REFRAME A P R O P O S A L I N D O C U M E N TA RY P H OT O G R A P H I C ST R AT E G I E S
REFRAME MAGAZINE
S U M M A RY
SUMMARY
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LET IT BURN A proposal in how to address the burning conflict between the real estate industry and favelas in São Paulo
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POSITIONAL GAZE PRACTICE A narrative proposal to bring the concept of 'positional gaze' to a concrete execution.
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EDITORIAL An introduction to REFRAME magazine as a MA final project 2
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MARGIN A comprehensive visual event about a socioenvironmental mining crime in Brazil
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CONCLUSION Aestheticization as a resource, not as tragedy 3
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EDITORIAL
EDITORIAL The documentary photography tradition has been a communication tool throughout history. Earlier interpreted as a somewhat transparent reproduction of facts in order to educate its public, the practice was later perceived as an industry, as per Susan Sontag definition, that turns citizens into “image-junkies”. From an individual perspective, adding a photographic practice to my repertoire after graduation as a journalist has deepened my ability to tell a story. Despite that, after a few years of photojournalism work addressing issues such as human rights, racial equity, social justice, my body of work seemed shallow. At first, when the images were made, their impacts could be, or were, significant. But in an age with a plethora of noise and digital consumption, using pictures to foster dialogue, humanize, provoke empathy or educate felt like a struggle that became more unattainable as the time since each photo was captured passed by. During my tenure at the MA Photojournalism and Documentary Photography Program at UAL, this feeling grew and became an urgency. If “attention is a resource” and “a person has only so much of it” (Crawford, 2015)¹, how can my practice strive to stay relevant in an attention economics era in which denunciation becomes numbed by time, volume and reproducibility? Widely spread despite decades of questioning, the promise of objectivity imposes limits to photography in order to adhere to a representation of truthiness. The comprehension that to convey a story within the 4
limits of a frame is already a form of aestheticization, proved fundamental for me to contemplate freely other conceptions of meaningful documentary work. Personally, to break with the stiff objective position was the first step towards answering the restlessness I've introduced earlier and experiencing a new practice. Without compromising the ethical approach, I’ve learned that the combination of continuous research and methodical interpretation, articulated through reflective thinking, outward subjectivity, and creative use of interventions may enhance the meanings of the documentary imagery.
“The more one loses oneself in a document, the denser the subject matter grows” WALTER BENJAMIN, ‘THIRTEEN THESES AGAINST SNOBS’ (1928)² My first work in this regard occurred during the MA’s ‘Rethink’ unit, in which I recreated the narrative of ‘After the Mud’ — an essay that I had made in 2015, four years earlier about the iron ore mining incident that became the biggest environmental crime in Brazil — by using cutouts and subjecting the images to a rusting process. Satisfied with the results of the photo book that
has since been called the ‘Margin Project’, I've decided to develop another proposition with transgressions as my major project, but this time as an idea conceived to be transfixed from the beginning. Thus was created the ‘Let it Burn’ project, which addresses suspicious fires in slums and occupations in the city of São Paulo over the last decade — an exclusive survey of Agência Pública, in partnership with Guardian Cities, revealed that affected communities are located in areas that are about 75% more valued than average venal value. Unfortunately, due to the Covid-19 outbreak, the original plan of making a new book about the issue could not come to fruition in all its complexity. As the numbers demonstrate, the risk of dying from the new coronavirus in SP is up to 10 times higher in neighborhoods with worse social conditions (Figueiredo, 2020)³, and it would be irresponsible to endanger my family, myself (since I suffer from asthma) and the people I would photograph, already vulnerable by previous fires,the lack of sanitary and structural conditions in their communities. With a pandemic as an impediment, the idea of addressing the process of interventions themselves as a final project flourished into the form of REFRAME Magazine. Throughout the four articles that comprise it, this unique edition will present upcycled images from finished projects, detail the thought behind some works that are still under development, and reflect on how theory may inform and intelligently engage in contemporary forms of documentary photographic strategies.
