Zurich-Altstetten

On Sunday afternoon, 18 August 2013, I went for a walk in Zurich-Altstetten; I love strolling around empty towns, particularly suburbs – they definitely remind me of ghost towns.

 When I was leaving the train station, my eyes registered the play of light on stairs leading up to an area of office buildings and apartment blocks.

Copyright @ Hans Durrer

Roger Grenier: A Box of Photographs

"But doesn't photography really begin with the first child who saw the sky, the trees, the prairies reflected in a drop of water? (...) Fixing the image afterwards was merely a chemical detail."

Thoughts like these make this book a revelation to me. And such wonderful observations from the early days of photography: "Anyone who owned a store had his picture taken in front of it."

The relation that people have with photographs couldn't be more different. There are the ones like the aged Shopenhauer who didn't tire of having photographs of himself taken, analysed and discussed. Then there are the ones like Balzac who hated being photographed. The most peculiar one I thought to be the American photographer Lisette Model who "locked up her photos at night, so their souls didn't come out to haunt her."

Roger Grenier's relation to photography started with his parents. They were opticians, and opticians at that time often added a photo-printing service to their main business. However, they, and particularly the mother, were not happy with the service for their clients asked too many questions, "they wanted to know why their pictures didn't turn out, were too dark, were too light." Nevertheless, young Roger acquired enough know-how from his father to work in a photo lab for a whole summer vacation.

A Box of Photographs is a memoir in brief chapters that revolve around photos. There was for instance the lieutenant who went mad and couldn't stop taking pictures: "We had the impression he was never going to stop, and we decided there must not be any film in his camera." Then there's the story of the precious photo of the train station at Tarbes that he cannot find anymore. And, his photographing paintings. And ...

In December 1940, still a soldier, he ended up in a regiment in Marseilles and sent to serve in Algeria. "The photos from North Africa immortalize scenes so incongruous that without these paper witnesses I would have forgotten them." Here's an cxample that has stayed with me: "The swamp water that was filtered through a handkerchief, for drinking."

Roger Grenier did not become a photographer but a writer. "Still, photography never stopped influencing my life." But photography was not only influencing him: it accompanied him, it directed him, it defined parts of his life.

Skiing on the Sancy, at Mont-Dore, he fell on his Voigtländer, which he was wearing around his neck. In Saint-Petersburg, getting out of a little boat after an outing on the Neva, he fell again on a camera. And, in August 1944, when the Germans were firing on people in Paris, he took photos, was stopped and searched, and the camera was taken from him. Grenier dryly comments: "They threw my Voigtländer in the gun turret of a tank. It was a return-to sender, actually, since this camera is German-made."

A Box of Photographs is a thoroughly enjoyable book. On its back you can read praise for another of his works, The Difficulty of Being a Dog. Interestingly enough, the very same praise would also be fitting for A Box of Photographs: "Utterly charming and irresistibly quotable", for instance. Or: "An alluring book full of philosophical and literary musings". Or: "Literate, light and lighthearted ..."

Roger Grenier
A Box of Photographs
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2013

Afrika!

"Plädoyer für eine differenzierte Berichterstattung" heisst der Untertitel dieses Buches von Martin Sturmer, und wer wollte da nicht zustimmen ... 

Ich habe selber einmal in Afrika gearbeitet, weiss nur allzu gut, dass Berichterstattung und Wirklichkeit vor Ort meist weit auseinander fallen (doch ist das so recht eigentlich bei fast jeder Berichterstattung so) und da ich überdies, viele Jahre ist es her, ein Buch mit Afrika Reportagen herausgegeben habe (Stefan Klein & Manja Karmon Klein: Die Tränen des Löwen), stürzte ich mich sofort aufs Literaturverzeichnis, um zu sehen, ob denn dieses Buch dort auch verzeichnet war ... doch, nein, es war nicht da. Und auch die anderen Journalisten Bücher, von denen ich einiges über diesen Kontinent gelernt hatte, waren nicht aufgeführt. Drei ganz unbedingt lesenswerte will ich hier erwähnen: Andrea Böhm: Gott und die Krokodile, Keith B. Richburg: Jenseits von Afrika, Michela Wrong: In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz. Zudem fehlt da noch ..., doch nein, das bringt nichts, und überhaupt hat der Autor schliesslich ganz viele Bücher gelesen, die ich wiederum nicht gelesen habe ...

Es gibt Bücher, die mag man nicht zu Ende lesen, weil einen die Lektüre ganz einfach zu sehr nervt. Für mich ist Martin Sturmers Afrika! so ein Buch. Schon seines Ansatzes wegen. Was meine ich damit? "Lässt sich ein differenzierter Afrika-Journalismus angesichts redaktioneller Sparmassnahmen überhaupt noch bewerkstelligen?", fragt Sturmer und fährt fort: "Meine klare Antwort: Ja. Wie? Durch einen einfachen Wandel der Perspektive. Ich bin überzeugt, dass die Zukunft der deutschsprachigen Afrika-Berichterstattung in den fähigen Händen afrikanischer Medienprofis liegt." Gut möglich, dass er recht hat, doch ich will mir den afrikanischen Kontinent nicht von Afrikanern erklären lassen, genau so wenig wie ich mir Amerika von Amerikanern oder die Schweiz von Schweizern erklären lassen will. Anders gesagt: mich interessiert die Perspektive von aussen. Zugespitzt formuliert: ich lerne mehr über die Schweiz von Nicht-Schweizern als von Schweizern (dass es da Ausnahmen gibt, versteht sich). Das Gewohnte aus Distanz zu sehen, bedeutet häufig, es klarer zu sehen (siehe auch: Warum rennen hier alle so?)

