Engaged Observers: Documentary Photography Since the Sixties

Exhibition dates: 29th June – 14th November 2010

Many thankx to the The J. Paul Getty Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting.

Leonard Freed (American, 1929-2006)
New York City
1963
Gelatin silver print
24.half-dozen 10 16.4 cm (9 11/16 x 6 vii/16 in.)
© Leonard Freed / Magnum Photos, Inc.
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

W. Eugene Smith (American, 1918 – 1978)
Industrial Waste from the Chisso Chemical Visitor
1972
Gelatin silver print
24.four x 34 cm (9 5/viii x 13 3/viii in.)
Minamata photographs by West. Eugene Smith & Aileen Grand. Smith – © Aileen Smith
H. Christopher Luce. Courtesy of Robert Mann Gallery, New York, New York

In the decades post-obit Globe War II, an independently minded and critically engaged grade of photography began to assemble momentum. Situated between journalism and art, its practitioners created extended photographic essays that delved securely into topics of social concern and presented distinct personal visions of the globe. On view at the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Heart, June 29 – November fourteen, 2010, Engaged Observers: Documentary Photography since the Sixties looks in depth at projects by a selection of the virtually vital photographers who accept contributed to the evolution of this documentary approach. Passionately committed to their subjects, these photographers have captured both meditative and searing images, from the deep south in the ceremonious rights era to the state of war in Iraq in 2006. Their powerful visual reports, often published extensively equally books, explore aspects of life that are sometimes hard and troubling only are worthy of attention.

"This exhibition focuses on the tradition of socially engaged photographic essays since the 1960s," explains Brett Abbott, associate curator of photographs and curator of the exhibition. "Working beyond traditional media outlets, these photographers have authored evocative bodies of work that transcend the realm of traditional photojournalism."

Engaged Observers is structured around suites of photographs from the following projects: "Girl Culture" by Lauren Greenfield, "The Mennonites" by Larry Towell, "Streetwise" by Mary Ellen Mark, "Blackness in White America" by Leonard Freed, "Nicaragua, June 1978 – July 1979" by Susan Meiselas, "Vietnam Inc." by Philip Jones Griffiths, "The Sacrifice" by James Nachtwey, "Migrations: Humanity in Transition" by Sebastião Salgado, and "Minamata" by Westward. Eugene and Aileen One thousand. Smith.

Although one does not always acquaintance manner with photojournalism, where objectivity and neutrality are traditionally valued, aesthetics have been an important consideration for all of the photographers represented in the exhibition. Ane of the strengths of this tradition has been its ability to harness artistic decisions in reporting on the world. Meiselas chose colour flick for her Nicaragua project because she felt it meliorate conveyed the spirit of the revolution as she experienced information technology. Salgado noted that the solemn beauty and so characteristic of his approach is important in conjuring a persistent grace amongst his migrant subjects, allowing him to nowadays them in a dignified way while calling attending to their plight. Nachtwey used tight framing of messy conglomerations of tubes, instruments, and arms in The Sacrifice as a mode of conjuring the atmosphere of controlled chaos that he experienced in trauma centers in Iraq. In this kind of work, discipline and way, message and commitment, are deliberately intertwined.

All of the photographers in this exhibition use a series of images to address conceptual problems. For instance, Freed was concerned with bridging cultural divides to engender back up of basic ceremonious rights, while Griffiths denounced trigger-happy commercialisation; Salgado pointed to the effects of globalisation, while the Smiths addressed the related issue of industrial pollution; Meiselas engaged and countered the fragmented process by which nosotros receive news and understand history, while Towell challenged the meaning of "newsworthy" and explored, equally did Greenfield, how cultural values affect life; Nachtwey plant the human toll of state of war unacceptable, and Marker, the idea of homeless street kids in one of the wealthiest nations in the world.

Many of the photographers have published books to further convey their socially engaged messages. Books allow for a greater depth of reporting than magazine articles since their length tin be tailored to the needs of a particular project. And considering they can exist read in individual, books are conducive to extended contemplation and the slow absorption of ideas, both of which are important to understanding projects that are broad in scope and accept layers of significant that, in many cases, were developed over the class of years. Moreover, they provide photographers authorial command over the presentation of their work. Each artist has the power to decide how pictures are captioned and with what information.