What regular documentary practices exclude from the view? How and why should a photographer address that? In 1939, Elizabeth McCausland wrote that “it is the spirit of his approach which determines the value of the photographer’s endeavor; that plus his technical ability to say what he wants to say” (McCausland, 1939)⁴. In order for this quote to remain truthful to this day and in years to come, photographers must, intentionally or unknowingly, task themselves to continue to find new and significant forms to tell stories.
“The journalistic photographer can have no other than a personal approach; and it is impossible for him to be completely objective. Honest yes. Objective - no”. W. EUGENE SMITH, EXTRACT FROM ‘PHOTOGRAPHIC JOURNALISM’ (1948)⁵
The content and propositions this magazine organizes are my paths to uphold this tradition. 5
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MARGIN
MARGIN South-African photographer David Goldblatt once stated during an interview⁶ that he would describe himself as a “self-appointed observer and critic of the society into which I was born, with a tendency to doing honor or giving recognition to what is often overlooked or unseen”. I identify with the phrase, often realizing that — much to my family’s dismay — only a heartwrenching situation or wrongdoing has the ability to spark my interest to take the camera out of the backpack and produce a photograph. OnOne of those situations was the socio-environmental crime that mining companies Samarco, Vale do Rio Doce and BHP Billiton committed in November of 2015 in my home state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. At first, my ‘After the Mud’ essay, as this project was named, gathered the attention of some media vehicles — namely a website called PapodeHomem and Galileu's magazine
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The portrait of José Barbosa, ex-resident of Bento Rodrigues, before and after the conception of the Margin project
and later BBC Latin America. During the first weeks, photographers and news outlets flocked to the region. A myriad of images registered the devastation caused by the 43 million m³ of toxic waste dispensed and chronicled stories about the 19 deaths and thousands of people affected (Pimentel, 2018)⁷. Months after the incident happened, there weren’t as many media attention or articles about it. The agenda had moved on and images about the crime would only surface again when the crime completed its anniversaries, each occasion with a lessened outrage. After three years and two months, Vale do Rio Doce repeated the offense, this time with the disruption of another mining dam in Minas Gerais, this time at Brumadinho. Even though it had more fatal victims than the first crime, 272 deaths (Canofre, 2020)⁸, the incident and the images which address it were enveloped in a baffling aura of naturalization.
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MARGIN
People of different cities along the Doce River basin were affected by the "Crime of Mariana"
Photographs shock in so far as they show something novel. Unfortunately, the ante keeps getting raised - partly through the very proliferation of such images of horror. (...) To suffer is one thing; another thing is living with the photographed images of suffering, which does not necessarily strengthen conscience and the ability to be compassionate. It can also corrupt them. Once one has seen such images; one has started down the road of seeing more - and more. Images transfix. Images anaesthetize. (...) The vast photographic catalogue of misery and injustice throughout the world has given everyone a certain familiarity with atrocity, making the horrible seem more ordinary - making it appear familiar, remote (‘it’s only a photograph’), inevitable. SUSAN SONTAG, ON PHOTOGRAPHY (1977)⁹ 8
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MARGIN
People lost their loved ones and continue to have their way of life denied
This effect of contribution to a deadened conscience bothered me about my body of work on this story ever since I made the pictures and was deepened by the repeated offense. At first, it was about the portraits. Although they are compelling and respectful of the affected, they are restricted to the people who were victimized by greed. I registered the faces of people that lost their loved ones, their houses, or their way of life, but the individuals responsible for the crime were faceless, hidden by the desirable invisibility offered by a business entity. Albeit unwillingly, I was being complacent with the very own capitalist machine of iniquity that I wished to denounce through my work. Therefore, in order to make the work more than an end in itself, it needed to regain emotional charge. And, not 10
to feel like yesterday's news by reflecting solely those brief instants in which the photographs were captured, should also address what has happened since 2015. As one of the main sources for commodity exports in Brazil, Vale never ceased to operate. Its subsidiary company, Samarco, has since been granted a renewed license to operate in the afflicted areas. In contrast, people who lost their houses and way of life can not visit their former homes, nor fish or farm at the margins of the Doce River basin. Still waiting for reparations, the victims are constrained to live with a minimum wage offered by Fundação Renova, a foundation created by the companies responsible for their misery. To this day, their demands and struggles are diminished. And if the people I once portrayed are 11
