Archive for the 'photographic essays' Category

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Jérôme Brunet

Cops: Riding Shotgun with Texas Sheriffs

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When asked why I’m interested in law enforcement, I’m compelled to reply, “We all should be.”  The fact that we know so incredibly little about our ‘boys in blue’ all though we see them on our street corners and of course in more dramatized versions on television and in Hollywood, I’ve always been interested in the symbolic aspect of the modern day police officer; the man with the badge, gun and authority to dramatically change a persons life forever. Societies apparent answer to all life’s little and not so little problems. However bleak and insignificant a situation may seem, officers are constantly dealing with lost children, family quarrels, various assemblies of homeless and confronting each day, the violence and corruption humanity inflicts on each other everyday.

During the six months I spent with a multitude of Deputy sheriffs in El Paso county, south west Texas in 1997, I had the rare opportunity to follow and record the everyday activities of these men and women. I managed to capture a few strong moments of the out-of-the-ordinary happenstance’s of these law enforcement officers, people not unlike you and I who share varying difficult tasks ranging from the mundane routine of pages of paperwork to absolute, life threatening danger, ugliness, insanity which ultimately leads to an inevitable breakdown of values and morals. This is an account, albeit brief, of a police officers job description.

These ‘Wild West’ ancestors keep somewhat true to their past. The majority of the men and women I interacted with were primarily Hispanic. Because of their ancestry they were able to bring forth a much appreciated warmth and understanding that I and, I’m sure, the rest of the townspeople, who were also Hispanic, enjoyed and accepted openly. I was first impressed with the equipment used by the officers, with a ‘larger-than-life’ resemblance to the grandiose American lust for “bigger is better” with such names as Chevrolet, Harley-Davidson, Ray Ban, Smith & Wesson. However, as the weeks wore on I watched these officers who exuded obvious professionalism accomplish their missions ranging from routine I.D. checks to reports, endless hours spent on surveillance duty which sometimes ended up being hundreds of kilometers down dirt roads to the sudden adrenaline rush during a dangerous bust.

Murphy’s Law never became so evident until this project. A law explaining the fact that things have a tendency to happen when you least expect it or as one of the deputies so eloquently described it. “It’s when the shit hits the fan!”. After hours of uninterrupted patrolling with a K-9 unit on a grave yard shift, we pulled up to the local truck stop on the I-10 highway. Apart from the lonely truck driver stirring his coffee endlessly, only one table at the back of the restaurant was occupied.  All deputy sheriffs and one stray highway patrol officer.  You can only imagine what might go on in their minds as you sit at a table like this one. Conversations running from family life to pay cuts, shoptalk to the guy that got away. You would catch the odd lost gaze out the window into a universe unknown to most.  A place where many do not return.  It’s only after receiving your meal ordered off a menu mainly composed of picture that the dispatch calls out “to all available officers code 10-50″ — a hit and run victim.  As quickly as we had arrived, we leave our untouched food behind, bolting for the door.  With sirens blazing, an agitated dog shifts from side to side, tension mounts.  To the untrained eye, the scene looks like total havoc, lights flashing in every direction, flares are scattered across a four lane intersection, a small white object catches my attention, it’s a shoe roughly ten meters from where the victim is lying.  Paramedics surround the body trying to keep its pulse.  The feeling of helplessness overwhelms me as a medical helicopter lands directly behind us, and two doctors try to revive him, it is too late.  After a grueling hour of unsuccessful tries, the body is covered with a white sheet.  Time of the deceased – 4:30 am. To my knowledge, no one was arrested for this senseless brutal act.  It was only then that we returned to the uneventful truck stop. Just another day in the life of the deputy sheriff.

