Ansel Adams: Documentarian

Yesterday, I gave my first class here to beginning photographers in Maputo. I started out with a little photo history-camera obscura and view cameras– and talked a bit about Matthew Brady and Ansel Adams. I told my students that I was going to have a photojournalistic/documentary slant since that's what the base of my experience, knowledge and interest. So why Ansel Adams?

As a native Californian, I've always had strong leanings toward my home state. When I was a kid, I favored television shows that were more West Coast-centric (The Brady Bunch; Adam 12; What's Happening; The Love Boat...). I was a big surf music fan (Dick Dale, The Ventures, Beach Boys), the whole San Francisco-Sunset Strip thing (Mamas & the Papas; The Doors; Grateful Dead...), then later with the L.A. punk scene (see Decline of the Western Civilization; Sublime and No Doubt...) and with Jazz, Dave Brubeck. John Steinbeck books were special for their California leanings. I've always hated Hollywood's tendency to lean toward the East Coast and became a big fan of Quentin Tarantino for breaking that mold with movies often set in the area of L.A. I grew up in. So with photography, there was Ansel Adams.

Ansel Adams was somebody that I looked at when I was first learning photography and trying to figure out proper exposures and black and white printing. The whole zone system was somewhat of a puzzle to me. Since he was the first marketed fine arts photographer, his work was everywhere (calendars, posters,museums), and he's usually one of the first or only photographers to pop out of a non-photo person's mouth because of his popularity. So to some, he's gained a bit of a cliché tag.

I was fascinated by a documentary that I checked out from the library on VHS about him. There was a scene when he was making a gigantic print with roll paper sprawled out on a darkroom wall that I found incredible at the time. But more than anything was how elequant he was speaking about photography and how-being a trained classical pianist-he often compared photography to music. Over the years when I've come across his quotes, read his writings or seen other films about him, my affection for him has grown. Much of what he says applies perfectly to documentary photography. Over the years instead of seeing simply pretty pictures, beautiful prints and exposures, or familiar western scenes, I've seen him as a documentarian.

He was obsessed with the United States wilderness and a big conservationist. Along with Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, his own book This Is the American Earth which released that same year was quite influencial and ultimately had some impact on the modern green movement. But more than anything, the scenes that he documented helped raise their profile and helped save them from eager developers in the post-World War II boom years.

That aside, I was surprised that I had never known about a project that he had done about Japanese-Americans in an internment camp in Manzanar, California during WWII. While I was gathering images to show, I came across them and was taken aback feeling a bit silly and ignorant. I knew that he had done some portraits–although he didn't enjoy doing that type of work– and was friends with folks who did photograph more people like Edward Steichen, Paul Strand and Edward Weston, and had much respect for photographers like Cartier-Bresson and their work; however, this project caught me off guard.

It's not the most wonderfully executed story in comparison to W. Eugene Smith or Walker Evans, but it helped me understand him more as a photographer, and made me feel more justified in being a fan of his. Here are links to the project:

Zeitmaschine review

U.S. National Archives

Trusting You With My Cute Kids

In Perpignan, I had a sort of rude awakening when I introduced Silva, Anna, Rhian and Maria to my kids-virtually of course. They were all eager to see their pictures on a blog I created when my one year old, Charles, was born. "Why didn't you show this to us before?" I was asked. "I didn't want to bore you all with pictures of my little kids. "You don't trust us," said Rhian with agreement from the others.

It's a little sappy and much more of my softer side than I thought anyone needed to see, but since I made everybody pancakes, i guess my soft side is exposed. Here's the link to my kids' blog. Don't expect any breathtaking photojournalism: it's mostly snapshots and often poorly composed or out of focus. I still feel it's a bit like boring friends with hours of vacation photos, but here it is: http://charlesbarrientos.blogspot.com

What I Learned In Perpignan

I learned that I'm not as big a lightweight as I thought by going out drinking more than I have in years. But it wasn't so much about partying as it was about getting acquainted with my classmates, meeting people, networking, getting acquainted with my classmates, former LCC students and discussing photojournalism and all the issues around it from photo gear to computers to software to politics to travel logistics to marketing and much more. There of course was the festival programming, exhibits, nightly screenings and presence of agencies, photography collectives and vendors that was the center of my week.

One significant fact--perhaps not so flattering--was that I only took out my camera once during the week. Perpignan's somewhat of a picturesque town certainly with lots to photograph but with so many photographers and cameras, I figured we had it covered. I can remember my early days in photography and going to photo gatherings in the U.S. such as the National Press Photographer Association's Flying Short Course or the Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar and sort of thinking that the guys (usually students) running around with a couple of bodies and a long lens to go to a seminar were a bit over the top. There really weren't those types of photographer there.

