Chicago, social displacement, Urban

ART SHAY: IN YOUR FACE LEGEND

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Nelson Algren at his Chicago home site as it is being

wrecked for a new expressway, by Art Shay. 1957

INTRODUCTION BY BRUCE BERMAN

Here is a great interview by Mike Thomas, for Chicago Magazine, with Art Shay, the great Chicago photographer of the 1950s, 60, 70s, 80s, 90s and, yes, even the 2000s. He was relentless, gritty, no nonsense, a true artist (because he didn’t consider himself to be one). I used to “soup” his film deep in the bowels of Astra Photo Lab, at 6 E. Lake Street, in 1969. I didn’t know he was even an influence until 40 years later. His main lesson, by example, was: “…keep shooting, always keep shooting.”
Mr. Shay passed on April 28, 2018. There will never be another Art Shay. He was one of a kind, in the manner of Weegee.
READ HERE: https://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/April-2018/Legendary-Photographer-Art-Shay-Tells-His-Remarkable-Story/

 

 

 Art Shay by Art Shat

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Children, Culture, Documentary Photography, Labor, Photography That Matters, social displacement, Survivors, Texas, The Great Depression, The Human Condition

MIGRANT FATHER

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Migrant Father, June 1938, by Dorothea Lange

Dorothea Lange’s extended caption:

Old time professional migratory laborer camping on the outskirts of Perryton; Texas at opening of wheat harvest. With his wife and growing family; he has been on the road since marriage; thirteen years ago. Migrations include ranch land in Texas; cotton and wheat in Texas; cotton and timber in New Mexico; peas and potatoes in Idaho; wheat in Colorado; hops and apples in Yakima Valley; Washington; cotton in Arizona. He wants to buy a little place in Idaho

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America, California, Culture, Displaced Communities, Documentary Photography, Foreclosure, FSA, social displacement, Texas, The Great Depression

NO NET AMERICA

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Migrant family on highway, California, 1937

Photograph by Dorothea Lange

Extended Caption: California at Last: Example of self-resettlement in California. Oklahoma farm family on highway between Blythe and Indio. Forced by the drought of 1936 to abandon their farm, they set out with their children to drive to California. Picking cotton in Arizona for a day or two at a time gave them enough for food and gas to continue. On this day, they were within a day’s travel of their destination, Bakersfield, California. Their car had broken down en route and was abandoned.

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America, California, Culture, Displaced Communities, Documentary Photography, FSA, History, Journeys, Roadside Attractions, social displacement, The Great Depression

LANGE AND HER TRANSCRIBED TEXT

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Dorothea Lange and the Walkers “Toward Los Angeles.”California,

March 1937 by Dorothea Lange for FSA

 “Next Time Try The Train– Relax.”  

Lange captioned this with the walkers own words: “Well– give me the fare and I will, buddy.  We ain’t walkin’ for our health…”

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Art, Celebration, Displaced Communities, Documentary Photography, El Paso, Innovation, Photography That Matters, social displacement

PRE ART LANDSCAPE

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Pre Art Landscape, El Paso, Texas, August 2015
Pre Art Landscape, El Paso, Texas, August 2015

 

The Pre Art Landscape is one in which there are images only attractive to some’s intellect that titillates the intellect of others who are over educated, over intellectualized, clean from lack of experience with the world that they choose to not touch and where, through their lack of desire to know a world around them other than the one aforementioned, allows them to revere and praise that which is without interest to anyone but them and their ilk.

So here is an image from my Guggenheim Fellowship submission. I created this less than fifteen minutes ago by walking out the back door of my slum loft (yes there are still some around that the yuppies and Julias haven’t occupied and, therefore, chased out those who were living there, not for some feeble concept of what is cool, but because, previously, they could afford the rent if they were willing to put up with the inconveniences and degradations of everything that the word “slum” implies).

If I hadn’t written this piece I very well may have earned a Guggenheim.

I coulda been a contenda…instead of -let’s face it- a bum…which is a what I am…*

I couldn’t resist the rant.

I suspect that’s what has saved my heart’s soul from an early death.

