David Plummer – Des Portraits de la Maison de la Chance
In the village churchyard there grows an old yew,
Every spring it blossoms anew:
Old passports can’t do that, my dear, old passports can’t do that.
The consul banged the table and said,
“If you’ve got no passport you’re officially dead”:
But we are still alive, my dear, but we are still alive.
Stood on a great plain in the falling snow;
Ten thousand soldiers marched to and fro:
Looking for you and me, my dear, looking for you and me.
Extracts from W.H. Auden Poem; ‘Refugee Blues’.
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La Maison de la Chance, The House of Good Luck, is a nickname given to a women’s refugee shelter in Calais, France. The refuge is a place of safety for trafficked women, vulnerable to sexual exploitation.
The following ID Photos were collected from the refuge between November and December of 2008 having been discarded by their owners before continuing their perilous journey to the U.K & Canada.
When taken, these ID Photos were perhaps unremarkable. Now, given the dangerous journey many trafficked women have undertaken, these photos invite us to meet them, think about them and ourselves whilst facing this issue where women are frequently forced into a situation of extreme dependency.
Photographs: David Plummer
Website: www.lightstalkers.org/davidplummer
DAH
¨i want to put both of you on my ethics committee¨
I would be honored to contribute to the best of my abilities and i would also be honored to be on the same committee asw Jim..hope he doesn´t hate the idea! Lately i´ve read some really GOOD GOOD stuff from Jim and it´s been stimulating reading to say the least. So Jim, you wanna?
HERVE, JIM,THODORIS
Herve, yes, a fellow Burnian told me the other day that the eyes of individuals in some of these Asian countries express so much of the collective sorrow of their race (and to this person who shall remain nameless, i hope i got that right)…
But hmm..i am reading all these comments and i want everyone to know i agree with so much that´s being said, everything really..but it has me thinking, about my reaction to the ID pics and what i personally see revealed in people through the lens and the truth of photographs (if there is any).
I have discovered over time that i am extremely sensitive to the faces of people. I thought we were all pretty much the same in this respect but i have discovered that some are more than others. Ok, so my theory is that some of us would look at these ID pics, not singularly but collectively and even without the story, be drawn to patterns. And i think conclusions could be made from these patterns. And those conclusions might legitimately be called honest.
I looked at the first photo and my thought was ¨hmm, pink lip gloss¨ Seriously, that was it! The same lip gloss was worn by many of the sitters and that struck me as really strange. I hadn´t yet even read the text! Then from the lips i moved to their eyes and their head scarves. I mean, i´m a girl and head scarves intrigue me. Their effect is feminine, mysterious, elegant as well as associated with a religion that traditionally represses females. All taken, besides the lip gloss and the scarves, what kept repeating to me were ¨sad eyes¨. Not just one or two but 95% of the subjects. I went back again and THEN read the text, thought, ¨ohhhhhhh!!!!¨, That´s why!!¨..i mean, maybe that isn´t why! Maybe they had to sit on a chair with metal springs poking into their butts, or maybe their ID pics were taken after a long and arduous plane trip to Paris. But my personal take was these women were profoundly sad. So i believe, judging from the 9 or 10 photos that there was great sadness in the women at this shelter. And i believe this is a truthful representation.
Now, i would like to ask your opinions, based on the above posts from you all..i totally agree that the photographer by his/her simple act of lens choice, composition, use of flash or not, DOF, etc, etc begins to edit the scene before the shutter is even pressed and every single post processing decision that follows keeps right on distorting truth. However i don´t think photos lie as much as we are thinking. I don´t think the only truth emerges as a silent dialogue between the viewer and the subject. I think sometimes the truth just ¨is¨. It´s incontrovertible. When i look through the lens i often see strong emotion (and no, it´s not ¨get this camera out of my face¨ haha). I am so struck by it that i often put the camera down and ask these total strangers, ¨Are you sad, angry, sick?¨ (depending on what i happened to see in that person´s face). They always, always tell me yes and proceed to explain why. And immediately there is a connection between me and the subject. A bond. I care. I feel their pain. I respect their ordeal. If they are happy or indifferent these emotions are more apparent to the casual view but other emotions are far more delicate and hidden behind a facade of reserve. So what we see through the lens and hence the sensitive viewer can see in the photo IS often the truth. It´s not invented or projected by the viewer! Now, depending on the photographer and his/her intentions and technique the viewer might see things that are NOT there and i´ve talked about this before, coquettry, cynicism, hardness, bitterness, naivete, loss of innocence..many of these illusions can be manipulated by the photographer. But i believe seriously in the potential for truth in photography. I could not possibly take photos of people if i felt otherwise because i would not have faith in my ability to tell this person´s story though my means are limited to tell it at all. if i felt i couldn´t do that, i would have nothing else to say with photography. Continuing would be pointless.
