Interview with magnum photgrapher ..Abbass

http://mediastore2.magnumphotos.com/CoreXDoc/MAG/Media/TR2/1/c/b/b/PAR91599.jpg
A. Abbas

IRAN. Tehran. January 25 1979
The Army intervenes when the woman faints. The man standing in the middle is believed to be a SAVAK, an officer of the secret service, as he is the only aggressor to have stayed on. Armed forces intervention made the rioters run away. The soldier on the right does not seem to appreciate the photographer.

http://mediastore2.magnumphotos.com/CoreXDoc/MAG/Media/TR2/3/9/2/b/PAR451961.jpg
The contact sheet, it appears the word "lynched" may have been incorrectly used by Abbas in his notes. No other photos seem to exist.
 
Most people run for their lives in these situations, where military with guns get involved, but he had enough guts to stick around and document it. No one truly knows how much he cares/cared about the poor woman. Just because he doesn't go on and on about it, doesn't mean he didn't care.
 
Roma said:
Most people run for their lives in these situations, where military with guns get involved, but he had enough guts to stick around and document it. No one truly knows how much he cares/cared about the poor woman. Just because he doesn't go on and on about it, doesn't mean he didn't care.
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...
right!
 
chikne said:
I don't know what you mean by "this type of work", but if you were to take antoine d'agata who does similar type of work and happens to spread pestilence, then you have an argument not.
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Many would say the same about some of your best photographs, photography is easily misunderstood. That is why I included Abbas' notes.

I agree with you, but then again don't, for me personally photography of war and suffering is a very gray area. I have faced armed men, bent on hurting anyone in their path, and not found my camera particularly obliging.

Yesterday I went to seen Jeff Wall's new show at Marian Goodman, in NYC. He clearly challenges our perception of photographic reality in this new work, in fresh ways. In his catalog he refers to his work as "near documentary" a term I would personally use for all photography, since a photo is always "after," and framed, thus always "truth and artifice."

It would be helpful to others if your rage towards this kind of work was a bit more didactic.

It seems to me you think photography should be a reflection how one understands one's values and beliefs, and to be inseparable from one's practices?
 
Roma said:
Most people run for their lives in these situations, where military with guns get involved, but he had enough guts to stick around and document it. No one truly knows how much he cares/cared about the poor woman. Just because he doesn't go on and on about it, doesn't mean he didn't care.
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The last photo of his series makes it appear she was being protected by the Shah's Secret Service SAVAK, and has fainted.

What happened to her later is of course unknown. Some were executed after the revolution, including important women like the physician Farrokhroo Parsa, who fought for women's rights.
 
It's easy to understand the conflict in his position.
Maybe a reason that these interviews are valuable.
When he said repeatedly it was not his revolution.
It made me feel like he had possibly had a change of heart.
The path changes all of us. The whole of the journey is what's important.
He seems a challenged soul.
 
chikne said:
hmmmm food for thought.

Coincidentally, someone from rff paid me a recent visit via an invalid thread...
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Might have been me, I had looked at your work when you posted a link a few years back, not sure if the thread was still live, but found found it on Google (sadly the search engine on the RFF rather poor), where nothing ever goes away. I remind people that Google tends to be forever, but they never seem to believe it.

Anyway very moving work.
 
Don't be critical of folks unless you've been there. You are in a war zone. You have only cameras. People are shooting. People are fighting. There are bodies around you. There is constant violence around you. You can't physically help everyone. All you can do is your job. If you are dead and unable to shoot photos, then what's the point?

It sucks, but someone has to do it.

Kevin Carter was criticized for taking the photo of the starving child with a vulture in the background instead of putting down the camera and helping the child. But, there were in reality hundreds of starving men, women and children along this path to the feeding station. He had no power to fix the problem. The best he could do is document it. Kevin won the Pulitzer Prize for the photo. Then committed suicide.
 
chikne said:
hmmmm food for thought.

