The photo essay reached its apogee in such weekly, large format picture magazines as Life and Look in the years before television installed itself in virtually every home. As advertising revenue decreased, so did the once widespread prevalence of those formerly ubiquitous publications.
The best of these photographic essays were journalistic on the one hand, but clearly artistic on the other, with the photographers’ subjective and often passionate sensibilities front and center. The nine photographers featured in “Engaged Observers,” a must-see exhibition that continues through Nov. 14 at the Getty Center, were a part of or continue this tradition, and the show condenses the book-length projects that emerged from their committed endeavors.
These include Leonard Freed’s Black in White America (1968), Philip Jones Griffith’s Vietnam Inc. (1971), W. Eugene and Aileen M. Smith’s Minamata (1975), Susan Meiselas’s Nicaragua, June 1978-July 1979 (1981), Mary Ellen Mark’s Streetwise (1988), Lauren Greenfield’s Fast Forward: Growing Up in the Shadow of Hollywood (1997) and Girl Culture (2002), Larry Towell’s The Mennonites (2000), Sebastião Salgado’s Migrations: Humanity in Transition (2000), and James Nachtwey’s The Sacrifice (2007).
Published in book form, these photographers’ projects can be absorbed at our leisure. In all or most cases, the photographer/writer has had editorial and pictorial control, which isn’t often the case when a photojournalist has submitted his or her work to a cigar-chomping editor at a daily or weekly. Furthermore, readers in general leaf through and skim the contents of a newspaper or magazine, but very few of them will approach a bound book in the same manner.
When the exhibition comes down, that’s it, right? But no, there is a splendid catalogue by Brett Abbott that will keep the memory of this show around for years to come. It’s available in hardcover at the museum or from Getty Publications for $49.95. Its 256 pages contain 70 color and 175 duotone illustrations, but it’s Abbott’s perceptive essays and commentary that nicely binds it all together.
There’s not enough space to mention each project, but here are some thoughts and impressions:
Nachtwey’s 60 trauma center photographs – filled with men badly wounded in Iraq – are melded into one long image – or viewer assault. The impact is reminiscent of standing before Picasso’s “Guernica” in Madrid. The Sacrifice also mirrors the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C., but whereas names on a wall are abstract, these images are vivid and immediate.
Along with the Vietnam War photographs of Philip Jones Griffith, Nachtwey’s work offers an eerie warning to America and its adventurism in the Middle East. People who think war is noble and heroic should study these images carefully.
It’s interesting that one of Eugene W. Smith’s iconic photos, “Tomoko and Mother in the Bath” (1972) is no longer licensed for publication because Smith’s widow, Aileen, feels it has served its purpose and that it remains upsetting to the family of the depicted. Abbott poses the apt question, Is this a dangerous precedent or an ethical triumph? Certainly there are some photos that are printed or – more likely – posted, which should never be, but those are more likely to be infringements of personal privacy rather than the result of responsible journalism.
While Smith and Salgado fully impress this writer, there’s a remarkable and slightly amusing image by Leonard Freed, taken in Brooklyn in around 1963, that shows a driver sitting in his car with all sorts of antennas and rearview mirrors. He’s got a radio, but that’s not all: “Even got a telephone in here,” he says, “but keep it disconnected; all my friends used to call their girlfriends. Unbelievable, ain’t it? Did it all myself. Had a portable T.V. set in it but the police made me take it out, got me while I stopped for a red light, saw me watching it.”
A man clearly ahead of his time, that’s for sure.
Engaged Observers: Documentary Photography Since the Sixties is on view through Nov. 14 at the J. Paul Getty Museum in the Getty Center, 1200 Getty Center Drive, Los Angeles. (310) 440-7300 or go to getty.edu. ER
