Jim Hubbard | Uncommon Photographic Journey

Jim Hubbard, IPE co-founder and creative director at Venice Arts, will be speaking at Brooks Institute School of Visual Journalism’s Guest Speaker Series on May 13th, at 6:30 P.M. The Iron Horse Soundstage will house the lecture. Read more

Blog Post: Justin Iwata

The very purpose of our class is to study how photography can evoke social change. Looking to Jim Hubbard’s Shooting Back, to Zana Brisk’s Born in the Brothels, and PBS’ Bad Voodoo, we can see the power and potential of participatory photography. How photos are utilized to create the change they were produced for has been the focus of another one of my classes Image and Image Management.

Image managers understand that images are synthetic, ambiguous, and that the more an image is reproduced the more “true” it becomes. Sontag also understood this as she wrote “Surrealism lies at the heart of the photographic enterprise: in the very creation of a duplicate world, of a reality in the second degree, narrower but more dramatic than the one perceived by natural vision” (p. 52). In this way, the images of a place become the reality. Technological advancements like Photoshop and the internet have facilitated this process. Photoshop allows pictures to be altered then sent worldwide instantly. Image managers then chose images that are simple, evocative, and believable to shape the news and public opinion.

When Kodak produced its first sales pitch “you press the button, we do the rest,” I never understood who the “we” were until I took Image and Image Management. I now realize that the “we” are image managers, who reproduce, modulate, and manipulate the images that we are flooded with. This process is often used for social change, whether it is beneficial or harmful change is difficult to say.

Blog Post: Tony Ruiz

A woman is standing behind her daughter, placing a hat on the girl’s head while trying earnestly to fit her hair in without disturbing her ponytails. The girl is resistant. Her face says, “I don’t want to wear a hat,” but her mother just laughs. Her younger brother points and giggles, an act his mother acknowledges, as if, together, they had plotted this very moment at which to incite the young girl to a tantrum with a simple request to wear a hat. The father stood, turned away, talking on his cell phone.

I imagined a photo: The four of them in frame, the father in the foreground, to the left his son, to the left the mother and daughter. Of all the possible things they could have done, places they could have chosen to stand, there they were outside of a neutrally painted barbershop, in partial shade, wearing Cuban paraphernalia just purchased at the Calle Ocho Festival, their bodies so picturesquely placed with relation to one another, their actions so uniquely their own, so descriptive, so temporary.

Temporary.

“It’s for a school project,” I had to explain to camera-shy subjects. Inquisitive subjects ruined a number of possibly brilliant shots. Unearthing the latent potential of a scene takes finesse. More importantly, it takes time.

In a split second, the little boy stopped laughing. He stared at me, and his sister retreated behind her mother. I had not gotten a chance to take a photo yet. I had stealthily but swiftly moved into the perfect spot and was finalizing the camera settings when the scene disappeared. The magic was gone.

“Why are you taking a picture?” Asked the mother. The father had moved away from his family and me in order to continue his phone call.

The mother offered to pose for the shot. But when I took the photo, she was staring at the hat, her daughter was staring at me, and the son cowered behind his father’s knees just when the setup was suggested.

While trying to capture an image that conveys a particular feeling, the subject’s knowledge of the photo proves to be a significant obstacle. In my experience, subjects did not know how to “look natural,” even upon my request. The immediate reaction of these subjects was to smile and look at the camera. When I told them the look was still not natural, they tended to smile and look away from the camera, instead.

I realized early on in my photo project that requesting subjects to “look natural” was futile. This is not only because they simply did not know how to “look natural.” This is because the photograph, itself, is not natural. No matter how hard a subject may try to ignore the camera’s presence, the knowledge of being seen and recorded has an automatic influence on the subjects’ behavior. Subject bias is the culprit, and there is nothing natural about the conflict between the subject’s interests and the photographer’s.

I wanted to capture the dysfunctional dynamics of this family standing outside of the barbershop at the hectic Calle Ocho Festival. The mother, however, wanted me to capture her flawless family sharing a Sunday afternoon together. The result was neither.

