still pondering those photos from the crimean war

no. 1

no. 2

i went on a frenzy today and switched around our living room (read: room where we watch television) with our dining room (read: room where we never sat to eat dinner because we were too busy watching television). in the process, i messed up my thumb in a badly-installed door (grr to those people we bought the house from - i'm still bitter towards them) and dropped the extremely heavy and two-meter long unwieldy dining table on my foot (hello giant bruise). but after several hours of swearing, vacuuming and sweating more than i'd like to admit, the result was that we ate our cheese soufflé and simple salad at the actual dining table and then stayed there for and hour and a half, as a family, talking and drawing and laughing. wow, what a difference it made!

during our discussion i showed husband the two roger fenton photos from the crimean war. and interestingly, husband had an entirely new perspective on them, one not mentioned in the errol morris book (which i love even more now after chapter 4 - about the FSA photos taken by walker evans and others during the depression...more about that soon). and one definitely not mentioned by susan sontag in her take on the photos.

husband looked at them as a soldier and an officer. i told him there was controversy over the sequence of the photos. it was known that that were taken on the same day during the same shoot, but that the interpretations of the meaning of them were different depending on which one you thought was taken first.  you also recall that i didn't tell you what morris' conclusion was (i still think you must get the book - via your library, i'm not advocating consumerism (tho' i want to own this book now)).

husband's take is that no. 2 is first, because it represents a "before" shot - tho' after a barrage of shelling by the russians. before in the sense of before the road was cleared for the soldiers to pass with their wagons and horses and continue the war. no. 1 comes after it was cleared.

what do you think?

authenticity in photography

i picked this book up from the library yesterday (i've been waiting for it for ages). i sat down with it and didn't put it down again until the end of chapter 2 - the television remained off and dinner was leftovers warmed in the oven. i was riveted.

chapter 1 is an exploration and analysis of two photographs taken by roger fenton (famed as the first photographer of war) in 1855 in the crimea - valley of the shadow of death is the name of the photo. there are actually two versions - one with cannonballs strewn on the road and one without. the controversy is whether fenton staged the shot for dramatic effect by spreading out the cannonballs (as susan sontag suggested in her last book regarding the pain of others) or whether the cannonball shot was taken first and then they were picked up and recycled by the british soldiers.

here are the photos in question (i found them here):

without cannonballs on the road

with cannonballs on the road

morris goes through a fascinating journey (literally traveling to the crimea to find the spot where the photo was taken) and a compelling analysis of whether it matters which shot came first and why it seems to be so important to us, as humans, to assign meaning. after all, posing a shot isn't necessarily a deception, but why do we have an impulse in us to think it is?

and simply as a photo, there is definitely more drama in the shot with the cannonballs on the road and in my google image search to find the shots for this post, it is by far the more reproduced of the two shots. was it a decision made by the photographer for the sake of drama? or a coincidence that he came upon such a scene? what are the implications of trying to capture war in photos? (or in words, as he quotes tolstoy's sebastopol sketches as well (my favorite tolstoy, if i have to like something of his)).

as morris concludes, "...is it unnatural to have people move cannonballs? Or inauthentic? Aren't these photographs of human events--even if there are no people in the frame. They are photographs about war. The effects of war. Is war itself natural or authentic? The concepts of naturalness, authenticity, and posing are all slippery slopes that when carefully examined become hopelessly vague."

after subjecting the photos to extensive analysis (shadows, light, etc.), he does make a conclusion as to which photo came first. but rather than tell you what that conclusion is, i'll insist that you get this book from your local library (i'll bet you won't be able to restrain from writing in it either) and read it for yourself.

do come back and tell me what you think - i think the question at the heart of it is one of authenticity, something i think we're all desperately searching for in what seems like a world gone mad (which is probably why this book speaks to me so strongly).

i want to continue this conversation.