A final department of the exhibition is devoted to tracing the origins of the documentary photography tradition, touching on American Civil War photographs by Alexander Gardner, plow-of-the-century activism by Lewis Hine, Depression-era photography, and photojournalism in pre-World War II picture magazines. This section too looks closely at the formation of Magnum Photos. Founded in 1947 by Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Besson, and several other photographers, Magnum provided a new platform for an independent documentary arroyo to photojournalism and became one of the world'due south most prestigious photographic organisations. Magnum was structured to permit its members to pursue stories of their own choosing, spend as much fourth dimension as they wanted on a particular topic, and be as involved as they desired in the editing, captioning, and publication of their work. The organization was meant to harness commercial assignments equally a base from which to pursue independent piece of work, and the concept has given rise to generations of independent photographers, including many of those in Engaged Observers.

Press release from The J. Paul Getty Museum website [Online] Cited 28/12/2019

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Sharecropper's Family, Hale County, Alabama / Bud Fields and His Family, Hale County, Alabama / Bud Woods and His Family
1936
Gelatin argent impress
19.4 x 24.three cm (7 5/8 x nine 9/16 in.)
© The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Philip Jones Griffiths (Welsh, 1936-2008)
Vietnam
1967
Gelatin silvery impress
21.3 x 31.8 cm (8 3/8 10 12 1/two in.)
© The Philip Jones Griffiths Foundation / Magnum Photos
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Limits of friendship. A Marine introduces a peasant daughter to king-sized filter-tips. Of all the U.South. forces in Vietnam, it was the Marines that approached Borough Action with gusto. From their avalanche of handouts, 1 discovers that, in the month of January1967 alone, they gave away to the Vietnamese 101,535 pounds of food, 4,810 pounds of lather, 14,662 books and magazines, 106 pounds of candy, one,215 toys, and i midwifery kit. In the same calendar month they gave the Vietnamese 530 gratis haircuts.

James Nachtwey (American, born 1948)
The Sacrifice
negative 2006-2007; print 2010
Inkjet impress
111.8 x 983 cm (44 x 387 in.)
© James Nachtwey
James Nachtwey, New York, New York

Sebastião Salgado (Brazilian, built-in 1944)
Church building Gate Station, Western Railroad Line, Bombay, Republic of india
negative 1995; print 2009
Gelatin silver print
34.3 x 51.4 cm (xiii 1/2 x xx 1/4 in.)
© Sebastião Salgado
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Photographic essays

Leonard Freed

BLACK IN WHITE AMERICA

"Photography shows the connection between things, how they relate. Photography is not entertaining, this is non decoration, this is non advertising. Photographing is an emotional matter, a svelte matter. Photography allows me to wander with a purpose."

Leonard Freed (American, 1923-2006), interview in Worldview, 2007

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While working in Germany in 1962, photographer Leonard Freed happened to notice a black American soldier guarding the dissever betwixt Eastward and West every bit the Berlin Wall was beingness erected. It was not the partition between the forces of Communism and Capitalism that captured Freed'due south imagination, even so. Instead, he was haunted past the idea of a man standing in defence of a country in which his own rights were in question. The experience ignited the young photographer'southward interest in the American civil rights motion raging on the other side of the globe. In June 1963 Freed headed back to the United States to embark on a multiyear documentary project, published in about 1968 equally Black in White America, that would become the signature work of his career.

The Black in White America series is a kind of visual diary with a moralising purpose. Information technology is highly personal and socially engaged with an implicit goal of effecting alter through communication. While Freed made pictures of important events in the civil rights struggle, including the 1963 March on Washington, he quickly constitute that his interests lay non in recording the progress of the civil rights movement per se only in exploring the diverse, everyday lives of a customs that had been marginalised for so long. Penetrating the fabric of daily existence, his work portrays the common humanity of a people persevering in unjust circumstances. His sensitive and compassionate arroyo sought not to stimulate outrage but to foster agreement and bridge cultural divides as a means of transcending racial antipathy.

Lauren Greenfield

FAST FORWARD and Daughter CULTURE

"Girl Civilisation has been my journey as a photographer, as an observer of civilization, as part of the media, as a media critic, as a adult female, every bit a daughter… I was… thinking about my chronic teenage dieting, my gravitation toward skilful-looking and thin friends for as long equally I can remember, and the importance of clothes and status symbols in the highly materialistic, epitome-oriented Los Angeles milieu in which I grew up."

Lauren Greenfield (American, born 1966), Girl Culture, 2002

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Lensman and documentary filmmaker Lauren Greenfield has built her reputation as a chronicler of mainstream American culture. In 2002 she published a photographic project, Girl Civilization, that delves into the ways consumer society affects the lives of women in America. Of key business concern to Greenfield was the exhibitionist tendencies of gimmicky American femininity. Visiting girls of all ages at home, in doctors' offices, and out with friends,

Greenfield examined personal issues of public outcome, providing an intense and intimate exploration of girls' relationships to their bodies and the effects of popular civilisation on self-image.

