I have recently been listening to podcast interviews (Depth of Field with Matt Brandon) with some of the most accomplished humanitarian photographers. They all tell compelling stories. They talk about what they pack for their trips and the difficulties and unexpected encounters in their travel. They tell about what gear works, what doesn’t and why. They give tips on lighting and how to work with the native populations and conditions—all of which is fascinating and useful to other photographers. Likewise, they all speak of the real needs and suffering of their subjects from around the world.

But missing in most of this discussion is a larger perspective—one in which bigger questions are raised and wrestled with.

Every one of these photographers claim it is a privilege for them to inform the rest of the world about what’s really going on in places like the Sudan, Haiti, Afghanistan and the Amazon rain forest. So they report on the work being done by the major Non Governmental Organizations and many relief agencies—their clients and employers. And they do it well because they are professionals.

The result is yet more images in a media saturated world—images targeted at people living far from the source of those images—affluent, well educated, socially committed readers of magazines and buyers of photo books and joiners of groups dedicated to helping causes—the pool from which the NGOs and relief organizations seek their support. So the humanitarian photograph must be compelling though not repellent. It must not tip the balance politically, culturally or aesthetically in any way that might offend the targeted potential donor.

It is this need for balance that pushes the humanitarian photojournalist more and more into the realms of marketing, advertising and public relations. And to the extent humanitarian photography is a business both the photographer and those who hire him or her have a vested interest in the continuation of their subject’s abject conditions.

It is notable that many of the humanitarian photojournalists routinely leave their own countries (mostly developed nations) to travel on paid assignment to remote locations, there to record and report on their subject’s pain, poverty and suffering. But surely pain, poverty and suffering exist in the photographer’s own home country and community? There is plenty of it here in the United States and it probably exists in places like France, Canada, Germany, Britain and Australia too! Surely it must be more environmentally, morally and economically defensible to address the problems of pain, poverty and suffering at home before trying to right the wrongs in places thousands and thousands of miles away.

Humanitarian photographers should ask themselves how much what they do is really done in service of humanity—really makes a difference—and how much of it is done to expiate guilt (theirs and that of their clients) for being able to live a life of privilege and choice not enjoyed by those they photograph.

The people devastated by the earthquake in Haiti, and those left impoverished if not homeless and demoralized by Katrina and more recently by the incompetence of British Petroleum in the Gulf are not now flying to Santa Fe, Palm Beach or Shaker Heights to photograph the plight of the wealthy—are they?

What are your thoughts?

© 2010 Michael Maurer Smith

Note: This blog also appears at beyondappearance.wordpress.com

Berger, for his purposes, proffers a modern and Eurocentric view of primitive art and writes from a Marxist perspective. He locates the definitions, explanations and analysis of art primarily in the contexts of class, culture and economics. His emphasis is upon art as something that may be possessed, valued and exchanged. He says little about the subjective nature and satisfactions of the art making process. It’s as if the quality called art only inheres in the object.

Reading this essay got me thinking about my own practice of Art. I hold both a Masters and Bachelors degree in Studio Art from Michigan State University. I am a painter, photographer and communications designer. So I work in the realms of fine art and applied—the sacred and profane.

It also happens that I grew up underprivileged. My great-grandmother raised me and until I was old enough to work, we had only her Social Security check and a welfare allotment with which to meet our needs. Her formal education ended at the ninth grade level. So I did not grow up in a home that exposed me to high Art. Nonetheless, I went on to obtain a university education by means of the G.I. Bill, a benefit of my service as a Marine during the Vietnam War.

As a boy I liked to draw and was good at it. I liked looking at pictures. I loved the varieties of color and texture and the joy I found in pleasing shapes and arrangements. I checked out art books from the local and school libraries and took art classes in junior high and high school. I gained a reputation as being artistic. Becoming an artist seemed natural and right for me.

So when I arrived at the university I too was presented with the model Berger describes—the modern and Eurocentric model of art—the Capitalistic and consumerist model. I then began to understand art in the context of culture and class—as a signifier of status. Likewise I became aware of the artist’ status within our contemporary class structure.

