Jim Goldberg (born 1953) is an American photographer and writer whose work reflects long-term, in-depth collaborations with neglected, ignored, or otherwise outside-the-mainstream populations. Goldberg photographs sub-cultures, creating photo collages, and including text with his photographs, often written by his subjects.Goldberg is part of the social aims movement in photography, using a straightforward, cinéma vérité approach, based on a fundamentally narrative understanding of photography. Goldberg’s empathy and the uniqueness of the subjects emerge in his works, “forming a context within which the viewer may integrate the unthinkable into the concept of self. Thus diffused, this terrifying other is restored as a universal.” (Art Forum, Summer 1987) My only agenda,’ says the photographer Jim Goldberg, ‘is to bring attention to otherwise ignored and shunned lives.’ while picturing the grisly surroundings of the welfare population for his 1970s series Rich and Poor and developed with Raised by Wolves, when he documented teenagers living on the streets in San Francisco and LA. ‘I had a sense that their perceptions were not being observed and considered,’ he says, and so he began asking his subjects to annotate the pictures he took, ensuring his photographs existed as ‘thoughtful encounter, rather than knee-jerk reaction’. Goldberg is best known for his photographic books, multi-media exhibits and video installations, among them: Rich and Poor (1985) The book includes photographs of people in their homes along with handwritten comments by them about their lives. For example, the handwriting under the photograph reproduced on the front cover reads “I keep thinking where we went wrong. We have no one to talk to now, however, I will not allow this loneliness to destroy me,— I STILL HAVE MY DREAMS. I would like an elegant home, a loving husband and the wealth I am used to. Countess Vivianna de Bronville.” Although the book received one mixed review shortly after publication,[3] other reviews were positive, and it was later selected as one of the greatest photobooks of the 20th century. Nursing Home The photographs in a 1988 exhibition of Goldberg’s “The Nursing Home Series” were accompanied by handwritten text by the nursing home residents who were the subjects of the photographs Hospice  Raised by Wolves (1995) See Vimeo A major mixed media exhibition by Goldberg concerning homeless children in California entitled “Raised by Wolves” began traveling in 1995 and was accompanied by a book. Goldberg made reference to other artists and photographers; used photographs, videos, objects, and texts to convey meaning; and “let his viewers feel, in some corner of their psyches, the lure of abject lowliness, the siren call of pain.” Open See (2009).  Open See vimeo Open See, a study of refugee, trafficked and migrant populations fleeing wartorn and economically devastated homelands to forge a new life in Europe. It is a mix of Polaroids and large-format photographs featuring his signature use of handwritten comments, combined with archive snaps and drawings to form a multi-dimensional story. The project began as a Magnum commission for the Athens Olympics in 2004. Greece’s location on the south-eastern tip of Europe makes it one of the busiest transit hubs for illegal migrants, but Goldberg realised he had touched a seam stretching far further than he had imagined. The photographs and scrawled, smudged comments reveal the aspirations and fears of people who might otherwise remain faceless statistics. ‘All I want is a bed to sleep in,’ writes one. ‘I make one dollar a day,’ says another, ‘and I have despair.’ Three years in, he was awarded a grant from the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, which enabled him to expand the assignment. Nominated for 2011 Deutsche Börse prize

Biography

Goldberg was raised in New Haven, Connecticut in a family of candy sellers. He took an aptitude test in high school that said he should do something in a field where he helped others. He went to college as a Theology major and ended up in photography when a schizophrenic Photo 1 teacher told him he had talent. Goldberg’s work was featured with that of Robert Adams and Joel Sternfeld in a 1984 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art entitled “Three Americans”; the exhibition was described as “a show of politically charged and socially conscious images.” Goldberg is a Professor of Photography and Fine Arts at the California College of the Arts and has been a full member of the Magnum Photos agency since 2006. He lives and works in San Francisco. His fashion, editorial and advertising work has appeared in numerous publications including W, Details, Flaunt, The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Rebel, GQ, The New Yorker, and Dazed and Confused. He is represented by Pace/MacGill Gallery in New York, the Stephen Wirtz Gallery in San Francisco, and Magnum Photos. —————————–

Jim Goldberg (born 1953) is an American photographer and writer whose work reflects long-term, in-depth collaborations with neglected, ignored, or otherwise outside-the-mainstream populations. Goldberg photographs sub-cultures, creating photo collages, and including text with his photographs, often written by his subjects.Goldberg is part of the social aims movement in photography, using a straightforward, cinéma vérité approach, based on a fundamentally narrative understanding of photography. Goldberg’s empathy and the uniqueness of the subjects emerge in his works, “forming a context within which the viewer may integrate the unthinkable into the concept of self. Thus diffused, this terrifying other is restored as a universal.” (Art Forum, Summer 1987)

My only agenda,’ says the photographer Jim Goldberg, ‘is to bring attention to otherwise ignored and shunned lives.’ while picturing the grisly surroundings of the welfare population for his 1970s series Rich and Poor and developed with Raised by Wolves, when he documented teenagers living on the streets in San Francisco and LA. ‘I had a sense that their perceptions were not being observed and considered,’ he says, and so he began asking his subjects to annotate the pictures he took, ensuring his photographs existed as ‘thoughtful encounter, rather than knee-jerk reaction’.

