Not standing still: new approaches in documentary photography at the Monash Gallery of Art includes Ashley Gilbertson's photography

 

Via Monash Gallery of Art

On exhibit through May 16, 2021

Virtual tour here

PHOTO is a major new biennial international festival of photography that will activate Melbourne and sites across regional Victoria with the most inspiring photography from Australia and around the world.

MGA’s headlining Photo 2021 exhibition will explore the festival’s theme of ‘Truth’ through the lens of new documentary photography.

Not standing still: new approaches in documentary photography, will introduce Australian audiences to leading photographers from around the world who are making new documentary photography, many never having exhibited in Australia before. This exhibition will place Australian photographers alongside their international contemporaries; spanning 11 countries of origin, these are the photographers who are changing the way we think about photographic storytelling.

Truth is implicitly linked to photography because of its capacity to be a medium of record, but photographers have been using their tools to uncover and reimagine truths through investigative, imaginative and allusive photography.

New documentary photography is about rethinking the traditional ways of representing what the camera sees. Instead of straight documentation, these photographers have sought new ways to show pressing social and political issues, and in doing so are transforming photography itself.

Ashley Gilbertson

 Marine Corporal Christopher G. Scherer, 21, was killed by a sniper on July 21, 2007 in Karmah, Iraq. He was from East Northport, New York. His bedroom was photographed in February 2009. 2009

Included in the exhibition are selections from Ashley Gilbertson's "Bedrooms of the Fallen" series.

In 2004, Australian photojournalist Ashley Gilbertson spent time documenting the Second Battle of Fallujah in Iraq. Images he made during this assignment won him the Robert Capa Gold Medal for ‘best photographic reporting from abroad requiring exceptional courage and enterprise’. During the trip, one of the young marines escorting him was killed. 

War photography is a complex phenomenon. It often relies on the bravura of a photographer to be in the ‘right place’ at the ‘right time’, capturing the action and the adrenaline on film to illustrate the drama of battle. To demonstrate the cost of this drama and to peel back its layers, Gilbertson has photographed bedrooms left behind by 40 soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The soldiers represented come from America, Canada, England, France, Germany, Italy, and Scotland. Their rooms show us what remains of lives cut short, displaying what is not evident in pictures of the battlefield. The familiar and ordinary objects that pepper these images communicate some of the texture of a soldier’s life, which is preserved in these photographed spaces – like an altar or memorial – in a way that a picture of an explosion or even a coffin struggles to convey. 

This series also show us what families cling to, and how memory and remembrance work in the real world of contemporary conflict. Gilbertson’s photographs show an aspect of war that is often secondary to images of battle. In their quietness these images reach no crescendo or catharsis, and so force a shift in pace in both the making and viewing of war photography.

View more of Ashley Gilbertson's work here

“Police militarization has been among the most consequential and unnoticed developments of our time, and it is now beginning to affect press freedom.”

Occupied Ferguson. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

“Police militarization has been among the most consequential and unnoticed developments of our time, and it is now beginning to affect press freedom.”


HuffPost, Washington Post reporters assaulted, arrested in Ferguson


Police firing tear gas at a TV news camera crew, in Ferguson, Mo., which is a city in the United States of America


"A SWAT team. To take out cameras. In the United States of America. Because you know how dangerous it is when people start pointing those things around"




The fiasco in Ferguson shows why you don't give military equipment to cops


You have a right to record the police
The Militarization of U.S. Police: Finally Dragged Into the Light by the Horrors of Ferguson


 NYPD sends memo telling officers they're allowed to be photographed


Photos: Protests continue for fourth night in Ferguson


"The gentleman on the left has more personal body armor and weaponry than I did while invading Iraq"


Ferguson or Iraq? Photos Unmask the Militarization of America's Police


"During the Obama administration, according to Pentagon data, police departments have received tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouflage and night-vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and aircraft"


How the Post-Dispatch’s photo staff is covering Ferguson






Related:   FREEDOM OF THE PRESS?


                "Is there too much press freedom? Ask 72 dead journalists"


                 "unprecedented rise in the number of journalists killed and imprisoned in the past year"


                 Comprehensive investigation of threats to press freedoms under the Obama administration

WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY Opens Veterans Day, Sunday, November 11, in Houston

WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston  

Admission on opening day is free to all visitors, in recognition of Veterans Day; admission remains free to active-duty military and veterans through the run of the exhibition

WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY travels nationally to Annenberg Space for Photography, Los Angeles; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; and Brooklyn Museum through February 2014

Houston—September 2012—On November 11, 2012, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, debuts an unprecedented exhibition exploring the experience of war through the eyes of photographers. WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath features nearly 500 objects, including photographs, books, magazines, albums and photographic equipment. The photographs were made by more than 280 photographers, from 28 nations, who have covered conflict on six continents over 165 years, from the Mexican-American War of 1846 through present-day conflicts.

