Le Tour

A long time ago I was on a trip round Europe with a good friend, sleeping on overnight trains and park benches, living off bread and cheese and generally covering thousands of miles with only one pair of socks. At one point we were at a music festival in Belgium subtley titled the 10 days of techno and I had the fantastic idea that I would go from the club to the train station, get an early morning train to Paris and go watch the Final stage of the Tour De France. Well, I actually left the club extremely bleary eyed as dawn broke, staggered through the streets to the house we were staying in and promptly crashed out. I was shaken awake by my travelling companion with words to the effect of 'Oi, didn't you want to go see the end of the tour? Well, get up and come watch it on TV.'

So much for my amazing plan. Anyway. I like cycling, and watching some of this years tour on TV (I've come a long way in the past decade) I was wondering if there were any good photo projects on the race. I've seen lots of great individual shots but couldn't recall seeing any lengthy projects. Of course, they exist. Flicking through some posts on Andrew Hetherington's blog I came across this interview with Brent Humphreys, who has been following the tour for a while. You can see a bunch of his work on this dedicated website and though personally I think he gets a bit heavy handed with his lights and stylistically the most succesful ones for me are those where the flash is at it's most muted, I think there's a lot of humour in the work and I can almost hear the crowds along the road shouting 'Alle Alle!' as they fill up on red wine and get in the way of the cyclists..

Team Time Trial - photograph by Brent Humphreys

My own bike has been quietly gathering dust since I moved to the U.S. (thanks to a combination of car culture and my own laziness) and as a result my fitness level has dropped so low that a slight incline is enough to get me out of breath these days. If I ever want to bomb around France for a couple of weeks taking shots of the tour with my 4x5 I think I'd better follow Humphrey's advice and get a van. Somehow I don't think I'll manage it with a couple of panniers and a backpack.

The last long ride I did was a 60 mile stint from London to Brighton on the south coast of England for the British Heart Foundation. Here's a shot I took of one of my housemates as we raced along the seafront at the end of the ride (and no, I wasn't actually looking where I was going as I took this picture...)

Not quite as Glamourous as Le Tour but a hell of a lot of fun.

Ellen Blaschke - Eye on the Strand

Kathy, rare books department - photograph by Ellen Blaschke

My friend Ellen is a finalist in this competition run by the Strand bookstore in New York.

There is an exhibition opening on Wednesday the 15th July at the Pratt Institute CCPS gallery, Manhattan Pratt campus,144 West 14th street from 6-8pm.

Mohammadreza Mirzaei

from the series 'Rewind'

This week I got a very pleasant email from a designer in Iran who pointed me in the direction of Tehran based photographer Mohammadreza Mirzaei. I like his work very much. He has a great eye for simplicity and harmony and there's a touch of light humour in there too. Check him out.

from the series 'Humans'

Kathryn Obermaier

The wonderful Kathryn Obermaier has recently updated her website. Some great work I've known about but not seen until now. Check it out.

Iranian Elections slideshow

By Gianni Cipriano.

Click on the image above to see the slideshow.

The Aftermath in Iran

Supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi try to calm down fellow demonstrators as they rescue a bloodied riot policeman (center) who was beaten during a protest in Valiasr Street in Tehran on June 13, 2009. (BEHROUZ MEHRI/AFP/Getty Images)

Iran. This is a country I have wanted to visit for a long time, and my desire has nothing to do with the political situation there. I read about ancient Persia and Islamic Sufis when I was a kid, long before I knew who Ayatollah Khomeini was. I never held the impression that this was some kind of backward society, even when I became aware of the politics of the country. It always seemed to me like a fascinating place with a long cultural history.

In any case, the recent election threw up a veritable volcano of analysis, propaganda, fiction, discussion and debate. What are we to make of this all. I honestly do not know. Facts were kind of hard to find amongst all the vitriol and rhetoric. I do know that Mir Hossein Mousavi is not some angelic reformist who would dismantle the Iranian Theocracy and abandon the country’s nuclear ambitions. I found it amazing that Conservative voices in the west were touting him as some kind of Saviour of Iran. I suspect they were mostly using him as a propaganda tool to attack the Obama administration, with one radio host I overheard whilst in a hardware store saying that Obama should have intervened in the election aftermath and that the fact that he didn’t proved he was less committed to peace in the Middle East that Reagan and Bush. This is quite frankly preposterous. I’m not even going to begin to unravel that kind of statement as it’s flaws should present themselves immediately to anyone with even the slightest clue of what is really going with the power struggles in the region.

In fact, politically speaking, the last thing the Obama Administration should do is interfere, both for their own good and for the good of democracy in Iran. See this insightful essay by Stephen Zunes on why that is the case.

I actually suspect that the Election was legitimately (as legitimately as these things get anyway) won by Ahmadinejad but they shot themselves in the foot by trying to rig it anyway. So in fact, they rigged it, won by a narrow but legitimate margin, announced the huge margin from the rigged results, got caught rigging it and then had to deal with the civil unrest that followed. That is what I suspect.

I don’t think I will ever truly know. As always, I turned to the articles of Robert Fisk to give me a clear and thoughtful report of what was happening in the country. Recommended reading if you have not already digested them.

The truly horrific thing in all of this is the fact that the protests were then put down in the most brutal and repressive fashion. This should really come as no surprise, and I’d just like to point out that demonstrations worldwide are often treated with violence by the Police, yes, even in the liberal western world where democracy is perfect and the people duly represented by their honestly elected officials. I don’t know if you can taste the sarcasm in my voice here but trust me it is extremely bitter. Remember people that Hypocrisy truly is the greatest luxury.

