picture?
Don't Ski Behind The Boat
Nubar Alexanian 08.28.01
This was a huge problem with the music book. And getting access was a nightmare because publicists and managers want to control everything. I met Wynton Marsalis on assignment for Life magazine. As I say in my introduction, I was told no pictures on the bus, in his hotel room or during sound checks. "What's left?" I argued. Publicists say it this way: "If you even ask about any of these things, we will never work with you again."
My way around this was to bring a copy of my Peru book to his room. I wanted him to see the kind of photographer I was. When he answered the door and saw two cameras around my neck, he said, "You're not comin' in here with those," or something like that. I just handed him the book and left.
One hour later there was a knock on my hotel room door. It was Wynton. He said I could do whatever I wanted. And he meant it. In his case, we also went on to become good friends.
Now I know this story is kind of cute. But part of the point I want to make is that most celebrities/musicians/public people have never been photographed by a documentary photographer. They are guarding against photographers who build their own careers by skiing behind their boats. Look at Annie Leibovitz's pictures. What are they about? The subject of her photographs is about what she can get famous people to do: they are about her. And if you go into a situation after her, you have to clean up the mess she left behind before you can begin working. So I learned very quickly not to react and to understand why they are not entirely wrong in protecting themselves.
Photographing women was different than photographing men in the music book and, though I did not give approval to anyone in terms of which pictures I used, I did agree to show them, especially to the women. For example, Emmylou Harris objected to the use of one picture I took because she looked tired and jet-lagged. This was, indeed, the point of this photograph. She was working hard and I wanted people to see her this way. In the end, she didn't want that picture used and I had to argue with her manager - either that picture is in, or none of the pictures of her would be included in the book (this, after spending a week with her in Europe on my own dime). He agreed.
I do have some "asshole" moment stories not directly related to celebrities. But they're kind of long.
Our Favorite Asshole Moment Stories
Jay Allison 08.29.01
We got time.
Don't %#&@ With The Photographer!
Nubar Alexanian 08.31.01
Don't #&*+ with the photographer! An asshole moment: so I'm on this oil drilling rig off the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico, shooting an assignment for GEO magazine back in 1983, I think. I'm supposed to spend two weeks shooting life on an off shore oil rig and things are going fine for the first few days. The men (and one woman) work twelve hour shifts/days for two weeks and then get two weeks off. The boss on the rig is called the tool-pusher. He was a real hard ass with a strange sense of humor. He was riding me from the moment I stepped off the helicopter. On the fourth day, he told all the other workers that I was GREEN, which to them meant I had never been on a rig before. I argued that I had (I was lying). There's an initiation that someone green has to go through. They pull your pants down and wipe this tar all over your butt that won't come off. It has to wear away. Takes months, I've heard.
So the tool-pusher provoked the crew and they chased me around the rig with this huge dollop of tar that they use when they're drilling. I was panicked. So I climbed up near the top of one of the legs of the rig and hollered down to the tool-pusher that I was his responsibility and if they came near me, I would jump. I further stated that I was the guest of the Governor of Louisiana, and not to be messed with.
They backed off. Near the end of my stay, I saw the tool-pusher fishing off the edge of the rig. He pulled up a small red fish. A very small red fish. I asked if I could take his picture. So there he was, wearing a blue jump suit, white hard hat, a little fishing rod and a tiny red fish, with a big, little boy's grin on his face.
Back in New York, I pleaded with the art director to run that picture with the others and she agreed. I arranged to send 12 copies of the magazine to the helicopter pilot who delivered them to the rig. I could almost hear the crew laughing all the way back in Massachusetts and I got a phone call from the tool-pusher himself, right from the rig. He was really pissed and told me if he ever saw me in the state of Louisiana again....
And I said, "Man, don't mess with the photographer."
Ha!
Jay Allison 09.03.01
I remembering seeing that picture in GEO way back when and remember the little boy quality of it. It works on its own, but I'm especially glad to have the backstage view.
In fact, while you say that photography is a non-narrative medium, I often sense narratives in your work and other photographers. Is photography truly non-narrative? Aren't we compelled to create our own narrative, our own caption, in the absence of one?