Goldberg is best known for his photographic books, multi-media exhibits and video installations, among them:

Rich and Poor (1985) The book includes photographs of people in their homes along with handwritten comments by them about their lives. For example, the handwriting under the photograph reproduced on the front cover reads “I keep thinking where we went wrong. We have no one to talk to now, however, I will not allow this loneliness to destroy me,— I STILL HAVE MY DREAMS. I would like an elegant home, a loving husband and the wealth I am used to. Countess Vivianna de Bronville.” Although the book received one mixed review shortly after publication,[3] other reviews were positive, and it was later selected as one of the greatest photobooks of the 20th century.

Nursing Home The photographs in a 1988 exhibition of Goldberg’s “The Nursing Home Series” were accompanied by handwritten text by the nursing home residents who were the subjects of the photographs

Hospice

 Raised by Wolves (1995)

See Vimeo

A major mixed media exhibition by Goldberg concerning homeless children in California entitled “Raised by Wolves” began traveling in 1995 and was accompanied by a book. Goldberg made reference to other artists and photographers; used photographs, videos, objects, and texts to convey meaning; and “let his viewers feel, in some corner of their psyches, the lure of abject lowliness, the siren call of pain.”

Open See (2009).

 Open See vimeo

Open See, a study of refugee, trafficked and migrant populations fleeing wartorn and economically devastated homelands to forge a new life in Europe. It is a mix of Polaroids and large-format photographs featuring his signature use of handwritten comments, combined with archive snaps and drawings to form a multi-dimensional story.

The project began as a Magnum commission for the Athens Olympics in 2004. Greece’s location on the south-eastern tip of Europe makes it one of the busiest transit hubs for illegal migrants, but Goldberg realised he had touched a seam stretching far further than he had imagined. The photographs and scrawled, smudged comments reveal the aspirations and fears of people who might otherwise remain faceless statistics. ‘All I want is a bed to sleep in,’ writes one. ‘I make one dollar a day,’ says another, ‘and I have despair.’

Three years in, he was awarded a grant from the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, which enabled him to expand the assignment. Nominated for 2011 Deutsche Börse prize

Biography

Goldberg was raised in New Haven, Connecticut in a family of candy sellers. He took an aptitude test in high school that said he should do something in a field where he helped others. He went to college as a Theology major and ended up in photography when a schizophrenic Photo 1 teacher told him he had talent.

Goldberg’s work was featured with that of Robert Adams and Joel Sternfeld in a 1984 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art entitled “Three Americans”; the exhibition was described as “a show of politically charged and socially conscious images.”

Goldberg is a Professor of Photography and Fine Arts at the California College of the Arts and has been a full member of the Magnum Photos agency since 2006. He lives and works in San Francisco. His fashion, editorial and advertising work has appeared in numerous publications including W, Details, Flaunt, The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Rebel, GQ, The New Yorker, and Dazed and Confused. He is represented by Pace/MacGill Gallery in New York, the Stephen Wirtz Gallery in San Francisco, and Magnum Photos.

 

George Rodger (1908–95) was a British photojournalist who was one of the first to photograph the death camps in Germany at the end of the war. He was an avid chronicler of the war, working for Life and then Time magazine.

Rodger’s images were horrific but also poignant in the way that they showed how ‘normality’ was perceived by those working in the death camps. The piles of corpses and the bodies lining the roadsides were images that shocked and revolted all who viewed them at the time. However 60 years later we view these images with
a greater understanding of how this situation came about as well as exposure to cinema and news images of the time.

We’ve looked at a number of images but we haven’t yet discussed their acceptance or reception.
In her book On Photography, Susan Sontag noted how as a society we
can become desensitised and respond almost passively to such images:
“We become inured to terrible events because we become over-familiar with
them through photographs.”
(Susan Sontag, 1977)