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MARGIN
With the absence of faces, human gestures increase the emotional burden sparked by the intervention process
being treated like their worries and demands, invisible or not urgent, I should make them invisible and convey that time is passing without any acceptable resolution to their pleas. In my search to find a revised way to tell a continuing story, I've surpassed the limits of my photojournalism practice. Contemplating the possibility of intervening directly in the images to effectively communicate about the effects of the iron ore mining, rust surfaced as an effective resource to add other layers of meaningful content and transform the original work. The technique was developed to comprise the different layers of abandonment to which these persons are continuously subjected to. The first step is the crop, which dehumanizes the human figure by removing their individualities. At the same time, the cutout has the power to regain the attention of the audience by showing that something or someone is missing. Subsequently, the void is filled by the act of pasting photographic paper behind what is left from the image. Finally, to both address the cause of the crimes and encompass the waiting period that has passed since the event, within its fringes, the newly formed blank space is subjected to a rusting process sparked by a conjunction of iron dust and wetness. In a project that tackles the effects of an industry 12
that prioritizes profit above life, the aspect of using the same material related to the incident aligns purpose, results, and reliable information, making the proposition come full-circle. So, despite the rust or perhaps especially because of it, since rust alludes to disdain over a period of time, I have the understanding that the ‘Margin’ project represents a valid alternative proposal to documentary work. As stipulated by Carl Plantinga: People do expect of the documentary that it is intended to offer a reliable record, account of, argument about, or analysis of some element of the actual world, that is, they expect an assertedly veridical representation. CARL PLANTINGA WHAT A DOCUMENTARY IS (2005)¹⁰ Without compromising the ethical aspects of the documental accuracy, the new narrative offers a comprehensive visual event that has the ability to inspire reflective thinking and deepen the knowledge while offering a perspective beyond the momentaneous aspect of imagery register. 13
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LET IT BURN
LET IT BURN
The most political decision you make is where you direct people’s eyes (Wim Wenders, The Act o f Seeing). Construction company of the Way Penha, Cyrela donated (or invested?) R$ 850,000 so the Fazendinha favela not to be reconstructed (Adorno,2014)¹⁹.
At 8:30 that night I was in the favela breathing the smell of excrement mixed with the rotten earth. When I am in the city I have the impression that I am in a living room with crystal chandeliers, rugs of velvet, and satin cushions. And when I'm in the favela I have the impression that I'm a useless object, destined to be forever in a garbage dump. (...) That includes me too because I'm also a favelado. I'm one of the discarded. I'm in the garbage dump and those in the garbage dump either burn themselves or throw themselves into ruin. CHILD OF THE DARK: THE DIARY OF CAROLINA MARIA DE JESUS (1962)¹¹ 14
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LET IT BURN
The daily life of favelas has already been portrayed, with images or text, by several authors. But this excerpt, written by Carolina Maria de Jesus in May 1958, comes from the perspective of someone who endures life in a favela. Translated to 13 idioms, the book originally named ‘Quarto de Despejo - Diário de uma favelada’, give its readers access to a reality marked by misery, hunger, violence and, in some cases, fire — like the burning newspaper the author often used to scare away the mosquitoes in her shed. Although more than half a century has passed, there have been no substantial changes in the living standards. With more than 1.5 million people living in 1,700 slums, São Paulo still subjects part of its inhabitants to precarious sanitary and infrastructural conditions. The architecture of vulnerability to which this segment of the population is submitted to serve what philosopher Achille Mbembe (2015)¹² defines as a necropower. This essay assumes that the maximum expression of sovereignty lies to a large extent in the power and capacity to dictate who may live and who must die. Therefore, to take life or let live are the limits of sovereignty, its key attributes. Exercising sovereignty is to exercise control over mortality and to define life as empowerment and its expression.
