little evidence of the urban poor, no graffiti and only the occasional advert.
Davidson's work portrays the subway in the same way I see the London Underground; as a social equalizer, everyone is travelling in the same cramped, hot, noisy metal box, all with somewhere to be and carefully, everyone just as scared of each other no matter their appearance. His work in in your face, a bold statement, he got on the subway and shoved his lens brutally into the lives of everyone on the subway, its style conicts with the subtle, polite nature of the underground, the quiet reserved thought of passengers he caught in his lens are slightly angered, a look of mild disgruntlement at having their day disturbed by a man with a camera. Evans on the other hand while he is still invading on the reserved area but in a much more subtle way, his camera hidden behind his jacket, he took much more secretive shots, his image below, is one of the few where someone has discovered his camera, he managed to take the image just as they found it. The mild interest on their faces is very different to the rest of Evans' work, they don't even seem to be annoyed at having their photo taken, their look intrigued me particularly as a photo that I myself could never replicate, a perfect moment in time.
A Journey The word journey can be widely interpreted to have a multitude of meanings for a wide range of people, but for my piece I'm going to choose Rob Reiner's visualisation of Stephen King's classic: The Body. The story of four young boys who set out to find a dead body, but on the way end up finding themselves. Stand by Me, as a film, it tries to encompass the idea of growing up in the space of 3 days. It challenges the social stereotypes forced onto the boys, shows the pain that can come from the loss of a relative, and the imagination and acceptance that all children have. A journey is as much about the people you meet, and travel with, as the journey itself which is what this film displays perfectly, the change in the four boys from start to finish shows that it was not a journey to find a dead body but a journey to discover more about themselves.
The range of emotions shown in the film throughout their journey, and the conclusions it comes to, vary as widely as they do throughout our experiences of growing up. The above image shows the four as they are at the beginning of their journey, full of hope and excitement, and just being content with the adventure they are experiencing. From that we come to one of the most emotional scenes in movie history, this scene shows the pain and suffering that comes from the loss of Gordie's Brother, even from this still you can see the obvious strength of Chris and the empathy he has for his best friend. The journey of life is portrayed at the end and very beginning of the film with the death of Chris weighing heavily on Gordie's mind, The last stage of the journey being the slow separation of two best friends, something I think a lot of people have experienced.
While Vern and Teddy are also part of the four, they are most definitely the two less important characters. While they come along for the journey their change is different, Vern takes the same sort of role as the Cowardly Lion in the Wizard of Oz, he goes from an opaque, boring scaredy-cat to someone who has some more guts. Teddy who is closest to Vern in the four, notices this change in Vern by the end of the film, they almost have a small role reversal, as the dominant and subjective friend. The 'two for flinching' punches that go on throughout the film display the slow change in dominance, and the resistance we see from Teddy, leading to the eventual fist fist between the two. This journey is less important than the journey of Chris and Gordie, a more childish, less entertaining journey.
Storytelling Storytelling has been a part of human nature since the stone age. From cave paintings were drawn on walls, and stories were word of mouth, to the great Greek playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides who created the worlds ďŹ rst large scale dramas and plays to Shakespeare and Dickens. Storytelling has and always will be one of mankind's greatest achievements, the ability to convey the emotions of human kind, to explore the imagination of the mind, and to empathise, despise and aspire to the greatest and worst men and women of history and characters from the worlds greatest storytellers. Photography throughout its short life has had its purpose twisted and warped, in its early years it was seen only as a tool to document and then it slowly became an art form, the exposure, the shutter speed, all of these aspects of photography brought it into the light as a serious art form. The surrealist movement was one of the early movements that showed off photography as something that wasn't just for the news. But storytelling has always been what photography has always been best at, it captures a single moment in time, anything from a war time shot of a battleďŹ eld, to a fork's shadow on a plate or you and your friends all in arms in the grottiest club in town after seventeen Sourz shots and eight WKD's.