Blog Post: Carla Guerrero 5/4/2008

The camera is a powerful and masterful tool. It captures much more than images; it captures the past and creates artifacts, as Susan Sontag writes. My camera however, was less than powerful or masterful. A Canon Powershot bought about three years ago, it has suffered my less than gentle care in my trips to Mexico, Peru and Bolivia. It sucks batteries dry in an hour, sometimes it doesn’t turn on, and when you click to take a picture it takes about a full 10 seconds before it reacts so the desired scene is never the one captured. However, this rinky dink camera was able to capture 15 decent pictures of the swap-meet.
The project was to take 15 images of the swap-meet in order to portray a subculture where families eek out an existence. Some fare well, others don’t. The reason why I chose this topic and not another, was that I knew this world very well. I belonged to it as it did to me. I didn’t think it would be challenging in the least, after all, I’m at this place every week and what’s so hard about taking a couple of shots, right?
Taking pictures however, requires a bit of courage. You need to be willing to expose yourself to people who don’t want to be exposed themselves. But anyone can go out and take pictures of anything. The secret, I think, lies in being able to contextualize them. Be able to give each image its back story and therefore make the image more powerful and fair. It is similar to what Robert Coles dealt with in his early research work. He is in a way, intruding in someone else’s life. He is there to do his work-which might or might not help his subject. As Coles went about his work, he began forming a discussion. A consciousness of what he was doing as a privileged, educated, white man in the segregated South or in Appalachia. Having a sensitivity when dealing with others who don’t share your background is difficult, but the road is made clearer once you start to ask the questions.
But how fair can one be when you are taking pictures of someone else’s reality? I was taking pictures of my reality, but even then, my reality of the swap-meet is very different to someone else’s. Participatory photography, as Roland Bleiker and Amy Kay discuss, in “Representing HIV/AIDS in Africa: Pluralist Photography and Local Empowerment,” is a different type of photography than the traditional naturalist and humanist approaches. Going into pluralist photography, you know you are not dealing with an objective image. It is an image completely subjective to the experiences of the child taking it. Humanist and naturalist photography claim to be objective—both have an agenda: to represent the truth of a situation. However, they are not completely objective; they are just as subjective as those taken by the children who participate in empowerment photography. Professional photographers make snap decisions when choosing what kind of image to take, how to compose it, where to take it from, etc. Decisions formed from their experiences, their education, and their upbringing.
Pluralist photography is defined by the authors as “a practice of mediation whereby the represented person takes an active role in the process of inscribing social meaning, but does so without attaching to it an exclusive claim that silences other positions and experiences.” The images taken by a set of children don’t claim to be the universal, objective truth as does the traditional naturalist photography. It claims to be one truth of many. It portrays the complexities and the complications that exist in any one issue affecting the poor, the underprivileged, and the hungry. It doesn’t read: “take me at face value.” It reads, look closer and study this issue on your own in order to form your own judgment-one influenced by as many perspectives as possible.
My 15 pictures of the swap-meet are obviously my form of participatory and pluralist photography. They form a picture of one reality. They are images I see from my view. Not from the shopper’s perspective, or the single mother working, or the elderly couple, or the owner of the property. These are unique images taken by a 23-year-old graduate student who has worked weekend after weekend since she was 9. They are taken by a hand that is already slightly roughened by the Santa Ana winds and the handling of rusty metals, splintered wooden tables and cheap, Santee alley merchandise. I have my own agenda when I take these images. I am sensitive to the struggles of immigrant families, because I am part of the struggle in my own immigrant family.
However, as much as I form a part of this community, I still feel odd holding the camera. Susan Sontag explains it well in On Photography, “The photographer is an armed version of the solitary walker reconnoitering, stalking, cruising the urban inferno, the voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes (Sontag, 55).” I think it goes farther than that, and it dwells in the issues Coles raises in Doing Documentary Work. There is an uncomfortable issue of privilege whether it stems from class or race or education. The camera signifies a certain status symbol in my hand. I’m taking pictures for my photography class at USC, a class taught by Pulitzer prize winning photographer Jim Hubbard. That’s a special privilege that I am able to experience because of my education. Hopefully, most doing this type of work will gain a social consciousness or sensitivity due in part from the nature of the work. As Coles elucidates, “…we are asking for a kind of forbearance from the people who are often considerably more burdened than we are, hence our obligation to think carefully about how we approach such people and how we are with them, not to mention how we take leave of them (Coles, 79).”
That is why in a sense, “parachute” journalists, photographers and volunteers or X-type of person doing similar work, don’t do justice to a story or an issue. Parachuting into a zone of conflict is usually a cost-effective way to cover a story for a newspaper or television program. Also, sending a well-known familiar figure to cover a story gives the reader or viewer a sense that comfort, and trust. However, for as long as the story is “hot,” the coverage will continue but as soon as the infotainment world catches a whiff of a hotter story, the attention is gone. People’s attention rates are short. Too much suffering is boring to people or people feel helpless and would rather not see it. Out of sight, out of mind. Maybe it’s a type of survival mechanism.
Not that parachuting into a story, doing the research and reporting on it is wrong. It provides information and bares certain facts. However, what is important is that this isn’t the sole truth out there. You can’t take it at face value. It is just one reality of many. It is just one perspective in what constitutes a truth. The people living that reality may have a dissimilar way of looking at things. They are after all, the ones directly affected. A collection of all perspectives would create a closer view of what the truth is, if there is a one general “truth.”
Photographs are not one reality either. Give two different people a camera and tell them to take pictures of the same event. Both will take different images, unlike each other, coming at it from different angles. Some things that capture one person’s interest will not capture the other’s.
Sontag writes that photographs are artifacts of the past “They are clouds of fantasy and pellets of information. Photography has become the quintessential art of affluent, wasteful, restless societies-an indispensable tool of the new mass culture that took shape here after the Civil War… (Sontag, 69).”
I think it is safe to say that today, photography is reaching the hands of those who live in the shadows that affluent, wasteful and restless society. Photography, like the rest of mass communication, is changing rapidly with the advances of technology. Today, hundreds and thousands of pictures can be taken by hundreds and thousands of amateur photographs and each represent the same yet different world. The nature of the artifact is changing as millions of voices now clamor for their own truths. No longer will the most privileged, wealthy societies be the ones writing the world’s histories.
As U.S. based journalism and media lag behind their fourth estate ideals, and infotainment takes over, it forces the rest of the world to produce their versions of the truth as infotainment distorts realities. “The fusion of information and entertainment, and the commercial need for recognizable headlines and simple stories, inevitably favors stereotypical representations over some complex ways of representing sociopolitical issues, such as HIV/AIDS (Bleiker and Kay, 143).” As such stereotypes and simplifications abound, other methods are explored to combat them. Pluralist photography, for example, explores the realities of children who have been affected by HIV and AIDS in Africa, dispelling myths and skewed images of what living with AIDS is.
In my project on the swap-meet, one of the things I wanted to explore was the issue of Latino immigrants in this country. As xenophobia has taken over various parts of the country, racist stereotypes abound about the people crossing the border. The majority of them are coming to this country to work, having been forced to migrate because of economic reasons. The swap-meet is NOT an easy job. It’s physically taxing, it’s stressful and challenging. It is at the mercy of the goings on the local economy and political situations. When the news talks about recessions and mortgage crisis, people making a living off of their ten by eight foot business begin to feel it in their pockets.
I am using these subjective images to present my reality, my version of the truth. I am continually undergoing my own personal discussions about privilege and the power of images. I believe participatory photography can help dismantle the idea of the objective truth and give importance to the realities of those who are living it. Engaging children in projects of photographic empowerment helps move away from the insensitive documentarians and Vista volunteers who visited the Appalachian families. My project was a combination of participatory photography as explored in Bleiker and Kay as well as a journey through my own consciousness as Robert Coles discusses.