Certain photographs betray a mood of pending violence when an ordinary family quarrel may well end up in a blood bath. In this respect, the bullet proof vest worn under the shirt of all these cop’s is highly revealing, (which in some cases I wore myself). Besides, the repression of drug trafficking constitutes the major part of the work done by this border police force. Roads linking Mexico to the U.S., such as the I-10, are sensitive arteries of a flourishing contraband. Even though another deputy in a deep sigh, admitted to me catching only ten percent of the actual traffic, a task force made up of U.S. Customs, D.E.A., Texas and New Mexico police have seized over 30 kilos of heroin, 2 tons of cocaine and 75 tons of marijuana. Even though these quantities sound enormous, actually landing on a large bust was a different story, only luck and perseverance enabled me to land on what was to be one of US’s largest single drug bust in US’s history.  As a nervous Mexican driver arrives at the U.S. border and a routine check is made on his car, officers reveal neatly packed away in the trunk, 23.3 pounds of black tar heroin, estimated at 24 million dollars. This package is later revealed to the local press in Hollywoodesque fashion. I watch in amazement and think of the outcome of this Mexican peasant paid 1000 dollars to transport this load into the land of the free.

Texas, the second largest  state in the U.S. also boasts the highest rate of incarceration (700 for 100 000).  In an ultramodern county jail of El Paso, Texas, I witnessed different aspects of “the inside world”. Body searches, finger printing and delousing before the anonymous inmate dons the regulation blue overalls inscribed E.P.C.D.F. (El Paso County Detention Facility). On the top floor is the outdoor gym, from which you can admire the end of the Rocky Mountains and the beginning of the Sierra Madre into Mexico. Caged like lions, 40 federal prisoners await transport to a large prison. I am placed alone with one guard in this cage. Surprisingly enough, like a ghost, I hover through the crowd unnoticed, my heart beating for what felt like an eternity. Prisoners can only be exposed to the natural light of the gymnasium a sparsely granted privilege of only three hours a week. An afternoon spent with the elite S.R.T. (Sheriff Reaction Team) proved to provide more excitement. This team made up of tough looking officers is specially trained to counter an unlikely riot in the prison. I was presented a billboard full of makeshift weapons made by previous inmates, everything from hand sharpened spikes, to knives made out of tooth brush handles with razor blades attached to their ends. All used for assassination purpose by gang members thriving to in the “inside world”.

We will find in the police officers, goodness, honesty, corruption and brutality. In many cases we are the police, and like it or not we are responsible of their actions as much as our own. The more we know about them, the more we observe and tie ourselves to them, and the more this society will feel secure.

This testimony shares a few privileged moments into the life of these Texas and New Mexico cops, as well as revealing the true backdrop of American culture.

Bio:

A freelance photojournalist Jérôme Brunet was born in southern France and raised in Ontario, Canada. After obtaining his O.S.S.D. majoring in visual arts, he started his post secondary education in Paris, France, at the E.F.E.T. School of Photography, graduating in 1997. Jérôme Brunet has been published internationally in The New York Times, Financial Times, Forbes, American Photo, Rolling Stone, and Billboard. His client list includes Nikon, The Discovery Channel, Fender Musical Instruments and Gibson Guitars. Jérôme Brunet is currently working and residing in the Bay Area of San Francisco and is represented internationally by Zuma Press.

Photographs: Jérôme Brunet
Website:  www.jeromebrunet.com

Editor’s Note:

Please only one comment per person under this essay.. Further discussions should take place under Dialogue..

Many thanks… david alan harvey

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Jennifer Richter

California Overpasses

Remembering Views From The Road

These images encompass my love for traveling by car or motorcycles and they take me back to my childhood road trips taken with my family.

I can still hear the words “GOD DAMMIT” bursting from my father’s mouth as he unsuccessfully tried to bring order to six loud children ensconced in the family Volkswagen bus during the 1970’s. Or later, cruising around with him in our orange convertible Volkswagen beetle and on his motorcycle. It was the middle of summer, with the sun going down, eating peanuts, rolling to Steely Dan and Cat Stevens on 8 track tapes on the radio. I recall vividly and fondly the countless rides to the swimming pool in the summer with my mom. Wearing our handmade terrycloth, pullover yellow ponchos, we would point our toy kaleidoscopes toward the sun and experience so many bright colors shining out like fragmented architectural landscapes. Then gazing out the car window, a coveted position I had to eternally fight for, I would record in my brain all of the landscapes and architectural forms on the way to the pool.