Please forgive the length of this post and i hope i did not misunderstand the issues..
Herve, no you never said you hadn´t read my posts, i was reacting to your statement that my posts were the most scathing and i was actually honored that you had read them so carefully. :))
best to all
Kathleen
.
I, like others here was very uncomfortable with these photos being posted, and hoped that this would not somehow compromise the women depicted.
I did see these remarkably powerful photographs soon after they were posted. I viewed them twice in fact, and was very taken with them, as were the Davids. Now that most of the furor has subsided I hope it is safe to comment.
Straightforward, eyes and shoulders front, look into the camera photographs, wether taken by pro photographers, clerks at passport offices, or automated machines can have extraordinary power and truth imbedded in them. The subject is not reacting to a photographers attempt to pull an expression out of them, they are not required to do anything but present themselves to the machine. They are not trying to engage the viewer. They are left to their own thoughts. What results is not just a map of someones face, but a glimpse of their state of mind, and, maybe even a little piece of their soul.
This is something that was understood well by People like Avedon, who certainly knew how to glamourise people if he chose, but set his tricks aside when doing much of his personal work.
It is perhaps hard for some photographers to accept that an automated portrait vending machine may produce portraits that may sometimes “capture the soul” of a person better than they could. I think it is important to bring these kinds of pictures to any serious discussion on image making just to keep us grounded and thinking about what it is that allows a photograph to communicate, and to remind us to try and not always be so clever.
I wish there were a photographic equivelent to “politics and the English language” by George Orwell
Gordon L.
the eyes of individuals in some of these Asian countries express so much of the collective sorrow of their race
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Kat, I know you did not say that, but I just cringed at reading that. Why would their race be collectively sorrowful? What an euro-centric reducing of Asian peoples (there are so many, with myriad diverse cultures). Surely, one would not speak of europeans/americans/occidentals as expressing a collective expression in portraits of them, but asians can be lumped together?….
I am not saying we can’t speak of certain traits you can find in many asian cultures (like curtailing one’s emotions in public, this less in China maybe) , but hell if that shows instantly on portraits, and the “devil” is still in the deatils/nuances, as in so many things.
You talked of 2 different contexts. One where yourself goes towards your subject with empathy. It does create a psychological frame in which much could be expressed, and where your own skill at seizing an emotion is paramount. on top, you will be here later to tell us about it as the photographer.
the context with ID picures is that we simply do not know, and we will never know. Yes, it could show sadness, but what is the sadness for, and is it real (lingering)? that is very subjective. It’s hard for me to say, I always smile…. But my Daddy, we always made fun of his ID portraits, he always looked like a psycopath with that “deer in the headlight” look.
i think the most telling thing about passport photos is that people are looking at a machine.. without human interaction to draw an expression or attitude out of them it could be true that people are at their most introverted.. if not vulnerable, at least alone with themselves and the way the look.
people get scared of portraits because there is something final about them, in so far as we percieve them still a little like paintings.. a likeness which will, or may at least, live beyond us and keep on representing us.. it´s nerve-racking for peole because of this i think.
the ambiguity with these photos is that there is no real way of finding out the pensive thoughts of the subjects without hearing from them directly… we can project onto them the imagined horror they could have been through, and use the context of the text to put US in the mind of why they might look so, even if they were not in that head-space themselves..
so long as there is individual consent to use the photographs from the women, it feels comfortable to talk about them as journalistic or artistic illustrations.
Herve
Gosh, you are right..i should clearly stick to a culture i know and that’s not the Asian one. I was thinking and reacting to your comment about Cambodia and Thailand and recalled a recent conversation with someone else and mentioned it conversationally. Hell, i probably didn’t even quote this person well as it was! But since i know this [.] much about the Asian culture i will leave those observations to the experts.
