SionPhoto

Happy Birthday...

Singapore National Day, 9th August 2008.

And a same-day Happy Birthday to Jessie too.

Through a Glass, Darkly...

It's World Press Photo award time again, and like nearly every year, the winning image (this time by Tim Hetherington ) has caused all kinds of ructions around and about.

To be honest, the only decent response is to congratulate all the winners, but it's worth remembering the contest is called not the 'World Photo Award', but the World Press Photo award (WPP). It's ultimately pointless elevating one image to encapsulate a whole years news, but some of the criticisms do have some validity, in that journalism seems to have been often displaced in favour of aesthetic concerns at the WPP.

Aesthetics needn't outweigh journalistic enquiry, you can have both - but Paul Melchers blog argument is that in a competition which is concerned with press photography, you'd assume the judges would be looking for an image that satisfied both pictorial and journalistic concerns.

I think the winning image is intriguing, but it doesn't really tell me anything I don't already know - and perhaps even tells me less about whats going on.

The blurred image clearly shows a US soldier at the end of his tether...but because of what? In Afghanistan, the largest military power in history is putting huge efforts into bending one of the poorest nations on Earth to it's will.

Yet by viewing this image I'm supposed to empathise with the more powerful party and to shrug off the growing and largely unaccounted civilian casualties caused by their activities.

Pictures like these (and the story its taken from) construct a developing consensus narrative about Afghanistan and Iraq, in the same way a media/popular culture consensus was constructed about Vietnam...that it was a tragedy for the US only, instead of what it really was - the military might of the Worlds most powerful nation, laying waste to a poor country and slaughtering its civilian population, for ultimately futile strategic aims.

Perhaps that sounds familiar? It probably will to average Afghans, as they endure the consequences of yet another superpowers 'boots on the ground'.

With neither present UK or future US political leaders talking about military withdrawal, I don't think its acceptable any longer to uncritically look at military images taken in Afghanistan or Iraq, and celebrate them simply on the sole aesthetic grounds that they carry on the pictorial legacy of Robert Capa.

The D-Day troops depicted by Capa on Omaha Beach were doing something markedly different to what US troops did in Vietnam, and are doing now in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Robert Capa's blurred photographs of soldiers at their tethers end, shoulder-deep in seawater amidst withering gunfire, were arguably images of liberators, and Capa had recognised and documented anti-Fascist struggle a damn sight earlier than most. His lover, Gerda Taro, died recording it.

As repugnant as Qutbism is, it simply does not present the same dire existential threat that Nazism posed in June 1944, and whatever threat of Islamic militancy that exists now, has been increased, not lessened, by the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The context of these current conflicts and WWII is very different, but the photographic depiction often, is not.

In many examples of contemporary photojournalism from Afghanistan and Iraq, deeply embedded (excuse the pun) pictorial motifs of liberation and sacrifice are being used to either endorse, ignore or excuse economic and military imperialism.

The Mexican Suitcase...

Wow...

Forget Indiana Jones, check this discovery out.

Then have a look for yourself.

Tell me exactly what you saw and what you think it means...

Is it a documentary? A feature film? Nah, its a commercial, but a lovely piece of work nonetheless, with a great understated comic performance by Martin Scorsese.

Which brings me on...some of you might have wondered about the somewhat opaque blog post titles in the past few weeks. Well, they're all quotes (er, except the first question) from movies, carefully laid down in preparation for the

SionPhoto Kristmazz Kwizz!

By way of a clue, each blog post title does have something in some way, to do with the content of post itself, so bonus points for anyone figuring out what those links are, with some other bonus questions thrown in if they come to me while typing.

The prize? I was gonna offer up a bottle of that Scorsese bubbly, but was worried about the bottle exploding in the post (or it being drunk by me first...) so, I'll think o' summat else.

Without any further ado - the Kwizz Kweschuns...

1/ Epiosode IV: A New Hope

An easy one first - which movie is this from?

2/ Cut You Buggers...Cut!

Which legendary director directed this movie? Which actor utters the above line before plunging to his doom?

3/ Oh, I'm a Funny Guy? Like a Clown? I AMOOZ You?

This quote is too well known...so...what was the name of the man who was killed by the character who utters this line, and whose death later causes his murderer to be assassinated?

4/ How Does He Get His Copy Out? Specially Trained Hens.

Which photojournalist speaks this line, in which film? And (Fiendish Bonus Question) why did he go on to vote for George W. Bush?

5/ They Won't Want us To Ask 'Em. They'll Just Want Us To Get It For 'Em...

Which movie? What connects this movie to Flash Gordon? And why does the above line uttered in the film have so much relevance today?