Many of her pictures and accompanying interviews focus on what she refers to as "torso projects," the daily grooming rituals undertaken in an effort to express identity through appearance. Others look at the social and consumerist influences from which these young women have their cues likewise every bit the difficulty of living up to such expectations.

Girl Civilisation grew out of an earlier written report, Fast Forrad, that critically surveyed what life is similar for children growing up in Los Angeles. The work revolves around her perception of an early loss of innocence amidst her young subjects and traces Hollywood's part every bit a homogenising strength in their lives.

Greenfield's lens becomes a mirror in which to reverberate upon ourselves. Together Fast Forrard and Girl Culture sensitively explore how civilization leaves its imprint on individuals.

Philip Jones Griffiths

VIETNAM INC.

"The "bang-bang" aspect of any war is the least likely to offering any caption of the underlying causes. My task is to find the why, so information technology's the actions surrounding the battlefields that present the best clues."

Philip Jones Griffiths (Welsh, 1936-2008), Aperture, bound 2008

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A lifelong desire to leave the world a better identify drove Philip Jones Griffiths, whose work is marked past a fiercely contained arroyo, deep appointment with his subjects, and a skeptical view of authority. Vietnam Inc., the photographer's critical 1971 business relationship of America's armed intervention in Southeast Asia, is one of the most detailed photographic stories of a war published by a unmarried photographer. The project's exploration of the why, and not but the what, behind the war's failures fabricated it a particularly engaging and aggressive work of advocacy journalism and a model to which many photographers notwithstanding aspire.

Griffiths'southward independent arroyo is remarkable because of its sensitivity to the people of Vietnam and its eschewing of a Western bespeak of view. In Vietnam Inc. there are few photographs documenting American troops and the might of their military prowess. Instead, his primary focus was on Vietnamese civilians and a culture in crunch. His book put the conflict in the context of Vietnam's history and culture, showing the ways in which the Backer values that America promoted in its efforts to contain the spread of Communism were out of sync with Vietnam's predominantly communal and agrarian way of life.

Vietnam, for Griffiths, became a "goldfish bowl where the values of Americans and Vietnamese can be observed, studied, and, because of their contrasting nature, more than hands appraised." And in Griffiths's appraisal, it was America's "misplaced conviction in the universal goodness" of its own values that would ultimately pb to an imperialist failure and, more than importantly, the unjust devastation of a people.

Mary Ellen Mark

STREETWISE

"1 of the reasons we chose Seattle was because it is known equally "America'south about livable city." Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York were well known for their street kids. By choosing America's platonic metropolis we were making the indicate "If street kids exist in a city like Seattle and so they tin be found everywhere in America, and we are therefore facing a major social problem of runaways in this land.""

Mary Ellen Mark (American, 1940-2015), Streetwise, 1988

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Mary Ellen Mark has reported on the country of our social surround for more than than four decades. Far removed from the immediacy of war and disharmonize, her work plumbs the basic commonality of human experience.

In 1983 Marker traveled to Seattle to practise an article for Life magazine on delinquent children. Focusing on a set of streets in the city's downtown expanse, she began building a sense of trust with the community of runaways and learning about their survival methods. Her pictures showed teenagers who managed to survive on the tough streets through petty crime, prostitution, foraging in dumpsters, and panhandling. She presented the abandoned buildings and underpasses they inhabited and the bonds they congenital with one some other in the absenteeism of family. Marker's compositions are hitting and uncomfortable, emphasising her subjects' youth while capturing them engaged in activities beyond their years.

Following publication of an article in Life, she continued to develop the story every bit both a documentary flick and nonetheless photographic project with her husband, filmmaker Martin Bong, and reporter Cheryl McCall. The film, titled Streetwise, was released the following year and was nominated for an University Accolade. Marking published her still photographs from the project in a book of the same title in 1988.

The Streetwise project provided dimension to an of import issue of its day. In giving specific shape, individuality, and visibility to the problem of runaway children, it called for greater social and political delivery to addressing America's epidemic of cleaved families.

Susan Meiselas

NICARAGUA, JUNE 1978 – JULY 1979

"We all cross histories, and the ones that we cross shape united states of america as much as we shape them."

Susan Meiselas (American, born 1948), in conversation with the curator, 2010

.
In 1978 Magnum lensman Susan Meiselas traveled to Nicaragua. Tensions were high following the assassination of Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, the editor of an opposition paper disquisitional of the repressive, hard-line government. Meiselas witnessed the eruption of a full-scale revolution in Baronial of that year. Aware that a momentous process was taking place, she stayed to record its unfolding, including the celebration of the revolutionaries' victory in the central plaza of Managua in July 1979.