This image taken by William Klein on Broadway and 103 rd Street, New York in 1955, displays perfectly the way in which photography has become a medium of storytelling just as strong as the novel. When I look at this image the ďŹ rst thing that comes to mind is the pure anger on the child's face. While this shot was staged by Klein after asking the child to look mean, his face shows real rage. Secondly, the out of focus gun pointed straight at the lens shows just how close the end of the barrel must be to Klein, and is a testament to the man's bravery. Thirdly, the look on the younger child's face. I still can't place it after spending many hours staring at this photo, I have decided it is a mixture of hope, aspiration and love. The close cropped photo shows very little apart from the two boys, the story is focussed on the short moment of their lives where someone asked them to pose, even the clothing of the two boys shows the difference between them, the older one in what looks like a leather jacket, collar up, as aggressive as he can look as a young boy can. The younger boy in a stripped eeced jumper, the innocence of his clothing and even his haircut, the scruffy childish look, while the older boy, doing his best to look grown up, his hair pushed back in a quiff, the modern style of the time, the story that even the smallest part of their being can add to a picture.
When you combine these three aspects the imagined story of the photo comes to mind, the hand of the younger child on the older ones arm/chest holding him back, the blind rage on the older child's face, there is no tool quite as powerful as a well shot image. This is ruined slightly when you learn the shot is arranged but if you did not know that then you would formulate your own story in your mind as to why this child is so aggressive, and that is the magic of storytelling with photography: That we all take our own slightly different view from our own very different lives and project our own feelings onto the image, photography is about interpreting the image rather than being told what it is about.
Surrealism, as an art form first started to appear around the 1920's, while at first it was a movement that revolved around painters like Picasso and Dali, it stepped out into photography through some of its earliest purveyors, three of which I shall quickly summarise as to dig deeply into their work would require much more time than I have. Man Ray, Kertesz and Atgét, my three favourite surrealists, while Atgét is not what i would call a surrealist his work was what some of the earliest surrealists adored and based their work around, in fact some even paying him for prints and using them in their own work.
Man Ray, formally Emmanuel Radnitzky was one of the pioneering surrealist photographers, and was one of the men who tried to blur the line between art and photography at a time when those lines were very stark, photography being seen a tool rather than an art-form. Much of his work which involves a sort of high contrast, negative style, where the outlines of his model and their features are the only defined things in the image, while nowadays with the advent of Photoshop and editing tools, may look simple and even a little childish in the extreme of its effects, in the 1920's, with the tools he had at hand, were a revelation. His ideas on photography and his style of work were revolutionary his mantra being that he wanted to"... produce a photograph that would not look like a photograph", he inspired the many photographers and artists that followed his surrealist ways.
Kertesz as a photographer was not always known for his surrealist work, many of his images form his earlier life in Hungary are very far from surreal, it was only when he moved to Paris in 1925, changed his name to André did he start to create the images that many people who are familiar with Kertesz, will know best. The above photo, 'La Fourchette' (the fork) is one of Kertesz most well known photos and is the epitome of surrealist photography in my eyes. The arrangement of the image, the exposure, the perfect shadow created by the angle of the fork, it takes something that in real life, unless you focused in on that minute frame of life, you would never see the beauty that it purveys, the beauty that every day objects, shadows and people bring to our lives, that is surrealism to me.
Eugene Atgét was one of the earliest photographers to greatly inspire the surrealist movement, he was found in his Montparnassé studio, an ageing, mysterious man, his work was something that the photographers of the surrealist movement had not seen before, he was a cataloguer, he travelled round Paris, and captured the heart of the city that he loved so dearly, the real, gritty parts, Atgét almost always passed by the big tourist attractions but if he saw an interesting doorway, a shop window, even a row of boots, it was something he would instantly capture and add to his huge back catalogue. He spent years capturing images of street vendors, old Paris and shop windows. The things that he was intrigued by informed and inspired the early surrealist photographers, they would go to his studio and buy his prints, so as i said, he was less of a surrealist and more of an enabler of them.