Coincidentally, someone from rff paid me a recent visit via an invalid thread...
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Might have been me, I had looked at your work when you posted a link a few years back (twice it turns out), not sure if the thread was still live when I looked recently, but found found it on Google, where nothing ever goes away. I remind people that Google tends to be forever, but they never seem to believe it.

Anyway very moving work.
 
JP Owens said:
Don't be critical of folks unless you've been there. You are in a war zone. You have only cameras. People are shooting. People are fighting. There are bodies around you. There is constant violence around you. You can't physically help everyone. All you can do is your job. If you are dead and unable to shoot photos, then what's the point?

It sucks, but someone has to do it.
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I wasn't being critical... I was just pointing out that he was the right person for the job. I couldn't do it.
 
JP Owens said:
Don't be critical of folks unless you've been there. You are in a war zone. You have only cameras. People are shooting. People are fighting. There are bodies around you. There is constant violence around you. You can't physically help everyone. All you can do is your job. If you are dead and unable to shoot photos, then what's the point?

It sucks, but someone has to do it.

Kevin Carter was criticized for taking the photo of the starving child with a vulture in the background instead of putting down the camera and helping the child. But, there were in reality hundreds of starving men, women and children along this path to the feeding station. He had no power to fix the problem. The best he could do is document it. Kevin won the Pulitzer Prize for the photo. Then committed suicide.
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I think the subject finds the photographer rather than the other way round.

Kevin Carter is a perfect example because no matter how many other photos he took, that image was always going to hang over his head like the sword of Damocles.

Every photographer aspires to that one famous iconic shot and yet once they captured that image, the image begins to define them... As they say be careful what you wish for.
 
JP Owens said:
Don't be critical of folks unless you've been there. You are in a war zone. He had no power to fix the problem. The best he could do is document it. Kevin won the Pulitzer Prize for the photo. Then committed suicide.
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One of my dearest friends from college was a combat photographer in Vietnam, I remember he had lost about 60 pounds when he was discharged, sick and constantly nervous, armed only with a Nikon F, and an army issue Graflex. Although I would do anything to get back to my discharge weight of 150 ;).
 
chikne said:
wow, I was familiar with Kevin Carter's image of the starving child but had no idea he later committed suicide.

Terrible story really.
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As Nietzsche said, "... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.”
 
Hsg said:
As Nietzsche said, "... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.”
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"I am depressed … without phone … money for rent … money for child support … money for debts … money!!! … I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings and corpses and anger and pain … of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners…I have gone to join Ken (Ken Oosterbroek) if I am that lucky."

In April 1994, the photograph won the Pulitzer Prize, 3 months after, on 27 July 1994 Carter sadly gave up. There really was nothing he could have done at the moment he took the photo, except not take it.
 
photomoof said:
"I am depressed … without phone … money for rent … money for child support … money for debts … money!!! … I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings and corpses and anger and pain … of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners…I have gone to join Ken (Ken Oosterbroek) if I am that lucky."

In April 1994, the photograph won the Pulitzer Prize, 3 months after, on 27 July 1994 Carter sadly gave up. There really was nothing he could have done at the moment he took the photo, except not take it.
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As I said the subject finds the the photographer and leaves him with the option to take the photo or not. K Carter did have the option not to take that picture.

I don't know who said it, but sometimes not taking a photograph is the real mark of a skilled photographer.
 
It is not correct to judge a person on basis of incomplete knowledge of the situation. The biggest part of any decision we make lies in the context of a given situation, few people are "good" or "bad" on ingrained basis.
 
Hsg said:
As I said the subject finds the the photographer and leaves him with the option to take the photo or not. K Carter did have the option not to take that picture.

I don't know who said it, but sometimes not taking a photograph is the real mark of a skilled photographer.
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He did not have the option not to see it. IMO, none of us really should take the option not to see, not to bear witness.

Take photos? I honestly don't know. I walked among the ruins of 9/11 for many months, I was "protected" from seeing, by those in charge.

Like chikne, I am petty much still lifes for many years now.
 
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