In its endeavour to summarise more than a half-century of human
experience within the confines of a single exhibition, Patient
Planet follows in the tradition of large-scale humanist photographic
exhibitions like The Family of Man in the mid-1950s.
Journalistic in intent, it includes many of the big names of photojournalism
such as Andre Kertesz, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Werner Bischof, Edward
Steichen, Robert Frank, Dorothea Lange, Bill Brandt and Herbert List
along with lesser known photographers and anonymous images in an
eclectic display of more than 250 photographs organised around key
themes.
Beginning with the juxtaposition of three faces, an unknown woman’s
alongside two world-famous, it asks the question: ‘When we look into
eyes, eyes look at us. For the Greeks it was Atlas who carried the world on
his shoulders: who carries it for usNULL’ Behind this question, and the themes
that follow, countries as well as eras - France, Italy, Brief Encounters, The
Creative Moment, Work - is the idea that the camera can catch those single
defining moments which represent the complexity of human experience.
Picture magazines such as Life and ‘du’, the Swiss magazine that the
exhibition’s images are drawn from, fostered the development of
photojournalism from the mid-1930s onwards with the idea that looking at
a photograph of a scene or an event could be seen as equivalent to the
experience of being there. In 1928 , when du was launched, it promised its
readers: ‘There is no picture magazine here in France which expresses the
speeded up rhythm of present-day life, a magazine that informs and
documents all the manifestations of contemporary life: political events,
scientific discoveries, disasters, exploration, sports exploits, theater, film, art
and fashion. du has taken it upon itself to fill this gap...’1
The photographers who provided these images usually worked as
freelancers through agencies, often presenting independently conceived and
completed picture stories to the major magazines. Agencies such as
Magnum Photos, founded by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, George
Rodger, David ‘Chim Seymour and William Vandivert from France,
Hungary, Britain, Poland and the US respectively, represented a new kind
of co-operative photographic agency, later becoming synonymous with the
very term photojournalism.
Life magazine, which sold all 466,000 copies of its first issue in 1936,
described its purpose as being: ‘To see life; to see the world; to eyewitness
great events; to watch the faces of the poor and the gestures of the proud.’2
An essentially American concept of photojournalism, this is contrasted by
the French picture magazine du's description of itself as depicting the
rhythm of life, a French interpretation of reportage which relied more upon
inference and visual nuance. Henri Cartier-Bresson’s subtle portraits of
French artists and writers in this exhibition, such as the poet Jean Cocteau
or the writer Colette, illustrate this approach.
Bruce Davidson’s series
East 100th Street, New York
1966-68 demonstrates the
commitment many of these
photojournalists had to their
work. A personal project the
Magnum photographer took
time off to complete,
Davidson sought and found
an engagement with his
subjects as if he were there
with them, participating in
their outings and social
rituals. There are no events as
such being reported on, other
than that of the existence of
tenderness and human beauty in this most unforgiving of settings. Like
Werner Bischof, W. Eugene Smith and Marc Riboud, also included in
Patient Planet, Davidson saw himself as a humanist photographer, who
‘wanted not only to arouse emotion but to do something for mankind.’3
The most successful of the works by
these photographers are characterised
by emotional commitment and realism
as well as by high aesthetic values.
Influenced by the enormous cataclysm
of the Second World War, they hoped
through their work to prevent the
suffering that so much of it recorded.
When Werner Bischof went to Tokyo
for the first time in 1951, six years
after the dropping of the atomic
bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
he registered with an equally attuned
eye both the tragic casualties of war
and the classical beauty of Japanese
culture. The same combination of
aestheticism and empathy is shown in
his photographs of the developing
wars in Indochina and Korea, which
he visited after Japan.
Robert Frank, another Swiss
photographer, moved to America from
France in 1947 where he later
published the seminal book The
Americans, the first such work to
make the photographic book into an
art form in its own right. Influenced by the great American photographer
Walker Evans’ 1938 book American Photographs, Franks’ book built up
a series of images which in deriving their subtlety and impact by playing
off against each other are not self-contained summations in the style of
Cartier-Bresson, but a more ambiguous exploration of the new world Frank
found himself in. Several of these, including ‘Saint Petersburg, Florida
1955-56 and SS Mauritania, both wryly compassionate portraits of
America’s disgruntled elderly, are included in Patient Planet.
Although it sets itself an almost impossible task, Patient Planet gives, if
not a ‘photographic record of our time’, then a fascinating insight into an
epoch of picture making by some of the most influential photographers of
the last century.
1Fred Richin, ‘Close Witness: The involvement of the photojournalist’
in A New History of Photography edited by Micheal Frizot, Editions
Adam Biro,1998.
2Fred Richin, ‘Close Witness: The involvement of the photojournalist’
in A New History of Photography edited by Micheal Frizot, Editions
Adam Biro,1998.
3 Colin Westerbeck, ‘On the Road and in the Street: The post-war
period in the United States’ in A New History of Photography edited by
Micheal Frizot, Editions Adam Biro,1998.
Patient Planet: So Many Worlds has toured throughout New Zealand
with the Auckland Art Gallery as its last venue from 11 December 1999 to
23 January 2000. The exhibition is organised by PRO-HELVIETIA -
Swiss Arts Council.
Related Links: