Week 9 Photojournalism FINAL Flashcards
Country Doctor, photo essay page 119
Eugene SMITH
Life Magazine
1948
Picture essay in Life “Country Doctor”
One picture whole page, Urgency shown, like film, quick moments
Smith emersed self with situations, families without editorializing. Opposed Life’s format of leading viewers through stories and towards an interpretive explanation discovered by photographer. Set up photographs and manipulated prints to clarify the feeling he wanted to present.
Minamata, Japan
SMITH, Eugene
1971
about the humanitarian concerns of the effects of industrial polution on Japanese fishing village. Smith emersed himself in the community, gaining access to intimate moments between villagers and their families. The fishing waters of Minamata Bay were being poisoned by industrial mercury discharge, resulting in birth defects in a generation of children. Smith beaten by company goons which may have lead to earlier death. He believed that photography can help bring about social change by stressing that “to cause awareness is our only strength.”
Smith set up photographs and manipulated his prints to clarify the feeling he wanted to present.
Street exectution of a Vietcong Prisoner
ADAMS, Eddie
1968
Vietcong prisoner, hands tied behind his back, victims controted face at the instant of death.
Iconic image of history of photography - the potential of the power of photography to kill. Adams felt he had destroyed the life of the general by photographing him shooting Vietcong Prisoner without trial. Vietcong prisoner had murdered a South Vietnamese major, his wife and their children. Photo incriminated but also unraveled the sotry of the victim doing even worse in his own life. This photo typified how war photograpphy taht documents situations can vibrate later on.
Molotov Man Sandistas at the walls of the Esteli (Nicaragua Book)
MEISELAS, Susan
1981
Meiselas covers a subject by spendign time with the community and becoming part of the community. She spent 2 years back and forth to Nicaragua documenting. Her photography is in color. Selections mediated through magazine vs. what is chosen by photographer in book.
Molotov Man, on the day before Somoza would flee Nicaragua forever in July 1979, Meiselas photographed the Sandista Poblo Bareta Aruaz throwing Molotov cocktail at one of the last remaining Somoza National Guard regiments under the dictator’s control. Murals and graffiti of the Molotov man could bee seen all over the country adn became the “offical” symbol of the Sandinista overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship.
She developed books to have more control about how her work was scene. Hiding images of faces when necessary, curating photos, captioning.
Youths practice throwing bombs in the forest surrounding Monimbo
MEISELAS, Susan
1981
“National Mutiny in Nicaragua” July 30, 1978 New York Times Magazine. showing youths practicing rebelling against Samoza Regime in Nicaragua. Meiselas would return 10 years later with filmakers to discober what happend to teh people she depicted in her books and in magazines.
Meiselas chose to do color photography because “the vibrancy and optimism of the resistance as well as the physical feel of the place came through better in color.”
Death of a Loyalist Soldier, The Falling Soldier
CAPA, Robert
1936
captures a Republican soldier at the very moment of death during the Spanish Civil War as War Correspondent. Soldier is shown collapsing backward after being fatally shot in the head, with his rifle slipping out of his hand.
Capa said he lifted camera above his head and didn’t even look, just clicked the picture and discovered the best picture he took later on.
Reproduced in Life Magazine 1938 “Death in Spain: The Civil War. Taken 500,000 lives in one year”
Naples, Italy
CAPA, Robert
1943
Women crying at funeral of twenty teenaged partisans who had fought the Germans before the Allies entered the city. Capa interested in summing up situation in one picture. Shwos crying mothers, photo of lost son in military clothing, despair, collective mourning, scene of funeral.
Exposing a Gestapo informer
CARTIER-BRESSON, Henri
1945
Enraged, puffed up woman reaches over and seemingly deflates another woman with her indictment that she is a Gestapo informer. Ex prisoners looking at scene of accusation, shame, sense of liberation. Cartier-Bresson interested in capturing bizaar noticable and eventful in the spur of the moment.
In Dessau, at a camp of displaced persons waiting for repatriation, a Gestapo informer who had pretended to be a refugee is discovered and exposed by a camp inmate. Cartier-Bresson draws the audience right into the middle of that anguished circle of the formerly wronged and the abused. The judge’s dazed aplomb was contrasted with the denouncer’s rage, the informer’s resignation, while faces of anguish and anger framed the picture in a modern day Greek chorus.
Henri Cartier-Bresson, himself once a German prisoner-of-war, took the photo between 21 April and 2 July 1945, between the American occupation of the city and the arrival of their Russian replacements. He was working with the Americans on a film for the Information Service about the home-coming of French prisoners of war, he recalled: “It was a film by prisoners about prisoners. The scene played itself out before my eyes as my cameraman was filming it. I had my photography camera in my hand and released the shutter. The scene was not staged. Oddly, this picture doesn’t turn up in the film.” (Meanwhile, back in the US, arrangements for a posthumous Cartier-Bresson retrospective was underway, editors believing that he had died in the POW camp).
The picture did not appear in the film because Cartier-Bresson’s fingers were indeed faster than the rolling film — a testament to his eerily ability to predict an impending “Decisive Moment”.
Behind the Gare, St. Lazare
CARTIER-BRESSON, Henri
1932
Man jumpting, reflected in water, mirrored in poster of dancer on wall. Connected to French surrealism. Instantantous capturing of tintentional situations on small format Lyca Camera.
Decisive moment, detective with a camera, Cartier Bresson did not interfere, but waited for scene to arrange itself. He stiduied cubist paintings. He was not a journalist, but interested in signifigant moments that had the audacity to suprise us with their own meaning.
Reaching Out At a First Aid Center in South Vietnam
BURROWS, Larry
1966
An injured Marine, blood stained bandage on his head appears to be inexorably drawn to a stricken comrad. Tendernous, terror, desolation and fellowship. Simple human jesture.
Color photograph, more graphic, esthetizized sense of beauty and desuction because color was usually used for advertising. Transfuring this quality made it more attractive and enhanced the shock value.
