World Press Photo 2012

Cover Photo by Samuel Aranda

Dieser schön gestaltete Band überzeugt (abgesehen von der Gliederung) in jeder Hinsicht und führt exemplarisch vor, was gute Pressefotografie leisten kann: Aufklärung.

Die erste Rubrik trägt den Titel "Menschen in den Schlagzeilen" und beginnt mit einer Fotoserie über Fukushima. Ein Erdbeben der Stärke 9.0, 70 km vor der Nordostküste Japans, löste am 11. März 2011 einen Tsunami aus, der riesige Überschwemmungen und Zerstörungen zur Folge hatte und über 340'000 Menschen obdachlos machte. Die eindrückliche Serie von Yasuyoshi Chiba beginnt mit der Aufnahme eines zerschellten Zuges, der über einem Friedhof hängt.

Die zweite Rubrik, "Reportagen", beginnt ebenfalls mit einem Bild (des schwedischen Fotografen Lars Lindquist) über den Tsunami im Nordosten Japans und zeigt eine völlig surreale Szene mit gestrandeten Schiffen im Hafen von Ishinomaki.

Copyright @ Adam Pretty, Getty Images

Dann folgt die etwas eigenartige Kategorie "Harte Fakten", die wiederum mit Aufnahmen des japanischen Tsunami eingeleitet wird. Als weitere Kategorien figurieren dann "Aktuelle Themen", "Alltagsleben", "Porträts", Kunst und Kultur", "Natur" und "Sport". Ich fand diese Einteilungen einigermassen willkürlich und gelegentlich schwer nachvollziehbar, doch einfach ist es ja wirklich nicht aus 101'254 Einsendungen diversester Art 161 Bilder für ein Jahrbuch auszuwählen und dafür auch noch geeignete Kategorien zu finden. Trotzdem: Sinnvoller wäre gewesen, die Gliederung den Ereignissen anzupasssen (also ein Kapitel über den Tsunami, ein anderes über den arabischen Frühling), anstatt nach recht bedeutungsleeren Themen ("Aktuelle Themen", Alltagsleben" etc.) zu ordnen, nicht zuletzt, weil man dadurch die sonst unvermeidlichen Wiederholungen (bei jeder Tsunami-Bildserie wird der Tsunami erklärt) hätte vermeiden können.

Copyright @ Vincent Boisot, Riva Press

Im Gegensatz zu einer illustrierten Geschichte des Jahres 2012 (wo die Bilder den Text ergänzen), stehen bei diesem Band die (durch informative Texte ergänzten) Bilder im Vordergrund. Da wir uns, wenn wir uns erinnern, sowieso eher an Bilder als an Worte erinnern, ist dieser kommentierte Bildband so recht eigentlich allerbeste Geschichtsschreibung. Man wünschte sich mehr solch eindrückliche und hilfreiche Werke!

PS: Der Titel der Publikation (World Press Photo 12) ist irreführend, da die hier versammelten Bilder alle aus dem Jahre 2011 stammen.

World Press Photo 12
Benteli Verlag, Sulgen 2012

BOGOTÁ D.C.

Guadalupe Ruiz' Bogotá is a nicely done book, in a rather unusual format (235 x 160 mm), edited by Joerg Bader, and with a text in English, French, Spanish, and German, from which I learn: "Guadalupe Ruiz Cifuentes travels between two worlds: South America, where she was born, and Europe, where she lives; or, to be more precise, Colombia, where her family - whom she sees regularly - is based, and Switzerland, the country that gave her her artistic training and her first exhibitons. Thus she also travels between two cultures: the Latin world of the Americas, marked by the Baroque and Catholicism, and the European world of austere Nordic culture, marked by Calvinist Protestantism."

Well, I must admit that I find it a bit peculiar to describe Switzerland as an "austere Nordic culture, marked by Calvinist Protestantism", just think of the Ticino or of Obwalden, but maybe the author was referring to Geneva ... the book was done in cooperation with Éditions de la Photographie Genève.

