"The Photograph as Contemporary Art" - Chapter 6: Moments in History - Learning Points

The course material includes also "The Photograph as Contemporary Art", a very interesting book written by Charlotte Cotton published by Thames and Hudson (London 2014 Third edition). As I decided to do for my practical course, I would like to keep track of my learning points as I gradually go on reading the book reporting the most important sentences by the above author.
No copyright infringement intended - photographs will be removed immediately upon request.

This chapter considers how photography can bear witness to the ways of life and events of the world.
Contemporary art photographers have, in the main, taken an anti-reportage stance:slowing down image making, remaining out of the hub of action and arriving after the decisive moment.
Rather than being caught up in the chaotic midst an event or at close quarters to individual pain and suffering, photographers choose instead to represent what is left behind in the wake of such tragedies, often doing so with styles that propose a qualify perspective.

Zarina Bhimji works with film and photography to recount the physicality and time of unidentified spaces and in doing so she considers the way in which images can resonate with general narratives of elimination, extermination and erasure.
She chooses forms that function as allegories which, through their extreme economy of means, always remain open-ended and unresolved.
She described her project about Uganda as learning to listen to difference, listening with the eyes, listening to changes in tone, differences in colour.

Zarina Bhimji - Memories Were Trapped Inside the Asphalt - 1998-2003

Fazal Sheikh has primarily photographed individuals and families living in refugee camps.
He uses black and white photography which both makes a declaration of resistance against the seductive fashion in art of colour prints and identifies the work as documentary portraiture with a serious intent.

Fazal Sheikh - Halima Abdullai - 2000

Visualising the maintenance of identity and self-respect in challenging circumstances is strongly present in South African photographer Zwelethu Mthethwa's extensive documentation of the homes and people in the shanty towns on the outskirts of Cape Town.
The increased toleration in the 80s of black people's migration out of the apartheid system's reserves led to a massive influx of rural blacks in search of work to these makeshift communities.

Zwelethu Mthethwa - Untitled - 2003

In the early 2000s Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin gained access to different international communities in their roles as photographers and creative editors of Benetton's Colors magazine (one of the few photography magazines in recent years to have explicitly addressed global issues).
They edited issues on social themes such as the treatment of mental illness, refugees and the penal system.

Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin - Timmy, Peter and Frederick, Pollsmoor Prison - 2002

The highly influential British photographer Martin Parr has also consistently tested the boundaries of documentary style.
Parr has employed a number of visual formats for his documentary projects, and in the mid 1990s began using a hand-held camera with flashlight in combination with a macro lens that focuses close up on a subject.
Parr's "Common Sense" creates the brash and graphic depiction of everyday objects and observations for which he is well known.
The overall theme of the series is the vernacular fashioning of junk food, tacky souvenirs and package holidays.
There is a democracy of sorts in Parr's project, as every subject is given the same visual treatment: closely cropped, flash lit, and the heightened colour of a snappy snap, whether an image shows the back of a person's head, a plate of food or a prized possession.
Parr's "Common Sense" epitomises photography promiscuity - the taking of hundreds of photographs, which in their combination offer one dynamic and subjective image of the world.

Martin Parr - Benidorm, Spain - 1997

Exhibition - "Flashbulb Memories, Ash Grey Prophecies" by Geert Goiris

During a recent trip to Amsterdam I had the opportunity to visit the exhibition "Flashbulb Memories, Ash Grey Prophecies" by Geert Goiris displayed at the Foam (Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam), a photography museum with four different exhibitions at any given time in which different photographic genres are shown, such as documentary, art and fashion.

Goiris occupies a unique position in the field of contemporary photography.
His layered photos of sublime landscapes, modernist architecture and reserved portraits possess a strange, unreal beauty with no perception of time and space, and are vaguely reminiscent of the visual language of post-apocalyptic feature films.
And yet everything that Goiris photographs is real. Nothing is photoshopped.
Many of his photos feature reminders of man's attempts to domesticate nature.
Goiris creates powerful images, in which he combines an almost universal perception of beauty with a subtle frisson of danger.
As well as being mental images, his photos are records of reality that generate room for stories, associations and suspense in the area of tension between fact and fiction.
The exhibition is entirely without daylight, and the oppressive atmosphere is intensified by spatial interventions and interaction between slide shows, framed photos of varying dimensions and enormous prints.

I gathered hereunder the photos I consider the most representative of the exhibition I visited.

I appreciate very much the simple, pure graphic touch of this shot, which was shown at the very beginning of the exhibition.

I like the very interesting light effect that the artist managed to create and I believe it gives to the picture a touch of magic.

I do not necessarily like the light grey shadows that can be perceived in the right part and on the central bottom of the frame, because I find that they distract the look from the real subject.

This is definitely my favourite photo.

The narrative of this shot is very intense and I think that this juxtaposition is simply perfect.

What are the children doing? Why did the bird die? What is the relation between them? Why so much pain? 

All these questions come to my mind and make me travel with my mind through the photo again and again, looking for more details, more answers.

This is exactly what a photographer should make me do. Great!

The rhino in the fog is dark and somehow scares me.

However, it is inoffensive, the threat is no longer there as it is too late: the powerful animal is gone, like eaten by the fog.

Very nice shot which won the Deutsche Borse award!

Goiris explains that the choice of his subjects depends. 

Sometimes they choose him instead of the other way around. 

In this series Resonance, for example, most of the photographs were made while he was traveling without a specific preconceived target, but with a camera. 

So when he came across inspiring people, places, animals, objects, atmospheres, or light conditions, he reacted on these in an improvised way. 

As if the photograph was already there in front of his eyes, and all he had to do was to record it.