Like most artists, I was and am an observer. I prefer the periphery from which I can analyze, assess, compare and contrast what I see, hear and feel. I knowingly keep a distance to preserve my options. A Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory I once took revealed me as an Intuitive, Thinking, Judging type and I agree. Being an artist demands being an outsider—a step out of sync. It demands the freedom to ask what if? Why not? Says who? It demands the courage and willingness to defy that which is commonly accepted, known and “understood.”

I concur with Berger’s analysis as far as it goes. However, I believe it is limited to understanding Art as an object within the purview of economics and politics.

In this essay, Berger does not address the artist’ subjective experience of art making. He does not examine the reason(s) the individual artist may have for making art. Nor does he consider the artist’ own definition(s) of art.

It is the confused and collapsed definition of Art that is problematic. Art in common parlance is variously used to mean: an object, a quality, an action or a practice. It is like the word love, which in one context may describe the mechanics of the sex act (they made love) and in another, the Greek concept of agape—selfless love.

The ascription of Art, as a quality, to anything is always a political and cultural decision.

Can something made intentionally for purposes of trade and commerce ever be real Art? Can real Art be made by the naïve and untutored person? Can it be made by accident? Can a computer produce it? Or must real Art evidence the freedom of the artist’ hand and mind and the caprice of momentary inspiration?

What makes art Art? And who says? The answer locates the politics. Is it Art only if the artist says it is? Or is it Art only if culturally accepted institutions, like galleries, museums and universities judge it so? Is it enough to be Art because it is skillfully and beautifully made? Or must the work show evidence of deep thought, meaning and imagination by its maker? Must a work of art be unique? Or can it be one of many machine produced and identical multiples? Why or why not?

Berger correctly posits economics and politics as the arbiters of what is culturally and socially accepted as Art—at least in modern Western society. However, the need for artistic expression—the need to make marks and objects, whether utilitarian, symbolic or purely decorative, is innately human and preexists any political ideology or economic system. In fact it is a defining feature of humans that they can make symbolic marks—marks that stand for shared meanings and concepts. This is the basis for written language and thus for the codification and sharing of mathematics, science, history and religion.

To bring this discussion into focus I want to discuss my brother Tim. Tim is five years younger than me. We have the same mother but different fathers. We did not grow up together. Early in his life Tim began having trouble with the law. This led to his incarceration in prison for several years. During that time he began to draw. His drawings betrayed a lack of formal instruction. Size relationships owed more to emotional meanings than observed differences—like those of children’s drawing. Objects were drawn as outlines and filled with color. There was little understanding of renaissance perspective and chiascuro. These were the drawings of a naïve artist. Yet they were expressive works that made manifest his feelings and did so in ways that were visually compelling and provocative. They were art as act, and art as process. They were art as personal expression. But they were not high Art—not the kind of art a museum would seek to acquire. Tim remains undiscovered.

After his release from prison Tim stopped drawing and began making carvings and constructions out of wood and scrap. He fashions detailed sailing ships, stagecoaches and windmills using humble tools. He does this without regard for efficiency or profit. He places no value on his work hour. He has no business plan or portfolio and his continuing personal and emotional problems make a professional approach to his art making and craft practically impossible. Yet he continues to make his art, probably because it is the one meaningful thing in his life. It affirms his being and gives him a sense of purpose and accomplishment—something that is uniquely his.

Tim and his art © Michael Maurer Smith 2009

Tim’s artistic expression is genuine. At the same time it is derivative. He tries to copy things he’s seen but his mental demons, lack of formal training and proper tools conspire to deny him the skill and discipline necessary to make convincing replicas at a marketable and profitable rate. Instead his pieces are improvisations, born without the pretense of theory and historical justification. They are akin to a journal compulsively kept, markers of a passage. But are they Art? I think they are. He doesn’t.

© Michael Maurer Smith 2009

Backyard Memories

Black and white photography is neither inferior or superior to color photography. Each has its merits. However, black and white photography allows the photographer to explore form and light in ways that color prevents or obscures.

A particular quality of the black and white photograph is its ability to immediately confer an aura of nostalgia on its subject—to remove it from and lock it in time, principally by the reduction of local color to a range of grays. The absence of full color eliminates the emotional shading that color brings.

