But I don’t see how this is so terribly different from choosing a camera (like a Holga) or a film type or a processing method that has a unique but consistent and predictable outcome or cross-processing or using a color balance not intended for the lighting conditions (tungsten in daylight or daylight in fluorescent, using the cloudy setting to warm up a scene).
Can Chefs Do It All?
The hard-hat restaurant tour of the new, much-hyped Mission district restaurant was winding down. I’d been shown where the herbs, foraged by the chef, would be drying. It was not a news flash that the charcuterie items would be made on the premises from whole animals, but I didn’t know you could use the leftover bones to make charcoal. Almost everything was being crafted in-house, from the vinegar to the mustard to the bread. It was only when the chef earnestly expressed his dream of raising a goat on the restaurant rooftop—right next to the herb garden and the beehives—that the New York publicist gave a shrill laugh while glancing in the direction of my notepad. Using her hand to mock-cut her throat, she gave the chef the universal sign for “TMI.”
Clearly the publicist wasn’t from around here, because in San Francisco this kind of utopian restaurant talk elicits oohs and aahs, not censorship. “Maybe you should have your own little slaughterhouse too,” I said as a joke. But being a much more idealistic person than I, the chef took the quip to heart, nodding deeply— yes, one day he’d love to do that.
If you’ve paid any attention to the city’s restaurant scene of late, you’ll know that this is just one example in a growing movement that makes DIY look like a slacker way of life. I’m talking DIAY, where the A stands for “All.”
At State Bird Provisions, it’s no biggie that chef Stuart Brioza makes his own kimchee when you know that he also puts on his potter’s hat to make many of the restaurant’s plates. At Wise Sons, they cure their own pastrami and bake five kinds of bread (and close a few hours earlier than they had initially planned in order to pull it all off). At Bar Tartine, chef Nick Balla dries, smokes, and pulverizes his own chilies to make paprika—and that’s just the beginning. “They pickle anything that walks in the door,” says chef Laurence Jossel of Nopa with admiration.
Not that Jossel is any slouch. Just ask him about the tortillas at his two Nopalito locations. “To make our own masa, we cook over 220 pounds of corn every single day,” he says. “And someone grinds that corn every day for two hours. Then to make the tortillas, we have four people each working eight hours a day. And tortillas are a giveaway item. Our labor cost is incredibly high.” He pauses to question his own sanity. “Are we smart? The highest thing on our menu is $16.”
Jossel’s rationale is that there aren’t good, fresh tortillas to be had—not even at the beloved La Palma tortilleria in the Mission. Chef Dennis Lee of Namu Gaji echoes this sentiment when I ask him why his restaurant has its own farm in Sunol. “We can’t find what we need,” he says, showing me teeny, tiny wild-radish pods as one example and different varieties of perilla as another.
Of course, the chefs aren’t alone in their DIAY determination: Customers are actually starting to expect it of them. How dare Cotogna import excellent dried pasta from Verrigni, where they’ve been making it since 1898, when it could buy a pasta extruder with a copper die and do it itself like Locanda?
Whether or not the pasta is superior is besides the point. For both diners and chefs, the romantic notion of everything being made under one roof is all the proof they need. And food writers—myself included—lap it up.
But there is a downside to this noble crusade. Fatted Calf charcuterie maker Taylor Boetticher is right when he warns, “You can’t be an expert at everything. And balancing labor and raw goods is part of being a good chef.” In other words, if overly high food and labor costs aren’t being passed on to customers, they’re being eaten by the restaurants, which—in the wrong hands—can be an unsavvy business practice. The Shutter column on Eater has its share of tales of restaurateurs who have overreached in the name of ego.
I don’t mean to discourage chefs who find all of this to be a creative challenge. It’s also clearly a good way for a restaurant to set itself apart from the fierce competition. But the self-imposed pressure to produce every little thing in house could drive a chef to drink. Jossel sheepishly admits that he was “a little embarrassed” that Nopa has actually served fresh mozzarella hand-pulled by someone else.
But look: In the restaurant world, there’s nothing wrong with a little outsourcing. Sure, there’s something quintessentially American about going it alone. Why buy apple pie from someone else when you can bake it yourself? But supporting artisans within one’s own community is an act that should make locavores proud. And who knows? The end product might even be tastier.
