Robert Gumpert 15 May 2012

Robert Gumpert 02 April 2012

Since Pete Brooke at Prison Photography recommended taking a look at Tony Fouhse photography, I have been following his work on two amazing long term projects: “USER” and “Live Through This”.

Today on /drool he announced a new project with a few thoughts on why he choose “Nothing” as the subject. The pulled quote opening up this post is from those thoughts and so perfectly said what I’ve been feeling for some time that I had to pass it along.

Robert Gumpert 18 March 2012

It has been more than 20 years since I was privileged enough to be a foreign correspondent, as a photographer. I did not know any of these correspondents. I certainly benefited from the skill, humanity and insights of Colvin and Shadid. I emailed a friend wondering about the the profession, the state it is in, in these times of cutbacks, freebees, jingoism journalism and the rise of amateurs. He replied with the following moving piece on Ms Colvin. With Phillip’s permission I am sharing it.

Robert Gumpert 28 February 2012

Phiilip Wearne 26 February 2012

“The Obits here in Britain have got it about right for Marie: generous, very friendly, madly courageous. The friend who described her as the child that never grew up — in the nicest possible way — had it about right. You know the traits: no fear, intense excitement (even at the prospect of doing the same story again and again — no where more so than the Middle East, her patch), the love of a party — all the key characteristics of an eight year old. Years ago in his Private Eye obit of Paul Foot, Francis Wheen described him handing in what would be his last copy at the Eye. “We’ve really got them this time!” Paul swore, waving his walking stick as he walked out of the front door one last time. That child-like optimism and belief that allowed them to be convinced that every story they filed would bring a government down, make a tyrant repent, stop the killing. Dream on Paul. Dream on Marie. Dream more as you always said Paul in your latter years. Shame on the rest of us for shedding such belief.
 
So it seems it was the shoes – how appropriate. She loved her shoes. The instruction to move came, and she and Remi the photographer went out into the hall where in best Islamic fashion their shoes had been deposited before entering the rooms of the house. Whoosh. You have milliseconds to take cover when you hear it, no time left at all if it lands within yards. And this one did. Targetted to do exactly what it did — kill the messengers and you one of the best of them. You knew better than anyone if you go on rolling the dice, time after time for a quarter of a century, one day sooner or later the dice roll off the board. Especially those makeshift boards you play on without a table — in a basement if you’re lucky – under bombardment.
 
The shoes. Its always the shoes. Earthquakes, bomb-blasts, volcanoes, the shoes are what those left alive, if not standing, always lose first. How fitting. Dead man, dead woman not walking — the last thing you need are shoes if you’re not going to stand again. “I even had my shoes — no one had their shoes!” Florence Rogers said to me as she pondered watching five people on the other side of her desk in her office in the Alfred P Murrah building in Oklahoma City disappear in front of her to leave her sitting on the edge of what was now a six-storey drop. After watching your boots fall off your feet escaping from Chechnya over the snow of the Caucasus Mountains into Georgia, losing your shoes running from the grenade blast that cost you an eye in Sri Lanka, you’d want your shoes Marie.
 
Glad that the two major Guardian obits paid full tribute to her superwoman efforts in Dili in 1999. When you can shame the UN into at least not completely abandoning nearly 2,000 civilians sheltering in your compound from one of the most savage set of death squad thugs Asia has ever seen you are something and someone very special when you most needed to be. I have no doubt that the Timorese leadership that somehow, someway found out where you were staying in NY Marie when you finally got out having undoubtably helped saved hundreds of lives (the Alquonquin wasn’t it, where else would it be?) and delivered bottles of the ingredients needed to mix the vodka martinis you said you were dying for (quite literally almost) in that compound, will now find some way to commemorate a hell of a good fight.
 
We will too. We’ll raise a  vodka martini — with and olive or two – at the bar of the Frontline Club where another photo of another member killed on the job will join the ten or eleven is it now on the wall above our heads. Or better still perhaps in the bar of the yacht club at Oyster Bay on Long Island, your long ago home where next month the boats will go back in the water. This summer you were going to sail the Atlantic. Set course for the north end of Long Island. Your vodka martini — or three — will be quayside.”

]]> http://robertgumpert.com/2012/02/a-death/feed/ 0 http://robertgumpert.com/2011/11/at-long-last/ http://robertgumpert.com/2011/11/at-long-last/#comments Fri, 18 Nov 2011 18:50:57 +0000 admin http://robertgumpert.com/?p=910 I have never understood that a corporation is a person. Don’t misunderstand me here, I understand the why: to give corporations power and insulate the actual persons behind the curtain from legal challenges for the deeds of their alter egos, but still it seems more than a bit strange. I believe it undermines social and political relationships, weakens “family” values on all levels from the nuclear family to the family that is the nation and beyond to the world we live in.

Well finally, in part due to the Occupy folks and the way they have moved the question, “is there no shame in the 1%”, Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL) has introduced an amendment that would ban corporate money in politics and end corporate personhood once and for all and we should all support him in actions on this.

You can read about the amendment at the above link to Think Progress. Read the amendment here.