Blog Post: Heather Shafer

Throughout the semester many different theories regarding photography have been brought to my attention. Most recently was in the book Image Ethics in the Digital Age. In the chapter regarding advertising photography the authors bring up a point about the encoding and decoding of photographers. While reading this I took a step back and began to look at photography in an almost negative light. I’ve lamented upon the decoding of photos. When I look at an image I know there is a large chance that I am seeing something entirely different than the person next to me. For example, I am enrolled in a Sports Business class and in class our professor displayed an image of Reggie Bush and his one handed catch in the end zone. My classmates clapped with excitement. My friend next to me explained exactly where she was when that catch was made. I, however, sunk in my seat somewhat. My best friend, whom played football for Tulsa, died two years ago. He was supposed to be coming to USC, but at last minute USC pulled out on his scholarship. He ended up contracting a staff infection at Tulsa and died within a week. At times, photographs of USC football send that chill down my spine. I sit and wonder, if he had gone to USC, would he still be alive? This is an example of the ways photos are decoded differently by individuals. We all have a specific history or past which may impact the way we interpret photographs.
The second part has to do with the encoding of photographs. When a photographer takes a picture, he is attempting to portray something specific. This can cause many problems to the credibility of a photograph. We spoke in class about one of the documentaries in which the Appalachian Indians were stating how these men would come in to film them, and that they were searching for a particular aspect of their life. They said that they would be upset if they didn’t see the people living in complete poverty, or in tears. Is this what happens with photographer? Do photographers adjust particular images so that they are able to capture a certain emotion or event in which they believe is occurring? With every photo is there something that is being “encoded?” For the most part, you would assume there is. However, when does this means of encoding crouch upon the ethics of photography. It seems now a days it should almost be necessary that every photograph come with a “disclaimer” or a short write up in which the photographer divulges his intentions for the photograph.
I apologize for the ambiguity of this post. I simply have so many thoughts running around my mind in regards to the encoding and decoding of photographs. I think of each student’s photo project. Every one of us were searching for something in particular, and so many more of us wanted to have “that moment” appear just as we were clicking our cameras. One woman in our class is doing a project on graffiti. For one of her pictures she asked a man (whom was tagging before hand) if he could continue as she snapped images of him. She was looking to encode the image of a human doing the actual work, instead of just the image of him standing by it. He had been doing it previously, however, now it was somewhat scripted. Does this take away from the legitimacy and the actuality of the image? For this instance, I do not think it is a problem. However, what about on a bigger scale? Are photographers creating lab like settings by reproducing once natural acts in order to get it on their camera, to encode what they saw onto their own photograph? And are we, the viewers, the receptors of the images being not only swayed by out act of decoding, but also by what has been encoded into the photograph?

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