Gerald Hirigoyen, the chef-owner of Piperade, grew up in the French Basque country, where restaurants get their charcuterie from the charcuterie maker, and bread from the baker. “For 25 years, I’ve had someone making my gateau Basque,” he says of one of his more coveted desserts. “I made the decision that hers is better than mine. I have no shame, and unless you have an army to make everything for you, it’s tough. You have to make money, too.”
Ah, money—the five-letter word that DIAY chefs are loath to utter. A restaurateur admitting that he or she wants to turn a profit kind of sours the goats-on the-rooftop ethos. But I’d rather chefs outsource their hamburger buns if it means that their restaurants stay open for the long haul. My utopia? A world where the word sustainable is applied to both business and food.
Currently reading. Going to an IDEO lecture tonight which I am also very excited about!!!
The Economist Intelligence Unit has released its annual cost-of-living index which uses the weighted average of prices for 160 products and services to compare global cities.
No surprise that Tokyo leads the list, but New York jumping 19 places since 2012? Alarming.
Buhhh. Copenhagen dreams </3
Currently reading
I have about 4 other books on my “To Read” list in addition to all of my mandatory class reading. Let’s do this.Behind the Lens: an Interview with Edward Burtynsky
From the ship breaking yards of Bangladesh to China’s Three Gorges Dam, photographer Edward Burtynsky has traveled the globe, capturing on film the degradation of the environment at the hands of industry. His work as a visual medium transcends the barriers of language and is heralded for its ability to draw in an audience, forcing them to make the connection between society’s desire for prosperity and the suffering this exacts upon the environment.
Most recently, Mr. Burtynsky’s project in China was captured on the big screen in the critically acclaimed Manufactured Landscapes. Already, the film has won Best Canadian Feature at the 2006 Toronto Film Festival and a 2007 Genie award for Best Documentary.
COLLECTIONS’ Jeremy Finkelstein met up with the celebrated artist at his Toronto office to talk about his work, the environment, and how he is using his work to effect change.
COLLECTIONS: You’ve been photographing industrial landscapes for over two decades. How has your work changed your view of the world?
Edward Burtynsky: One aspect that’s been consistent throughout my work is that I’ve always chosen to target specific landscapes which demonstrate the largest expression of the incursion of industry on the land. For instance, if I am photographing quarries, I’ll find out where the largest quarries in the world are and plan my trips accordingly. And I think that bearing witness to these transformed landscapes, year after year, has allowed me to recognize that something is changing. I mean, we’ve always taken from the land, but never on this scale. The speed and scale have changed. I don’t think many people realize how rapidly the world is changing and how technology is allowing us to scale up on a level that was unimaginable even a hundred years ago.
C: Certainly there is some disconnect between our habits and their impact the planet. Are you finding that your work is helping to eliminate this disconnect or do you find that your method ofbeautifying the tools and legacy of industry is counter productive?
EB: I don’t know that I’m necessarily ‘beautifying’. Some do refer to the images as taking something that would normally be considered ugly and making it beautiful; but I’m not sure beautiful is the right word, and I’ve always had some resistance to that sentiment in that ‘beautiful’ has a very strong cultural connotation. We all have a value system and a system of aesthetics, but through my work I’m trying to find a universal resonance. What I’ve often felt about photography as a visual language is that it transcends the barriers of the spoken word.
A visual language should be something that is transportable across different cultures without translation. And I think that in a kind of Jungian collective consciousness, there’s a way to tap into the kinds of imagery that we as a human species respond to. So I think that someone from Pau Pau, New Guinea who may not have seen many pictures will still see something in the landscape and be able to read it because that landscape is so primal to our existence… it’s our habitat. We may have moved our habitat to urban centres, but we’re still connected to the planet. It is still our home. So, my impulse has been to draw a person in and make them stop and look at the picture; it wasn’t to make a ‘beautiful’ picture.
Now, while I don’t think I’ve set out to beautify the landscape, I have set out to make it digestible and visually compelling. ‘Do I think that it’s had a negative or positive affect?’ I think the affect has been positive. Certainly my work is more of an open narrative and it is open to interpretation, but it still leads you to a certain spot. You still realize that these are man’s marks… that this is man’s activity on the landscape. And that ultimately raises the question, ‘who are we and what is our collective value system that has allowed us to work on this scale?’
