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|| SportsShooter.com: News Item: Posted 2009-05-08
Review: 'Witness in Our Time' by Ken Light
What Photographers Should be (Re-) Reading
By Jim McNay
Photo by Paul Michael Myers
Jim McNay says it's time to take Witness in Our Time: Working Lives of Documentary Photographers by Ken Light down off your bookshelf again and give it a look.
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Witness in Our Time: Working Lives of Documentary Photographers by Ken Light, Smithsonian Books
After several months—or years—on the shelves of serious photographers, it's time to take this volume down again and give it a look. For all of us who have complained about how tough things are now in these times—and who among us has not complained?—the voices in this book remind us photojournalism and documentary photography were never easy, not for those during photojournalism's Golden Age, not even for those included in this book who are generally accepted as stars in the profession.
First published in 2000, these are first-person accounts from many of the best working documentary photographers. Readers get to hear from Eugene Richards, Susan Meiselas, Sebastiao Salgado and 15 others. Many speak about the lean periods they encountered scratching out a living, spans that varied from a few years to several decades. It all helps put documentary photography in perspective, reminding us these photographers did it because they had to do it, were driven to do it.
And like the portfolios of these great storytellers, there are some fine moments in what they have to say.
Some examples especially relevant now:
Hansel Meith speaks of covering an earlier Sacramento Depression camp, building relationships with the people by putting down the cameras when it was more important to help people with their kids. She went on to work for LIFE magazine, following Margaret Bourke-White, landing a full-time position with the publication. "We looked upon it as a calling," she said, adding "…we felt we had a responsibility to give back, to help if we possibly could to move the world a little closer to understanding…."
Joseph Rodriguez, with his commitment to the stories found in Spanish Harlem and the barrios of Los Angeles says, "This is not a job. Seven days a week, 365 days year, I’m working and thinking about photography. It drives our families crazy."
Peter Magubane recalls being detained by South African authorities and kept in solitary confinement for 586 days. Ultimately he speaks of liberating both his people and the white majority government. “If you liberate yourself and you leave out the oppressor, you have not liberated your country at all,” he says.
Walter Rosenblum, who worked with New York’s Photo League tells of answering an ad for an office boy in the 1930s—and finding a line of a thousand people for the job.
A key benefit of a record of photographers' voices such as this is to put our own experience into context. When we’re reminded by some of the most experienced veterans in the field how tough it has always been out there, we remember this is just the water documentary photographers swim in. We come to realize when we step out our door, it is not just raining on us.
And we can get on with the next project.
Jim McNay teaches and writes about photojournalism in California—while fantasizing about running a charter fishing business in Key West.
Related Links:
Book: 'Witness in Our Time' by Ken Light
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