Broomberg and Chanarin

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https://bombmagazine.org/articles/adam-broomberg-and-oliver-chanarin/ - an interview by Sabine Mirlesse

Some extracts i found important to my work

SM What do you mean by abusive?

OC Most of the images we were using came from photography agencies and in ninety-nine percent of the cases we had no connection to the photographer and the subjects. That distance is potentially abusive—the photographs become detached from their context, from the people in the image. The subjects stop being individuals and become part of a visual or political argument. We wanted to resist that.

AB So we came up with this formula where we would go to these gated communities—for example, refugee camps, prisons, and psychiatric hospitals. We went with our 4x5 camera, always taking a writer who was not a journalist—often screenwriters or novelists—and we would interview everybody. We disclosed their real names and kind of upset that one-way flow of power that is inherent in traditional documentary photography. One example, which doesn’t necessarily work, is that last chapter in the psychiatric hospital in Cuba. We set up the lights, gave the subjects the release cable, and said, “Take your own portrait.” But, ultimately, the process, even in that documentary format, started troubling us more and more.

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AB But it’s logical because it was the institution that gave us authority, and photography, historically and presently, is so tied up with that power relationship. It happened to us time and time again that people would see us as part of the institution and would say yes because of that. And then there’s another, slightly more subtle thing, a sort of false promise built into photography—

For me Broomberg and Chanarin point out the clear ethnical issues that can quite easily undermine a piece of work and i plan to work to way Broomberg and Chanarin do. The key is not to become detached from people or context of the work and also focusing and reducing the power play between photographer and subject. to combat this i want to build a relationship with the subjects and want them feel at ease. I think power play is gendered which could work to my advantage, being a small young girl rather a older man. Taking a photograph can almost be seen to have similarities to being interviewed. Pierre Bordieu, a sociologist, particularly focuses on the idea of power within society. Using the term Habitus, Bourdieu suggests that habitus consists of both the hexis (the tendency to hold and use one's body in a certain way, such as posture and accent) and more abstract mental habits, schemes of perception, classification, appreciation, feeling, and action. These schemes are not mere habits: Bourdieu suggested they allow individuals to find new solutions to new situations without calculated deliberation, based on their gut feelings and intuitions, which Bourdieu believed were collective and socially shaped.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitus_(sociology)

#portraitproject