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 How do you visually document social and economic inequalities of a city?
Guadalupe Ruiz opted for a rather unique approach: she decided to photograph the houses, apartments, streetscapes, interiors, and furniture of residents from Bogotá's six different taxation classes. Does it work? Do you really come away with a pretty good idea/picture of the social and economic inequalities that govern Bogotá? I'm not sure. First of all: Had I not been told, I wouldn't have known that these pictures were taken in Colombia, they could have been taken almost anywhere in Latin America. Secondly, I wonder what showing, for example, different kinds of beds in different houses can possibly tell me of a city except, of course, that some people can afford nicer beds than others.

Nevertheless, I've enjoyed spending time with these photographs because I find it interesting to see in what surroundings people live. It felt a bit like peeping through a keyhole.

Editor Joerg Bader aptly observes that "an unashamed fondness for kitsch" is shared by all social classes, and that not one of the homes photographed lacks a television set. Unfortunately, he then proceeds by stating: "While the photographs of TV sets do not occupy the central column in Guadalupe Ruiz' hanging, television does in fact function as a vertebral column in the lives of all these residents" and goes on to elaborate on the importance of the telenovelas in South America. True as this may be, it has absolutely nothing to do with the photographs in this book.

It is on purpose that I do not tell you from what taxation class the above pictures are. Have a guess! Should you then want to know whether you've guessed correctly, check out the book - it is worth it.

Guadalupe Ruiz

BOGOTÁ D.C.

Scheidegger & Spiess, Zurich 2012

Audrey Hepburn

Copyright @ Taschen

Audrey Hepburn (1929 – 1993) was a Belgian-born British actress and humanitarian.

In 1953, Bob Willoughby had been sent to photograph her at Paramount in Hollywood. Hepburn had just completed the filming of Roman Holiday and publicity photographs were needed. „I really didn't know what quite to make of Audrey when I first saw her. She certainly was not the typical image of a young starlet ... that radiant smile hit me right between the eyes, warming me inside like a shot of whisky.“

"I decided, very early on, just to accept life unconditionally", she once said. And that is, I believe, what her pictures show.

Copyright @ Taschen

What do I associate with her? Most of all her 'Bubikopf' (pixie cut) and the fact that she was often wearing drainpipe trousers. The movies? The Nun's Story, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and My Fair Lady come to mind.

Looking at pictures of her always means to be filled up with positive feelings for what she seemed to personify was joyfulness, curiosity, and self-assuredness. She comes across so naturally that I often wondered whether she was actually posing - and of course she was.

It is useful to keep in mind that a photo is a photo is a photo: a two-dimensional reduction of a three-dimensional physical reality that neither smells nor sounds and that has always been only as real as a picture on a page can be. At the same time however — and that is what makes them so intriguing and special — photos radiate something magical. As Maureen Dowd penned in the New York Times: "... in Hollywood, couples who have chemistry on screen often don't like each other off screen, and ones who are involved off screen often don't have any chemistry on screen."

Copyright @ Taschen

There are photographs of private moments and from movie sets to be found in this tome. Bob Willoughby writes: "While many of these photographs of Audrey are well known, they have never before been seen together as a complete collection."

It is an impressive collection of beautiful photographs of a beautiful woman. They emanate, it so seems, who and what she is. In the words of Hubert de Givenchy: "She was an enchantress, inspiring love and beauty. And fairies never quite disappear altogether."

Bob Willoughby

Audrey Hepburn

Photographs 1953-1966

Taschen, Cologne 2012

Volker Hinz

"Volker Hinz is a German photographer, and the German bit is important because for more than 40 years, Hinz has been one of the eyes of the country", I read in the biographical notes that Jochen Siemens contributed to this impressive tome. 

Hinz has been shooting photos for stern for almost 40 years, a selection of his shots can now be seen in the stern FOTOGRAFIE series. Dominik Wichmann of stern sees Hinz' photographs as "both snapshots and pictures", and characterises them aptly as "both charmingly reserved and relentlessly intimate".

Looking at the extraordinary photographs in this work, there is no doubt that Volker Hinz is a great photographer. I often wondered how the shots came about. The one of Muhammad Ali at his desk, for instance. Was this an unguarded moment? Or was Ali told to please sit in his chair and sleep/relax/close his eyes? Unfortunately, we are not told. 