 

*Thank you Budd Schullberg (http://bit.ly/1KetpPl)

 

 

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African-American, America, Displaced Communities, Documentary Photography, Funklands, Life, Photography That Matters, Photojournalism, social displacement, Street Photography, The Americas, The Human Condition

BRIDGE TO SOMEWHERE

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Bridge to Somewhere, El Paso, Texas. ©2015 Bruce Berman
Bridge to Somewhere, El Paso, Texas. ©2015 Bruce Berman
Text and Words by Bruce Berman

 

The meteorologists call this a “High Pressure system being pushed out by a Low Pressure system.”

Photographers will admit “every once in a while things come together and you get a lucky.”

What do I call it? What does one get for being out there, every evening and every day, always with your “axe (camera)at the ready, often coming home with nothing but the pleasure of having been out there trying?”

The funny thing is, as usual, I was in a part for town I’d never been in before (there are few left). It is a very unusual ‘hood for El Paso. In another city one would call it the “ghetto.” Here, no one thinks there is a ghetto. Being a predominantly latino city (82%), if you have a neighborhood that is lower income, the natural thing is to call it a barrio. This neighborhood was definitely “low income,” and of the three people I conversed with, two had been drinking alcohol to the point of inebriation. It is a mostly Black neighborhood, unusual in El Paso that is only 4% African-American.

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Africa, Asia, Children, Conflict, Displaced Communities, Documentary Photography, Life, Mexico, Middle East, Photography That Matters, Photojournalism, social displacement, South America, Street Photography, Sub Continent, Survivors, The Americas, The Economy, The Human Condition

Susan Meiselas on The Engaged Photographer

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Editor’s note: Susan Meiselas, Magnum Photographer and long time great documentarian, discusses documentary photography, motivations, uses, intentions and hopes for the work’s impact on subjects and society.

This project, funded by the Open Society Foundations (Meiselas Co-Curated the project’s exhibition), shows the work of some of the world’s best contemporary photographers working in this discipline.

 

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Africa, Art, Children, Conflict, Documentary Photography, Middle East, News, Photography That Matters, Photojournalism, social displacement, South America, The Americas, The Human Condition

Ami Vitale; Beauty, Power, Life

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Hungary Baths by Amy Vitale©2011

From Ami Vitale’s website (http://www.amivitale.com):

Ami Vitale’s journey as a photojournalist has taken her to more than 75 countries. She has witnessed civil unrest, poverty, destruction of life, and unspeakable violence. But she has also experienced surreal beauty and the enduring power of the human spirit, and she is committed to highlighting the surprising and subtle similarities between cultures. Her photographs have been

exhibited around the world in museums and galleries and published in international magazines including National Geographic, Adventure, Geo,  Newsweek, Time, Smithsonian. Her work has garnered multiple awards from prestigious organizations including World Press Photos, the Lowell Thomas Award for Travel Journalism, Lucie awards, the Daniel Pearl Award for Outstanding Reporting, and the Magazine Photographer of the Year award,  among many others.

Now based in Montana, Vitale is a contract photographer with National Geographic magazine and frequently gives workshops throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. She is also making a documentary film on migration in Bangladesh and writing a book about the stories behind the images.

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Conflict, Documentary Photography, Middle East, Photography That Matters, social displacement, The Human Condition, War, Women

Andrea Bruce Shoots You In The Heart

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Ingushetia by Andrea Bruce

Andrea Bruce is a passionate, stylish, skilled documentary photography who’s images -in the best traditions of still photography- sear your soul and drive their point through your heart, restoring it instead of terminating it. She is the new breed of documentary photographer that blends all the skills of good journalism with all the skills of great graphic image-making and produces a coctail that is nothing less than photo alchemy.

Take a look: http://www.andreabruce.com

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Conflict, Documentary Photography, Photography That Matters, social displacement

Ashley Gilbertson: Shrines and Conflicts

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Contact Sheet of Ashley Gilbertson’s Conflict Photography

“He has a very good news sense and for me that’s really essential,”

says Cecilia Bohan, foreign picture editor for The New York Times.

“I need them [her photographers] to be my eyes and ears on the ground.”