A Sense of Truth
Nubar Alexanian 08.29.01
Jay asked about what happens when an artist's sense of the truth is unflattering to someone who has given unusual access. After thinking more about it, I realize that the place where a sense of truth is most compromised is with the magazines. There are times when I've had to be protective of people who've given me access, fearful that their generosity will be betrayed. There have even been times (here goes my career) when I've held out images that I know a magazine would use and use badly, betraying the trust AND my experience of the subject.
This gets back to the idea of photojournalism vs. illustration. Can a photographer and a writer work on the same story and have different experiences of the subject? Of course. The real question is whether photojournalism is journalism in the eye of the editor, and able to hold sway with the writing. Aren't photojournalists reporters? Don't they gather information, reveal things about the subject, just like writing? Walker Evans and James Agee proved the power of these two mediums working within their strengths, in a parallel way, neither one explaining or illustrating the other. This rarely, if ever, happens in the real world of documentary photography. And it shouldn't matter whether the subject is a celebrity or a dairy farmer. If the magazine already knows which pictures they want before the photographer goes into the field, then why go at all? To illustrate what they think they know about the subject. And this is where truth is compromised.
What is Romance?
Josh Barlow 08.29.01
I have always found it more intriguing to capture the human (non-glamorous) side of celebrities and, inversely, to relay the grander (poetic) themes present in the lives of "ordinary" people. Your work seems to achieve a wonderful balance that doesn't exploit in either direction, but do you find that some photographers (especially younger ones), have a tendency to over-romanticize, or project through their subjects? At what point is the photographer no longer being true to the subject?
'Taking' Pictures
Nubar Alexanian 08.31.01
At what point is the photographer no longer being true to the subject? What a great question! There are so many ways to answer this, yet no one way seems adequate. A photograph dignifies everything. And it's not really true that my work doesn't exploit my subjects. I exploit to the extent that the work is about me and what's important to me. I don't mean to keep beating this drum, but being honest is what matters. So I don't ask subjects to do anything for my camera unless it's obvious in the image, as in a portrait. However I did exploit the people of Peru to the degree that photographing my experience of them taught me what I know about photography. Some photographers take a harsher view of what they do, calling it "taking" as opposed to giving. Of course, photographers take photographs. But they make no bones about how much photography involves "taking" from people, and giving little else in return. It's a compelling way to look at one's work. And perhaps difficult to argue with, though I do wonder whether this lets them off to easily.
Regarding personal projection, I don't see how a photographer who cares about what he/she is photographing can't project to some degree. And if the photographer's visual vocabulary is adequate, this will be obvious in the pictures.
Verbs and Narratives
Viki Merrick 09.03.01
When a radio documentary reveals what is in a human's dark place, or a photograph reveals austerity or sorrow in a human face or body pose, the artist "takes" the revealment and "gives" it to the world. But your use of these verbs sounds like a much larger moral one. Your work is remarkably eloquent - giving back a story with heightened poignancy. Isn't that your "giving"? Isn't that enough? Are you simply talking about the difference between decency vs. pillaging ? I don't really think so.
Also, how can you say photography is non-narrative? All these years of wasted mental wandering? I always thought photographs, more than other visual art, get to tell a story, beyond the image, through intimation, suggestion and that you photographers were in fact urging a narrative in the viewer.
Also: more asshole stories, please.
Dignity
Jay Allison 09.03.01
Nubar, you said, "A photograph dignifies everything." This is an interesting thought. What exactly do you mean by dignify? I can see how it codifies, preserves, even elevates. I wonder how a story works in the same way.
Photography and Narrative
Nubar Alexanian 09.04.01
Most of the photographs we see day today are used in a narrative way. And some photographers use it well.
When I say narrative is not one of photography's strengths, I'm comparing it to writing, radio, film, etc, where narrative is the heart and soul of these media. Photography is much better at metaphor, at the poetic. I'm not just talking about art photographs here, but documentary work as well. So I'm not saying that photography is non-narrative.
Jay's point about us creating our own narratives from work is true for all art, especially the visual arts. What constitutes meaning in a photograph has a lot to do with what someone expects from or brings to the work. Is this enough? Kind of goes back to Joshua's question about projection. It just happens.
I am talking about decency but not pillaging. With the correct amount of narcissism and equal amounts of talent and ambition, a photographer can leave behind a pretty nasty wake. Perhaps this is also true in radio or other forms of journalism. I know it to be true in film.
