Margaret Bourke-White: Depression Era Food Line

A good photojournalist might count himself lucky if he gets only one of his images published in a leading newspaper. A good photo should be able to convey an entire story on its own, but sometimes the image itself might be misleading because of the time and place it was made. In this famous example, Margaret Bourke-White's picture of a depression era food line has actually more to tell than its face value.

This thought-provoking photograph was captured by Margaret Bourke-White during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The image shows a group of mostly black men and women lining up for food against a giant billboard that has the caption, "World's Highest Standard of Living". The overhead picture also shows a  middle-class white family, smiling in their car with the tagline, "There's no way like the American Way".

The juxtaposition of the poor black people and the happy white family is quite striking, which makes this photograph one of the most recognizable images of the Great Depression. However, this is misleading as the image was taken right after the Ohio River Flood of 1937. Over one million residents were left homeless after the flood, which only exacerbated the conditions of the 1930s depression. A lot of residents had to resort to charitable donations after the catastrophe, and Bourke-White entitled the photograph, "Kentucky Flood".

While the lack of an appropriate description might mislead some into thinking that everywhere people were always in food lines around 1930s America, the photograph is still quite symbolic of the great depression. LIFE Magazine has more details on the life of Margaret Bourke-White as well as some more background on her most famous photograph.

Robin Hammond: Condemned Mental Patients of Africa

Images of war and conflict have helped sway the opinion of people towards acting for the benefit of the victimized groups. In today's world however, the prevalence of war photographs has become so commonplace that most viewers have become desensitized to these images. This is saddening since a lot suffering still happens even years after armed conflict has passed. In his series entitled "Condemned", Robin Hammond gives a different perspective as a he exposes the cruel treatment of mental patients of Africa.

Robin Hammond is a photojournalist who has worked on human rights issues focusing on East Africa. He had previously traveled to Zimbabwe to document the extreme poverty of mostly everybody there. In the few short months he was in the country, Hammond was imprisoned two times and then deported. While the affair shocked him, he went back to the East Africa for another mission which he discovered serendipitously.

Hammond began his work on the condemned psychological victims when traveled to South Sudan to document the birth of the young nation. During one of his trips, he visited Juba Central Prison. There, he encountered mentally ill patients suffering from the trauma of prolonged war and who were now being neglected for lack of trained medical personnel and proper facilities. It was then that Hammond decided that his mission was to document the condemned mental patients of the region.

According to the World Health Organization, 1 in 3 Somali citizens suffer some form of psychological illness, born out of the years of war, famine and rape. The period of violence and desolation is so long, that an entire generation of Somalis have been born knowing only conflict and suffering. Similar stories can be found in the other neighboring countries of South Sudan, Kenya, Uganda, and Congo. When Hammond visited these places, he found men and women who had either lost lost loved ones to armed conflict, or were victims themselves of violence.

 While the physical manifestations of war were easy to see, the mental toll was somewhat harder to document. This was because most mentally ill citizens were locked away from the public. Hammond recounts one of his visits to these victims: "Stepping into Juba Central Prison was like stepping into some kind of Hell. The heat, the stench, and here are these men, many chained to the floor, some naked and covered in flies and excrement... unfortunately, I would discover that this was not a unique case." 

The default solution to the physiologically imbalanced is to chain them up and lock them away. For those still living outside of these prisons, they are tied up to a stick or post, and left their for years and years. In other areas, people resort to religious leaders to cure their family members. These healers use prayer and herbal medicines to treat patients, although many are also chained up during the process. For most families with mentally disturbed children, the only options are to lock them away in make-shift hospitals, hide them from the public, or simply abandon them.

Hammond's photographs reveal the cruel toll of war years after the fact, but his images only cover East Africa. In the next few years, the photographer is looking to expand his documentary to West Africa, specifically Côte d'Ivoire, Chad, the Central African Republic, and Nigeria. In order to fund his project, Hammond is requesting the public to help cover his expenses (pledges can be made here). In doing so, Hammond hopes to increase awareness of the vulnerable people in these countries, which will hopefully lead to positive action.

This is Robin Hammond's website. Those who would like to help fund his continuing reportage of the condemned mental patients of Africa can do so here. He currently has one publication on his previous project entitled Robin Hammond: Zimbabwe: Your Wounds Will Be Named Silence.