Meiselas was taken by the bravery of those who were willing to risk their lives against the dictatorship for the promise of a improve future, and she took pains to photograph the activity from the perspective of those involved in it. The record of her movements effectually the country formed a narrative about the progress of their insurrection. She made a decision, which at the fourth dimension was still considered somewhat unusual in serious war reportage, to record the revolution on colour film, seeing information technology as a more appropriate medium for capturing the vibrancy and optimism of the resistance.

The photographer's compelling pictures were picked up by major newspapers and magazines around the earth, giving individual images a public life, but one that was beyond her immediate control with regard to captioning and that was fragmented from the context of her larger body of pictures. In collecting lxx-one of her photo-graphs into a volume, first published in 1981 every bit Nicaragua, June 1978 – July 1979, Meiselas reasserted the narrative of the revolution every bit she experienced information technology and gave greater permanence and coherence to her documentary endeavour.

James Nachtwey

THE SACRIFICE

"For me, the forcefulness of photography lies in its ability to evoke a sense of humanity. If war is an attempt to negate humanity, then photography can be perceived every bit the opposite of state of war. And if it is used well, it can exist a powerful ingredient in the antitoxin to war."

James Nachtwey (American, built-in 1948), from the film The War Photographer, 2001

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For nearly thirty years James Nachtwey has defended himself to delivering an antiwar message past documenting those around the world affected by conflict. Traveling with emergency medical units in Iraq in 2006, the photographer began a photo essay, The Cede, that documents the struggle to save and rebuild lives. The series depicts the helicopter transfers from boxing sites to treatment centers, the emergency rooms where lives hang in the remainder, and the difficult process of recovery.

In apprehension of showing the piece of work, Nachtwey created a awe-inspiring installation print, consisting of sixty individual trauma-center images, tightly framed and digitally collaged into a grid. The work stands as a grim reminder of the human costs of war. The object's sheer size, in which i picture gives manner to the adjacent in a seemingly countless stream of torn flesh, metal instruments, snaking tubes, and bloodied hands, finer conveys a sense of the controlled chaos that permeates these medical centers as well as the overwhelming volume of casualties flowing through the medics' easily on a daily basis.

While it may exist easy to contemplate and even back up war in abstruse, strategic terms, it is difficult to confront Nachtwey'due south portrayal of its inevitable results. In its ambitious calibration, his intentionally unsettling piece of work demands that nosotros reconcile the goals and achievements of armed disharmonize with its homo costs, that we be prepared to admit in particular visual terms the sacrifice information technology entails and the valiant piece of work of those who practice their best to mend its path of devastation.

Sebastião Salgado

MIGRATIONS: HUMANITY IN TRANSITION

"My promise is that, as individuals, as groups, as societies, we can pause and reflect on the human condition at the turn of the millennium. Can we claim "compassion fatigue" when we show no sign of consumption fatigue?"

Sebastião Salgado (Brazilian, born 1944), Migrations, 2000

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Trained in economic science before taking upward photography, Sebastião Salgado has used his camera to raise awareness of the world's economic disparities and provoke word about the state of our international social environment. Betwixt 1994 and 1999 Salgado pursued an enormous project to certificate migrant populations effectually the world. Published in 2000 equally Migrations: Humanity in Transition, this epic work of twentieth-century photojournalism documents people across forty-three countries who accept been uprooted by globalisation, persecution, or war. The pictures in this exhibition stand for several themes in Salgado's written report, including the effects of population surges in cities of developing countries, the conditions of refugees fleeing war in Africa, and the process of migration from Latin America to the United States.

Salgado's work is marked by a heightened attention to aesthetic grace that attempts to endow his subjects with dignity even every bit information technology communicates the discomfort of their circumstances. His photographs are synthetic with careful attention to dramatic lighting, elegant contours, and hitting visual impact. Ultimately, Salgado sees himself every bit a storyteller and a communicator, a bridge between the fortunate and the unfortunate, the developed and the undeveloped, the stable and the uprooted. Portrayed lyrically and sensitively, his subjects are transformed into metaphors for complex inequities that exist in the globe – issues that must be recognised and best-selling before they can exist addressed.

W. Eugene Smith and Aileen Thou. Smith

MINAMATA

"[Pollution] is endmost more tightly upon united states each mean solar day… Later reflecting on the rights and wrongs of the state of affairs in Minamata, we hope through this volume to raise our small voices of words and photographs in a alarm to the globe. To cause sensation is our only force."