I believe this is cultural as well. Our culture supports the surface over substance. For example, it really astonished me that after the civil war ended in Peru, among the first things the government did along with building medical clinics in poor neighborhoods was to give out grants to artists, poets and writers. Right at the top of the list. I know this is a tangent and not really part of this topic, but it just popped into my head.
Regarding my own work, I have never thought of it in terms of giving, only receiving. Perhaps this is because I'm so focused on "process" rather than "product."
More asshole stories to come.
The Gloucester Project
Jay Allison 09.07.01
Nubar, can you tell us a little about your ongoing current project - documenting your home town? Some of us have undertaken longitudinal radio/tv documentaries, following stories over time, but time tends to be part of the finished product. I'm wondering how the Gloucester project is different or the same.
When Words Emasculate Meaning
Jeff Jacobson 09.09.01
Nubar asked me to talk about my view of narrative in documentary photographs. They aren't [narrative], except in the mind of the viewer. A photograph means whatever the viewer decides it means, no matter what the photographer intended. I am speaking about a photograph unencumbered by words that direct us how to interpret it, such as captions in magazines, or text in advertisements. For example, the fact that the umbrella in Nubar's picture is black means absolutely nothing to me, even though it has meaning for him. You see, Nubar was there when the picture was taken and he draws meaning from facts outside the frame of the photograph. I have only the photograph to go by. Hell, all umbrellas are black!
There is a weekly column in the NY Times Magazine entitled "What Were They Thinking", in which the point seems to be that the meaning of the photograph hinges on what the subject of the picture was thinking at the moment of exposure. The only problem with this exercise is that the meaning of a photographic image becomes completely dependent on words, in this case the transcribed thoughts of the subject. I would argue that this limits and emasculates the potential meaning of the photograph and, of course, its viewer. Many photojournalists and photo editors would probably disagree with me. They feel that photographs and words work well together to create a narrative structure. I am just more interested in the pure photograph alone, where it functions more like poetry than journalism.
I am always as interested in what is not visible in a photograph as in what is visible. For me, the most interesting photographs are those that create supreme tension between the real and unreal, reality and fantasy, visible and invisible. Its the unseen presences that haunt certain pictures that intrigue me. Words get in my way when I look at photographs; they interrupt my reverie. If the photograph, or sequence of photographs, move me, their meaning comes from the way I am moved, not from someone else's words directing me how to interpret them.
Potential Meanings
Nubar Alexanian 09.09.01
First of all folks, let me introduce Jeff Jacobson. He's not only one of my dearest friends, but as a photographer he's doing some of the most interesting work in color documentary photography today. I believe he is one of a few photographers whose work advances our understanding of the possibilities of color photography.
Jeff, I'm fascinated by your use of the work emasculate, when talking about the affect words have on the potential meaning of a photograph. Strong word. Say more.
The Ability to Reproduce a Multiplicity of Meanings
Jeff Jacobson 09.09.01
So the word "emasculate" elicited a particularly strong response in you, eh, Nubar? I mean that I am struck by the ability of great photographs that document a fragment of real space and real time to give birth to many different meanings to different viewers. Words can attach specific meaning to photographs which may inhibit their ability to reproduce a multiplicity of meanings. I love the paradox of ambiguity in an image that is a direct representation of the reality before the photographer's lens. The combination of that ambiguity and specificity, that paradox, is what I feel gives photography its most unique power.
Preaching To The Choir
Nubar Alexanian 09.09.01
Well said, Jeff. I love the way you describe the tension that results from the paradox of ambiguity and specificity in photographs. To echo your point, I feel like photographs are more like dreams, in that the power of their effect can be subtle, even unconscious for the viewer. I love this about photography.
Jay, I'm not sure what you mean by longitudinal radio/tv documentaries, and following stories over time, with time ending up being part of the final product. Can you say more?
The Curve of Time
Jay Allison 09.09.01
If I spend six months chronicling an event or a place for a radio or TV documentary, the curve of time will become part of the story. The time I spent there will translate in some way to the sense of time in the piece itself.
You're spending years documenting your town in pictures. I assume your perspective and understanding change over time. Is it possible to chronicle that in your finished product? Can the chronology, the story, of your experience be part of what you do?
Do you even think like that? Hey, it's a radio site, so I'm asking radio-type questions.