The modified portraits evoke the image of a match. Lives can be extinguished, blown out. 16
When the humanity of another is denied, an array of violent practices becomes tolerable. Hence, despite what is guaranteed by the constitution, the politics of death exerted by the Estate have the ability to decide who is disposable and who is not, killing directly — at least 5,804 people were killed by the Brazilian police last year (Velasco, Grandin and Reis, 2020)¹³ — or at least controlling how the ones who don’t matter enough are allowed to live. In São Paulo’s favelas, it frequently means being subject to fires. According to an article published by news agency Pública (Barcelos, 2017)¹⁴, between 2001 and 2012 firefighters recorded at least 1,648 fires in the city slums. In an exclusive study made in partnership with Guardian Cities and based on estimates by the Housing Union (Secovi), which represents the city's real estate companies, Publica also revealed that the communities affected are located in areas that are about 75% more valued than average for the rest of the favelas. The frequency of the occurrences is also elevated in high income areas. During the period of the research, there were 23 fires in the 145 favelas located in the 15 districts with more venal value. In the over 1,500 other slums of the city, 52 fires were recorded at the same interim. Most of the favelas affected are located in areas that are selected for Urban Operations, in which the public and private sectors establish partnerships to carry out 'strategic projects for the city'¹⁵ — public bonds called CEPACs sell ‘additional construction areas’ and are traded in the stock market. They have special rules that differ from the current zoning law, in order to entice more 17
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constructions and 'requalifications’ toward what are, essentially, gentrification plans. Such a stray of “coincidences” didn't go unnoticed. After a series of complaints and activist projects like ‘Fogo no Barraco’, developed by journalist Patrícia Corneus, in 2012 a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (CPI) was established to investigate the causes and responsibility for the recurrence of fires. With all city councilors (vereadores) that composed this commission being financed by the real estate industry (Nanô, 2012)¹⁶, the CPI published an incomplete and inconclusive final report, which identified issues such as dry weather as an official explanation, alongside illegal electrical wiring, candles, pressure cookers, gas canisters. The steep difference in the relative humidity of air between the occupations at the peripheries and the ones in central areas is yet to be explained, but the other alleged causes give us traces on how to address the issue from a documentary perspective. Even if the police or public policies were especially inclined to investigate the situation, it is difficult to determine whether the fires are incidents or criminal arsons. Does a candle fall or is a candle intentionally dropped? It is possible to pinpoint, however, that wooden or cardboard shacks — feasible materials to be acquired and used by vulnerable people who often need to rebuild 22
LET IT BURN
their lives when fires are recurrent — are easier to expropriate than consolidated brick houses. Conrado Ferrato, one of the producers of the documentary 'Limpam com Fogo' (Clean with Fire, in a literal translation), alluded that the fires could represent another form of eviction in an interview about his project.
São Paulo’s Master Plan foresaw 13 designated areas for urban operations. Already under development, operations Águas Espraiadas and Faria Lima concentrate the fire occurrences
“When we say that (real estate) speculation is behind the fires, we do not mean that contractors and developers have lit a match, burned the favelas, and built a building in the same place — this is a gross simplification. It's something more subtle. (...) These interests involve things like mobility, leisure, and security improvements - the latter almost always translates into surveillance over the region's favelas. This surveillance prevents the consolidation of these communities, which maintain a precarious construction profile, with cardboard and wood walls and a high density of houses, all factors that contribute to a major fire. It is not a matter of setting the fire, but of letting it burn”. (CVM AND FERRATO, 2014)¹⁷ 23
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LET IT BURN
To address the issues involved in a subject as complex as this, I designed the project 'Let it Burn' with the intention of not only registering this reality but also to demonstrate and document visually, with the use of interventions made with fire, how private interests are above the dignity of people. After the coronavirus outbreak becomes a lesser risk (for me and the affected communities, as addressed at the editorial of this magazine), I envision the following images to be part of my finalized photo book about the issue. 1. Overlapping Maps - aerial map captured from Google with the communities where the fires happened pinpointed. The reader will overlay it with an acetate colored map, which will indicate the coincidence between those and the areas of the Urban Operations orchestrated by the City Hall;
a candle lit in a shack, a pot in the fire, a gas canister, illegal electric connections;
2. Photos of places that occupy areas formerly occupied by favelas which were burned. Those new buildings, parking lots, squares, bridges will receive interventions by fire;
c. Images produced from 24 frames of videos of the burnt favelas captured by people who live there (this idea will be further developed in the next article, about positional gaze).