C: Your work in China lends visual form to the transformation of the country and is highlighted by some shocking images as it relates to coal yards and the three gorges dam. Do you feel these images permit the viewer to point to China in lieu of looking within, or does this body of work spark a personal call to action?
EB: Certainly the work is not about wagging my finger at China and saying ‘you’re the problem’. If they’ve got a gun, we gave it to them, and ultimately we’re implicated in that. But I think it goes without saying that we cannot deal with the problems that we are dealing with globally without addressing China. China has to be a part of the conversation, as does most of Asia. Out of the world’s 6.5 billion, they represent 3 billion; and those 3 billion are trying to come up to our standard of living. It’s insane to think we can ignore that.
We also have to look at how we can help emerging markets avoid the mistakes we’ve made. In Canada, we can pull our weight and reduce our carbon footprint by 50%; but our total output isn’t even 2% of the world’s output on carbon. China’s is going to be 25%; the United States’ is going to be 25%. Somehow those need to be dealt with because we cannot work in isolation… climate change and environmental degradation is a global problem.
C: You raised the point of the Canadian footprint. As you know, we’re currently tapping into the Albertan oil sands. Do you have any lessons to pass on from your experience in China as we begin the industrialization of Alberta’s landscape?
EB: What’s consistent with China and Alberta is the speed at which they’re both evolving, and you can’t control things if they’re moving that fast. With a 10% growth like China’s, it’s very hard to keep the checks and balances in place for whether the environment is being harmed or not, whether employees are getting their fair share or not, whether systems are being built in a safe and reliable way… all these things are gone to the wind when you start moving at that speed. I think Alberta is moving at that speed. In fact, we’ve already started hearing of the ‘on-the-ground’ types of problems in Alberta. For instance, small businesses are failing because no one can find employees at lesser wages when the same person can get $30 an hour to stand with a shovel in the oil sands.
But what I think is a bigger and broader issue is what’s going to happen to Alberta itself. Alberta is on the further edges of the Boreal Forest, and this forest means to the earth and its atmosphere what the Amazon means. So in Canada we are custodians of this really important lung for the world. But the proposals that are on the table for the development of the oil sands have dissected the province into microscopic chunks to the point where a number of animals who require a certain distance from human habitation will never find it again.
As well, the oil sands are the single largest contributor of carbon emissions for Canada. And what I think is often misunderstood about the oil sands is that over the next 12 to 15 years, if nothing changes in the way we deal with carbon emissions, the rest of Canada could lead carbon free lives, and we would still be out of compliance with Kyoto. I don’t know how many Canadians recognize this dilemma. So while Alberta may be keeping us buoyant financially, it is also keeping us dependant as a resource economy… and there’s a price to be paid for being a resource economy.
C: You’ve recently come back from Chile. As an artist, how do you develop a new theme for a project?
EB: That changes all the time. My work is a compendium of ideas or places that say something about our world; and I’m trying to continually add to that body of work. In Chile, for instance, I was photographing a saltpetre mine in the Atacama Desert, the driest region on the planet. The last recorded rainfall in the area where I was shooting was fifty years ago. It’s like being on Mars. There’s no life. There’s nothing.
So I went to photograph this abandoned mine which was recently established as a UNESCO site. And it’s interesting because it’s a story of how technology can impact a whole town – this was a town of about 4,000 people - and a whole industry. The town is still there, but its livelihood and that whole industry got wiped out overnight because a German scientist figured out how to synthetically make saltpetre in a lab. So within four or five years, all of the mines around the world collapsed, and this mine was the biggest one.
C: Your work was the subject of the recent documentary Manufactured Landscapes. In the film, you raise the point that we come from nature; but your photographs show little of what we would consider a natural environment. In your opinion, as a species have we severed our connection with nature?
EB: What I find interesting is that the idea of nature was only recently introduced in the human vocabulary. The early romantics came up with it because they recognized the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. It was a reaction to industry. They recognized the dehumanizing effect of industry on the landscape and I think the word ‘nature’ was derived because it was something outside of industry. We call that ‘nature’ and we call that ‘industry’, and it was a kind of clinging on to that idea knowing that it would be severely tested against this new machine called the Industrial Revolution. What’s interesting, as well, is when Europeans first came to North America, the Native Americans never had a word for nature. There was no need, because they never saw themselves as something outside of it.