Defensiveness 09.10.11
Abigail Heyman
Jeff's statement, "The combination of that ambiguity and specificity, that paradox is what I feel gives photography its most unique power," is so valid but for the word unique. I'd prefer to say this combination/paradox may be what gives photography its greatest power. It also gives good writing, and probably most arts, their greatest power. This discussion is increasingly isolating photography, trying too hard to define it as different from any other form, defensive, as though in the larger world of combined forms and multimedia, photography feels threatened. Perhaps even "emasculated"?
Common Strengths
Nubar Alexanian 09.10.01
Let me also take a moment to introduce Abby Heyman, another dear friend and great photographer. Her book Growing Up Female, published in the 70's, remains one of the most influential photography books published.
So Abby, can you say more about how photography is similar to other media? I agree that the discussion isolates photography somewhat. I separated it as a way to examine it. But it would be great to talk about how photography's communication strengths are shared or held in common with other media.
The Threat to Documentary Photography
Jeff Jacobson 09.10.01
Abby, I'll go with "greatest." But photography is different from any other medium in that it can render a still image from real space and time. That ability is what gives photography its uniqueness.
As for photography being threatened, it is - at least the kind of documentary photography I care about. The computer has undermined the basic assumption underlying documentary photography, i.e., that the image represents a moment from real time and space. It cuts the legs from under photography. Look at the magazines; most of the pictures are conceptual, set up images. Its becoming rare to find powerful documentary photographs. Maybe its a phase, a fascination with the new technologies. In the interest of truth, justice and my bank account, I hope so.
The Gloucester Project Through Time
Nubar Alexanian 09.10.11
Time functions differently for me on long term projects than the way you describe your experience, Jay. Although certainly time does allow me to get to know people and place more intimately, sometimes revealing a deeper, more complex story.
If I were working, say, in the old National Geographic style, and doing a story for them on Gloucester, I would spend this time getting certain required pictures - the mayor, the librarian, the city councilors, the best beaches people frequent, etc. But to me, this is boring and predictable, and why the best photography can always be found in books.
I am really photographing my experience of Gloucester. Time is a factor in that it affords me the luxury to wait and watch things develop. The story about the picture of Ten Pound Island is a good example of this. I followed the tide for a year before it was low enough for me to get the picture I thought I wanted - thought I wanted is key here!
The other difference is that photographs don't always build on themselves in a project as they might in a radio documentary. For example, when I commit myself to watching the tide's affect on a rock for a year, it's an idea that may or may not produce an image I'm interested in. Again, let me say, I'm interested in the power of individual images without captions other than place and date.
So how, then, do I know when a project is done? I published the Peru & Music books when I felt I came to a place where I could leave them and they felt complete. There was no real arc to the story. Could I have included more/different musicians in the music book? Of course.
With the Gloucester book, I see it as part of a volume of small books. There is so much to photograph here, so many things changing so fast, that if I were to wait until I had a body of work that looked/felt resolved, it could be ten years or more.
Yes, my perspective and understanding change. But I discover these things in the photographs, not from being with people and places. So my perspective and understanding are chronicled to that extent. The reason I like to use the date each photograph was taken is to let anyone who might be interested see how the subject affected the way I see and how I translate my experience visually.
The Possibilities Still Seem Thrilling
Jay Allison 09.10.01
It's an interesting idea - photography as isolated and threatened now. Nubar has told me that he thinks photojournalism is dead or dying. At least at the magazine/newspaper level. Maybe not in books. (Or on the Internet?)
Of course, radio is used to dying. We've been dying for a long time. Ever since the Golden Age. Ever since pictures began to venture through the air. Strangely, though, we refuse to give up entirely, and some (public radio publicists) would even say we're in a Second Golden Age. I might dispute that (too few venues for adventurous stuff, too few artists working, general risk aversion), but there are plenty of days when the possibilities still seem thrilling.
A New Week Has Begun
Jay Allison 09.17.01
There has been silence here since September 11th, which was fitting.
In the coming days, it will become more important to talk about images and stories and how they are used, properly and improperly. Television, print, radio, and the Internet function to describe and even define a national attitude and approach to events.
The New Yorker
Nubar Alexanian 09.20.01
As a way of breaking the silence, I'd like to suggest a look at The New Yorker coverage of last week's events. There are many things to say about it, most pertinent here is their thoughtful and provocative use of photographs and words. They let each do their thing and do it well.