6/ If anyone approaches, you shout "Halt, Who Goes There" and take down their credentials...

Which British TV show was this movie made from (Clue: Tony Benn mentions it in his interview)?

7/ I Dont Take Sides. I Take Pictures.

Which photojournalist character utters this line while in jail? And (Fiendish Bonus Question) what language does he speak it in?

8/ Don't lets spoil everything. We've only just met. No, we haven't met. You've never seen met.

Whats the fictitous photographers name in this movie? And which real photojournalist provided the images seen in the film?

9/ Who in God's name has automatic rifles? Dashed unsporting. Probably Belgian.

Who is the author of the graphic novel, which was adpated into the movie from which this line is taken? Whats the name of film?

And finally...

10/ Tell me exactly what you saw and what you think it means...

The Scorsese commercial makes visual references to many Hitchcock films - who speaks this line? What's the name of the press photographer in the flick?

And what links that movie snapper to the author of this blog?

Thats it! Send your answers to

sionphoto@hotmail.com

with 'Kwizz' in the subject line.

The one who gets most answers right wins a prize.

If nobody answers? Erm...the whole thing will be quietly buried and conveniently forgotten like a reality show voting scandal, or the invasion of Afghanistan.

I Dont Take Sides. I take Pictures.

AP photographer Bilal Hussein finally had the opportunity to sit in front of a court yesterday, after being detained by U.S. forces in Iraq 19 months ago.

Although calling it a 'court' is obviously dignifying what looks like a legal farce and a complete mockery of due process.

The details of the hearing are going to be kept secret, the defence lawyers can view materials presented at the hearing, but not take any copies away with them, and Bilals lawyer, Paul Gardephe cannot speak to him without a US soldier and military interpreter being present in the room.

As Gardephe says:

"You cannot prepare a defendant for a criminal trial with the prosecutor in the room"

Even if the Central Criminal Court of Iraq (CCCI) releases Bilal Hussein, the U.S. retains the prerogative to continue to hold someone as a security detainee, even if the CCCI clears them.

Tony Blair, at the US Congress, 2003:

"Our ultimate weapon is not our guns but our beliefs ...any time, ordinary people are given the chance to choose, the choice is the same. Freedom not tyranny. Democracy not dictatorship. The rule of law not the rule of the secret police."

How Does He Get His Copy Out? Specially Trained Hens.

Here's the short film I chopped together for last weekends Media Workers Against the War conference. Spent all night finishing it off, then the conference projector bulb blew out in the last few minutes....typical : (

There's stacks of material that didn't make the film, so maybe if I get the chance I'll edit up some more segments.

Cut, You Buggers...Cut!

Here's another video for the forthcoming Media Workers Against the War conference.

This time it's Martin Bell OBE, veteran war correspondent, former MP and UNICEF Ambassador:

(The John Pilger YouTube page now has its first comment...which has a pop at my clunky editing. Sheesh...)

Episode IV: A New Hope...

...yeah, I'm still just about hanging in there.

Sorry its taken so long to post anything, but I'm back to show a series of short videos which I've been shooting and editing for the Media Workers Against the War forthcoming conference, 'The First Casualty? War, Truth & the Media' at the London School of Economics (LSE) on November 17th 2007.

The first video is John Pilger, who really needs no introduction:

Cameras: Sion Touhig, Jess Hurd
Editing: Sion Touhig

I'll post other interviews in the next few days (with luck), so check back in for Tony Benn, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Ken Loach, Martin Bell, John Kampfner, Jonathan Steele, Abdul Rahman Malik and Jeremy Dear.

Sorry...

An apology is in order to anyone who reads this blog, as a combination of dodgy broadband upgrades and being in a deep, deep video editing hole for a while, means I haven't posted anything for ages.

I will however be posting some tasty chunks of hot steaming 'content' on the blog shortly, as the result of a short film I'm working on at the moment, which examines the media's reporting of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

People like Tony Benn, Yasmin Alibiah-Brown, John Pilger and Martin Bell have had a lot to say on the matter, with more people to follow, so tune in soon...

Frock and Awe...

Regular 'blog readers will know we're a major fan of fashion demi-god/Davy Crockett-lookalike Steven Meisel here at Touhig Towers.

His recent spreads for Italian Vogue will either stand as beyond-cutting-edge critiques on the Worlds current madness, or a final indictment that the fashiorati are so far up themselves, that even a humanitarian catastrophe is just another excuse to get a bit o' bling on.

So fire up that Humvee, get the Kevlar pants on, and have a look at Meisel's lastest stonking multimedia assault.

You have to hand it to the bloke...he not only pushes the taste envelope, he drags it outside, kicks it in the knackers and steals its Gucci wallet, before setting it on fire.