Today, human beings are still very much a part of nature with the same instincts of survival, but in our current urban setting it takes on different manifestations. I still feel we are a part of the natural order; we’re just defying it, thinking we’re outside of it… which is a very dangerous place to go.
C. Was it a challenge applying your photographs to a different medium as you did forManufactured Landscapes?
EB: Jennifer Baichwal, the director, had already worked with photographers and had the experience to translate a fixed visual medium to a motion picture medium, bridging those two worlds. What I think the film did successfully that the still image cannot do is lay down the context from which these images were plot. The still image is silent, and more about contemplation, where a film exists in a space time continuum. In film, you can explore these people’s lives, and see kids running through rubble. So it gives more of a human dimension to the activities and lives of these people that my images don’t include. And that touches you in a different way than seeing a child frozen in that landscape.
C: The film won Best Canadian Feature at the Toronto International Film Festival. Did this award open up doors for you internationally?
EB. It’s just reaching out internationally now. But what’s exciting about it for me as an artist is that the film puts what I do in front of an audience that would normally never see it. Now it’s a motion picture, it’s coming out on DVD (available March 6), and then the TV rights will start going out. And with the current phenomenon we’re witnessing with the world’s media all over global warming and climate change, and the speed at which this global movement seems to have taken afoot, the timing is right.
C. How do you personally deal with the emotional impact of the subject matter that you’re seeing?
EB: In a way, bearing witness to this, you build up a bit of a shield. I’m very much an inquiring mind; I’m interested in where this goes and where it all comes from and I try to think in terms of those other histories. So the hardest part for me is that I’m not naïve to think that we haven’t always taken. Just look at the pyramids in Egypt. There is some serious earth movement, and slavery, and human toil and tragedy in creating those things.
But my work is a kind of constant reminder to me that our world is changing in a very rapid way; speed and scale are the two things that I find sobering at times. To me it’s really more of a concern for my two kids. If we’re already a population of 6.5 billion and they’re anticipating it will go to 9 billion in 30 years… well, my kids are going to be in their prime lives then. What is life going to be like for them?
I’m now fifty and I kind of feel like we’ve just eaten through the filet of what the world had to offer and now we’re getting near the rump roast. In 40 or 50 years my kid might be boiling the bones. And that saddens me to think that we can go there, but I can see that we’re going there, unless there is a radical shift in our consciousness and a shift in how we divide the riches of the world. And we need to turn that consciousness into action soon to stem this Pandora’s Box which we’ve set in motion.
C. You’re working to put that consciousness in motion. In fact, you were given a TED prize. Please tell our audience a little bit about that.
EB: TED stand for Technology Entertainment and Design and it is an annual conference that looks to see what can technology, entertainment and design can do about the problems of the world. You may wonder what entertainment has to do with it, but it has a lot to do. More than any culture, it is ‘celebrity culture’ that is shaping our society’s value systems. So entertainment is very much a player in moving consciousness to new levels.
TED has been together for 20 years and it’s made up of an illustrious group of movers and shakers; a room full of ‘Type-A’ personalities. Chris Anderson, who’s a kind of curator and the man who runs the conference, wanted to take the group and move it away from a world of ideas and into a world of action. He felt that this group could be engaged and put to positive use in a world that needs a lot of help. So he put in a call for members to submit potential candidates for a prize that included a purse of $100,000 and a chance to make wishes that would change the world.
C. What did you wish for?
EB. I decided to look at the environmental problem in a real pragmatic way, realizing that the modern environmental movement had failed. Why? Because the movement failed to recognize that we cannot tackle the environment in isolation of the economy, of society, of social justice, and of social safety nets. A sustainable society has to have people who feel safe in their jobs, who have a safe place to raise their children, who have clean air to breathe and who have good food to eat. You just have to do that with a consciousness that your habitat has to be maintained and not depleted.
For me, ‘sustainability’ embraced that view, where as ‘environmentalism’ simply said, ‘save the environment and everything else can go to hell.’ That just doesn’t work, because it’s very easy for the captains of industry to say ‘this doesn’t make jobs’; but ‘sustainability’ looks at the corporations, and the government, and the NGOs, and the people, and the grassroots efforts and realizes that all of this has to flow through cooperation.