It wasn’t my intention to say that photos capture a culture’s emotional or psychological patterns. Perhaps they do. I never thought about it. Your gave the example of curtailing one’s emotions in public. Photos taken in Costa Rica and earlier on in the US mainly portray unsmiling people. But that doesn’t mean they were/are sad. Anyway, that wasn’t what i meant about the photos in this essay which was a group of Muslim women who looked infinitely sad to me. And heaven knows i still see their faces in my head. I could practically tick them off right here. David AH was so right in his reaction to them. They make an indelible impression. So, ok, clear on that, yes?
Yes, Herve, i hear what you’re saying about ID photos but when you see a group of them together, gathered under virtually identical circumstances and each to a one looks pained, well, you can conclude that either there was some common physical discomfort affecting the group or else there was something else. And to me, and to the two David’s and to Gordon and to who knows how many others who saw the essay before it was pulled felt it was something else.
GORDON
Well said…you, as a portrait photographer are extremely sensitive to the human face and its infinite range of expressions..nice to know you reacted this strongly as well..
take care, both
kat/
Herve
One more thing..i am working like a maniac on a couple of photo projects and so i probably will not be back to respond if you write. Just want you to know it’s not indifference it’s just that i’m working elsewhere.
best
kat~
Kathleen…
My comments were more general and were not focused on this specific essay or in portrait photography per say.
About portraits:
Many people exhibit some of the symptoms of OCD in their everyday behavior… from not stepping on the cracks of the sidewalk to clicking their clicky pens an odd number of times… I, let’s say, need things to fall into “their place” in my frame before I can press the release. Combining this with the “need” to spot meter at least a few times and focus and refocus (my cameras are all manual), and you can imagine that I’m not shooting too many portraits, right…? So, I haven’t being able (yet) to break through my own constrains and go to the place where you are (and pretty much any good portrait photographer is) and be able to SEE the flitting expressions of emotions on people’s faces while holding a camera in their faces, instantly and intuitively assess those expressions and actually, finally capture them.
My main argument here was against the idea of “pure” PJ-ism. The idea that a “straight out of the camera” picture is somehow a more real representation of reality than a picture which was manipulated (within reason) in order to “express” reality according to the person who actually experienced reality, the photographer.
There are too many—both technical and aesthetical—factors into the making of any picture to say that a single one of them makes-or breaks-the whole thing.
In my mind it always comes down to the intentions of the photographer. And the difference between a picture/essay that “works” and one that doesn’t comes down to the successful (or not) implementation of all of those factors.
Photographs should not be considered innocent transcriptions of the real. They should be treated as complex material objects with the ability to create, articulate and sustain meaning. Photography is a signifying system, which imposes order and creates particular sets of meaning. One of the characteristics of photography is that it appears to have a special relationship with reality. We speak of taking photographs rather than making them, because the marks of their construction are not immediately visible; they have the appearance of having come about as a function of the world itself rather than as carefully fabricated cultural objects. Documentation cannot act to reveal inequalities in social life, for there can be no document that is merely a transcription of reality. Rather, as part of a discursive system, it constructs the reality that it purports to reveal. (Liz Wells)
We need to trust, not the mechanical properties of the camera but the personal integrity of the photographer. The reality revealed by the cameras lens should be regarded as being to some extent a product of the personality, sensitivity or creativity of the photographer. The camera cannot provide the objective facts. (Liz Wells)
“Photographs can lie and liars can use photographs” – I can’t remember who said that, but I think it may have been the late great Philip Jones Griffiths.
“We speak of taking photographs rather than making them…..” Some of us make photographs, snap and make them
Gordon
“It is perhaps hard for some photographers to accept that an automated portrait vending machine may produce portraits that may sometimes “capture the soul” of a person better than they could.”
Cannot agree more on this: I strongly believe (and apply to my way of shooting) that every portrait is basically a self-portrait of the photographer or, as Oscar Wilde better wrote: “Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself”. This could seems extremely far from a documentaristic approach but, on the other hand, also a photojournalistic shot is just a subjective view of something happening and, in this case, the crowd of safety cameras in the streets could be considered the equivalent of photobooths. Actually, it seems to me that the authorial approach is valued and pushed for on Burn also for strictly photojournalistic essays.
a group of them together, gathered under virtually identical circumstances
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But that’s my point, Kat. David P. started a narrative that called for our compassion. And he is the one who put them together, ID pix are not really taken in group (it may be that you think they were taken in the refuge, I think they were taken back home, different countries, years even.