(D-FL) Rep. Ted Deutch’s office can be found here. Send him a note of support and while you’re at it, copy the note to Nancy Pelosi, former Speaker of the House.

Robert Gumpert 18 November 2011

]]> http://robertgumpert.com/2011/11/at-long-last/feed/ 0 http://robertgumpert.com/2011/10/we-are-all-monkeys-now/ http://robertgumpert.com/2011/10/we-are-all-monkeys-now/#comments Wed, 26 Oct 2011 17:21:52 +0000 admin http://robertgumpert.com/?p=884 Most of us have heard the adage that, if enough monkeys were given enough time and enough typewriters, a Shakespearean play would come into being. I have no idea if this is statically possible or not, but many years ago a cheeky photo editor of the weekend magazine of the London Telegraph paper group thought he would try out a related question. If you gave a monkey a camera, enough film, time, and rewards, could a cover shot be produced? Would anyone be able to tell it wasn’t taken by one of London’s great photojournalists?

And so the photo editor arranged with the London Zoo a setup: for a reward, the caged monkeys snapped portraits of the humans watching them. The day’s take was edited and one image picked for the cover; it looked very much like what most of us photojournalists would have produced on a similar assignment.

Today’s digital cameras have brought new life to still photography. It seems everyone now is taking a photo with their camera. These cameras have given one and all the power to produce technically professional quality images even with their cell phones. Through social media, millions of images taken by millions of people in millions of places are shared. And share they do, as the big “photo agencies” and publications find an image that suits their needs from anyplace and any circumstance. These photo editors have adopted the monkey and typewriter model for image making, with millions of low cost and technically good images at their fingertips. Being able to cover the story with a camera as a journalist, and using exposure and focus to help tell that story, don’t seem that important anymore in a society that values form over content.

Why am I thinking of this now, after all it isn’t exactly new news? In the last few days a couple of news items have crossed my desktop reminding me of the story of monkeys, magazine covers, of replacement, quality and value.

A few days ago my friend, the archivist Lincoln Cushing referred me to the new Lytro camera. This is a true point and shoot camera: take the photo, upload it, and use a computer to focus anywhere in the frame, whenever you want, as many different times as you want. What a gift this is; not only does it mean that the photographer (as the reporter on the scene) no longer needs to think about where the important elements of a story are, but what the photographer thinks no longer matters. The person at the desk can decide for any reason that THE story is better told with a different focus point. Still, though, the image is at least taken by someone at the scene and selected by an editor at the publication.

As it happens, around the same time as the monkey cover came out, I was talking to the same photo editor about screen grabs from video. In those days screen grabs were really crap images; grainy, out of focus, unusable except in the most extreme cases. But the photo editor foresaw the day that all images for the paper would be screen grabs from “footage” shot either by scribblers using small video cameras (now phones), or by some sort of CCTV network. No need for cranky, temperamental photographers and agents who thought they should be paid for their expertise. The photo editor would just view the material and grab whatever fit best.

Then in a 24 October 2011 post John Nack wrote that “Adobe engineers & University of Washington researchers are collaborating on a method of automatically finding the best candid shots in a video clip.”

With screen grabs of Google Maps now art, and artists arguing that their screen grabs of the exact same Google Map frame are somehow different than another’s grab perhaps a new version of the monkey photographer’s cover can be done using the Adobe photo editing software. Will anyone notice the difference?

Robert Gumpert 26 October 2011

]]> http://robertgumpert.com/2011/10/we-are-all-monkeys-now/feed/ 0 http://robertgumpert.com/2011/10/on-the-road-with-prison-photography/ http://robertgumpert.com/2011/10/on-the-road-with-prison-photography/#comments Mon, 17 Oct 2011 19:31:48 +0000 admin http://robertgumpert.com/?p=871 Many of you are familiar with my work because of Pete Brook and his Prison Photography blog.

Pete is now traveling the US interviewing and recording photographers, activists and others involved in issues of photography and incarceration.

Pete is not only posting short edited interviews but full on audio. So far there are 5, including one with your’s truly.

17 October 2011 Robert Gumpert

]]> http://robertgumpert.com/2011/10/on-the-road-with-prison-photography/feed/ 0 http://robertgumpert.com/2011/09/the-invisible-and-unwanted/ http://robertgumpert.com/2011/09/the-invisible-and-unwanted/#comments Wed, 14 Sep 2011 15:45:57 +0000 admin http://robertgumpert.com/?p=849 Working on criminal justice issues anywhere in the world can be a tough and dangerous calling. Whether because out of sight means out of mind, or as in places like Mexico, anyone touched by the “system” is presumed to be in some way dirty, getting anyone to care is a thankless job.

Photo and copyright: Fernando Moleres

A photographer who has been trying is the Spaniard Fernando Moleres who is working with juvenile detainees in the prisons of Sierra Leone. He was recently interviewed in the British Journal of Photography and it should be read by anyone interested in issues of justice and the problems of working as a social documentary photographer in today’s world.

His work can also be seen at FREE MINOR AFRICA NGO.

For more information on juvenile justice in Africa and incarceration issues and photography link to Prison Photography.

Robert Gumpert 14 September 2011

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