So I went on a search for a group that was spreading these messages and these values, and whom this prize money could help support. ‘World Changing’ came to me as an organization with great potential because it already had this dialogue going. They were exploring the Blog which I think is going to be the most influential disseminator of ideas and exchanger of information that the Internet is capable of. Plus, all the writers understood that to be effective you can’t just go out there and bitch about what’s wrong with the world. We all know things are wrong with the world. That doesn’t help. Instead, World Changing isolates an issue like carbon emissions or ethanol or hybrid vehicles and discusses it. ‘Buildings today are not efficient.’ Fine, ‘how do we make them more efficient, who’s doing the best job in making efficient buildings, and what can we learn from Europe?’ The site has become a central clearing house for all of the best ideas; and anyone who’s interested in making a more sustainable world can go there.
And it’s growing. The group just had a successful run with the World Changing book. It’s already sold over 40,000 copies and they’re just about to put it into paperback and three other languages. And now they’re being offered more book deals so it is becoming kind of what I’d hoped it would.
C: With another wish, you chose to engage children in sustainable thinking?
EB: Yes. I feel that in building a sustainable world, it’s critical to involve children – particularly between the ages of 7 and 12, or what I call ‘post-age-of-reason’ and ‘pre-puberty’. They pay attention and are able to absorb things in a very profound way, so that it can become a life lesson. We ended up working with another TED participant, WGBH, which is a public broadcast out of Boston. We developed a program that will be interspersed between regular programming where children essentially trick their parents into becoming more sustainable by making funny things. But it’s essentially designed to direct kids to a website where they can interact with all kinds of things that revolve around sustainable thinking, without them even hearing, seeing, or understanding the word sustainable. In the fabric and in the play of it, you learn about sustainability, while you’re having fun.
C: Your wishes are grassroots or ‘bottom-up’ in nature. Do you believe that grassroots programs are more effective than traditional ‘top-down’ political mandates?
EB: I often think about what creates a movement. Is it bottom-up or is it top-down? I tend to think it’s somehow a bit of both. And it’s about consciousness, too. As people learn and wake up to realities, it opens them up to new ways of thinking and doing things. It’s hard, though. Most people have no more than a two or five year perspective; traditionally that’s been fine and people happily live their lives with that kind of range in their life.
That’s where governments must step in. They should be saying, “We’re looking out for 20 years from now.” Unfortunately the political system has failed when it comes to setting agendas today for tomorrow. That failure probably has something to do with how we elect our government and how we turn politics into a kind of popularity contest versus a battle of policies and values. Unfortunately, that debate doesn’t seem to go on very often.
C: Are you optimistic?
EB: I try to be. I try as much as possible. I think it is very important that these messages come with optimism. Because I think there’s a real danger that we move directly from denial into despair. But, between denial and despair, there exists ‘hope’. Hope and a willingness to try to change, to try to better the world… to try to add to the positive side of the ledger. I think history will judge each and everyone of us on which side which side of that ledger we landed on, because this is a moral imperative. It is a moral decision and we stand at a juncture. We now have enough knowledge to know that we are causing a huge problem and each and everyone of us will be looked upon in our community, by our children, in our possessions, as to where were you? What did you do when you found out?
I think that whether you’re a corporate leader or heading up a government, or just an individual making a life for yourself, you have a role to play. There’s a role for everyone. It’s going to be very interesting to watch the next five years. I’ve been talking about this for the last 3 years with a number of think tanks ever since I got the award. We’ve all been talking about the inevitable global movement towards sustainability. We knew it was coming. It would have to come. Because THIS is coming! It’s going to come whether we want it to come or not. Denial is not going to stop it.
I found it very interesting when Al Gore, in his documentary, showed a globe and described covering it in varnish. That thin coat, that thin coat of atmosphere, that’s what we’re fighting for. That thin vapour layer is what separates all of this from being just another rock in space.
Taken from World Changing.
Aziz’s thorough evaluation of love.
Happy vs. Meaningful Life
As psychologists zero in on the key to a good life, it’s becoming clear that there are two distinct paths.