Ashley Gilbertson is a VII photographer and one of the strongest Conflict Photographers working today. His recent work, done far from the battlefield but in the bedrooms of fallen soldiers, is one of the strongest testaments to the outright sadness about Loss that War induces, that this editor has ever seen.

For a sample of Mr. Gilbertson’s work:

  1. For a personal website:SEE: http://www.ashleygilbertson.com/index.php
  2. A piece  from 2004 in Photo District News, SEE: http://www.ashleygilbertson.com/index.php
  3. For The Shrine Down The Hall, SEE:  http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/03/21/magazine/20100321-soliders-bedrooms-slideshow.html?hp
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Documentary Photography, Photography That Matters, social displacement, The Human Condition

Dhiraj Singh: Video Biographer

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[pro-player]https://documentaryshooters.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/my-name-is-dechen.flv[/pro-player]

“My name is Dechen.”

Watch this touching video done by Dhiraj Singh.

He did an interesting thing: A Video Biograph.

In a way, all Visual Journalists who do stories on people, are doing “biography,” but with the addition of audio, where the subject can speak for themselves (edited, of course), where the image-maker can animate the images and drive the viewer’s emotions, the subject of the story becomes more “alive,” the depth is ratcheted up, and, potentially, the medium is beginning to resolve the age old struggle of photojournalism: Who’s viewpoint is this about? The subject’s or the photographer’s?

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Documentary Photography, Photography That Matters, social displacement, Sub Continent, The Human Condition, War

Dhiraj Singh: The (New) Eyes Of India

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From “Six Feet Under,” ©2009Dhiraj Singh

For more work by Dhiraj Singh, SEE: http://www.dhirajsingh.com/01.htm

Dhiraj Singh is a Photojournalist who lives in Mumbai, India. His work has been published in numerous international magazines and online journals, including Newsweek, Vanity Fair, msnbc.com, The Wall Street Journal, L’Expresso, and, many others. He has won numerous awards (see his “bio,” on his site, above) and participated in many exhibitions. His pictures of the Mumbai terror attacks in 2008 were part of the prestigious group exhibition titled, ‘Bearing Witness’ held in Mumbai in 2009.

Documentaryshooters is honored to have permission to publish Mr. Singh’s work. We feel he has the insights and skills to show India as it is, depicting its greatness and its struggles, its deep and ancient soul as well as its modern and energetic heart. He, as no other photographer has, since, the great Raghu Rai’s seminal work of the 1970’s, ’80’s and 90’s, not only shows India and the sub continent, he makes us feel it.

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Documentary Photography, Photography That Matters, social displacement, The Human Condition

Vote

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BruceDavidson_

“Vote,” Selma Voting Rights March, 1965

©Bruce Davidson

Sometimes we forget that the “Big Work,” the work that one becomes known for making isn’t all there is.

Bruce Davidson went south, from Chicago, on  instinct.

The world was shaking and he felt the vibe.

The time was now: Civil Rights.

Real change.

Without assignment or specific destination he “nailed it,” and was able to work on the edges of the news, tell the story from a personal and deeply intimate viewpoint.

This image, for me, is one his best. Beautiful composition. Beatiful moment. Beautiful storyline. Iconic and packed with all the elements that make it a novel unto itself,  if this was the only photography that existed from the era it was shot in, it would, I think, be enough to tell the story of the struggle.

One word and one image: sometimes it’s enough: Vote.

For More on Bruce Davidson: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Davidson_(photographer)

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Africa, Documentary Photography, Middle East, social displacement

Shawn Baldwin Feels Egypt

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Man selling popcorn at a moulid, Tanta, Egypt, ©Shawn Baldwin

GO TO: http://www.shawnbaldwin.com/

Shawn Baldwin’s photographs of Egypt are lyrical, soft, sometimes tough, nuanced and, mostly, an eye that sees with the heart and feels with the intellect.

This is the kind of documentary that lets its viewers see as if they were there (although you’d have to be looking as hard as he is and putting in your time to get these beautifully done images).

In the end, because these are not screaming and specific, this work let’s us know a place and people without prejudice.

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