3. Portraits of affected residents of favelas and occupations. Those images will receive interventions by fire;
Martha Rosier stated¹⁸ that “in the liberal documentary, poverty and oppression are almost invariably equated with misfortunes caused by natural disasters: causality is vague, blame is not assigned, fate cannot be overcome”. Although this proposition is not equipped to answer the last phrase, I definitely intend, with the concept of interventions created to add meaning to the images of this project, to address both causality and blame without any complacent mist with the unacceptable urbanism of destruction.
4. Images that combine new buildings and urban improvements with poverty in the same frame, to illustrate the idea that having poor people nearby devalues the area;
The intervened images address the facts, but also suggest information beyond what a regular representation could. 24
5. To address the notion that treats fires as irresponsible mistakes, I will also produce pictures of regular actions that are deemed as causes for the fires. Examples:
6. To address the notion that treats fires as irresponsible mistakes, I will also produce pictures of regular actions that are deemed as causes for the fires. Examples: a candle lit in a shack, a pot in the fire, a gas canister, illegal electric connections; 7. I will also use the following images as supporting documents: a. Copies of overvalued CEPACs (Certificates of Additional Construction Potential). There are cases where these assets increased a 1000% in value. b. Facebook prints of neighbors celebrating the fire at a nearby favela (Way Penha buildings, by constructor Cyrela)
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POSITIONAL GAZE PRACTICE
POSITIONAL GAZE PRACTICE Citizenry journalism' may be used to address 'lugar de fala' as a photographic strategy 26
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POSITIONAL GAZE PRACTICE
Videos captured by affected people have the ability to register a fire from a unique time and perspective.
As part of the History and Theory unit of the MA Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at UAL, I've written the article “Positional gaze: a defense of the application of ‘Lugar de fala’ in Documentary Photography”, an essay which addresses how social locus must be acknowledged as part of the narrative accountability of the producers and be an integral part of the perception we have about any photography work. As described by Pierre Bourdieu (1990)²⁰, culture is a field of knowledge in which symbolic systems reinforce the power relationship already established by the domination of the economic field. Furthermore, when we address documentary photography specifically, colonialism, patriarchy, racism, and a fetishism around the idea of otherness have long been materialized in the form of essays and photo books. The positionality of one’s discourse is structural due to inalienable conditions such as race, gender, social class or generation, and become apparent in speech, texts, or images produced. Largely constructed from the discourse of the white western heterosexual male, presumed to be universal, the photography industry often reproduces or reinforces bonds of social domination. “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are” ANONYMOUS SAYING, OFTEN ATTRIBUTED TO ANAÏS NIN²¹ Even projects who allegedly attempt to criticize this activity, as Renzo Martens' film ‘Enjoy Poverty’²², have exploitative attributes to them. One of the byproducts of this reiterated choice to sustain a hierarchy of representation is epistemicide. 28
For us, however, the epistemicide is, in addition to the annulment and disqualification of the knowledge of the subjugated population, a persistent process of producing cultural indigence: by denying access to quality education; for the production of intellectual inferiority; due to the different mechanisms of delegitimization of blacks as carriers and producers of knowledge and demotion of cognitive capacity due to material deficiency and/or the committal of self-esteem by the current discrimination practices in the educational process. It is not possible to disqualify the forms of knowledge of dominated people without also disqualifying them, individually and collectively, as cognosants subjects. And, in doing so, deprives them of reason, the condition for achieving “legitimate” or legitimized knowledge.. That is why epistemicide mortally wounds the subjugated rationality or kidnaps it, mutilating the ability to learn, etc. It is a form of reason's kidnapping in a double sense: by denying the other's rationality or by the cultural assimilation that is imposed in other cases. SUELI CARNEIRO, EXTRACT FROM ‘A CONSTRUÇÃO DO OUTRO COMO NÃO-SER COMO FUNDAMENTO DO SER’ (2005)²³
From the understanding that my photographic work may also incur subalternization, albeit unintentionally, I have been reflecting on manners to contribute to change this balance of power within my own body of practices without waiving to report or document what anguishes me, conscious of my standpoint. Even though I am black and Latino, two of the existential categories often made invisible in the industry of which I belong, there is power in the resources I have (knowledge, gender, access to equipment) and choices I make in order to represent a person or segment of society.