Volker Hinz was born on the banks of a river in 1947, in a house on the northern flank of the River Elbe in the Hamburg district of Blankenese. "Looking out onto a river teaches you how to look: in the foreground the riverbank, in the middle the ships, and beyond them the land on the other side. And seeing spaces means seeing dreams", writes Jochen Siemens. Although I do like this, I fail to see what it has to do with the photographs in this book that mostly show portraits of people.

The Hinz way of photographing has been called "the art of intuition and atmosphere" (Siemens). Well said and true. Not least because Volker Hinz makes you see famous people not wearing their usual public masks but their human faces.

Volker Hinz

stern Fotografie

Portfolio Nr. 67

77 Schriftsteller

„2005 begann ich damit, Schriftsteller am Ende eines Interviews darum zu bitten, für einen Augenblick zu ihrem eigenen Gesprächspartner zu werden. Sie sollten sich selbst eine Frage stellen und sie dann auch beantworten, in der jeweiligen Muttersprache und vor dem Mikrofon“, schreibt Herausgeber Tobias Wenzel im Vorwort. Gute Idee, dachte ich, bevor ich das Buch zur Hand nahm. Jetzt im Nachhinein bin ich mir da gar nicht mehr so sicher. Das liegt zum einen daran, dass ich mit vielen Fragen und Antworten nicht viel bis gar nichts anfangen konnte, und zum andern, dass ich den Eindruck hatte, man hätte dieses Experiment auch mit irgendwelchen Leuten von der Strasse machen können, es wäre wohl in etwa auf dasselbe heraus gekommen oder anders gesagt: Schriftsteller stellen sich offenbar nicht schlauere oder interessantere Fragen und geben sich auch nicht viel schlauere oder interessantere Antworten als andere auch. Sicher, es gibt Ausnahmen. Ein paar will ich hier erwähnen:

Gao Xingjian, was haben Sie noch nicht gemacht, würden Sie aber gerne einmal machen? Musik. Ich habe einen Rhythmus in mir. Aber er ist sehr schwer umzusetzen.

Richard Ford, weisst du, was wichtig für dich ist? Nein, aber ich lege mir etwas zurecht.

Herr Enzensberger, warum sind sie nicht unglücklich? Die Zeit, die mir bleibt, ist mir dafür zu schade.

Liza (Marklund), hat das Leben einen Sinn? Eigentlich nicht. Das wissen wir ja. Und mit diesem Wissen kann man nicht leben. Deshalb haben wir die Drogen erfunden, die Religion und den Terrorismus. Aber es gibt eine Sache, die wir durchaus tun können: Ich glaube, dass wir unsere Gesellschaft, die Welt verändern können. Wenn also das Leben nun mal einen Sinn haben muss, dann sollten wir genau das tun. Das kommt anderen Menschen zugute.

Was diesen Band speziell macht, sind die eindrücklichen Fotos von Carolin Seeliger. Jonathan Franzen äussert sich zum Posieren für die Kamera so: „So paradox das auch klingen mag: Man kann sein Privatleben schützen, indem man sich selbst der Kamera aussetzt und lächelt. Wenn man ja sagt, hat man Kontrolle über eine Sache, über die man vielleicht keine Kontrolle hat, wenn man nein sagt. Je mehr man von sich preisgibt, desto geschützter ist man. Ich habe keine Ahnung, wie das funktioniert. Aber so empfinde ich es.“ Übrigens: auf dem Porträt von Franzen, das neben diesem Text abgebildet ist, lächelt er nicht.

PS: Nicht erschlossen hat sich mir, weshalb die Befragten sich in der jeweiligen Muttersprache und vor dem Mikrofon äussern sollten – im vorliegenden Buch finden sich ihre Fragen und Antworten ins Deutsche übertragen.

Tobias Wenzel / Carolin Seeliger
Was ich mich schon immer fragen wollte
77 Schriftsteller im Selbstgespräch
Benteli Verlag, Bern und Sulgen 2008

Pulitzer Prize 2012

When, a few days ago, it was announced that Massoud Hossaini got the Pulitzer-Prize in the category Breaking News Photography, I clicked through the sequence of photographs that were displayed on the website of the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

The second photo in the series, the one for which Massoud Hossaini received the Pulitzer, showed Tarana Akbari, 12, amidst dead bodies, screaming in fear moments after a suicide bomber detonated a bomb in a crowd at the Abul Fazel Shrine in Kabul on 6 December 2011.