A Thousand Times They Flew
Robin White 09.20.01
One of the big questions for me about last week was to do with the repetition of the footage of the planes flying into the WTC and then the subsequent collapse of the buildings. I was nauseated at the number of times the images were repeated - it really must have been thousands of times over a few days. So I avoided the television mostly to try to preserve my own sanity.
But the question for Nubar is what do you think it mean that those images were replayed over and over? Did it increase people's sense of outrage? Did it numb people? I preserved the meaning of those images for myself, by not watching them too many times.
Is This Journalism?
Nubar Alexanian 09.22.01
I can tell you that I was - how can I say - sickened by how television used the image of the WTC collapsing as a background graphic, while showing live footage in front of it. What could this mean? Is this journalism? I, for one, could not watch the coverage on tv. I know reporters were referring to the television as our collective campfire, helping us through this horrific event, keeping us connected. Not true for me. Repeating those images over and over has an astonishing affect on peoples' psyche. Does it encourage belief or disbelief? It certainly does not create an environment for understanding, let alone collective grieving.
Memory
Jay Allison 09.23.01
I'm wondering if memory consists of stills, not video. The horrifying pictures burned in my mind are frozen, not moving.
And the peaceful pictures of memory too, those are stills. Like today on an empty beach on Nonamessett my children set against the sky, a storm moving in, our green skiff resting on the water.
I think of Joel Meyerowitz, who photographs stillness as well as anyone I can think of, and his pictures in The New Yorker of the towers, and of the beach here on Cape Cod, all resting, floating in time.
The Televised Images
Susan Jenkins 09.24.01
Anytime I see a skyscraper image now, I'm a little unnerved, because my mind is making it into a target, my mind is even running a little airplane into the building, it doesn't matter which building-any tall squarish building that stands out, even on a book spine, my mind topples it. I can't look at these buildings right now, because they just trigger those televised images that played over and over again.
Yet, as haunting as it was to handle Joel's prints, which I delivered personally to The New Yorker, I found them to not trigger that reaction. I'm not really sure why.
Photographs Are Their Own Reality
Nubar Alexanian 09.24.01
Susan, I wonder whether you would have had the same reaction if you had delivered Gilles' or Susan's pictures to The New Yorker, which were taken on the day of the attack? One of the fascinating things about photographs is that they are a thing unto themselves: they are their own reality. Yes, a photograph is about something. But it is also a something - an object which could also be a subject. The still photograph of the second plane about to strike the WTC is a not just a haunting event captured on film. That photograph exists in time, in our time, in our reality, which makes both the event and the existence of the image part of our own record and personal history.
Let me give another example. I was in Auschwitz a couple of years ago with Errol Morris working on his last film. We spent two weeks commuting every day back and forth to this death camp. It was indescribable. In the archives room I saw beautifully rendered architectural drawings of the death camp, right down to the gas chambers and ovens. They were even hand colored. It was more horrific than I could have imagined. I even saw an original carbon copy of a letter sent from the builder in Auschwitz to Berlin. On this carbon copy, the word Vergasungskeller was underlined in red pencil by the person in Berlin who informed the builder never to use this word again in any correspondence. Vergasungskeller means gas chamber. I held this original carbon copy in my hand and decided to photograph that word. The image is enclosed.
I'm still thinking about Jay's comment of whether memory consists of still images not moving images. It's interesting.
After The TV is Turned Off
Robin White 09.24.01
Jay, it's interesting what you observe about stills vs. video. I wonder if we're physically incapable of remembering sequences of film. Put that together with Nubar's comment about tv not creating understanding and you start to have a picture of the medium of tv. Perhaps most of the thinking and understanding comes after the television is turned off. While it's on, it's hardly even possible to breathe.
Triggers
Susan Jenkins 09.24.01
Gilles' images in the New Yorker are "somethings," they exist in their own reality, yet refer us to another reality through the suggestion (in this case) of timing and text. Susan's cathedral-like image, too. But they don't act as triggers to my skyscraper dilemma, since they don't depict something tall, sticking out, unscathed, like the image on the spine of my book or close-up images of the towers.
Joel's images also are their own reality. But the scale of city/landscape, of vast, color-filled, sometimes turbulent sky, is able to overpower the other subject, the towers sticking up there in the center. The WTC buildings are a significant feature, but they are still less than 1/16th of the image. This doesn't diminish the subject matter, but gives it a different POV. While the images are "about" the WTC, they are about it in a larger context of the city's universe. Plus, the effect of setting land against sky flattens the overall perspective, so that the buildings lose their 3-dimensionality. I think it is the perspective, his perspective, that does an end-run around my skyscraper quirk.