With these overpasses I chose to shoot the straight image of them in the most dramatic way possible.  I then ascended to the next level and turned them into architectural surreal images that are interesting to me. My work engenders hope that the individual observer viewing the work would be able to view these structures in a new way even when driving these same highways in the future.

Riding in cars or on a motorcycle, and looking out the window and feeling the breeze on my face is a type of euphoria for me.  I would point out anything and everything I saw that was interesting or out of place to me.  Recently living in California, and seeing all the different overpasses brought elation of those sweet memories. When I photograph some of the overpasses, I see kaleidoscopes aglow and sometimes roller coasters; or I visualize the sensations and recall what it feels like to ride on one. It gives me new insights and I think that maybe the architects’ base some of their own ideas on what they remember or wish they could experience again.

My viewpoints have been built from the ideas from other Master artist works of the past, whom I have studied such as Dali, M.C. Escher,  (surrealism, places that don’t exists), Andy Goldsworthy (the idea of earth as art and design), and Architect – Frank Gehry, (clean abstract design), and photographers Michael Kenna, Edward Weston, Jerry Uelsmann, to name a few.

With the movement of Dancers and the sounds of music take me on a flight and speed that I have always enjoyed and to translate it in to a image is a daunting task and very enjoyable. The curves and sharp angles of movement that you can see visual in the overpasses this is one of the ways I visualize sound and movement in an image. They pull you in even as a small image or a ten-foot image into the unfamiliar but existing worlds.

The surreal viewpoint is something I have found to be very inventive, inviting, and engrossing images to view. The overpasses themselves are surreal in nature and very artistic on their own. They show the movement that grips my soul and I am able to see objects and faces of things within the images that are of dreams and unreal, but at the same time they are genuine, because the object in the image is a photograph of something real.

Bio:

Jennifer Richter is an emerging award winning fine art photographer, based in St. Louis, Missouri. She has been shooting photography since she was a child, but did not embrace her talent until she rediscovered it in college and her curiosity grew. Having moved to San Francisco, she furthered her studies in fine art photography. Jennifer has exhibited her work in numerous shows including Center of Fine Art Photography. She has participated in artists in residence program and taught workshops on photo in the local schools in St. Louis.  She is an artist who focuses on the compositional element of an image and the emotional response it elicits, and strives to bring greater awareness to the public through the lens of her camera.

Photographs: Jennifer Richter
Website: www.jrichterphotography.com

Charlie Mahoney

A Troubled Paradise

Climate change is a difficult subject to treat visually, because much of the expected damage is still yet to come. We just haven’t seen many direct victims of climate change…at least not yet. As a result, I wanted to find a story that had a human element to it. After extensive research, I decided to go to the Maldives because, if scientists are correct, it will likely be the scene of one of first humanitarian disasters due to climate change. The story also ties in to an interesting social-political situation. I hope you find it interesting.

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Beneath the outsiders’ vision of the Maldives lurks a troubled paradise- one shaped by 30 years of a brutal dictatorship. No one knows this better than Mohamed Nasheed, the nation’s new democratically elected President, who unseated Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, the Maldives’ ruler since 1978, in a landmark election in October 2008. Nasheed was imprisoned thirteen times by Gayoom and was named an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience in 1991.

Nasheed is determined to secure liberal democracy in the Maldives, but the country is facing pressing challenges at home. Despite significant tourism revenue – the Maldives has South Asia’s highest GDP per capita – almost half of the Maldives’ population earns less than $2 a day. And Maldivian youth are in the middle of a heroin epidemic that may be one of the worst in the world. The legacy of Gayoom’s rule lingers, and the process of unraveling it will take time as entire political institutions, like a free press, an independent judiciary, and a multiparty legislature will need to be built from the ground up, emerging from the long shadows of three decades of tyranny.