A forthcoming paper by Roy Baumeister, Kathleen Vohs, Jennifer Aaker, and Emily Garbinsky in the Journal of Positive Psychology looks at the difference between a happy life and a meaningful life. Here’s the abstract:
Being happy and finding life meaningful overlap, but there are important differences. A large survey revealed multiple differing predictors of happiness (controlling for meaning) and meaningfulness (controlling for happiness). Satisfying one’s needs and wants increased happiness but was largely irrelevant to meaningfulness. Happiness was largely present-oriented, whereas meaningfulness involves integrating past, present, and future. For example, thinking about future and past was associated with high meaningfulness but low happiness. Happiness was linked to being a taker rather than a giver, whereas meaningfulness went with being a giver rather than a taker. Higher levels of worry, stress, and anxiety were linked to higher meaningfulness but lower happiness. Concerns with personal identity and expressing the self contributed to meaning but not happiness.
In short, a meaningful life involves suffering for a greater cause.
The study, based on multiple surveys of 397 adults plus past research, found that people can feel both happy and meaningful — indeed the two feelings reinforce each other — but at some points you may have to choose.
The authors hope you’ll choose meaningfulness:
Our data enable us to construct a statistical portrait of a life that is highly meaningful but relatively low in happiness, which illuminates the differences between happiness and meaningfulness. This sort of life has received relatively little attention and even less respect. But people who sacrifice their personal pleasures in order to participate constructively in society may make substantial contributions. Cultivating and encouraging such people despite their unhappiness could be a goal worthy of positive psychology.
The paper concludes: “[H]umans may resemble many other creatures in their striving for happiness, but the quest for meaning is a key part of what makes us human, and uniquely so.”
Read more: Business Insider
Eating Animals
Although I’m only a little more than halfway done with Jonathan Safran Foer’s book, I find myself wanting to discuss so many things with people. I am by no means a vegetarian, but this book has definitely forced me to think about my eating choices and habits. Here are a few main questions I have that don’t necessarily have answers:
- Why is there such a stigma with well farmed animals? There seems to be an assumption that if you are interested in buying meat from family farms or farms that treat and slaughter their animals humanely (or at least, as humanely as slaughtering can get), you are automatically labeled as either some sort of hippie or rich middle aged housewife that has nothing better to do than overspend on groceries? From what I’ve read, Whole Foods doesn’t even sell reputable eggs or meat. Frank Reese, a poultry farmer, wrote that most of his clients are not wealthy by any means but choose to pay a little extra to eat meat that has been treated well. What’s the big deal with this judgmental sense of hierarchy?
- Why are humans so contradictory with their eating habits? Why do we bond with some animals but accept the fact that millions of others face horrific situations that we impose upon them? Why are we obviously morally against these methods. but choose to eat the meat anyways? Why are some of us even grossed out by butchering animals or touching raw meat, but okay with eating it? Shouldn’t we only be okay with eating things that we can see in its raw form? For example, once I saw that chicken nugget soft serve photo, I decided that I just couldn’t eat chicken nuggets anymore. Why isn’t that different for when animals are slaughtered horribly on camera vs. why is this reaction the same as seeing someone slice the skin off of the side of bacon? Why do people choose to ignore instead of explore?
- Since we have the power to slaughter and the conscience to decide between what gets slaughtered, does that mean we have the responsibility to do it humanely?
- How do you define pain and a humane slaughtering?
- If Whole Foods, a supposed wholesome, healthy, and morally sound grocery chain does not actually promote any of these values, where would one go to find the well treated meat?
TLDR, I’ve been thinking about meat.
Feeling blessed that this counts as research.
by Damon Winter
I have stayed away from much of the online discussion of the use of camera phones and apps in photojournalism largely because I have not wanted to be seen as an advocate for their use and because I have wanted to avoid any appearance of endorsing any particular product or technique — which I absolutely do not. It was never my intention for these photos to be seen only in the context of the tool by which they were made.
Having said that, I will always stand behind these photographs and am confident in my decision that this was the right tool to tell this particular story.
Any discussion about the validity of these images comes down to two basic fundamentals: aesthetics and content.
At the heart of all of these photos is a moment or a detail or an expression that tells the story of these soldiers’ day-to-day lives while on a combat mission. Nothing can change that. No content has been added, taken away, obscured or altered. These are remarkably straightforward and simple images.
What has gotten people so worked up, I believe, falls under the heading of aesthetics. Some consider the use of the phone camera as a gimmick or as a way to aestheticize news photos. Those are fair arguments, but they have nothing to do with the content of the photos.
We are being naïve if we think aesthetics do not play an important role in the way photojournalists tell a story. We are not walking photocopiers. We are storytellers. We observe, we chose moments, we frame little slices of our world with our viewfinders, we even decide how much or how little light will illuminate our subjects, and — yes — we choose what equipment to use. Through all of these decisions, we shape the way a story is told.