Read more here.



Related:

"People don't think this war has any impact on Americans? Well here it is," Nina Berman says of the image of a somber bride staring blankly, unsmiling at the camera, her war-ravaged groom alongside her, his head down.

CNN: Classic andHistoric Portraits of War


Financial Times: War and Peace (with slide show)


NY Daily News: War photography exhibit debuts in Houston museum


 KPRC TV Houston  Exhibition showcases war photos (with video)


Houston Chronicle: "It's a subject that has deep impact, and because most of us don't experience war first-hand, photographs are our collective memory of it"
 

The New York Times: "Battlefield Images, Taking No Prisoners"


Photo District News: War Correspondence


Modern Art Notes Podcast features the new Museum of Fine Arts Houston exhibition “War Photography: Images of Armed Conflict and its Aftermath.


MFAH debuts unprecedented exhibit of war photography

Time LightBox: "War/Photography, on view from Nov. 11 to Feb. 3, is a magnificent, wide-ranging exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston"

"Every photograph is a product of the photographer’s experiences in their entire life"

In case you missed this important interview with photojournalist Ben Lowy by Jonathan Blaustein on A Photo Editor, we have posted the links below. A must read.


I caught up with Ben Lowy in August. He’s a busy man, juggling family and personal projects with a super-charged career. In the last year alone, he was in Libya, on Jon Stewart, won the photojournalist of the year award from the ICP, and had his book, “Iraq Perspectives” published by the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke.



Ben Lowy Interview – Part 1

"I’m an open book. I’ve got nothing to hide. I was pretty fucked up by things that happened in 2007. And I felt really guilty about surviving."

Ben Lowy Interview – Part 2


"Photography, regardless if it’s photojournalism, or some sort of esoteric contemporary art, you’re putting a bit of your soul in it. That soul is what makes you take a picture at that instant. It’s what makes you compose, to wait for things to happen. For serendipity.

Every photograph is a product of the photographer’s experiences in their entire life. It’s everything that comes together that makes them want to take that picture at that instant. Otherwise, we would all be robots."


Via APhotoEditor

War games: Photographer chronicles evolution of kids' play in Baghdad

Iraq "War Games", Baghdad, Iraq, July 2, 2007 - by Hadi Mizban

Copyright AP

History's Big Picture

"They did not have the spirit of childhood in them... They acted like men."

That's an observation by AP photographer Hadi Mizban as he narrates an interactive presentation of his photographs and video chronicling the evolution of children's play in one of Baghdad's most violent neighborhoods.

For years, Mizban has covered clashes there between militants and soldiers — and along the way, he has gathered powerful images of children living at the doorstep of war.

"They played with weapons because whenever they opened their front gate they found people with weapons," he says, speaking in Arabic.

In his chilling images, kids act out roles they have witnessed. Young boys with toy guns take a cowering hostage. Others threaten a girl and snatch her doll. They move through narrow alleys with miniature walkie-talkies and rocket launchers that look all too real.

But lately Mizban has noticed changes in the kids: "They've gone from aggressive children to peaceful children."

As his video shows, they play soccer on the dusty streets now. They wear jerseys of international teams like Real Madrid and pretend to be famous players — instead of insurgents, soldiers or criminals.

In these images, the Baghdad kids could be happy kids anywhere.

Mizban reflects on his reporting about the youngest in society: "You have to document the situation without blinking. But when you shoot pictures of children playing, children laughing, there is hope."

ASHLEY GILBERTSON BEDROOMS OF THE FALLEN VIA MEADIASTORM

LOOK3 – Ashley Gilbertson



By Matthew McAllister
Published: June 23, 2011

One of the most powerful talks that I attended during the LOOK3 festival in Charlottesville this year was given by Ashley Gilbertson. Gilbertson presented his latest project titled, “Bedrooms of the Fallen.” The project consists of a series of pictures of the dormant bedrooms left by soldiers who died at war. Gilbertson explained that he had become frustrated by the public’s lack of response to his photographs coming out of Iraq that depicted the violence surrounding him and the soldiers assigned to protect him.