More so than its color counterpart, the black and white photograph is an artifact to be read. Its appeal is to the intellect first and the subject is to be discovered through a reading of the tones, lines, textures, shapes and voids in the picture but without the slippery and burdened emotional associations of color.

In our age of increasing attention deficits the color photograph prevails. Color is everywhere—even for the physically or perceptually color-blind. It soothes, titillates, excites and masks. This extension of color into every facet of our media saturated existence blurs the boundaries between what is real and what we perceive as real. However, the black and white image announces it separateness, its artificiality, and thereby makes itself something other, something removed from the way we see the world outside the rectangle—something to contemplate.

The color photograph appeals directly to the emotions—to the mostly unconscious color associations in the viewers mind. It bypasses the intellect. And no matter what the putative subject of the color photograph may be, its color palette will elicit an immediate visceral response. In this way the color photograph can be insidious. Likewise, it is often a reiteration of the obvious—a pretty packaging of the banal and vacuous.

The picture above was taken in the early 1950s. It shows me in the arms of Nick—one of my step-fathers. My memories of him are few. He and my mother were divorced soon after this picture was taken and I did not live with either of them. I lived with my great-grandmother.

I saw Nick only a few times yet this picture confirms the memories I have of him—as someone I liked, and who liked me. He died several years ago. I never saw him after the late 1950s, but I still have this picture, with its off center geometry—with the two of us looking out to the unknown. And with it I can look back at us wondering what was? There we are in that rectangle united, removed from time and worry, composed and recorded for all time in black and white forever.

© Michael Maurer Smith 2009

Coffee at the Supreme Bean

It had been nearly 3 months since the city’s Combined Sewer Overflow project had come to the front of the Supreme Bean and for all this time pedestrian traffic was restricted to narrow paths on either side of the street. Patronage had suffered as a result and even Tony, Carmina and Curran had stopped coming. Finally they decided to meet. So on the last Thursday of August they convened for their usual coffee, pastry and conversation.

Outside the clanks, scrapes, bang and thuds of the heavy equipment, the staccato of jackhammers and the loud voices of the hard-hatted workers went on. Inside three lobbyists were ganged up on a single legislator, with each proclaiming their studied positions. In spite of these distractions Carmina, Tony and Curran got down to the serious business of catching up and speculation. Tony began.

“You know,” said Tony, “Senator Kennedy’s death has got me thinking a lot about the connection of politics and photographs. I’ve heard it said that every photograph is a political statement—a political inquiry and I believe it. I know mine are—even my snapshots.”

“But Tony, you shoot mostly nature stuff. What’s so political about photographing a spider? Curran asked.

“Well, just aiming the camera is a political act—even if you aren’t consciously ‘thinking politically’ at the time. What you choose to photograph is always a reflection of your values—and your politics. The images we make are mirrors and windows.

Just making a photograph of a spider isn’t likely to identify you as a Republican or a Democrat but it will reveal something about your relationship to the natural world. If you believe spiders are important to the ecosystem you will photograph them with a different attitude, than if you believe they are ugly and expendable. Your photographs are records of what you find meaningful—worthy of notice, preservation and examination—worthy to be shared.

I recently read a fascinating book titled, After Photography, by Fred Ritchen—which I highly recommend. Anyway, Ritchen asks, ‘Did the millions of romanticized and appropriately beautiful images of nature that serve as an image archive, on calendars, in textbooks and magazines, on the Internet and elsewhere, help us to ignore the realities of environmental destruction?’

Well, I think the answer has to be yes—and I am a card-carrying member of the North American Nature Photographers Association. So this got me thinking even more about the politics of what I do, what you do, what we all do as image-makers,” said Tony.

“So Tony, if I understand you, you are saying that even if we think of ourselves as apolitical, our politics, our values and beliefs still manifest in the photographs, paintings and design that we make—that it is impossible for anyone to be truly apolitical. Is that right?” Carmina asked.

“Yep. I am saying that every picture—is a political statement—that it can’t be otherwise, not if it is made by a human,” Tony replied.

“Well I guess that rules out objectivity in Art? Carmina replied.

“Sure does,” said Tony. “But it need not rule out truth.”

