Portraits

(My eldest little boy, Thomas, in South Africa.) Despite my mini-rant on my fight against portraits while an editor and assigning them as a last possible option, it does not mean that I am not a fan of portraiture. They are an integral part of photography and go to the heart of what we do. Portraits are obviously an important element of documentary photography.

What brought my issues to mind was Paul's discussion of magazines increasing use of them. I'm assuming that most in our group probably are already aware of the reason why magazines opt for portraits much more now: it's essentially a money issue. It has been a hotly debated topic. In general, making a portrait is much cheaper than producing a work of documentary photography. That's a big reason wy magazines such as Life and Look took a big death fall. It is absolutely the reason why many magazines will ask for a portrait of Tony Blair rather than a day in his life. There's little risk; you won't have to pay a photographer to actually spend days following a subject looking for real moments; you know what you'll get and can plan easily for it; you won't have to give up valuable potential ad space for photographs.

Politicians, celebrities and other news subjects and unfortunately public relations representatives have come to expect this and encourage it. They have a lot more control over the situation and how their client appears. The Los Angeles Times-my hometown newspaper-and several magazines had a small war with Hollywood over this issue. At it's height there were some publicity people who insisted on providing their own photographs or taking complete control over the photo shoot. For the L.A. Times, the were finally able to reign things in a bit and their staff photographers are making portraits of stars again, but that newspaper has much more pressing issues at the time.

At The New York Times our photography staff had diverse strengths, but for the most part were powerful story tellers and I think were much better served along with our readers by real photojournalism than a portrait. I got much more joy and satisfaction working with Joao Silva's project on the morgue in Bagdad; James Estrin's work on a Brooklyn kosher butcher; or Mike Kamber's project on homeless, HIV-positive teens than I did with portraits of CEO's or lawmakers.

Again, I have nothing against portraits in themselves. I have a long list of my favorite portrait photographers. My bookshelf includes several Annie Liebovitz books (her early book "Shooting Stars" is much different from what she does now); Diane Arbus and various compilations. Certainly, the roots of photography and it's popularity came from portraiture; portraits were no longer the property of those who could consign a painter. I respect a fine portrait photographer. There are a list of portrait projects and photographers that have really inspired me over the year. Cartier-Bresson, Steve McCurry and Sebastiao Salgado and others we've discussed have done incredible portrait work.

As a newspaper photographer, I had to shoot tons of them and spent much time searching for locations, hauling gear, setting up lights, or locked in a studio. It's a unique talent and my friends who are really good at it are generally doing well financially as well getting lots of magazine and corporate work.

The Photo Exhibit Question

Has anybody in our group ever exhibited? Although I've contributed prints to shows over the years, I've never done one solely featuring my own work. It's one of those things that goes to the heart of how I view myself and photojournalism. There have been times over my career that I've had friends and colleagues try to push me into doing a show, but I rejected it. I've always had an internal debate about whether photojournalism or documentary photography is art.

I'm sure it might seem ridiculous that I raised the question. Considering our previous class about Robert Frank, Gary Winnogrand, and Lee Friedlander, and their history of exhibiting and producing books, it seems a good vehicle to show our work. I've read articles where the case is strongly made that photojournalism becomes art with age. Some of the coolest exhibits that I've gone to have been of a documentary/photojournalistic nature such as a Magnum show in Paris, Alex Webb at the Leica Gallery, and more than a handful of wonderful photographers at the International Center for Photography. (One of the best employee perks at The New York Times was getting free admission into virtually all NYC museums. including the ICP which was a very short walk up W.43rd from the old NYT building and a place I frequented).

The flyer above is for a show by a local photo club of amateurs and photo enthusiasts that I've contributed to for their next show which will benefit a charity. I let them use one of my pictures for the flyer and cringed when I saw the type all over it: a carryover pet peeve from my newspaper years. A Mozambican photojournalist who's become a good friend, Carlos Litulo, thinks very little of the group's work and has been urging me to distance myself from them and thought it was bad for my reputation to be associated with these less than stellar photographers. (Carlos's thoughts have affected me somewhat: I haven't let them include me on their web site and did not want to be included in an upcoming South African magazine feature about the club. I told them I was too new and didn't want to step on toes-so hopefully I don't come across as an arrogant snob who thinks he's too good: I don't.)

I, however, have befriended several of the folks which is made up of diplomats, NGO workers, and other ex-pats. It's mostly a reason to get out, drink beer and talk about photography. I have to say I enjoy their enthusiasm and it can be sometimes inspiring, plus many have been in Maputo for quite some time and have good knowledge and contacts. Nevertheless, since I arrived they've been lobbying me to give them formal instruction. I finally made a deal with them last week that I would give them some instruction if they did grunt work for a show that I would like to do with some of my work from Portugal. I thought this was a good time to do it and have had a lot of friends pushing me, including Carlos. So, although I still have some of the hesitations that I mentioned with art and photojournalism, I'm going to exhibit.

I thought it would be a good exercise for this course, as well as an opportunity to introduce myself to NGOs, etc who I would like to have as clients. Now the plea, if you have any experiences or advice that you'd like to share about your exhibits, I would love to have them. Some things that are on my mind are about print size, frames, & matting; the number of photographs to exhibit; whether editing for a show should be different than for a story; promotion; and whether it would be odd to seek corporate support for expenses.

Any thoughts?

Relationship Assignment

I've tried to incorporate our assignments the best that I can into projects that I have in mind or am working on. I was two out of three for this one.

1.) Beach playing: A group of children skipped school to spend the morning at the beach. Two boys covered themselves with sand, and my only real intimacy came briefly when a younger girl piggybacked on the oldest in the group. My biggest challenge as is often the case with children was trying to get them to forget about me and go on with what their activity. It was tough because they kept splashing me and were scheming to try to throw me in the water.

2.) Football warm-ups: I was looking for interaction between players during warm-ups, but instead concentrated on their physical contortions.

3.) Mozambican Wedding: This is something that I've wanted to do since I found out about it. There is a fantastic wedding chapel in Maputo that does civil services. You'll usually see and hear honking cars with ribbons parading down the avenue celebrating on Friday afternoons. I spent several hours working around the chapel trying to get the wedding that would fit the assignment best. The civil service is stale and quick, but directly after the service, the wedding party slips out the side door and there is lots of singing, some dancing and a line of guests pays their respects to the happy couple.

Matchedje

I've begun working on what I hope to be a year-long project on a local football team called Matchedje which is a military-affiliated club here in Maputo. I show my American stripes by my virtual ignorance about the sport despite covering it over the years and being on a team myself when I was a boy. My personal preference as a spectator is American Football and as a player, basketball-Mozambique's second most popular sport.

I hope to get an education about the world's most popular sport and hopefully get a view from the ground of Africa's version of it. I had been looking for a football story as a build-up to the 2010 World Cup in neighboring South Africa. I want to find an interesting angle to focus on rather than simply following the team through their season, but nothing's clear so far.

Charity

Children sit on a latrine during potty time at the Sisters of Charity orphanage, Maputo. Sisters of Charity was the order that Mother Theresa. However, Sisters of Charity are not being so charitable to photographers and will not grant me any more photo access (it has nothing to do with this picture).