photo beirut

Yasser Alwan's portraits and Paris Photo 2009

Paris Photo 2009 begins today. Unfortunately I am in Baltimore. The focus this year is Arab and Iranian photography and the central exhibition space is devoted to the Beirut archive I have written about before, the Arab Image Foundation. The Paris Photo website includes a selection of their photos that are on display in Paris.

Tonight a group of photographers will discuss the art photo scene in the Arab world and Iran with guest curator of Paris Photo Catherine David at the Institut du Monde Arabe. Among them is Yasser Alwan, whose wonderful work I have recently used in a publication by the Solidarity Center called "The Struggle for Worker's Rights in Egypt," written by Joel Beinin. His photos are included in Paris Photo in the Sfeir-Semler gallery space along with Wael Shawky and Akram Zaatari (who I have also written about on this blog, here).

Many of Alwan's photos are portraits that show people as individuals in the context of their work or in the public sphere. Details of the street, workshop, tools of their trade, and clothing give the viewer clues to the texture of their lives. Although these portrayals convey a sense of dignity as well as compassion for the hardships of working class Egyptians, the photos do not devolve into abstract statements about the "human condition," a problem -- to my mind -- with some documentary photography. 

The people in Alwan's photographs are always being themselves, even if caught in a particularly self-possessed, carefully composed moment. This is not "decisive moment" photography like that of Henri Cartier-Bresson or poetic street photographers like Robert Frank, both of whom preferred the candid and thus seemingly revealing gesture or expression. Alwan allows his subjects the privilege of projecting their image of themselves to the camera knowingly and with confidence. People in the Middle East, especially the working class, have historically not often been allowed that kind of agency or control over their own appearance. This doesn't mean that the resulting photos are somehow less true or meaningful. As in all photography, the fraction of a second exposure can only convey that momentary slice of time. Things look different in the next instant. But in this brief moment of speaking to the camera Alwan's subjects tell us something about their resilience and uniqueness with complex expressions of defiance, curiosity, humor, patience or sadness. 

I urge you to look at Alwan's photos on his website and also to explore Paris Photo, in Paris if possible! I would love to hear comments from anyone who gets a chance to see the exhibitions.

Photojournalists, LIFE magazine, and AUB in the 1950s

Yesterday I wrote about an interesting BBC video that shows news photographers at work covering the evacuation of Israeli settlers from a house in the West Bank city of Hebron for The Compelling Image blog. (Read it here.) TCI offers lots of great online classes for photographers of all levels. I teach a course called Developing a Photographer's Eye.

I have also been exploring the new Google archive of LIFE magazine photographs. It's a great resource for scholars and lots of fun for everyone, I recommend taking a look. If you want to license the use of a photo for publication you need to go through Getty. But the Google site has fairly high-res images (ones here are the smaller versions) and can even order prints.

I did a search for American University of Beirut and came up with these shots from 1953. (This is just a sample of ones I like.)

These are all by Lisa Larsen.

Listening to another student Mona Asfour (L), of Palestine and Su'ad Habri (R), preparing to be teachers sit in education class.

 

New Engineering School Building.

Studying on the library roof.

Students.

Sex education class.
[I wonder if this is still taught ... and what exactly was being taught at this time!]

60 years of the Universal Human Rights Declaration - photo slide show

Oeil Public, a French photo agency that I like to use for excellent photos of the Middle East, has a poignant and compelling slide show commemorating 60 years of the UN's Universal Human Rights Declaration. As you might imagine, from a photojournalistic/documentary agency, the photos almost all show violations of (not respect for) human rights. It's powerfully done. I rarely sit through online slide shows, but this one was riveting (the music adds a sense of urgency). Just click on the link above and it will start up.

One of the photographers whose work appears in the slide show is Karim Ben Khelifa, whose photos I use occasionally for Middle East Report, and who focuses on Islam and the Arab world.

Hashem El Madani Itinerary, by Akram Zaatari

On Saturday we took a trip to Saida (Sidon) to see Akram Zaatari's latest project involving the photography of Hashem El Madani, a commercial studio photographer from Saida. Madani opened his Studio Shehrazade in the early 1950s. In addition to studio portraits he also created wonderful portraits of people at their places of work. Forty-one of those that he took in the old district of Saida have been printed, framed and displayed in the original locations or in nearby cafes.

Visitors get a map that locates each photo and provides a thumbnail image of each along with a caption.

 

[Fragment of the map.]

Having a common purpose for wandering around the old district's narrow streets and to pop into various stores, workshops and cafés created a unique experience. Some shopkeepers kept working after we exchanged greetings, others wanted to point out something from the photo such as the elderly man who kept telling us the guy in the photo is his father. Some of the others following the itinerary took photos of him, while neighbors watching it all teased him affectionately.

I wondered if many of the Lebanese who were following the itinerary had been there before. In a way it seemed like a great method for creating a moment of mixing between Lebanese of different social classes and backgrounds. In addition to calling attention to the history of the area and of the role of studio photography in Saida, of course.

It helped me feel a bit less like the typical tourist. Being part of this mini whirlwind of visitors sweeping through to participate in an art exhibit created a different dynamic. I wasn't there just to look at a place but to participate in some kind of interaction, however brief and ephemeral.