Curran was listening intently. As a graphic designer his profession had much in common with those of the lawyers, lobbyists and legislators that frequented the Bean. As a designer for hire, he was expected to champion his clients values rather than his own. He dealt in coercion, illusion, and artistic deception—it was his stock in trade. Of course Tony and Carmina did the same, all artists did, but they did it in service of their personal values and politics. They could use artistic lies to tell truths.

Still Curran wondered if in spite of his best efforts his design revealed his personal politics. He preferred the minimalist ethic—less is more. He favored Helvetica and Bodoni. He advocated for the utmost in clarity, readability and legibility—nothing sentimental or extraneous. And so he sought clients who liked this approach. Was this serving his client or his own political nature? Now he wasn’t sure and that disturbed him.

“So then, all of our work is political speech and has consequences, even if it does no more than add to the noise and confusion that is piled up on our information super highway?” Curran remarked in a tone of thoughtfulness and resignation.

“Yep,” said Tony . “Think about it Curran. You and your designer friends have helped create our super packaged, and branded world. Our lives are lived in a sea of media—mediated reality. Our views of reality are so pre-conditioned that we may already have lost the ability to distinguish the real from the virtual. We are conditioned to expect our world to look like the perfected and manufactured images we see everywhere. With every new image added to the pile our cynicism grows. We can’t trust our senses anymore. Everything is ‘mediated.’

As a photographer I question the validity of what I do. What does it mean to make an authentic and original nature photograph? Is it even possible? Is the species natural if it exists only in a zoo or on a game preserve? Is a tiger a real tiger if it is not free to roam?

Quoting Ritchen again, he says it is estimated that in 2010 nearly a half a trillion photographs will be made in just that year alone. So what’s the point of making another nature photograph? Taking millions of photographs of a threatened species means little if they disappear among the billions—the trillions of photographs being released into media? It means little if the public believes that every picture it sees has been Photoshoped—manipulated or constructed,” said Tony.

“But Tony, there is that satisfaction which comes from making a picture you believe in, a piece that is authentic and original and which reflects your personal values to the best of your abilities. There is that satisfaction and meaning which comes from sharing the work with others who know and trust you. And really Tony, none of us can ask more of ourselves as artists than that,” said Carmina.

“You are right,” Tony replied. “We are artists and artists make art. Politics will take care of itself,” he said.

“So, you all want to try this again next week? Curran asked.

“Sure,” said Carmina.

“Sure,” said Tony.

© Michael Maurer Smith 2009

Sunset at White Sands, NM © Michael Maurer Smith

I find little need to resort to tricks to make a picture interesting or beautiful. The world has plenty to offer a discerning eye and mind and for me that is the challenge and joy of photography. I prefer to make “straight” photographs.

I do not add or remove objects from these photographs and I rarely use an image-editing program to alter them in ways that would change their essential reality. However, I do color correct, sharpen, adjust contrast, eliminate dust spots and crop judiciously. My goal is to render a final image that is as close to what I saw as possible, although that is always subjective—simply by shifting position to the left or right it is possible to leave out of the frame something as large as an aircraft carrier! Photography is all about choice, judgment, taste and intention.

The simple test of the straight photograph is this: could another person in the same position, at the exact same moment, using the same equipment and settings have recorded this same image—in the camera? Of course, final processing and printing are other matters entirely.

The reason I prefer ‘straight’ photography is simple. It is the ability—the magic really—of photography that it can apprehend the actual reflection of light from the subject, as it happened and preserve that particular moment of time for future viewing and review.

There are many times I intentionally deviate from making straight photographs but when I do I am making a photo-illustrative or artistic interpretation. There is a significant difference between making a photograph as a faithful record of that seen or using the camera to acquire resources from which a photographic image is later constructed, either in the darkroom or on the desktop.

Since I work professionally as a graphic designer I often use photography as a tool of persuasion and communication. As an artist I often use the camera to make images I plan to alter for expressive purposes. However, I make a point to identify my altered images as such. I owe this to the viewer and my conscience.

In my opinion, as a photographer, painter and designer, the overt manipulation of a photographic image removes it from the realm of photography and places it into the realm of illustration and creative self-expression. And this is fine. However, the photographer needs to know what he or she is really doing and be honest about it.

© Michael Maurer Smith 2009