Die schlechte Presse, die Afrika in den deutschsprachigen Medien hat, so Sturmer, schade vor allem im Hinblick auf:
"° die Wirtschaft des Kontinents, insbesondere den Handel und den Tourismus
° die Spendenbereitschaft bei humanitären Krisen und die Akzeptanz von Entwicklungszusammenarbeit
° das gesellschaftliche Zusammenleben mit Menschen afrikanischer Herkunft in deutschsprachigen Ländern."

Dreht man das Argument um, müsste man schliessen, die Aufgabe der Medien sei, der Wirtschaft zu dienen, die Entwicklungszusammenarbeit sowie das interkulturelle Miteinander in deutschsprachigen Ländern zu unterstützen. Wirklich?

Afrika! ist ein Buch darüber wie einige, der politischen Korrektheit verpflichtete Akademiker zur Zeit die Welt sehen. Das geht von der Verwendung von akzeptablen Bildern bis zum Gebrauch korrekter sprachlicher Ausdrücke. So seien etwa "Animisten, Buschmänner, Pygmäen" bedenkliche Ausdrücke, "die auf anthropologische, rassistische oder imperialistische Konzepte zurückgehen." Laurens van der Post empfand übrigens die Bezeichnung "a white bushman" als Ehrentitel. Und für die Bildauswahl von Afrikabeiträgen gelte "Ähnliches wie für die Nachrichtenselektion – Negativismus ist das Kernmotiv." Ganz so, als ob das sonst im Journalismus anders wäre ...

Die verzerrte Darstellung von Afrika sei medial konstruiert, lese ich. Und stimme zu. Doch mit Afrika hat das wenig zu tun. Wer von den Medien eine unverzerrte Sicht der Dinge verlangt, versteht nicht, wie die Medienwelt tickt.

Martin Sturmer
Afrika!
Plädoyer für eine differenzierte Berichterstattung,
UVK, Konstanz 2013

Barbara Klemm: Fall of the Wall 1989

When approaching a book, I usually start with the introduction. In the case of Barbara Klemm's Fall of the Wall 1989 I would however advise to skip the intro and go directly to the photos.
It is the very first pic in this convincing work that did it for me, that made my senses connect to what the image showed: Border Fortification, Bernauer Strasse, Berlin 1971, the caption reads. It is a black and white photograph that might have been taken in November, fog and mist cloud the lifeless scene, the dominant colour is grey, the street lamps stand in line as if they were soldiers at a military parade.

But why skip the info? Well, let me give you the first paragraph and then you will probably understand:
"A charge that cultural critics level at producers and mediators is that their images convey information that deliberately blurs the boundary between being and appearance, encouraging viewers to form ideas about the world that are far removed from the realities of life. The history of photojournalism contains many an instance where the technological miracle that is the snapshot served to disseminate manipulative and distorted visual information. The children and grandchildren of photography – print media, television, and the internet – have made the bad reputation of photojournalism and photo reportage worse by promoting the circulation of images that were neither true to reality nor had any artistic value that justified their existence beyond the day they were published."

In case you don't understand why I think that this is, well, to put it mildly, not worth my time: "blurs the boundary between being and appearance"?! I mean, that is what photography is all about. The "bad reputation of photojournalism and photo reportage"? I've never been aware of such a bad reputation and do not think at all that it is true. Anyway, I prefer to experience the effect Klemm's photographs have on me. The first sensation that I'm conscious of is that I like to look at them. They do not bore me. Quite the contrary, they make me feel curious. And, I say this with a certain wonder, I'm suprised that it is like that for the topics photographed do not strike me as out of the ordinary: remnants of the wall, the Brandenburg Gate, Wall Tourism in 1990, Kohl and Genscher waving, a youngster on a bike in Berlin-Kreuzberg. What is it that these black and white pics (and the fact that they are in black and white certainly constributes to it) radiate something magical, something surreal. No idea, really, but as strange as it seems: there is an aura of timelessness about these documents that capture moments in time that happened only then and there.

I was in Berlin on the day the wall fell, I have written about it. I did not see what Barbara Klemm decided to record and it doesn't cease to amaze me that one can be at the same event and experience it so differently. And, I do of course know that much of what I see in these photographs I do bring to them. I know for instance a bit about the two German states, I have been to Berlin before, once to the Eastern part, quite often to the Western part. Yet Barbara Klemm makes me see a fall of the wall that is somehow new to me.

Looking at these photographs feels like watching a movie ... but with a difference ... for I can decide how long to stay with a certain pic. At this very moment: With a shot that shows Egon Krenz in front of Altes Museum. At first glance (when I concentrate on Krenz and the people behind him), there is nothing notable about this picture but the more time I spend with it the more I begin to see (I concentrate now on the statue I see in the back, almost on the same line as Krenz) that this is a truly remarkable composition. And, there are lots of such convincing compositions in Barbara Klemm's Fall of the Wall 1989.

Barbara Klemm
Fall of the Wall 1989
Nimbus Books, Wädenswil 2011

www.nimbusbooks.ch