As if all that was not enough, the archipelago nation faces a larger challenge. It could find itself submerged by a swelling sea. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an international body of scientists, forecasts that sea levels will rise an estimated 2 ft. (60 cm) this century, enough to inundate most of the country, many of whose 1,190 isles sit just 3 ft. (1 m) above the ocean. For a nation of so small a size, the new government’s task is monumental.

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Photos from this story were published as part of an assignment in Time Magazine (Asia Edition) and in Intelligent Life and Corriere della Sera Magazine.

Bio

Charlie is a photojournalist and multimedia journalist currently based in Barcelona, Spain. His clients and publications include Time Magazine, The Guardian, BBC News, GEO, National Geographic Traveler, Lonely Planet Magazine, The Times, The Independent on Sunday, The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHRC), the Council on Foreign Relations, Corriere della Sera Magazine, Intelligent Life, CS Monitor Weekly, 100 Eyes, The Telegraph, Financial Times, Global Post, Die Tageszeitung, Frankfurter Rundschau and De Standaard.

His most recent awards and nominations include the 2009 Environmental Photographer of the Year Award, the 2009 International Photography Awards, the Life category of the 2008 Travel Photographer of the Year, the 2008 PX3 Prix de la Photographie for photojournalism, the 2008 SOS Racism Photography contest and the new talent category of the 2007 Travel Photographer of the Year. He is represented by Bilderberg, Corbis and Cosmos.

He especially likes to work on stories of human interest and strongly believes that photojournalism can promote change by giving a voice to people who are all too often powerless to tell their own stories.

He has a Masters in Photojournalism from the University Autónoma of Barcelona and a B.A. in International Relations and Biology from Bowdoin College. Prior to his career in photojournalism, he worked in investment banking and equity management.

Related links

www.charliemahoney.net

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Mimi Mollica

Terra Nostra

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The story I want to tell is about my land, Sicily, the effects of Mafia in our territory, the people that fight against it on the front line and the context in which Mafia has grown and rooted its identity.

The Sicilian reality is a ‘pre modern’ one, rooted within the family system and characterized by an accommodating behavior toward the corrupted system, strongly based on nepotism as opposed to a healthier meritocracy. Commonly diffused is the lack of respect towards the law and its representatives. The resulting scenario is, in fact, one of an orphaned society abandoned to its ill-omened destiny of relentless decadence. Therefore,  the aim of this photographic essay is to capture this backdrop of decay.

Mafia and corruption have destroyed our most beautiful coasts that once were described by artists and writers as a paradise of natural, artistic and archaeological beauty. Cosa Nostra has worn out our economic system by killing market competition through intimidations and a thick network of corruption, and by imposing extortion to 95% of the region’s business, Mafia holds an even stronger economical control of the territory.  The price paid by those who rebelled against this oppression has been reported by blood stained chronicles on newspapers and media.

After many years of pondering on the idea of working on such project I recently felt the urge to photographically deliver my wide perspective on the Mafia phenomenon, in a moment in time where Italy is living its worst political and social crisis since the Fascist era.
This is a long-term project on which I wish to work for several months to come.  Any comments or suggestions are more than welcome.

This Essay has been published on the Financial Times Weekend Magazine on July 18th 2009.

Bio:

I was born in Sicily, Palermo where I lived until I turned twenty and decided to move away from Italy.  I have always been in love with photojournalism since an early age.

Now I am 34 and photojournalism is what I do for living. I take photos because i have an urge to communicate my views about our time and to show people that what I have had the privilege to witness first hand.