During the research necessary to the 'Let it Burn’ project, I’ve learned that some of the recurrent fires that afflicted favelas or occupations in São Paulo during the last decade were registered in videos captured by the affected people on their smartphones. Created either to recount to a relative what happened or as a tool to denounce government leniency, those registers became a narrative opportunity, as introduced at the end of the previous article of this magazine, to bring this concept of positional gaze to a concrete execution. Using the videos captured by the residents and posted on social media or sent directly to me as a 29
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matrix, I export the films to an editing program and, after choosing one or more seconds of the video, superimpose the selected frames — different degrees of transparency can be useful — to produce a single image. The blurry aspect of the composition doesn’t present the technical refinement of other images from the project, however, it helps to assure the feeling of motion and urgency that fire claims. To a project as complex as 'Let it burn', with a multitude of pictures, I envision to apply this visual resource as transitional images. Furthermore, besides giving readers access to the unique social locus that the victims of the fires have to tell their own story, this practice delivers a way to have images that, otherwise, a professional photographer wouldn't normally have (an outsider would arrive
A fire register at Paraisópolis favela (below) and, to the side, the most recent one in an MTST occupation, during the coronavirus pandemic
POSITIONAL GAZE PRACTICE
too late to register those images). Despite the added meaning of this choice, I am aware that it does not transform my production in a non mediated practice. Nevertheless, by clearly addressing my role as curator of the images produced by people in their citizenship exercises, I bear the responsibility for my position of authority, instead of ignoring it behind a transparency allegation. I still feel that I have (we have, in the industry as a whole) a lot to develop within the proposal of stimulating diverse positional gazes. For that, I challenge myself to remain attentive. In that sense, I really like a critic by filmmaker Trinh T. Minh-ha, who says that the mere reflections do not say much if it is not used actively as remedies against the status quo.
As an aesthetic closure or an old relativizing gambit in the process nonetheless of absolutizing meaning, reflexivity proves critically insignificant when it merely serves to refine and to further the accumulation of knowledge. No going beyond, no elsewhere-withinhere seems possible if the reflection on oneself is not at one and the same time the analysis of established forms of the social that define one’s limits. Thus to drive the self into an abyss is neither a moralistic stricture against oneself nor a task of critique that humanizes the decoding self but never challenges the very notion of self and decoder. Left intact in its positionality and its fundamental urge to decree meaning, the self conceived both as key and as transparent mediator, is more often than not likely to turn responsibility into licence. (...) The bringing of the self into play necessarily exceeds the concern for human errors, for it cannot but involve as well the problem inherent in representation and communication. Radically plural in its scope, reflexivity is thus not a mere question of rectifying and justifying (sub/ectivizing). What is set in motion in its praxis are the self-generating links between different forms of reflexivity. Thus, a subject who points to him or herself as subject-inprocess, a work that displays its own formal properties or its own constitution as work, is bound to upset one’s sense of identity - the familiar distinction between the Same and the Other since the latter is no longer kept in a recognizable relation of dependence, derivation, or appropriation. TRINH T. MINH-HA, EXTRACTS FROM ‘ WHEN THE MOON WAXES RED’ (1991)²⁴
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A E S T H E T I C I Z AT I O N A S A R E S O U R C E , N O T A S T R A G E DY
AESTHETICIZATION AS A RESOURCE, NOT AS TRAGEDY The conversation around the aesthetics of photography is a scorching debate, and it's as lengthy as the history of the medium. From the choices made in darkrooms and labs to the reflections of scholars and the choices of art galleries, a lot has been said. During the MA at UAL, the questions around this issue also become somewhat central to my practice. What are the limits of photojournalism? What constitutes a document? What stories do I choose to tell? What right do I have to tell those or to represent the people I portray? Is there room for beauty when it comes to conveying truth? Is not aestheticizing already an aesthetic choice? What ethical pillars should I always be aware of? These are some of the queries I have heard or asked myself a few times. Therefore, although I am aware they cannot be answered definitively, I’ve tried to
“Salgado is too busy with the compositional aspects of his pictures - and with finding the ‘grace’ and ‘beauty’ in the twisted forms of his anguished subjects. And this beautification of tragedy results in pictures that ultimately reinforce our passivity toward the experience they reveal. To aestheticize tragedy is the fastest way to anaesthetize the feelings of those who are witnessing it. Beauty is a call to admiration, not to action.”