Tamara Staples: The Chicken Fancy and Pretty Birds

Portrait photographers such as Yousuf Karsh and Annie Leibovitz are famed for bringing out that extra spark out of an otherwise ordinary subject. Many aspiring portraitists today follow their example in trying to coax out a little bit more out of their subjects. Fortunately for Tamara Staples, her subjects already look glamorous  The only thing need in her portrait series was the patience and passion to get all participants in one book. These pretty birds are the subjects of the chicken fancy in her book, The Magnificent Chicken.

Tamara Staples is a professional photographer known for her regal portraits of chicken. Her fascination for the domesticated farm bird began when she was a child visiting her uncle's poultry farm. Many of these visits would involve long conversations about chicken, and on one occasion, her uncle invited her to a poultry show. After her first experience with cacophony of sights, sounds and smells, Staples was hooked on the chicken.

Staples' subjects were the pets and owners of the chicken fancy, a hobby involving the breeding and raising of special breeds of poultry. Just like dog shows and similar events, there are also poultry shows which gather these hobbyists and their birds to show off their lovely plumage.

The governing body which organizes these events is the American Poultry Association established in 1873, and their basis for judging the best of the best is the American Standard of Perfection, a reference book which has been regularly updated since 1874. Every bird is judged on a 100 point scale, with no ambiguity left about any feature the chicken might have.

The exacting demands of the standards might make it seem that the breeders are overly competitive, but Staples only has nice things to say about the poultry owners. Each poultry show is indeed a competition, but fancy hobbyists spend more of their time discussing common points of interest rather than keeping secrets about their breeding strategies.

Staples' first portrait attempts were simple pictures she took during her free time. Slowly, she would learn from each shoot and bring better gear or adjust her lighting settings to suit the subjects. As she began to get a feel for the chickens, Staples began preparing more elaborate backdrops. On one occasion, her assistant brought different colored fabrics, which, when placed behind the chickens, created a whole different look to the project. She then experimented with different environments to suit the look of each bird.

Initially, Staples' sought out the best examples of each breed as put forth in the Standard of Perfection, but as the project went on, the photographer began choosing specimens based on their demeanor and pose. While this did not go well with fancy experts who could see defects in the subjects, the photographer hopes that the chickens' personalities will more than make up for any physical shortcoming they may have.

There are more pretty birds on Tamara Staples website. There's also the Pretty Chicken website for more publications on the chicken fancy. Tamara's pictures are available in The Magnificent Chicken: Portraits of the Fairest Fowl, and The Fairest Fowl: Portraits of Championship Chickens. For those looking to get into the fancy, there's The American Standard Of Perfection: A Complete Description Of All Recognized Varieties Of Fowls (1906).

Alexander Gronsky: Less Than One

Winter still dominates much of the northern hemisphere, so it's only fitting to feature more photographs on this subject. This special season only heightens the feeling of loneliness and the perception of endlessness with its foggy textures and white-gray hues, but what happens when these feelings and perceptions are presented in an area with less than one person per square kilometer? Alexander Gronksy tries to answer that question in his series, "Less Than One".

Alexander Gronsky has already been previously featured here for his series "The Edge", photographs that explore the meeting points of the urban and rural, civilization and nature, and everything that involves these boundaries. He focuses most of his energies into exploring old concepts and presenting them in a new format, especially with regards to subjects in Russia.

In his series, "Less than 1", Gronsky points his camera at the same subjects, but this time with the aim of documenting the areas in Russia with a population density of only one person per square kilometer. The photographer traveled to the countries outlying areas to see what life is like in such a sparse environment. The results might look like of his other projects, but the element of his purpose adds an additional dimension the photographs in this series.

The photos in this series were also taken during the making of Gronksy's other work, "The Edge". This previous project done in the cold months of winter on the outskirts of Moscow heightened the sense of loneliness and isolation of his subjects as well as provide a more minimalist view for the entire series. Gronksy also revisited several of these sites, as he took three years to complete this work beginning in 2006.

While many of these photographs lack a human subject, there is still a strong feeling of people, whether it's the sense of their awaited arrival, or the dread of their imminent departure. Scenes like a colorful playground without any children, a group of townspeople seeing off the lone ferry at their port, or simply the trash littered around the ground all point to a civilization that seems to be waiting for spring in order to start living again.

Even with the strong human element in his images, Gronsky sees himself more as a landscape photographer. This frame of mind only helps to emphasis the environment in his photographs as they add a strong foundation for his visual stories. Thus, Gronksy has been described as a photographer who belongs to the new generation of graphic documentary photographers.