The themes that interest me most are related to society undergoing transitions, identity and migrations. I believe I have grown together with photography both professionally and on a personal level. I have traveled a few countries and met all kinds of people, rich and poor alike, criminals and judges, academics and musicians, interesting people and ugly characters. All of them are part of who I am now.

They gave me the eyes to see and the ears to listen their stories and my deepest self, so photography became for me an neverending journey that I am enjoying as much as I enjoy my life. News about my previous essays, publications, exhibitions and other stuff can be found on my website.

Related links:

www.mimimollica.com

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Petri Uutela

Passers by

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I don’t know how to analyze or comment something that personal as my street photography. It’s therapy for me to wander in the streets trying to capture moods, events or gestures that I feel somehow connected to. Even if  I’m taking pictures of total strangers, my street photography actually reflects myself – this is an autoportrait series, although it’s not me who is in the pictures.

Photographs in this video are taken in Finland and Slovakia during 2006-2009. Music written and performed by my brother Tuomas Uutela.

Bio

I am a freelance photographer and a photography student based in Finland.
I am co-founding member of Finnish photo collective STRAP.

Related links

www.petriuutela.com

www.strap-photos.com

THIS ESSAY CONTAINS EXPLICIT CONTENT

Erica McDonald – The Dark Light of this Nothing

Janet: Hi Erica..(kiss)

EM: Hi, Where’s Adele?

Janet: Adele’s inside..Erica, this is my family, that’s uh..Donny, my sister in law, Sharon, Angie…David and that’s my brother John..

EM: You’ve got a good memory.

Janet: I’ve got a good memory, I have 38 nieces and nephews, I have to..this is just a little quarter of it.

EM: I’m trying to get people to talk about what the neighborhood was like and what it is like now and..

Janet: You want some dessert? Steven would know that, my husband would know that, and so would Mary.

EM: No thanks, I’m okay. Yeah, Mary was just talking to me a little.

Anthony: I wasn’t born here..I don’t know anything..

Janet: You was SO!  He’s full of crap! Where were you born? Where were you born?

Anthony: I was born in Staten Island.

Janet: No he wasn’t.. He was born here in the house on..

Anthony: What the hell is this? you gotta talk to this thing?

EM: It’s a microphone.

Janet: Dad, just talk about..

Anthony: What am I gonna tell? I was born over on 3rd street. And the place was beautiful at that time, we had a nice time, not too much traffic, I’m old, that’s why. We used to play stickball in the middle of the street, there was no traffic, you could play stickball. right? Today you can’t even walk in the friggin street, too many cars.

Janet: You played Skellies..

Anthony: Skellies, well, we played all kinds of games. Kick the can, you know, stuff like that. What else did we play?Johnny on the pony, Johnny on the pony..You know what that is? She don’t know…(looking at EM) On the fire hydrant, and everyone’s gotta jump on his back and try to make him fall. We played a lot of games, when we grew up it was a nice neighborhood..There was no computers, of course not. You had to add in your mind. We didn’t even have a television. That’s why we used to go out and play. No it was nice, it really was, it was nice around here.

Janet: We used to play cards, knuckles..knuckles..We used to play over here everyday, and Grandma would come out and go “Why can’t yous play on your own stoop, whattaya gotta play here for?” Because we live here, Grandma! People would come and have to get up to the house and we’d always have cards and we had to move and the people would get annoyed..cause we were sitting down playin’, but what else were you gonna do?

Anthony: When we were young we used to play stickball, or stoopball, you hit the ball against the stoop, or punchball. And when we grew up we were poor, in plain English, it’s the truth. When we played football, you know what we used for a football? You rolled up a newspaper, seriously, you taped it, and that was a football, we couldn’t afford a football..it’s true..and if we had a baseball, eventually the cover would fall off, we used to tape it up..yeah, we couldn’t buy another baseball, we were all poor. And the glove was falling apart..it’s true..now what, what do they call all these people around here now, they all got money, what are they, Yuppies? Right, they’re all Yuppies? No, I grew up in a good time, I’m glad I grew up when I did.