made but also in this text which I write as a conclusion of this Major Project. In the last decades, one of the most notable criticisms of what is seen as aestheticization of pain is the article ‘Good Intentions’, written by Ingrid Sischy.
The criticism of Salgado's work, especially in regard to the romantic gaze and extreme connection to the visual repertoire of Christianity, resonates and finds consonance in me. In a political standpoint, Salgado's ongoing relationship with Vale do Rio Doce, the company
address those not only during the course of the propositions I’ve
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INGRID SISCHY, "GOOD INTENTIONS" (1991)²⁵
The choice of format could also be relevant to the process of adding meaning to a documentary project. I will use the language of real estate companies' sales pamphlets as a strategy to denounce the issue of the fires. 33
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responsible for the crime I denounce in ‘Margin’, has long been accused of greenwashing²⁶. At the same time, despite all the controversies surrounding his figure, it seems imperative to acknowledge that it is the very aestheticization of his work that made his practice effective. Dwelling with the catholic ethos, the pang of guilt that his work arouses does spark awareness. For a long time, I experienced a struggle to decide, in my mind and in my practice, if beauty is an acceptable outcome to the images I produce when addressing inequalities. In a consumerism driven society, aestheticization may be used to reinforce the status quo; withal, a work that is not seen cannot denounce effectively, neither provoke or inspire conscious changes in the pursuit of the restitution of denied humanities. Guilt and remission are intertwined and do very little to challenge the distress and miseries portrayed — as the results of material conditions evidence throughout our history. In that sense, what I want is accountability, and I believe that the use of aestheticization as a resource can help with that. To contemplate in a portrait the scars of a face burned during a fire, even the ugliest ones, give only the idea that something immutable has happened. To look at a portrait intentionally burned in post production also causes discomfort, but directs the viewer's gaze towards action. What's going on over there? Why did the photographer make that choice? If there is a yearning for content with significance, it is a photographer's choice to access it or not, to the best of their ability, provided that observing ethical ethos and remaining attentive to the positions which occupy and privileges it has. The possibilities of my practices opened up when I acknowledged, while searching for reflections on Sischy analysis, that aestheticization is intrinsically attached to our work.
A E S T H E T I C I Z AT I O N A S A R E S O U R C E , N O T A S T R A G E DY
These pamphlets could be used as part of an exhibition or a material resource for activism, being distributed near the affected regions.
To represent is to aestheticize; that is, to transform. It presents a vast field of choices but it does not include the choice not to transform, not to change or alter whatever is being represented. It cannot be a pure process, in practice. This goes for photography as much as for any other means of representation. But this is no reason to back away from the process. The aesthetic is not objective and is not reducible to quantitative scientific terms. Quantity can only measure physical phenomena, and is misapplied in aesthetics, which often deals with what is not there, imagining things into existence. To become legible to others, these imaginings must be socially and culturally encoded. That is aestheticization. DAVID LEVI STRAUSS ‘THE DOCUMENTARY DEBATE: AESTHETIC OR ANAESTHETIC?’ (2003)²⁷ I understand that the critical insertion of acts which evidence the causes and the benefits the perpetrators reaped from their behavior or omissions blur the objectivism expected from documentary work. I prefer to bear the responsibilities attached to that than to corroborate with a culture of silence, in which neutrality over injustices is convenient to the oppressor. What doesn't and cannot exist is an indifferent gaze. 34
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
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The REFRAME Magazine, by Ismael dos Anjos, is a final project at MA Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at UAL. Distribution not allowed.