W. Eugene Smith (American, 1918-1978) and Aileen M. Smith (American, born 1950), Minamata, 1975

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In 1971 W. Eugene Smith, a major figure in the history of socially concerned photography, and his wife, Aileen G. Smith, were told of a controversy over industrial pollution taking place in the small Japanese fishing village of Minamata. First in the 1950s, thousands of people in the area were severely affected by mercury poisoning, brought about by eating fish contaminated with chemical waste material dumped in the bay past the Chisso Corporation. Victims were afflicted with brain damage, paralysis, and convulsions. The disquiet, which came to be known as Minamata Disease, is non reversible.

When the Smiths arrived in Minamata, lawsuits had already begun, and the couple set out to document the progress of the claims. They spent 3 years on the project, calling attention to the victims' crusade. Aileen acted as an equal collaborator, making pictures and writing texts with Westward. Eugene. The work resulted in numerous magazine publications, exhibitions, and a coauthored book, Minamata, published in 1975.

The Smiths' written report records the form of the trial through the court'southward ruling in favour of the plaintiffs in 1973. The essay relates the importance of the sea and fishing to the town'due south civilisation, reports on the company's drainage pipes into the sea, chronicles the lives transformed by the affliction, and depicts the demonstrations that took place in opposition to Chisso. As a tale of the dangers of industrial pollution, the projection gained traction within the political temper of the 1970s, when the environmental movement was taking off.

Larry Towell

THE MENNONITES

"When a Mennonite loses his country, a bit of his human nobility is forfeited; so is his financial solvency. He becomes a migrant worker, an exile who will spend the rest of his life drifting amidst fruit trees and vegetable vines, dreaming of owning his own farm some day. But for these who struggle with God at the end of a hoe, the refuge of land, Church, and customs may be at to the lowest degree a generation away."

Larry Towell (Canadian, born 1953), The Mennonites, 2000

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Wary of the media'south commitment to speed, photographer Larry Towell insists on the integrity of extended-coverage reporting. In 1989 he came into contact with members of a Mennonite community near his dwelling house in Canada. The Sometime Colony Mennonites are a nonconformist Protestant sect related to the Amish that originated in Europe in the 1500s.

Over the centuries, they have migrated between countries to preserve their way of life, living in colonies where faith and tradition are intertwined and modernistic amenities, such as cars, safe tires, and electricity, are not welcome.

The Mennonites Towell befriended had migrated to Canada from colonies in Mexico in search of seasonal work. Due to shrinking water tables in Mexico, the furnishings of international trade, and a ascension population in the colonies, many Mennonites take constitute themselves landless and economically marginalised, forced to compromise their beliefs in order to survive. Towell was eventually invited to join them in their treks back to Mexico for the winter. With his unique and intimate access, he spent the next 10 years photographing their activities, capturing their struggle to preserve a lifestyle incongruent with the larger world on which they have become interdependent.

Towell'southward work documented the Mennonites' way of life for the historical record and inspires greater understanding today for a group whose attempts to embrace life could be easily overlooked. In spending a decade on a subject that would be of only passing interest to mainstream media, he asserts a form of visual reporting in which reflection takes precedence over profitability and immediacy.

Text from the J. Paul Getty Museum

Sebastião Salgado (Brazilian, built-in 1944)
U.Southward. – Mexico Edge, desert of San Ysidro, California
Negative 1997; impress 2009
Gelatin silver impress
34.four 10 51.4 cm (13 9/xvi x twenty i/4 in.)
© Sebastião Salgado
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Mary Ellen Mark (American, 1940-2015)
Lillie with Her Rag Doll, Seattle
1983
Gelatin silver print
22.half dozen ten 34 cm (8 7/8 x 13 three/viii in.)
© Mary Ellen Mark
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Mary Ellen Marking (American, 1940-2015)
"Rat" and Mike with a Gun, Seattle
1983
Gelatin silver impress
22.8 x 34.ii cm (nine x xiii seven/16 in.)
© Mary Ellen Marker
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Lauren Greenfield (American, b. 1966)
Sheena tries on wearing apparel with Bister, 15, in a department store dressing room, San Jose, California
Negative 1999; print 2002
Dye destruction print
32.5 x 49.i cm (12 13/16 x 19 5/sixteen in.)
© Lauren Greenfield/Establish
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Lauren Greenfield (American, b. 1966)
Erin, 24, is blind-weighed at an eating-disorder clinic, Kokosnoot Creek, Florida. She has asked to mountain the calibration backward so every bit not to see her weight gain
Negative 2001; impress 2002
Dye destruction print
32.5 x 49.ane cm (12 13/xvi 10 19 5/16 in.)
© Lauren Greenfield/INSTITUTE
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

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