In the summer time, when it got very hot, nobody had air conditioning. Not like today. Everybody had a fan, that was all you had, was a fan. But, if you had a fire escape, you could go out and sleep on the fire escape.

Janet: Remember? Grandma used to feed us on the fire escape. My cereal, on the fire escape, every morning. And our favorite game was, what we played was jump rope, all day long. I didn’t need anything else. Grandma used to stand by the window and yell at us, “What are you doing? what are you doin?” Yeah, double dutch…All day, I could play jump rope all day long..double dutch. And be happy.

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This piece is meant as a tribute to those long term residents who have sustained the Park Slope, Brooklyn, New York neighborhood for generations and are now in an increasing minority. The old guard is losing their sense of community. A new, affluent population, drawn by Park Slope’s popularity as one of America’s best neighborhoods, is swiftly overshadowing the working class.

The title of this body comes from the words of the philosopher Derrida that reflect on the experience of the loss of  “what I myself am not” and on the interiorization of the Other in his irrevocable absence.

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Many warm thanks to Rachel Been, Anna Maria Barry-Jester, Kelly Lynn James, Jacob Silberberg, Tom Sullivan, Andrew D. Sullivan and John Westfall for assisting in the making of the street portraits, and an especially big thank you to Sana Manzoor for her assistance which was both generous and gracious.

For all the thoughtful feedback and editing help, thank you to Joe Colligan, Jason Eskenazi, Paul Fusco, Eugene Richards and Andrew D. Sullivan.

Thank you Jim Powers for loaning me your lens! and to the Burn community for going on this ride with me.

DAH..thank you from the beginning to the end. Way back when you wrote on Road Trips that you might have “a good idea…why not really “show our photographic hand…” in the most provocative way…so, here is my idea: i give out short assignments or projects….on an individual basis…at the end each photographer presents this work right here for us all to see…for example, i ask Erica if she has time to shoot portraits on…” and somehow that idea turned into this work..though after a much longer wait than you had in mind! Thank you sincerely for your ideas and energy and care and for all that you do.

Bio

Erica McDonald is mostly a self taught photographer, taking inspiration from a myriad of social documentary and portrait photographers. She has a strong belief in the importance of lineage in photography and working in a continuum.

Erica is a thankful recipient of a Keyholder Fellowship at the Lower East Side Printshop, and her work has been exhibited in New York and Paris including in Chelsea and by PowerHouse, at the burn gallery and the Camera Club of New York, and has been included in projections at LOOK3, Palm Springs Photo Festival and the Slideluck Potshow. Awards and nominations include IPA/Lucies, PX3, The NY Photo Awards and the Magnum Cultural Foundation EPF. Her work has been published in Mother Jones, Boston Magazine, YES! Magazine and is part of The Collector’s Guide to Emerging Art Photography. She loves dogs, large and small alike, and is based in NYC.

A larger selection of images from this project is available for publication as a book. Please inquire with me directly at erica@ericamcdonaldphoto.com

Related links

ericamcdonaldphoto.com

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Thomas Bregulla

Everyday

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There are those everyday repetitive tasks… So small, so little, we don’t even think while doing them. We do them – every day. But without them, something would be missing in that day.

Somehow, that makes these little everyday tasks important. By telling this little story about my everyday life, I wanted to make them special, .

These images show me in my everyday situations. Like they happen, more or less, every day. I made the images with a tripod or just by putting the camera in front of me.

I hope this essay makes us stop and think about the little and everyday things we have in life. The things we often forget that we are doing.

Bio

I was born 1965 in Salzgitter, Germany. After several years in southern Germany, I moved to Bonn where I live today. My main job is in telecommunications, where I am a program manager in an international context. I like to outline a story and take pictures according to that. Photography is a good balance for my current day job, allowing my creativity to go different ways.

Related links

www.flickr.com/photos/tfelix/