Now Now Now Now Now
Nubar Alexanian 09.24.01
Susan, in this discussion we've talked some about photography and story telling. However, we haven't really discussed that most people relate to photographs in terms of memory - in family pictures, personal events and so on. Photography is good at this. Photography is also good at describing someone's experience of a subject because experience and photography both happen in the present. Meaning they both happen now, now, now, now, now. Joel's pictures of the WTC hit on both of these cylinders, but because of the events of Sept 11, memory begins to play a larger role. What we now bring to those photographs has changed. I wonder how this plays in radio: memory and experience.
The World Trade Center, 1991
Nubar Alexanian 09.24.01
Jay Allison 09.25.01
silence
Stories Into Pictures
Jay Allison 09.25.01
Susan's comments on Joel's perspective make sense to me. Much of his work, his landscape work, is like still life to me. Literally. Still. Life. Perhaps that's what protects it from our projections (like Susan's quirk which I bet many of us share). His images hold an internal peace.
I have been thinking about how sound and story reside in memory, how they linger differently from images. Interestingly, I think some stories abide as pictures. We make the translation internally. The story becomes image.
I think of a 75 year-old TV repairman I once interviewed. He told me how he still likes to climb up on rooftops to fix antennas because of the way the wind feels blowing his pants legs. I remember the enthusiasm in his voice when he said this, but mostly, it's as if I actually saw him up there on a windy day, which I didn't.
We hear the story and we make the picture.
The Back Of My Neck
Susan Jenkins 09.25.01
The view that I remember best of the towers was the New Jersey Turnpike/Train view - the appearance of the towers in the distance meant being close to New York. As a teenager traveling to the big city, that view was anticipation of a place I didn't know but desired all the same. As a resident it meant I was close to home. The other view that I remember from personal experience was being down between the towers a couple of months ago, looking for the Borders bookstore and marveling at my smallness, at everyone's smallness relative to them. And their darkness against the white of the plaza. That plaza seems fantastically white in my memory.
Joel's view from his 19th Street studio was never one with which I grew acquainted in the way that I am intimately acquainted with the view of the Hudson and water towers outside his current studio. It was before my time. I saw it once, a week before, when he returned to what is now a book publisher to make one last image for the show. It was a beautiful pink-gold early autumn sunset glow, the kind of basking color you rarely notice from the ground, and I yet was hardly taking notice of the towers so much as reminiscing about the studio that once was, and what a cool office it had become.
So to say that I relate to the photographs in terms of memory would be inaccurate. My memory is not of that view, or the myriad views from Jersey City, Brooklyn Heights, the water, etc. that we all have seen in photographs. I relate to them the way I would relate to a photograph of the back of my neck - I know it's me, but I don't really have a memory of how it looks that I connect to the image. I know those towers, but I don't connect to those particular views through my experience of those views. I connect to them through my other experiences of their subject. The connection is indirect, or less direct. When we say that we relate to photographs in terms of memory, I think there are different relationships at work, depending on how the image relates to personal experience.
I'm not sure that photographs "describe" experience well. They seem more a result of experience, but as your missionary example above shows, we cannot really know the experience of either the photographer or the people in the image without some help, either in a text, or in another narrative created by placing several images together, or accompanying an image with sound. The photograph only stands alone as an object. As a photographer I often feel my whole life's experience goes into each photograph I make as my "eye" reacts to things I have become subconsciously predisposed to see and coordinate into the image. So while each image refers to our experience, it doesn't necessarily describe it very well.
Thus photographs always refer to the past, even if it is the immediate past. They always hum ‘then, then, then' rather than ‘now, now, now'. However, our experience of the photograph is like our experience of anything; it is just ‘now'. Even when we experience memory, we experience ‘now'. Usually the humming is quietly running in the background, or else we would never see a photograph as an object, a "something." The tension between the now-ness and then-ness becomes too distracting.