Copyright @ Massoud Hossaini

The next photo showed the photographer upon learning that he had won the Pulitzer.

Copyright @ AFP

The next couple of days, on various internet sites, I again and again came across the picture of the screaming girl in green – and always the pic of the happy photographer came to mind, although I had seen the photo of him only once.

It goes without saying that looking at a photograph in a series is very different from looking at a photograph that stands alone. To present a series of photographs requires thinking. What pic should I put first? What pic should follow? Should the pics relate to each other? Should there be an order or should the viewer be left alone and do with the pics what he deems fit?

I do not know what the picture editor of the Süddeutsche Zeitung had in mind when he placed the photograph of the happy photographer next to the one of the screaming Tarana Akbari, but probably not much. In any case, the effect this, in my view, totally insensitive positioning had on me was devastating. It made me once again aware that to shoot disturbing and necessary pictures is a career, a business, a way to make a living. Maybe the picture editor of the Süddeutsche Zeitung wanted to show us precisely that. If so, he should also receive an award.

Cedric Nunn

Since the end of the 1970s, Cedric Nunn's photographic work has focused on people from his homeland, South Africa, I read in the preface by Ralf-P. Seippel - and briefly wondered what the P. might stand for. Anyway, having worked as an ICRC-delegate in KwaZulu-Natal in 1994/1995, this tome aroused my special interest.

"In photography", writes Cedric Nunn, " I saw a medium that would allow me to express myself in relation to various issues that I was becoming aware of. The most obvious was the extent of the racial division and exploitation to which we blacks were subjected. I was particularly struck by the racism in my own mixed-race community and sought to understand this and why it was that mixed-race people were so prone to alcoholism, unemployment, broken marriages, teenage pregnancy, and other social ills. Very quickly I learned that these issues had a national character and that the remedy for them was indeed a national one. I remember a discussion with my father in which I vented my frustration at the state of the nation. His quiet response was: 'Do something about it.' These photographs, which span a thirty-year journey in photography, are in a sense my answer to that challenge."

Copyright @ Hatje Cantz, 2012

Although I think many of the photographs in this tome excellent, I fail to see how they could possibly give answers to questions "on alcoholism, unemployment, broken marriages, teenage pregnancy, and other social ills." So what do Nunn's photographs then do? In my view, they illustrate carefully chosen aspects of life in Southern Africa, they show me a wide variety of often impressive scenes that document a social reality that we need to confront in order to change it. Lewis Hine came to mind, who "sought to apply to documentary photography: 'to show things that had to be corrected' as well as 'things to be appreciated'", as Andries Walter Oliphant points out in his essay "Writing with Light: Textures of Life in the Early Photography of Cedric Nunn".

Copyright @ Hatje Cantz, 2012

"... what made you feel confident that photography was your metier?", asks Okwui Enwezor, and Nunn replies: "It was the incredible powerful feeling I had, it certainly wasn't any intellectual sense that I could master this medium (...) the medium called me, and I was on a journey to produce images that people like Omar Badsha and David Goldblatt were producing. Later I met Santu Mofokeng, Guy Tillim, and others. I was in awe of them and wanted the kind of ability that they have."

I thought the captions that accompany Nunn's photographs often irritating: A young boy playing, the caption reads: "community forcibly removed to make way for a game reserve." Or: A guy holding a guitar, the caption reads: "Migrant worker from the Eastern Cape on a sugar farm."

Copyright @ Hatje Cantz, 2012

The caption of the pic above reads: "Children from Arniston or Waenhuiskrans surfing off the Western Cape coast. Frequent missile testing at a nearby military base prevented fishermen from their village going out on boats to earn a living." This photo and caption illustrate (although I doubt that this was intended) what the problem with social documentary is: the picture cannot show what it is supposed to show; we need to bring to the picture what is not there in order to see what the photographer wanted to show us.

Cedric Nunn
Call and Response
Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern 2012