My main objectives were mostly achieved: 1.) to spend some time with and get to know some of my classmates; 2.) to connect with a new agency (Polaris in this case); 3.) to see some excellent photography (much was excellent); 4.) to gain some new clients (this one I sort of struck out on but got some great tips).

Being in Africa, I feel a bit isolated at times from others in the class, so it was good to spend time with part of our group. Our common bond is the LCC MAPJ. Having gone through projects, papers and sometimes rough tutorial sessions, I think we all felt a certain badge of honor for having gotten through our first leg of it.

There were several agencies represented such as Getty, Corbis, AP, AFP, Reuters, EPA, Sipa, Zuma and others. The collectives area was interesting mostly to see the ways that these groups of photographers promoted themselves with cool postcards, lots of Blurb and Mac books, and lots of interesting work.

As far as the photographic exhibits there were several very good ones but a few that were just okay. My favorites were by Paolo Pellegrin's project in Iraq and Stanley Greene's story (more the whole story) about the Silk Road being transformed into a drug route. The evening screenings were good but many of us thought a bit uneven at times and are too loosley edited. They did, however, get progressively better as the week went on, but unfortunately the Saturday show which in theory should have been the best, and the big festival party were both scrapped because of rain (don't worry there were LCC reps protesting).

At the Hotel PAMS, there were continual critiques and editors that I wanted to meet (I was told but only ran into the one I used to work for-Michelle McNally). They did have free wifi and drinks, so it was an active place. It's also where we registered. Despite not getting some of the connections that I wanted, I did get great advice, much of it from LCC graduates. Most of that happened at La Post (I'm sure Perpignan's most popular bar during the festival). It's where we had the pleasure of meeting our very own Homer Sykes.

What I liked most out of the trip was primarily getting to know Maria, Dean, Silva, Chris, Jono, Mark, Anna, Rhian, Morag (my favorite LCC grad) and Homer. It helped me realize that we have a rich and interesting group and that being in an online course gave me more of a connection than I thought I'd have. On the festival side, I most enjoyed an impromptu session by Brian Storm about multimedia and a hard-hitting film by Christian Poveda called La Vida Loca about gangs in El Salvador which I got through with French subtitles. My favorite brush with greatness was meeting John G. Morris. It also was kind of cool that David Alan Harvey remembered my name, but I'd much rather have people remember my images.

Dean is going to keep in touch with the apartment owners that we rented from to see if there can be LCC Does Perpignan Redux.

Here's Jono's slideshow if you haven't seen it.

http://www.jonathanlewisphoto.com/mapjPerpignan2008slideshow/

Perpignan

California

California, where I was born and raised, is a good place to reflect on my place right now in our course. Trips that involve family typically paralyze me creatively. So while I'm enjoying seeing parents, sisters, aunts, uncles, neices, nephews, cousins and friends and introducing my children to my home, it's tough to get much done photographically. One strange thing for me in Los Angeles that I always find is that I suffer a bit from over familiarity and or even being numb or maybe simply overwhelmed by all there is to photograph there. It's such a huge, sprawling place that I have a tough time focusing or even figuring out what to photograph. I can't really pin point it and even sat back and considered if I lost the progress that I made. However, if I was actually living in L.A. or even for a newspaper, it would definitely be different.

As of this point in the course, one thing I have achieved is a clear focus on photography I hadn’t had for some time. I'm thinking about photography, the imagery and what I want to communicate. There are several points I have improved upon or refined. I am thinking in terms of projects and stories I’d like to do as opposed to single images.

In my shooting style, I have become more disciplined and am concentrating on the entire frame more than ever and very rarely crop. I have thought more about the content of my photographs as well as all of the compositional elements.

The things I must improve upon are still self-editing and improving the development of story ideas and organization and execution of stories themselves. I see my greatest weakness as becoming overwhelmed by broad ideas and then a large body of work. One of my goals coming into the course was to improve on the business side of photography and finding new ways and profitable outlets for my work.

Guest lecturers and tutors have given powerful advice and ideas such as Homer Sykes’s extensive experience with stock photography and publishing his photography in books. Classmates have also given invaluable inspiration and gotten me in touch with elements of photography, technology and media that I hadn't considered or may not have learned about.

My greatest challenge remains remaking myself from a career newspaper staff photographer and editor into an effective freelance photographer and defining what that means to me. More tangibly, I have seen that multimedia, as much as I am resistant to it, is essential to learn. My personal goals remain to learn to increase my freelance cliental, publish a book and to show my work in a public exhibition.