It was moving to hear him talk about the soldiers in his pictures, and in many cases, explain how they were killed. His wife suggested that he photograph their bedrooms as a way for people to relate to their lives. Since then, Gilbertson has photographed dozens of bedrooms across the US and Europe. In many cases, the rooms are arranged in the exact same way as the day the soldier left, except for the occasional folded flag to remind us of why the room is vacant.

Just as Gilbertson was describing how viewers can relate better to loss through these images, a picture of the bedroom belonging to PFC. Richard P. Langenbrunner of Fort Wayne, Indiana appeared. I immediately recognized a poster on the wall from the movie “The Matrix” and realized I have the same poster on my own wall. The room immediately became far more personal to me and I felt like I knew more about this soldier through this photograph than any description in a newspaper article could provide.

Bedrooms of the Fallen - Ashley Gilbertson

Ashley Gilbertson’s Website: http://www.ashleygilbertson.com/index.php

Via MediaStorm



BEARING WITNESS

Wounded by a land mine, Joao Silva, a New York Times photographer, shot three frames before becoming too weak to hold the camera.


The New York Times
 
By Michael Kamber

Published: December 23, 2010

TWENTY-FIVE years ago, Joao Silva was a troubled high school dropout on the streets of Johannesburg. His future looked bleak until the day a friend took him along on a photo shoot. Joao fell in love with the camera.


He was drawn to battle. Within a remarkably short time, his photos of conflict were on the front pages of newspapers around the world. His camera became a prolific instrument, helping the public understand the wars of the last two decades.

His photographs from Iraq — where he was embedded with both the American troops and the insurgents fighting against them — created, in my opinion, an unequaled record of the war: a Marine pulling a bloody comrade through the mud to safety; an Iraqi mother wailing in anguish as her dead son lay nearby; an enraged militia member firing a machine gun from a window ledge at American soldiers; a car bomb victim engulfed in flames.

The danger was extraordinary. As his colleagues were killed and wounded over the years, Joao became the last working member of the fabled Bang-Bang Club to cover conflict. A tight-knit group of South African photographers who covered the township wars near the end of apartheid, they soon branched out into photographing other conflicts. Yet even with two young children, Joao persevered, making trip after trip to Iraq, Afghanistan and other war zones.

“I’ve always somehow managed to walk away unscathed,” Joao said. “I’ve been very, very lucky.”

Joao’s luck held until Oct. 23, when he stepped on a cheap plastic land mine outside Kandahar, Afghanistan. The blast ripped his legs off. Shrapnel tore through his abdomen, causing massive internal injuries. He is currently undergoing rehabilitation at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, where he will remain for the foreseeable future.

Talented, humble and generous, Joao was the rock for many photojournalists in the field. It would be no exaggeration to call him probably the best-loved and most respected photographer working today. So his wounding has created a crisis of confidence of sorts for many photojournalists.

Like Joao, I am a contract photographer for The New York Times and have covered conflict over the years. I have taken his place in Afghanistan. In the wake of Joao’s wounding, friends ask me why I keep returning to photograph men inflicting suffering upon one another. I have asked myself and my fellow photojournalists this same question over the years.

I grew up in the 1960s, learning of Vietnam by poring over black-and-white photos in Life magazine and The Portland Press Herald. The classic images of Eddie Adams, Nick Ut and Henri Huet brought home to me the politics and drama of the war, a sense of my country’s history unfolding on the page. Photojournalists gave us a visceral understanding of the link between foreign policy and the violence done to people’s lives.

And photojournalism helped create a culture of visual literacy that was instrumental in the activism of the 1960s. It is a culture that is slowly receding into a storm of visual, aural and written white noise: the weekly wait for Life is replaced by a stream of cellphone photos, blogs and Twitter feeds. And as papers close around America, front-line photojournalism is in decline.

Still, the frustrations of photojournalists today are outweighed by many rewards. We venture into remote corners of the world to watch incredible dramas. We are often the sole objective witnesses. We find that much history would happen in a vacuum, save for our cameras.

“I get a lot of messages from people saying that we show the world what they cannot go see firsthand,” Joao told me last year.

This is the reward and the magic of photojournalism.

I know that Joao Silva’s camera has not finished its work. Once Joao finds balance on his new legs, he will venture again to the corners of the world. He loves photography like few I have known. Photojournalism remains a profession that allows a dedicated, courageous high school dropout from Johannesburg to help record the history of our times.