Photography Through the Lens of Magnum and VII

Spring 2016

Tag: war

Haviv Response

March 11, 2016 / / 0 Comments

I do not know how true the statement is that a Ron Haviv image can only be interpreted one way. In the society we live in now, everything can be ripped out of its context and placed into a new one in seconds. However, I do think that stands true in the example of the image of the woman getting kicked in the head. No matter where or in what context this image would have been taken, it is a snapshot of a blatant basic human right violation and a blaring disregard for a human being. I think that this image won such international world fame because no matter who sees the image sees this as it is. There’s no dispute about what is happening. This is why I found it so hard to find negative critiques on his work, especially this photo. He went out of his way to try and make history, putting his life on the line for the sake of others, and to criticize this as an outsider would be baffling to me.

Haviv’s images made a long-standing impact publicizing this war. Almost all of the articles I’ve seen related to the Bosnian War either uses his photos directs or mentions him. People turn to him for the unbiased look on the war; such as this 2015 Vice article titled “A Photographer Looks Back at the Bosnian War”. BBC in the UK called this image “one of the most striking images to come out of the Balkans in the last decade of violence”. National Geographic says that these photos are a reminder that photojournalist’s works, such as Haviv’s, help shape history. A lot of the articles I found discuses his photos used as evidence in trying the cases of many of the perpetrators of war crimes.

 

One article I found an issue with was one on the Lens Blog of the New York Times written by James Estrin in 2013. It starts off talking about making an impact through photojournalism and how Haviv was disappointed when his photos did not make an immediate impact or how they don’t necessarily prevent future evil. They go on to quote him saying, “I’ve now documented three genocides — Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur — and I look back to the lessons of the Holocaust, which were ‘never again,’ ” he said. “Nobody should be able to say they didn’t know what was happening. What we do as photographers is to attempt to create a body of evidence to hold people accountable.” To this comment, Estrin replies, “To him, it is not just the soldier executing people or even his commander or the politician who gave the order who needs to be held accountable. It is the public too.” I have an issue with this writer lumping the soldier executing the people with the public. I understand that he probably doesn’t mean that they are held at the same level, but he makes no distinction of this and then finishes the article. The quote by Haviv is a little vague and this man turns it into something black and white – the exact problem facing photographers today. He just throws this quote in, interprets it, and finishes the article.

 

What I was most interested in and what I couldn’t find was European reaction to those images. All of the articles I found were US or UK based, and as much as our opinions matter, we were not the ones directly affected by this war. In an interview with Haviv in the Globe and Mail, Haviv says, “Twenty years after the photograph was published, Bosnians still respond to Haviv in a way that amazes him. “I’m so happy to meet you … I appreciate everything you did. And then they start crying… It’s actually very uncomfortable because Bosnia is a country suffering still from PTSD … if you scratch a little bit, you’re at war.” I’m sure many people in the Balkans are grateful to Haviv. However, I would be interested in hearing the people’s opinions that he shut down because of the war. Do they still believe in ethnic cleansing? Would they go back and do it all again? Who besides Arkan want to “drink [Haviv’s] blood and what would they say about such a blatant image of a violation of human rights?

 

Sources

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/capturing-a-war-crime/article25016202/

 

http://www.vice.com/read/photos-of-the-bosnia-war

http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2013/11/03/ron-havivs-testimony/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1347218.stm

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Haviv Interpretations

March 11, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Ron Haviv’s Blood and Honey reached international recognition as the collection of images that were the  eyes into the Balkan conflicts. His coverage of the events were unrivaled by any other photojournalists of the area at the time. Over the years, Haviv’s work in the Balkans has remained part of photojournalistic discourse, especially when the conversation is geared towards aesthetics in photojournalism as well as the legacy and impact of the conflict and the images produced from them.

When searching the internet for conversations regarding Haviv’s work, it usually contains his most famous images from Blood and Honey, namely Arkan’s portrait, the Tiger paramilitary soldier kicking a dead Muslim woman, and the prisoners of the Bosnian concentration camps. A notable website was http://www.balkaninsight.com/ which contained an article about members of Arkan’s “Tigers” that escaped justice by concealing their identities after Arkan’s indictment. In speaking about the war crimes committed by the Tigers, many of the Blood and Honey images were present, a brief portion of the article spoke about how Haviv was invited by Arkan to photograph him and his troops. I found many websites that contained Haviv’s images as ancillary to the topics of the article, another example was on http://www.crimesofwar.org/a-z-guide/paramilitaries/ that used Haviv’s image of the Tiger paramilitary kicking a dead Muslim woman as evidence in a historical layout of paramilitary groups. My overall impression of seeing Haviv’s images online is that there are only so few outlets that talk about the images themselves, such as Vice where Haviv has an informative interview about his work in former Yugoslavia (http://www.vice.com/read/photos-of-the-bosnia-war). An interesting quote from the interview was when Haviv was asked about the current situation in the reigion, stating “I had hope that the country would be moving forward at a faster pace. I find that the current situation is an insult to all those affected by the war.” Many sites are using Haviv’s images as proof and practical display to explaining the conflict and the atrocities committed during it, the legacy and use of his images are most times in efforts to further educate about the conflicts themselves and express a desire to resolve them.