Let’s look at how the images have been processed by the application. This is not a case of taking an image and applying a chosen filter later. A photo is taken and then you must wait up to 10 seconds, while the image is processed, before you can take the next one. In processing, every image receives what seems to be a pretty similar treatment: a color balance shift, the burning of predetermined areas of the frame and increased contrast.
These are all fairly standard parameters in Photoshop. And they can be done on a color enlarger. The problem people have with an app, I believe, is that a computer program is imposing the parameters, not the photographer.“No content has been added, taken away, obscured or altered. These are remarkably straightforward and simple images.”
Take as an example the image that won first place in feature singles in this year’s Pictures of the Year International competition. It is black and white, shot with an extremely shallow depth of field to focus attention on the intended subject and blur other distractions and to give it a certain feel. It features a very heavy use of vignetting.
Much of the information in the image has been obscured in the interest of aesthetics. We humans do not see in black and white. And we do not see the world at f/1.2. These are aesthetic choices that do not contribute to the accuracy of the image. They are ways that the scene has been enhanced aesthetically.
Images like this have been celebrated in photojournalism competitions for years. I have a hard time seeing how this differs — in essence — from how the camera phone has processed the images I made. It’s just a different tool.
If I had had the choice at the time, I would have used a program that applied less of an effect. But this was all I had available to me. Without an Internet connection, I could not download a plug-in for the application with more subtle processing, as I would have preferred. This is what I had. And this is what I used. And that is that.
I have always loved shooting in a square format. This program allows you to shoot and — most importantly — compose in that format. I could not have taken these photos using my S.L.R. and that perhaps is the most important point to be made about the camera phone in this story.
Using the phone is discreet and casual and unintimidating. The soldiers themselves often take pictures of one another with their phones and that was the hope of this essay: to have a set of photos that would almost look like those snapshots — but through a professional eye.
The beauty of a new tool is that it allows you to see and approach your subjects differently. Using this phone brought me into little details that I would have missed otherwise. The image of the men resting together on a rusted bed frame could never have been made with my regular camera. They would have scattered the moment I raised my 5D with a big 24-70 lens attached. But with the phone, the men were very comfortable. They always laughed when they saw me shooting with it while professional cameras hung from my shoulders.
“A Grunt’s Life” was a lighter feature story within the context of The Times’s larger “Year at War” project, following the First Battalion, 87th Infantry of the 10th Mountain Division in northern Afghanistan. This essay was not a news story. The reporter, James Dao, and I had racked our brains trying to figure out how to tell the story after having been on so many missions that often go nowhere and have no clearly defined story arc.
We spent so much time with these men. They had become so comfortable with us that we were given a rare and honest glimpse into their lives. For us, it sometimes resembled a summer camp with guns more than a military operation. Halfway through our six-day mission, I knew there was no other way I could tell the story. I concentrated on shooting “snapshots” with the phone. Jim’s story — light, but gritty and raw — meshed perfectly with the images, a wonderful collaboration. I believe our readers were served well.
People may have the impression that it is easy to make interesting images with a camera app like this, but it is not the case. At the heart of every solid image are the same fundamentals: composition, information, moment, emotion, connection. If people think that this is a magic tool, they are wrong. Of hundreds of images taken with the phone over those six days in Nahr-i-Sufi, only a handful were worth reproducing.
I have no intention of becoming a camera phone photographer. I use it often for personal photos (my cat being my favorite subject), which suggests why it was the perfect tool to tell this particular story. It helped me make intimate pictures of a subject — the American soldier in wartime deployment — that is often seen only as part of a sizable, anonymous fighting machine. I cannot say if I will use the camera phone again on my job.
People have covered war with plastic toy cameras. Most recently, Erin Trieb in Afghanistan. David Burnett used the tilt of his large format cameras to render major sporting events into miniature dioramas. Paolo Pellegrin creates exquisite black-and-white images of major news events around the world that often more closely resemble paintings than photographs, using the same digital camera we all use. Each photographer uses a technique or tool that helps him or her to best tell the stories and all of their work has been acknowledged and celebrated. None of these techniques are grounded on the idea of visual accuracy but they are effectively used to tell stories, convey ideas and to enlighten, which is the real heart of our work.