The thing about radio programs that seems at first distinctly different from still photographs is that they are multi-media. The experience of a radio program is first of all one that unfolds over time in what seems to me a much more pronounced way than it does in the viewing of images. It also incorporates and layers discrete elements: a voice or voices, text/words, silences, sound effects, noises, and music. Each of these on their own have qualities that give them their "somethinghood." These voices, silences, sounds, and music can each trip memory, both of specific experiences and of general states of emotion. It amazes me to think of the possibilities given so many elements, both for making a huge mess as well as for making something as tight and seamless as a TAL program. Producing a program piece that uses one or two elements is like writing a song; producing one that uses most elements is like writing a symphony.
In photography, I would suggest street photography is more akin to the symphony because there are so many elements you have to be aware of, and they're constantly moving; whereas maybe still life would be on scale with songwriting. But enough of the oversimplified comparisons. It seems that a radio program is effective in its ability to orchestrate the experience of many listeners through the selection of elements and their deployment in a cohesive pattern (such as narrative) over time, within a time-frame.
Nevertheless, Jay's post reminds me of what Ira Glass says: "Radio is our most visual medium." This quote was brought home for me two weeks ago, when at 10 a.m., having just learned of the disaster from my neighbor moments before, I was in a taxi on my way to work. The radio was on. A woman on 1010 WINS was describing the scene. She stopped abruptly, then, her voice cracking, said, "and, we have just, yes, the south tower has just collapsed." The sound of destruction bloomed in her subsequent silence.
The image in my mind at that moment was in many ways far more devastating than anything I later saw on the television, or in print.
Then Then Then Then
Nubar Alexanian 09.26.01
Susan, you are wonderfully articulate. For the most part we are saying the same thing in different ways. I have never considered the hum of "then" but the unconscious process of "now". Perhaps they are the same. In either case, it is this process which distinguishes photography from other media, making it more immediately self reflective than others. In terms of experience, my choice of the word "describe" is less accurate than to say that photographs can "reflect" a photographer's experience of a subject.
A List of Palliative Aphorisms
Jay Allison 09.26.01
We in radio have many palliatives to reassure us in the face of television's overarching power. Generally, their point is that in radio the pictures are better. Improvising a list of related aphorisms here, I'd say:
The imagination trumps all the senses.
Sound has a key to the imagination.
The unlocked imagination creates an indelible realism in memory.
Like the falling building on the radio.
In my gig as curator in the NPR Lost & Found Sound series, I heard hundreds of people call up to tell us about their captured voices of the dead. Often they said of the bits of tape, "It's all I have left." It wasn't, of course. They had photos and memorabilia, no doubt. But those were outside of them, objectifiable. The sound of the voice lives in the air, invisibly, like a ghost. You can't hold it in your hand. But it's real. It can surround you and be inside your mind simultaneously.
There's power in that, and a compelling reason to keep on working in public radio, one of the few places able and willing to explore that power in broadcast.
Existential Aloneness
Ara Oshagan 09.27.01
I heard Gilles Peress interviewed on NPR. When the reporter suggested that there is a tremendous silence in his photos of the WTC aftermath, he seemed to agree. But seeing the photos later I feel they are about something a little different or perhaps larger than just silence. The overwhelming feeling I get from them is one of aloneness. Not loneliness, but an almost existential aloneness in face of tragedy and an absurd, massive and incomprehensible universe.
The image that I find most compelling is on The New Yorker web site (but not printed in the magazine), of people coming out of the dust with no rhyme or reason. Together but utterly separate from each other. The other photos seems to add to that aloneness tenfold, especially the one of the two medics.
Perhaps I am placing myself and my emotions, in his photos. But that is the only thing I can do. I feel it in me and I feel it in his photos. And it is through his images that my imagination is moved to these feelings and not the airplane seconds before impact or the explosion afterwards. Horror overwhelms all other feelings while Peress' photos elicit something totally different. And, as Nubar has said here, there is poetry in that. There is poetry in my looking at scenes of destruction and horror and feeling something much larger, connecting to a larger human reality. And, as it has been said here before also, this is the power of photography.
I also truly appreciated the fact that the photos and the text for that issue of The New Yorker stood together, but each on its own terms. Photos were NOT in an illustrative, secondary position or forced into some rigid chronology.
Then And Now
Jay Allison 09.27.01
It's encouraging to read these passionate, articulate notes about the pictures and stories being made. How desperately we want to craft meaning, poetry, order, peace.