Gronksy's series on these places in Russia have a strong sense of nostalgia, as if the old days of the Soviet Empire still reign, yet they also hint at a more hopeful future, when spring will come to wash away the gloom. For this beautiful collection showing what the world is like in a place with a population of only less than one, Gronsky received the Foam Paul Huf Award for 2010.

Alexander Gronsky's website is here. His previous series on "The Edge" can be found here. His published works can be found in the book, Contact Sheet 166: Pastoral. For more features on landscape photographers, check out these previous posts.

Alexander Gronsky: The Edge Of The World

The changing seasons have long provided inspiration for artists since man began creating art. Winter, while being one of the more somber seasons, provides plenty of material for storytellers. The themes of death, rebirth, beginning and end all play into this season, and its easy to see why. Photographer and artist Alexander Gronsky captures what the edge of the world looks like in his project, "The Edge".

Alexander Gronsky is a professional photographer who has worked for different advertising agencies and publications. Over the last few years, he has devoted his photography to his personal projects, leaning towards documenting the unique landscape and people of his adoptive home of Russia.

In his "Mountains & Waters" project, Gronsky looks at booming Chinese cities and how the landscape has changed with urban development. In his "Less Than One" series, the photographer travels to the most desolate places in Russia where the population density is less than one person per square kilometer. In his "Pastoral", Gronsky looks at the intersection of the urban and rural, areas that fit neither concrete definition. For this work,  Gronsky won the 3rd Prize in the Daily Life category of the World Press Photo 2012, one of the many prizes he has accrued to his name over the last decade.

In his project entitled, "The Edge", Gronsky explored the concepts of boundaries in reality, presented in an abstract manner. The photographer captured different scenes all around Moscow city, exploring the meeting points between the urban and the wild, industrial and residential, and all other points of convergence. Similar to Daniel Kukla's Mirror Landscapes, Gronsky presents how diverse a landscape can be, this time with added element of people.

In addition to the subject matter in his photographs, Gronsky heightens the feeling of isolation through the use of the nature of winter. The photographer had previously photographed the area during the warmer months of the year, but shooting these landscapes in winter gives the scene a "blank canvas" look ready to be filled by the subjects of Moscow. In the same way as Marek Samojeden uses the snow as neutral space, Gronsky  only needs a few subjects to give color to his minimalist photo artworks.

Gronsky also presents a different boundary present in all photographs: the photographic frame itself. These images only exist within the edges of the photographic paper, creating another boundary between reality and abstract.

While Gronsky's artistic statement about his photographs might get overly philosophical, there's no denying that he's managed to captured a magical world in the white blanket of winter. His project is aptly entitled, "The Edge", but his images are more about intersections: industrial and rural, old year and new year, winter and spring, and so on. It's wonderful to see how even the seeming edge of the world, while being overwhelmingly muted, can still still be vibrant with urban life.

This is Alexander Gronsky's website, with more images of the edge of the world and his other projects there. His portfolio, Contact Sheet 166: Pastoral, can be purchased here. For another view of edge landscapes, check out Daniel Kukla's Mirror Landscapes. For a different take on winter, have a look at Marek Samojeden's winter time in Poland.

Robert Capa: 20th Century War Photographer

Images and videos of war have become more commonplace in today's digital age compared to the situation years ago. It's now possible for ordinary citizens armed with a camera phone to shoot an armed conflict scene, upload it to Facebook or Youtube, and have thousands of views the next day. Decades ago, only a select few has the technology and willpower to do that. Here is the story of 20th century war photographer Robert Capa.

Robert Capa was born Endre Friedmann in 1913 in Hungary. He left the country because of his activist stand against the government and settled in Berlin, finding himself working with photography and art. The rising Nazi threat forced him to move again, this time to France where he changed his name to the more American sounding name "Robert Capa" in order to market his photographs better.

Capa then traveled to Spain at the start of the Spanish Civil War, and it was here that he made a name for himself as a war photographer. His famous "Falling Soldier" photograph became an instant classic, although its authenticity would be questioned later on. Capa also traveled to China to document the Japanese invasion there. The photographer was slowly building a name for himself as a photojournalist, but his greatest achievement would happen later on during the Allied liberation of France starting with D-Day.