Who knows, since he never explained much as to his process?
We react to the photos because we were told they were trafficked women. Take the same expressions, but no veil, and even a different ethnic background, let’s say caucasian, do you think trafficked. Would you think that no caucasian women can ever have that trafficked, exploited look on their faces?
As another thread showed (black shroude women) and Audrey’s candid comment showed, we do project a lot that comes from us in a photo, much that may not be there. You do it, DAH does it , I do it. And the perception will differ, in the absence of sure facts about the context of the images.
that trafficked, exploited look on their faces?
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To be precise: meaning they are not trafficked, but have those expressions.
Abele
“every portrait is a self portrait”
In some sense that is true. I believe we are looking for a piece of our common humanity when we view or make portraits.
Photographers often consciously seek out the same piece in every person they portray. Arbus’ people always look pathetic. Lartiques people all look whimsical. Karshs people always look plastic and bigger than life. Avedons portraits often show a person with a slight sideways unfocused glance, and the look of someone searching the melancholy section of the memory banks. I watched a video of him doing a sitting once. He asked the sitter a question something like “what would you be doing if you knew you only had a few days to live”. Then he photographed the reaction.
Part of making a deliberate portrait is having the skill to allow the expression you want happen, and be ready to capture it when it does. Unless you are working with a trained actor, you cannnot ask someone to “look sad and thoughtful” and get a genuine expression anymore than you can get a genuine smile by asking someone for a “big smile now”.
Gordon L.
Wow, so much good stuff from you guys..and no time..well, anyway, to Herve:
Herve
Yes, of course, it´s possible that in David P´s edit ID photos of smiling women need not apply. I do see your point but my point, and it´s a simple one really, to me: the fact that they were supposedly trafficked had nothing to do with the sadness i saw. I saw it before i read the text. They could all have been shot standing in a line at the bus stop and my reaction would have been the same. They are Muslim women. That was a clear fact. Indisputable. Trafficked? mmm..who can say for sure but David P? Taken in the same place? Well, unless Muslim women all wear the same shade of pink lip gloss as most of these women did, then i would have to say yes, all taken in the same place. In what country? That i couldn´t say. But..but..apart from all the speculation, were they all sad? To me? yes, indisputably. Great discussion, Herve!
bob-black-running
kathie
Any of you knows about the pictures Marc Garanger took during the Algerian war? I can’t seem to find a link of pictures to show you. Marc Granager was a conscript during the war and had to take ID pictures of Algerian men and women, unveiled suspected of various degrees of support to the resistance…
The only thing I can provide is this link: http://www.noorderlicht.com/eng/fest04/princessehof/garanger/index.html
Typo: the name is Marc Garanger
John
Yes, i think he´s the one i´ve been trying to think of. In the not too distant past i saw photos of Muslim women who were forced to take their veils off for ID purposes during wartime (or immediately after?). I´ve been searching through my books to find it but without success..will check this link to see if it´s the same..thanks sooo much!!
best
kathleen
John,
Checked the link, yes, this has to be the same thing i am remembering..i recall the photographer was under orders of the French government and that the country was Algeria. I can stop beating my head against a wall now (and i can also put all my books away), phew, THANK YOU!!
kat
They are Muslim women. That was a clear fact.
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yes, they are, that was not really where none of us differred. Anyway, I had to think about you this morning, when I saw this young muslim woman, almost stripped naked, looking into the camera. yet, she seemed to put a good face (if shrouded) to her ordeal. Just bearing testimony…. :-)))
dedicated to you, Kat:
http://www.pbase.com/uc/image/112643672
hahaha, Herv..yes, she was putting a brave face, er, brave eyes on her ordeal..an interesting photo indeed..what was the event? left you a comment over there..
like peace, man ;)
kat~
Kat, I mentionned the evnt in the caption: Bay to breakers. Taking down the pix, it was just a little prank.
Herve..
sorry, didn´t know what Bay to Breakers referred to..not being a left-coaster as it were..i liked it! Your pranks are a welcome diversion..long as you stay your always sweet, lovable self :)
best
kat-