Television News
Nubar Alexanian 09.29.01
Regarding television news - it's unbelievably bad. It's narcissistic to the point of being about them, not about us or even the events they try to describe. This is why public radio is so important to so many of us. I understand some of the difficulty independent producers have working with NPR. There are real concerns here. However, it's the closest accessible alternative news will every get to a mainstream audience.
Rejections That Don't Feel Righteous
Susan Jenkins 10.01.01
One of the things that great narrative radio programs do really well (great photography, too, for that matter), is to step off the hard sell and just suggest ways of looking at things. Suggestion doesn't preclude bias, but it provides avenues for acceptance that don't feel cajoled and for rejection that don't feel righteous.
digitaljournalist.org
Nubar Alexanian 10.04.01
For anyone interested, the October issue of the digital journalist is up on the web and there are some amazing photographs from Sept. 11 in NYC. Some very fine photojournalists were covering the events of the day and the week that followed. There is also a very fine editorial, which describes the effect the events have had on photojournalism.
Your WTC Photo
Nannette 10.22.01
Nubar, yours is the only photograph I've seen that gives me the experience of what it was like to be there, awed, in a day-to-day way.
A Corporate Photograph
Nubar Alexanian 10.24.01
I have always looked at this image of the WTC as a corporate photograph, perhaps because it's color; that I shot it on a corporate gig, and the form overwhelms the content. Talk about meaning having much to do with what we bring to a piece of work - this image has changed because of the attack. I love this image now. It describes a moment where someone - a figure - is running up into the building. Freely. On a mission. In safety. That seems important now.
When I look at this picture, I also think of the firemen who rushed up the stairwells as people were going the other way, trying to get out, never imagining what would happen.
I think photographers have done a very good job covering this story. I was particularly happy to hear that Joel Meyeorwitz has been given complete access to the site. We couldn't have a better photographer documenting what's going on there. He knows when to bring his vast experience into play and when to leave something alone.
A Long Journey and Twelve Worthy Companions
Nubar Alexanian 11.07.01
Rebecca and I lived in Seattle for three years, beginning in 1984. How we got there and why is the long version. She started her first therapy practice after finishing grad school. I had had the career every photographer dreams of, traveling all over the world for great magazines. But I was unhappy with the work I was doing. I decided I didn't know who I was without my cameras. So I put them down for a year and a half while seeing a Jungian therapist once a week Everyone who saw this wise man had to travel five hours round trip - drive to the ferry, take the ferry, and drive some more. It was like being in therapy all day.
We started with my dreams. After a year or so I brought in new photographs I was taking, which replaced my dreams as the subject of our work together. Convinced that my career in photography was over (no flair for the dramatic here) I ended up selling everything except my two Leicas. This included my entire library of photography books. I love poetry books, especially because you can carry them with you (unlike photography books). Besides, I needed the money. I sold all but twelve books, which I couldn't part with. Perhaps that makes them the most influential photography books in my career. These books are listed below in no particular order:
Travelog by Charles Harbutt
The Americans by Robert Frank
Gypsies by Josef Koudelka
Growing Up Female by Abigail Heyman
Dorchester Days by Eugene Richards
Falkan Road by Mary Ellen Mark
Public Relations by Garry Winogrand
Fifty Years of Photography by Cartier Bresson
The Photographer's Eye by John Szarkowski
Solos by Linda Connor
Edward Weston Monograph, Aperture Books
Landscapes by Paul Caponigro
- this last remains one of my favorite books of all time
Thanks
Jay Allison 11.08.01
I hope Nubar will continue to hang out here as he sees fit. His friends too.
This discussion about story and image occurring in the midst of the most devastating stories and images of our time has been helpful in organizing thought and action, and confirming the need and purpose of documentary evidence.
Carol Wasserman sent this note after editing Nubar's issue of The Transom Review:
I am working on the posts of September 10. Did you realize the extent to which our little virtual community was a miniature version of American culture? Did you remember that before September 11 we were fascinated by celebrity and celebrity gossip? That what we wanted most from our Special Guest was "more asshole stories"?
Then everything changed.
And we found ourselves in the ruins. Bereft of narrative. Clinging to image.
Finally, here's an image I like. It's from the Spring, before September 11th, taken with my foggy-lensed 110 cartridge camera. It's Nubar with a striped bass and a cigar in my wooden skiff off Naushon. He'd like the fish to be bigger, I know. There's always next Spring.
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