/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/PHOTOGRAPHY: Images of a Cruel and Unjust World

By Tito Drago Reprint | | Print |

Tito Drago

MADRID, Jul 18 2000 (IPS) - Three collections of photographs by two celebrated artists, Sebastian Salgado and Robert Doisneau, in Rome and Madrid, give vivid testimony to the cruelties and injustices that persist in a globalised world.

Brazilian photographer Salgado opened his show, “En Route”, in Rome in late June, while his latest book, “Retratos de criancas do exodo” (Portraits of Children of the Exodus), was launched in Madrid, published by the ‘Fundacion Telefonica’.

Also in Madrid, French photographer Doisneau released his book, a collection of his works, titled “For Freedom of the Press” – published by the international organisation ‘Rapporteurs Sans Frontieres’ (RSF – Journalists without Borders).

Gervasio Sanchez, a prize-winning photo-journalist who specialises in covering armed conflicts, told IPS in his comments on the two books that “some believe photography takes away from a good story, when many times the image is the story.”

At his show’s opening, Salgado said his photos are an attempt to provide a cross-section of the conditions in which humanity exists around the world.

“Fifteen percent of the world population is on the road to the future. All with their wonderful cars, all enormous consumers, enjoying a considerable level of security,” the Brazilian photographer told the Rome daily ‘La Repubblica’.

But, he added, “the remaining 85 percent (which are represented in this exhibition), in their attempt to flee the past, is humanity forced into diaspora after having lost its foundations.”

In his “Portraits”, he presents some 200 photographs of children from countries and regions of Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America who are submerged in armed conflict, or who have survived its impact. All are photographed looking directly into the camera lens.

Salgado points out that his book shows children from drastically different situations, but all have seen their lives destroyed in some way.

But “this has not prevented them from continuing to be children, to laugh and cry with ease, to get excited or to be disappointed, to be communicative one minute and reserved the next.” Which is why the viewer of the photos wonders, “is it a gaze of hope or are they seeking compassion?”

Doisneau also speaks of the gaze of subjects he photographs. Today, he says, it seems most photographers recommend against having the person being photographed look into the camera lens. And he comments that “they have to give the subject this direction so (the audience) does not suspect the hunter is allying with the prey.”

Doisneau stresses, however, that “shifting the gaze away is to deprive the image of most of its mysterious power.”

Sanchez insists that a good photo is often worth more than written accounts because, “since its birth, photography has made the incredible credible.”

The Spanish photographer says photographs show what it meant to be Jewish in Auschwitz, Dachau or Treblinka. And he cites the case of US military photographer Ronald Haaberle, whose photos taken May 16, 1968 were not published until 18 months later, but convinced the world that a massacre had indeed taken place in the Vietnamese village of My Lai.

There, “504 people died, including 182 women – 17 of whom were pregnant-, 173 children including 56 newborns and 149 middle-aged and elderly men,” said Sanchez.

And he wonders “why 3,000 deaths in one week in Sierra Leone, one million displaced and hundreds of victims of horrific amputations are less important than the same numbers coming from Kosovo?”

Vindicating the role of photo-journalists, he responds to his own question: “Pure cynicism and because of the increasingly close ties between the media and outside forces.”

“In the United States, (television network) NBC is has ties to Westinghouse, an arms manufacturer. ABC belongs to Disney, which manufactures cultural weapons and promotes cultural imperialism. General Electric owns CBS. This puts press freedoms in great danger,” Sanchez said.

He cites “the great Herni Cartier-Bresson,” who said the camera is a notebook, an instrument of intuition and of spontaneity, the master of the moment that, in visual terms, asks and decides at the same time.

Sanchez concludes, “Photography is to put the head, eye and heart on the same plane. It is a way of life.” The collections of Doisneau and Salgado seem to confirm this.