Camera vérité

Of all forms of photography, I am drawn most to portraits. Faces. Forms. Expressions. The result is less about technique and more about what that fraction of a second captures. Is it the essence or the superficial? Does it convey more about the photographer than the subject?

Today is World Photography Day and each of us with a smartphone camera can claim to be quite adept at instant access to what may be loosely termed history in motion. We see it when pictures about catastrophes and revolutions are uploaded. Then, there is the history of ordinary people, which is another story for a sequel.

Now that Princess Diana is back in the news with reports of another twist to her death, one cannot but recall her name without the mention of the paparazzi. Those men — there are few women giving the chase — who will risk life and limb only to snoop on a celebrity getting drunk, or involved in a brawl, or caught in an intensely private moment. They and the celebs feed each other.

However, some famous people do not quite get posterity on glossy finish prints. They are the characters that a camera waits to unravel.

It would be so predictable to mention the portraits by Henri Cartier-Bresson, and I have decided to be predictable. There is a reason: he photographs minds.

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It was not easy for him, it would seem, for he had said, “The most difficult thing for me is a portrait. You have to try and put your camera between the skin of a person and his shirt.”

We are so accustomed to seeing Che Guevara in the iconic posters, the pose of angst, of a rebel on his way to rebel, that this smiling man enjoying his spirits — two glasses at that...was there a companion, a comrade, a visitor? — comes as a surprise. It also makes us question our stereotypes. The revolution is indeed on as is evident, but surely a person is not merely one thing?

This is not a great photograph, but it is a revelation.

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Robert Kennedy lounging on a deck chair is expected. It is the contrast that is brilliant. Machismo against innocence. Or perhaps the innocence of machismo, if we look at Kennedy's almost meditative expression and even the hairy overgrowth that harks back to another age, less sophisticated than his lifestyle. His son seems to want to know what is in the balled fist. There is also a sense of detachment. He is not looking at the boy, who too has his face turned away, although his head rests on the edge of the father's thigh.

The connection established here is of give-and-take role-play.

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Cartier-Bresson believed, "Photography is an immediate reaction, drawing a meditation."

Carl Jung's portrait is nothing less than a fine piece of meditation. It is not candid and he might well have been sitting for an artist.

His own words somehow coalesce into this photograph: "As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being."

The use of light and shadow is always interesting and here it adds dimension because of Jung's own conflict theory about the conscious and unconscious. The trickle of light in the background, the ever-so-slight swirl of smoke that stops short of being cocky, the deep furrows on the brow and the compact manner of sitting are at once disturbing as well as almost holy.

For Jungians, this would make a whole lot of sense. And for others, it would still be about a man with several tales to tell.

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Henri Matisse loved colours, the more lurid the better. Cartier-Bresson used monochrome and even then managed to capture the shades.

This photograph is a bit of a tease. The main subject is not even in the foreground, but he grabs our attention. Matisse loved his still-life, and the birds do look like one of his works. That the cage is empty and they are poised atop it could be seen as the artist's own freedom from using standard templates for his art.

It looks like a scene from a film. This is not Matisse in a typical studio setting with painting equipment. He is surrounded by life, almost bare and rundown. Like a blank canvas in an attic.

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These are all famous names and we would have seen them in numerous pictures. It takes someone like Cartier-Bresson to not just transform them into subjects, but real people with more than the single dimension they became known for.

I'll have to answer my own question posed in the beginning and say that in complexity the superficial is also the essence.

© Farzana Versey

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Images: Magnum Photos, Washington Post Magazine

Tea with the Nazi

He still sells. Anger sells. It has buyers. However, are they "Nazi lovers"? A bit simplistic.

You must have already read about the JC Penney tea kettle that looks like Hitler and the reactions to it. They were forced to remove a billboard, but the damage, or publicity, had been done.

Those who probably did not need a kettle right then rushed to purchase it. Some are selling the $40 steel piece online for four to six times the price. It has become an investment.

The description of the kettle is that one can see the “handles as Hitler’s hair parting, with the lid being his moustache and the spout a Nazi salute".

Is this only about imagination or was it deliberately designed as such? A report quoted JC Penney from its Facebook page, “You won’t be able to stop yourself from whistling at us when you see this billboard off the 405 Freeway in LA!!! If you find it safely shoot us a pic if you can.”

Why would anyone want to whistle at a kettle? It seems obvious they knew what they had — whether by design or by chance. If it was the latter, then clearly it was a whoa moment and the kettle went right up there to claim its Calvin Klein moment.

It was a stripping of both sensitivity and political correctness. I wish they had gone along, for it would reveal facets of how we as a society treat history in a contemporaneous setting. Unfortunately, the page was removed and the Penny people said, “If we had designed it to look like something, we would have gone with a snowman or something fun.”

Given the sales and the bidding, it seems this is people's idea of fun. I do not agree it is about love for the Nazi leader or the Nazi credo, though. There are many souvenirs available. And the ideology, for whatever it was worth, is not quite dead if we extend it to the 'superiority of the race' theory. In almost every part of the world, there are groups that believe they are superior or better than others. These might span from religion to socio-economic policies, trend-setters, divas, the rich and in some ways the poor, who by virtue of their disenfranchisement are beyond the system.

Californians are known to be quite liberal, so it was surprising that the kettle billboard was forced down by its residents. Is anti-Nazism a way to assert liberalism? Isn't such a badge of 'we are more liberal than the rest' itself an assertion of superiority?

Let's talk about fun, then. It is possible that the buyers merely like something that has curiosity value. Some might enjoy 'Hitler' boiling, which says a lot about Nazism as a psychological phenomenon that has nothing to do with a specific ideology.

We aim darts. There is road rage. We need magnets and stress balls to keep ourselves in check. We use voodoo dolls and burn posters and images of hate figures.

Is this peaceful? It reveals our hate. Quite naturally, there is the value dimension of what is generally considered good and evil. However, the fact that good has traditionally been known to triumph over evil means that it went into battle. It gave a good fight and had its hands bloodied.

When we use figures like Hitler and Gandhi as opposites, we forget the nuances of how non-violence too chooses the self-destruction of a people. The leaders in both instances are safe. Incidentally, images of Gandhi too have got into trouble, because people don't like their heroes tarnished, when there is a whole industry that fools people by selling themselves as Gandhians.

Were JC Penney to use a look-alike of, say, Martin Luther King there would be opposition. Yet, people will use fridge magnets and other knick-knacks with his image. The same goes for pop celebrities. But, there is less of a reaction to a Marlilyn Monroe being used to sell products, and this also should bother us. Why do some people become public property and, only due to their profession, their memories can be treated with scant respect?

And, no, I don't see Hitler in that kettle. It looks like Chaplin to me.

© Farzana Versey