Documentary photographers & human rights
Editor Alessandra Mauro; Contrasto, Turin, Italy, 2007
www.contrastobooks.com

My Brother’s Keeper, is a carefully selected summary anthology of the work of 22 outstanding photographers who sought to galvanize public awareness of human rights abuses through the power of inspired photography. This is a book that every person should have in their personal library, a book that we can return to in order that we never forget what has happened to our fellow man and what is CONTINUING to happen.

The book is composed of 3 brief introductory essays followed by 20 chapters each devoted to the work an outstanding individual photographer with a careful selection of photographs (one chapter deals with 3 photographers). The book concludes with a brief biography of each of the photographers.

The photograph by Tom Stoddart on the dust jacket exemplifies the deeply humane, thoughtful, artistic, transforming and visionary photography presented in this book. The photograph shows the gloved hand of a Zambian nurse (no head shown) gently holding the emaciated  wrist of an AIDS patient (only the arm is shown) – but what deeply moves the observer is that the fragile wrist is held by only the thumb and two forefingers, conveying the sheer humanity of the nurse and the helplessness of the AIDS patient who is being so gently led to her bed.

The book is introduced by a brief essay “Images and the culture of rights” by Professor Marcello Flores (University of Siena) who discusses the emotional and descriptive power of images in creating a “more powerful space for the culture of human rights to truly become the universal language of the new century”.

The following brief essay entitled “Right under our eyes. Examples of photography and denunciation” by Alessandra Mauro (historian of photography and Contrasto editorial director) makes the crucial point that the photographer is not merely shooting what he sees – he is also conveying an interpretation of reality. She quotes Georges Didi-Huberman: “To know, one must imagine”.

A much lengthier  following essay by Susie Linfield (Director, Cultural Reporting and Criticism Program, New York University) is entitled “The ethics of vision. Photojournalism and human rights” makes the point that every image of barbarism embraces its opposite – humanity. However she critically comments that there are exceptions to this. Her examples include the detailed Nazi photographic documentation of their atrocities and terrorist videos of hostage executions. My example would be the morally deadening and desensitizing TV violence, whether  Hollywood fiction or the daily TV news we see as we eat our dinner. Susie Linfield concludes her essay with a quote from Jewish Italian writer and Holocaust captive Primo Levi: “The aims of life are the best defense against death” and she then poses a  question thus: “Will the culture of life vanquish the culture of death? Only a fool would be sure of the answer.”

The 20 subsequent chapters deal with individual photographers from the end of the 19th century to the present day. Each chapter involves a brief essay about the life, inspiration and work of the particular photographer by either Alessia Tagliaventi, Alice Tudino or Alessandra Mauro and a set of carefully chosen photographs illustrating a particular facet of their work.

The photographers and their particular work shown are most simply  described below by their name followed by the chapter heading with photograph dates and nature of the photographs. Thus the anthology commences with Jacob Riis (How the other half lives. Immigration and poverty in New York at the end of the nineteenth century) [1885-1896] – sullen, stoic  people bear mute testimony to appalling living conditions. Lewis Hine (Correct and appreciate. Child labor in the USA) [1908-1913] reveals the apprehension of new immigrants and the passive acceptance of child workers. David Seymour (Between dreams and denial. Children in the aftermath of war) [1948] has very troubling photographs of children (some evidently traumatized) in the aftermath of war.

Marc Garanger ( “The casserole tied to the tail”. The Algerian War) [1960, 1961] portrays the quiet strength of Algerians under the French jackboot and various themes of oppression in war  and occupation (strength, defiance, distress, abuse, devastating loss) are illustrated by Philip Jones Griffith (Vietnam Inc. War explained through economics) [1967-1970] and Josef Koudelka (A free outlook. The broken dream of the Prague Spring, 1968) [1968].

Other mass social oppression is variously explored by Peter Magubane (Between the camera and me. South Africa under Apartheid) [1956-1976], by Bob Adelman (The truth marches on. The fight for civil rights in the USA) [1963-1968], by Li Zhensheng (Red-Color News Soldier. Censorship during China’s Cultural revolution) [1966-1980] and by Gilles Peress (Gathering evidence. Genocide in Rwanda and in ex Yugoslavia) [1994-1996], the latter having some horrific images of the consequences of Man’s inhumanity to Man.

Humanitarian abuse in otherwise “normal” civil society is exposed with very disturbing images from Ginanni Berengo Gardin, Carla Cerati and Luciano D’Allessandro (Fit to be Untied. The psychiatric revolution in Italy) [1965-1968], Donna Ferrato (In private. Domestic violence in America) [1982-1990], Ulrik Jantzen (Revenge and Punishment. Women disfigured by acid attacks in Bangladesh) [2001], the latter having profoundly upsetting images of horribly burnt young women. Lucinda Devlin (The “Omega Suites”. Capital punishment in America) [1991-1992] provides chilling images of “death rooms” and death devices for State murder.

Industrial disasters with attendant carers, devastating injuries, devastated landscapes and heroic workers are exposed in powerful images by W. Eugene Smith (Minamata disease. Mercury poisoning in Japan) [1971], Raghu Rai (The silence of Bhopal. The chemical horror of an ecological disaster) [1984] and Igor Kostin (The importance of bearing witness. The Chernobyl disaster) []1986-1990].

However the most moving images are those from Africa involving circumstances not due to deliberate actions of Man, including  images from Sebastião Salgado (The essence of the desert. Famine in Sahel) [1973-1985], Tom Stoddart (Sad and necessary. AIDS in Subsaharian Africa) [2000-2002] and from Juan Medina (As we sleep. Illegal immigration in Europe) [2004].  These images  are particularly powerful because of the dignity of the subjects who are coping and doing their best  in  horrendous circumstances.

I am deeply conscious of the failure of words and statistics  to get through to people in an age in which we are saturated with images and information. A major part of the problem is the lying, racism and holocaust-ignoring of mainstream media who resolutely turn away from the awful reality of 5 million post-invasion excess deaths in the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories (see MWC News). However another part of the problem is that people simply don’t want to know or when apprised of the horrendous numbers cannot comprehend what those numbers actually mean in human terms.

I have spent a dozen years researching avoidable death and have recently published a book on the subject entitled “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007). The detailed tables in the book will tell you that 16 million die avoidably each year and that 9.6 million of these people are under-5 year old infants – but how does one grasp what 16 million means? Another statistic is that 1.3 billion people have died avoidably since 1950  but how do you grasp what a billion people means? 

However a further statistic in the book is the ratio of post-1950 avoidable deaths to the current population of a country. Expressed as a percentage, this ratio is 2.9% for Australia (a good outcome) but 81.0% for Timor Leste – this means that for every 100 Timorese at a wedding, 81 can be allocated  the emotional burden of an avoidable death of a loved one, whereas at an Australian wedding of 100 guests only 3 people would be thus burdened. Once I attended a big  wedding and was at a table with East Timorese refugees. As is my wont I was drawing portraits of everyone. The children were innocent, happy and excited. The adults were also happy on this joyous occasion – but  when I necessarily as a portraitist looked into the eyes of the men and women I instantly saw the PAIN. The photographs in “My Brother’s Keeper”  enable you to look into the eyes of the victims, to see the body language and to see the pain.

This is a powerful book that is a MUST for decent people. It will perpetually remind decent folk why there must be zero tolerance for racism, injustice, war-mongering and callous disregard for our fellow Man. We must all be our brother’s keeper.

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