That said, I am not in any way belittling the loss of life that occurred during the demonstrations. Along with the many arrested and detained, those Iranians who lost their life should never have had to do so.

The widely circulated images and videos have been greeted with disgust and indignation, and rightly so.

In fact, this brings me to the point of how the images coming from Iran during the protests were used. I know from talking to a photographer who was present that it was extremely difficult for professionals with their big cameras to work unhampered – though once again this is a trend not unique to these demonstrations – hence the fact that much of the footage came from cellphone cameras. There is a compiled slideshow on the FOTO8 website. Citizen journalism in action. The big news outlets utilized many of these images for their own ends. I noticed that a still from the video of Neda Soltani’s shooting was being distributed by Getty. I don’t know if any money changed hands here or if Getty are syndicating this for a fee. I begin to wonder about how thin the line is between reporting and voyeurism, about how often we as human beings cross this line without thinking and about the moral repercussions of our actions. Death and violence are part of the journalist’s trade. It is news. But it is also the commercialisation of a woman’s death. It is also propaganda. It becomes so many things. I feel like things get trickier every day; that the black and white of right and wrong become more and more of a murky grey. Will that woman’s death become overwhelmed by the aftermath of the event? I’m sure it will. Stan Banos put down some words that I think go right to the core of what should be important about the footage.

“I don’t usually do “these” videos. It had a graphic warning, but this time, for some reason, I unwittingly ignored it. And there was no amount of violent Hollywood desensitization that could have possibly prepared one. In seconds, the brutality of death overwhelmed the fragility of beauty, the promise of youth, and finally, the very thought of hope itself. It left no time for moral or meaning.

In an age when images rarely shock or move us, this one will forever haunt me. And when I again accidentally gazed upon the opening still later the same day, I realized why. She stares directly at us, knowingly or not, she confronts us and demands we bear witness to humanity’s long history of depraved indifference.”

Indifference indeed. That is the key word here. In a world where I can turn on my TV, open a newspaper and Browse the internet, I can hear about brutal oppression in Peru, China and Iran, I can read about poverty and desperation in South Africa, corruption in the United States and Political hypocrisy in Europe. I can hear about a Coup in Honduras and remember the photographs a friend of mine took in a Gaza hospital and I can do nothing to change these things right now. I have no magic wand to make the world a better place in one fell swoop, and when I am confronted with so much that is wrong I am left with a feeling of helpless indifference. But I can make small steps. I can do something to make the world a better place. Even if I do nothing today except ask my wife how her day was and actually give a shit about her reply. I can do something. And this is what I learned most from what I read, heard and saw from the Iranian protests. These people are doing something. They might not overthrow a repressive regime in one week. They might not change the world, but they are making steps toward a better future. A flawed future no doubt, but a better one. And that is a lesson we can all learn something from. If we do, then no one will have died in vain.

Not if but when...

This is the mantra everyone utters regarding loss of computer data through crashing/dropping/burning/flooding/acts of god etc. Well it finally happened to me. Even though I properly ejected a portable hard drive from a Mac, the next time I plugged it in I found I had lost all the data on the drive. 120GB worth. Unbelievable. The drive was actually empty. No computer I plugged it into could read anything from it.

Fortunately, the stuff I was working on was backed up - well, I was actually working from the backup at the time as someone else was using the master, but the point is there was 2 copies of these particular files so I was able to get everything done with only a minor headache. As for the rest of the stuff on the drive - gone. The bitch of the matter is that this was my 'work in progress' drive, which means it had raw files and scans and documents on it that were in transit from one computer to another, or were in need of a quick edit and a sort before being properly filed (and backed up).

So, now I face the prospect of many many hours of headache with data recovery software and trawling through gigabytes of recovered files in order to see what files I can restore and what negatives I have to rescan and what I have lost for good.

The lesson here? Shit happens.

A picture of one of Corey Arnold's photographs 'recovered' from my hard drive

As I always say in these situations; 'It's a good job we don't rely on machines for anything really important right?'

So, even if I was to back up everything immediately in triplicate (which even with the best intentions in the world I'm sure I would not do every single time...) there is still the potential for things to go wrong and for data to be lost. The probability of the master and the backups all failing? Well, let's just say it's a matter of not if...but when...

CYL: Change Your Life

This is a project run as part of the International Center of Photography's community programs in partnership with the Friends of Island Academy in Manhattan. Drop me a line if you would like to attend the final presentation of the student's work this Wednesday, July 1st..

Jack Delano

Someone should take the (copyright free) photographs of Jack Delano from the Library of Congress and publish a book. At present the best way to see his work is on Flickr. His full digitised archive at the LoC is here. I first came across his work a couple of years ago, and ever since have wished I could have a book to take down off the shelf and browse; by far my preffered means of referencing photography.

Anyone who stands on top of a freight train with a 4x5 deserves a bit of attention.

In my opinion an underrated photographer with a great eye, as well as one showing us the 1940's in colour.

Are you listening Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans?

... and all those who think colour photography began with Eggleston.



In fact, colour photography (of a sort) has been around since the 1860's...

Summer Reading

I vow to not buy any more books until I have finished going through these. I can't afford any at the moment anyway. Nor do I have the time to read, except on the train, hence the fact that I've managed to get through half of the Gonzo book since I bought it last November. The photo books are a little less portable. Anyway, from the pictures in them they look great, just hope the text is worth the weight.



Besides, when I have had time to read these past couple of weeks, it's been all about the Iranian Election. Plenty enough words (and pictures) on that subject to engage the brain without delving into this lot on my desk.