There's an interesting interview with Rineke Dijkstra about her techniques and inspirations here.

Image by Sarah Jones

Sarah Jones, Tom Hunter, and Wiebke Leister
In conversation

16 October 2008, 19.00
Ondaatje Theatre, National Portrait Gallery, London

Three contemporary photographers whose work explores ideas of potraiture, tradition and figuration discuss their practise. Looks interesting!

Brighton Photo Biennial

As previously mentioned, this year’s theme for the Brighton Photo Biennial is ‘The War of Images and Images of War’ and it raises some interesting debates. I visited the ‘Iraq through the lens of Vietnam’ show, which I have to admit was a fairly hard hitting exhibition. The exhibition was curated in a way that one is first led through archival images of Vietnam, showing the work of photographers such as Philip Jones Griffiths, Don McCullin and Tim Page highlighting the way in which the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have reactivated memories of past conflicts, after Donald Rumsfeld has talked of an ‘image war’ between the US and its enemies. The use of images has become an intrinsic part of a strategy that is both used to fuel and oppose war. As the blurb for the show states, ‘The contrast is particularly illuminating because the response of the US military to its defeat in Vietnam was to remake its strategy in the negative image of that war, and much of that strategy was about image management.’

The show strives to compare and contrast the changes within the documents of war as digital technology has developed and access has become more restricted. For example, in Vietnam, the military allowed photojournalists to travel with the troops anywhere they wished, whereas in Iraq photojournalists must be embedded with a particular unit, encouraging a much narrower focus of vision, intending that photographers will concentrate on the conditions of the troops and identify with them. This is one element of control that is highlighted in the exhibition, but interestingly, through digital technologies and the internet (resistance websites etc) we are shown another portrayal of war, through the eyes of the soldiers. There are two sides of this- the images taken by soldiers interacting with and helping the community – the images shown to the US public, and the harrowing images taken in a prison camp of the army torturing the inmates, most memorably with soldiers in the background grinning with a thumbs up salute to the camera. The problem with this is we are so shocked by the later images that we immediately view the former images as falsities, as set ups to force the American public into a view that the government is selling- that army presence is not only necessary, but beneficial to communities. This becomes a problem because we are perhaps so aware of the media manipulation of war images that it leads to a reverse effect- that the only truth can be in the revolting images that are hidden from mass consumption.

There is also a heap of other shows on that I would have liked to see, especially ‘The Sublime Image of Destruction’. Unfortunately I didn’t have the time but it promises to be an interesting show, examining morality and aesthetics in the aftermath through the works of Paul Seawright, Simon Norfolk and Sophie Ristelhueber. These photographers photograph areas of conflict after the event, portraying images of surreal devastation in depopulated, highly aestheticised landscapes and could not be further from the documentary traditions of black and white war photography. The images these photographers produce lie on slick surfaces, rich in colour, meditative in quality. The exhibition strives to examine the beautification of these ugly places and what it means to make war sublime.