George Rodger and Nazi death camps
There is a similar problem with appeals for famine relief. Charities have increasingly turned to
advertising agencies in a bid to raise funds because ‘straight’ press images fail to produce the
required financial response from the viewing public.
Why is our interaction with horror and death often so muted? Our familiarity with photographs
through reproduction and reprinting, and our social conditioning after repeat viewing of images
of a similar nature, seems to diminish our ability to form an emotive response.
In The Society of the Spectacle, first published in 1967, the French philosopher Guy Debord
looked at the commodification of culture and society as a commodity. Debord argues that
representation or ‘spectacle’ has replaced an authentic social life. In other words, images have
replaced genuine social interaction.
“Images detached from every aspect of life merge into a common stream
and the former unity of life is lost forever.”
(Guy Debord, 1967, section 1.2)
As photographers, we need to be aware of and understand the tendency to voyeurism and
spectatorship. The Roman arena was a gruesome place where men, women and children met
their deaths in ever more sophisticated ways before crowds of many thousands, yet this was
perceived as entertaining. As contemporary civilised humans we consider this barbaric but is it
only time that creates this view? Or changes in society relevant to moral codes and decency? Or
a combination of both?
Project Spectacle and truth
Photography 2 Gesture and Meaning 37
Guy Debord was a Situationist. They believed in the ability of the proletariat to define their own
society should they take action to do so and this is a position which has flavoured and informed
postmodernist thinking for many years. Debord notes in section 1.3:
“The spectacle itself appears at once as society itself. As a part of society
and as a means of unification. As a part of society, it is that sector where
all attention, all consciousness, converges. Being isolated – and precisely for
that reason – this sector is the locus of illusion and false consciousness; the
unity it achieves is merely the official language of generalised separation.”
(Debord, 1967)
To return to the Romans, the ruling class used the arena as a way of controlling the masses.
This spectacle effectively became the society because, without it, balance and control – society
itself – could not be maintained. Spectacle and society are one. In the modern world you could
argue that the mass media is spectacle and therefore is society. We disapprove of the journalists
who hack celebrities’ phones but buy their newspaper to read about our disapproval, thus
completing the circle. To quote Debord again, “What appears is good; what is good appears.”
Debord is not easy reading but the complete text is readily available on the
internet if you want to give it a go. You should definitely read the first part
of Anandi Ramamurthy’s chapter ‘Spectacles and Illusions: Photography and
Commodity Culture’ in the course reader (pp. 207–36) and then, if possible, use
the student forum to discuss what you’ve read. Does your understanding of this issue contradict
or align with the views of your peers?
Ramamurthy uses the following quote on p.213 of your reading:
“The spectacle is the stage at which the commodity has succeeded in totally
colonizing social life. Commodification is not only visible, we no longer see
anything else; the world we see is the world of the commodity.”
Do you agree with this? What are the implications of this statement for photography in general
and photojournalism in particular?
The chapter by Wells links photojournalism – which is where it starts – with advertising, where
we expect images to represent commodity; this is diametrically opposed to our expectations in
photojournalism where the public still sees images as impartial and informative.
38 Photography 2 Gesture and Meaning
‘Voyeurism’ is mainly discussed today in terms of its sexual connotation but its truer meaning
is that of a passive observer. There is, though, a point of view that this passivity reflects either
true lack of concern or some sense of fascination or intrigue that creates either academic or
intellectual stimulation rather than a physical one. Levels of control in our society decide what
we can or cannot see – censorship is alive and well. Images that are considered unacceptable
(possibly voyeuristic) are controlled by various non-governmental bodies, particularly in the
UK where news-based images are strictly controlled compared to Holland or Spain where the
graphic nature of disasters is shown on prime time TV. Therefore there is a parochial element to
the censorship with standards maintained by non-elected local custodial guardians.
In 1977 Sontag wrote that “A photograph is undeniable proof that an event took place.” Find a
student that believes that today!
Nowadays, digital images allow us to create from nothing, combining two or more photographs
to form a landscape or portray an event that did not happen. In his foreword to Thomas H
Wheeler (2008) Phototruth or Photofiction? Ethics and Media Imagery in the Digital Age (p.viii),
James D Kelly writes:
“Today the software that changes a frozen moment of time into a moment
that never was, is available to everyone with a personal computer. Some
people are even ready to give up the truth of photography altogether as if
the truth were resident in some magical place called a darkroom. They claim
photography is dead. But the analogy of photographic truth to scientific
rendering never fit, and is quite obviously even more flawed now. Today
all the world knows that a photograph is nothing more than arranging
dots into a pattern that looks like something. Rearrange the dots on the
computer screen and the pyramids are closer together. Rearrange the dots
and a man is pregnant. Rearrange the dots and your ex spouse never went
on that vacation with you to the mountains.”
Kelly’s point about ‘all the world knows’ is a debatable one since humans need freedom and
resources to find this information out and the majority of the world’s population lacks one or
both of these. However, it is certainly true that in the western world an increasingly media-aware
public relies on the ethics of the photojournalist. To their credit photojournalists have on the
whole responded well in maintaining an extraordinary degree of trust in what can be called
non-fictional photography, in stark contrast to the low public esteem in which some literary
journalism is now held.
Photography 2 Gesture and Meaning 39
A burning issue for photojournalists is maintaining a credibility that their photographs have a
truth and that truth is related directly to reality. Wheeler states that ‘phototruth’ is not based
on a reader’s conviction that a photograph is reality. Rather, a photograph can be true in the
way that a sentence can be true. Viewers will believe in its truth as long as they believe that it
‘corresponds’ in a meaningful way to reality.
With the mass reproduction of images on the internet there is every chance that the image
becomes the remembered reality. This is a difficult issue for photography as photographers
in general do not cover areas in the way that television or film-makers do. They extract potent
fragments to create a whole. It is the issue of what is left out that relates to the photographer’s
individual perspective or even to editorial control.
Think about the issues we’ve been discussing – the truth of an image, its relationship to reality
and its acceptance by the viewer – in relation to some photographers who have created images
of different societies. Make notes in your learning log or blog as you read the commentaries
and view the links

Magnum Photographers

Manuel Ortiz

Sebastiao Salgado