The only drawback was that in such a stimulating environment I couldn't concentrate on the photos much. But perhaps that was as it should be. The text on the map explains: "The Madani Project [of which this project is just one part] takes the archive of Studio Shehrazade as study material to understand the complex relationship which ties a studio photographer to his working space, his equipment and tools, economy and aesthetics, and further explore his ties to his clients, society and the city in general." In this experience we visitors were placed into the actual physical environment and given the tools to imagine Madani out with his camera, taking the photos and building the relationships he needed for his business. On the other side, I was also compelled to wonder about Madani and Zaatari's relationship to the current shopkeepers and owners as they put this project together. What does this all mean to them and the other residents of the old district of Saida?

Below are some photos I took, which show the placement of the photos and the shops' current appearance. Sorry you can't see the original photos, for other work by Madani look into getting one of the excellent books Zaatari has published, such as Mapping Sitting or Hashem el Madani: Studio Practices.

Cobbler's shop. Photo 17 on the itinerary. In 1951, when the photo on the back wall (beyond the mirror) was taken, it was a watch sale and repair shop. The red symbol on the wall is the Arabic letter meem, or m, for Madani I assume. Each shop with a photo inside displays this symbol. This alleyway was my favorite visually, it was covered so many shops spilled out into the alley. Most were cobblers with grand old machines.

Photo 14. This shop is Mohamad Ali el Jardali Nouveauté, but in the early 1950s it was two shops, a calligraphy and paint shop and a place called Nouveauté Barsha.

Photo 3. This textile shop displays a photo that was not taken here originally, but nearby I guess. If you click on the scan of the map above you might be able to make out the thumbnail of the photo that is hung here.

 

 

Photo 23 (up from the fan, next to the mirror) shows Wafiq el Baba at the door of his shop Nouveauté el Baba taken in the late 1940s. It is now a barber shop called Salon el Anouar.

Photos 5, 7, 25 and 26 are placed in this café, Beb el Saray Café. The photos show men standing in front of a pharmacy, a tobacco, perfume and spice shop, a sandwich and tobacco kiosk, and two young men standing by a tree in the square. The green fruits on the right are oranges for making fresh juice.

Photo 29. This carpenter's shop was closed by the time we got there. In the early 1950s it was a pastry shop.

Pulitzer prize-winning photographer recognized 27 years late

In August 1979 (about 8 months after I was evacuated with my family from near Ahwaz) the new Islamic Republic of Iran killed 11 people, mostly Kurds, by firing squad. One photographer and a reporter were there to witness it. Their newspaper, Ettela'at, chose to use one photo but ran no credit in order to protect the photographer. It won a Pulitzer Prize in 1980 for spot-news and was the only Pulitzer ever awarded to "anonymous." This month the photographer was officially recognized and given his award.

His name is Jahangir Razmi. He is still a photographer in Iran.

The fascinating story of the event, the photographer, and the life of the photograph can be read in this Wall Street Journal article from last year. It's worth reading for insights into photojournalism in the '70s, Iran just after the revolution, and the way photographs can circulate and be used in unpredictable ways.

Here's the photo:

[Caption: After a short show-trial, 11 people charged as being "counterrevolutionary" were executed at Sanandaj Airport. Jahangir Razmi. From the Magnum Photos website.]

According to the WSJ article about Razmi, about 500 former Iranian government officials and "counterrevolutionaries" had been killed by the time this photo was taken, so it can be read as representative of many more deaths than those pictured.

The photo reminds me of Robert Capa's photo of a Loyalist soldier at the moment he was shot dead in the Spanish civil war.

[Loyalist Militiaman at the Moment of Death, Cerro Muriano, September 5, 1936. Robert Capa.]

Arab Image Foundation

The other day I paid a visit to the Arab Image Foundation in downtown Beirut. You can visit them online and search their photography collection. http://www.fai.org.lb/

Since the mid-1990s this foundation has been assembling an archive of photographs from all over the Arab world and are now branching out in the Arab diaspora (such as Lebanese living in Africa and South America). They have bought some photographic collections, especially the remnants of commercial photo studios that might otherwise be lost or destroyed. The foundation has also negotiated agreements with families and organizations to act as a depository for their photo collections for renewable periods of time.

I met Tamara Sawaya and Rayya who explained the work of the foundation, showed me their publications (some of which you can buy via Amazon), and their climate-controlled archival storage space. When I arrived Tamara was painstakingly cleaning a shallow drawer full of little film boxes arranged neatly in rows. Each box has a long strip of exposed and developed film curled up inside it.

To see the Arab Image Foundation's postcard picture of one of these drawers, click here (501.2K)

There are 5 of these drawers. They belonged to a Lebanese commercial studio, called Photo Jack if I remember correctly, which in the 1950s set up several photographers in the local square to take "surprise" photos of people walking past. Those caught on camera could go to the studio later to buy a print. Some of these have been reproduced in the foundation's book Mapping Sitting and are fascinating images of all types of people, their styles, gestures and expressions. I am intrigued by this systematic documentation of the life of one particular public space and what a study of those photos could tell us. 

I'm sure I'll be writing again about the foundation, their approach to their collection is different from many archives. Generally they show their photographs in exhibits and books as not simply historical documents, or aesthetic objects. Instead, the photos themselves and the production of the photos are  presented as integral to processes such as the dissemination and formation of social ideas, cultural trends, consumerism, politics and identities in the various times they were created. The photographs are circulating again now under the auspices of the foundation in particular ways, with new meanings and uses.

If you're in San Francisco, you can see an exhibit featuring images from the foundation at SF Camerawork (http://www.sfcamerawork.org) and if not, their journal has some interesting articles about it.