Some of Capa's most famous war time pictures include his Magnificent Eleven, a series of black-and-white photos showing the American forces landing at Omaha Beach on D-Day. Capa was in one of the landing crafts together with one of the invading platoons. He shot 106 frames of films that day, and was in London the next day to have his film developed.

The story goes that the darkroom technician assigned to process the film was so excited to see the resulting pictures that he applied too much heat to the film drying process, accidentally melting almost all of the frames. Only 11 images survived, and these precious 11 were among the first pictures of D-Day to be published and seen by the American public.

Capa continued to travel after the war was over, and in 1947, he co-founded Magnum Photos, one of the most prestigious photographic cooperatives in the world alongside other imminent photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson.

While Capa is considered to be one of the greatest photojournalists of the 20th century, some of his work's  integrity have been questioned, especially with his most famous photo, the "Falling Soldier" showing a Spanish Republican loyalist soldier falling to the ground as he's hit by a bullet (the header image above). When it was first published in Life magazine, it was described as the exact moment of the soldier's death, and quickly became one of the most famous war photographs of its generation.

Recent studies strongly suggest, however, that the scene was staged at a different location far away from the purported battlefield. These studies also invalidate the rest of the photos Capa's took around this time. Despite these recent findings though, Robert Capa's legacy has allowed newer generations of photojournalists to aspire to get closer to the action, because in his words, "If your picture isn't good enough, you're not close enough".

Magnum Photos has more images by Robert Capa. His 20th century war photographs can be found in Robert Capa: The Definitive Collection, Robert Capa at Work: This is War, Blood And Champagne: The Life And Times Of Robert Capa. For a 21st century look at war photography, check out James Nachtwey.

Man Ray: Photography As Art

There's no doubt that photography grounds itself in being able to take factual scenes with objectivity. Most people might argue that editorial photography really began with the advent of Photoshop and its related programs, but almost 100 years ago, one pioneering artist was blurring the lines between photography and art, even advocating for photography as art. This is the ground breaking work of Man Ray. (WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS NUDITY).

Man Ray was born Emmanuel Radnitzky in 1890, but due to the growing anti-semitesm in the Philadelphia neighborhood he grew up in, his parents changed their surname to Ray. His friends called him Manny, which he shortened to Man, which eventually led to his now famous name, Man Ray.

Ray displayed great enthusiasm for the visual arts as a child, learning how to draft in primary school and supplementing his education with frequent visits to local museums. After graduating, he decided to pursue a career as an artist, despite being offered a scholarship in architecture. Ray studied at a couple of art schools before dropping out and teaching himself the rest of the way. Slowly, he worked towards become a professional painter, and he soon started receiving commissions as an artist and illustrator.

As an artist, Ray leaned towards the popular cubist movement of that time, looking for inspiration in prominent painters such as Marcel Duchamp who would later become one of his closest friends and frequent sitters. Ray continued to develop in his paintings, but it was only in 1918 that he started to work on photography seriously. Shortly after, he began associating himself with the Dada movement, producing even more avant-garde paintings and scultptures.

The experimental works he did with his paintings also translated into his photography, with many of his images reflecting classical techniques combined with unorthodox photographic processes. Ray invented the Rayograph, more popularly known as the Photogram, which involved placing objects on light-sensitive paper and exposing it directly to light, creating shadows and silhouettes. Ray also developed the Solarisation Technique which creates light areas in a photograph to appear dark or vice versa (some of the photographs in this post use this technique).

Ray became a highly successful portrait photographer, with many of his artist friends agreeing to sit for hum. Not content with the still medium, Ray later went on into film, involving himself with a series of avante-garde movies in the 1920s. In his later life, the artist continued to work with traditional paint, photography and film, but always seeking to find new ideas, both in terms of subject and execution.

Photography for Ray wasn't so much as medium to simply document what was in front of him. Rather, it was a way for him to to explore his dreams and ideas in a novel manner. Indeed, his most famous photographs aren't those that came straight from the wet plate, but those that were heavily edited or "photoshopped" using the earliest instruments of photographic editing. For Ray, the ultimate goal of photography in his own words, was to "... produce a photograph that would not look like a photograph".

The Man Ray Trust is the official trust site for the late artist. The Man Ray Photo website has extensive collections showing how the photographer made photography as art. Some of the many books on the artist include Man Ray, Photographs by Man Ray: 105 Works, 1920-1934, and Man Ray Photographs.