In further studying the legacy of Haviv’s image and those from Blood and Honey, I would especially value the input of those involved in the conflict firsthand. I would want to see how the images affected the civilian population besides helping indict Arkan for war crimes, as I’d imagine their experience in seeing the images would be more personal and specifically relevant to the conflict rather than those who see it from a distance (speaking to the UN Security officers who prosecuted Arkan with the photographs would also be valuable). I would also want the opinions of historical photography aesthetics experts and researchers to see how Haviv’s images and others involved in the former Yugoslavian conflict pair up with coverages of other wars and what context the images serve in terms of shaping the public’s perception of it.

Sources:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/capturing-a-war-crime/article25016202/

https://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/bosnia/Bosn005-03.htm

http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/arkan-s-paramilitaries-tigers-who-escaped-justice

http://www.crimesofwar.org/a-z-guide/paramilitaries/

http://www.vice.com/read/photos-of-the-bosnia-war)

Themes/debates we have discussed so far…

February 9, 2016 / / 1 Comment

Here’s a running list of themes/issues/debates we have touched on in class…
• Art versus journalism
• Photographer’s responsibilities to subject?
• The decisive moment…accidental or purposefully caught?
• Is there a duty for the public to be informed of the news? If so, how much of the news?
• What gets covered, and how does “saleability” factor in? That is, which news sells? And why? (racial, economic, class, other factors in play?)
• Coverage of war—making it feel real. Does that encourage the viewer to think she “gets it”? And are there potential concerns with that response?
• Aesthetics versus content of image
• The authenticity (or not) of one image versus the portrayal of “a larger truth”
• What makes an image powerful?

  • These concerns we listed, as a class, on the date we discussed war and work by Meiselas:

War Meiselas

  • various, sometimes competing roles of media: helping to start war(foment nationalist ideologies), continuing war/perpetrating war (photos as tools of violence?), stopping war (alerting public, compelling intervention), holding assailants accountable (photos in a juridical capacity)
  • ethical duties to the subjects of photos
  • photography as “universal language”
  • photos as visual sound bites
  • Is narrative required to make us understand (to play off first Sontag and later Reiff)?
  • photos of violence vs. violence done to photos (i.e. violence in effigy)
  • breaks with visual convention, e.g. Parr’s fashion photography
  • the everyday versus the glamorous vis a vis fashion photography–one style visually admits to being posed, the other doesn’t. Does one form convey “the real” more than the other?
  • modern versus postmodern worldviews
  • “The curse of history” (per Peress): damned if you do document and damned if you don’t
  • The photograph is the “moment where my language finishes and yours starts.”
  • New Photojournalism of the late 1970s—transparency, subjectivity, expressionism, prioritization of the personal perspective
  • the success or failure of making meaning, through pictures, of the reality that surrounds
  • What constitutes “evidence”? What purpose/s should evidence serve?
  • how images produce political meaning/constructing a narrative without any text (a la My America by Morris)
  • the rhetorical power of images
  • visual metaphors, eye contact, camera angle, associational juxtaposition; mirroring v. oppositional positioning
  • the business/economics of covering crisis (which crises “win out” over others and why)
  • spectacle and famine
  • NGOs and photography/”advocacy journalism”
  • “as if” images (per Zelizer)
  • Stereotypes/clichés/tropes
  • Metonymic structures
  • “the civil contract of photography”
  • the absent image (per Azoulay and Campbell)
  • relating the local situation to the larger political/social/global forces
  • colonial histories as shaping patterns of viewing
  • affect v criticality
  • Sympathy,  empathy, anger – which is the best motivator in response to images of injustice?
  • Pitching to policy makers versus concerted effort to educate wide public
  • Role of social media in effecting change
  • The economics that undergird conflicts/crises
  • When research is crucial to photographer’s work

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