Photojournalism

Reporters hate photographers. Reporters painstakingly gather the facts, write gripping articles and bold headlines. They bring people the news. They should be the stars of a newspaper. But then someone with a camera takes a picture - suddenly nobody is interested in reading anymore.

"A picture tells a thousand words." Rarely has a saying been more accurate or more used.

Witness the photo here: 'Migrant Mother' taken in America during the 1930s depression.

The Farm Security Administration (FSA) sent out a team of photographers to document rural poverty and the attempts to solve it.

[The US Library of Congress recently released an amazing set of these images on Flikr.]

Documentary photography was never the same again. Dorothea Lange's photo, here, was the beginning of a more compassionate style. One which took a humanitarian view and attempted to influence world opinion.

Some argue that photographers of this style are too biased, forcing their own beliefs onto the situation. But isn't a photo always subjective to some extent? Covering human stories needs a degree of human feeling.

Perhaps this is what infuriates reporters. How can their words ever capture the raw emotion expressed in a brilliant snapshot?


Sources:

Excellent blog post by BBC photo editor Phil Coomes

Further reading:

New York Times article "When a Picture Is Worth a Thousand Debates, Give or Take"

No Rules!

Hey All! Don't worry SZ is back. We're dropping the rules for now and going for short sharp comment on all that is NOW.

Here's a Japanese proverb for the road:

"Better to write down something one time than to read something ten times."

[Unless, of course, you're reading Spooner's Zeitgeist]

Awesome Writer Dies

J G Ballard has died aged 78.

If there is one book you should read before you die, it is his autobiographical novel 'Empire of the Sun'.

It is a fictionalized account of his internment, at the age of 12, inside a Japanese prison camp in China during WWII. Surrounded by violence, starvation and death, Jim's spirits never fall and neither does his iron determination to cling onto life.

Self-pity is not in Jim's repertoire. Flies clog his sick gums and pus oozes from the sores that cover his body, but his black humour and ability to barter favours sees him live off a single mouldy sweet potato a day.

The Collins English dicitionary may define 'Ballardian' as 'dystopian modernity', but Ballard's writing in 'Empire' thrives on the man-made catastrophe of war.

Prostate cancer may have taken him, but I look foward to exploring his 15 novels and many short stories further.

• 'Empire of the Sun' was made into a film by Steven Spielberg in 1987
• 'Crash' was made into a film by David Cronenberg in 1996 and tells of a group of people who take sexual pleasure from car accidents
  

The Reader

1950s Germany: a teenage lad ends up knocking around with a sultry blond tram conductress. For some reason she gets him to read classics to her before she teaches him a new position. Although the reading is a bit odd at first, he enjoys it.

The affair lasts the summer and then she disappears. By the mid 60s the young man is a law student attending a special seminar on a war crimes trial. Who should be sitting in the dock, but his first love. She was a guard at Auschwitz.

The Holocaust and German guilt are major themes, but it is essentially the tragic love story which drives the film. We follow Michael’s relationship with Hanna throughout.

German actor David Kross is utterly convincing as the nervous besotted youth. But Michael holds his own and is soon rutting Hanna in bed with growing confidence. This is not child porn as some critics have argued. This is a fully consensual adult relationship. As with any relationship the power balance is in flux.

Kate Winslet is outstanding as Hanna Schmitz and fully deserving of her Best Actress Oscar. She’s hot, but at the same time mysterious and rather coarse. Her voice is dry with a hard edge – no cheap German accent here. The way she always calls Michael ‘kid’ is brusque yet affectionate.

Hanna is accused of letting 300 Jews die during a death march in 1944. She has a piece of evidence that may help her defence, but she is so ashamed of it that she keeps it a secret to the bitter end.

Are we supposed to feel sorry for Hanna? Most of the film is shot from Michael’s perspective so his point of view offers a guide. He cannot forgive her for what she has done. But is it more the betrayal of his trust or the fact that she was complicit in the Holocaust? It is certainly a mixture of both and her betrayal becomes even more enormous given that she hid her terrible wartime past from him. Think about it, what if your first ever lover was a death camp guard? Wouldn’t that make you complicit?

Ralph Fiennes plays the grown-up Michael and is a perfect match for Kross. The make-up artists do a very thorough job of making Winslet look old as her character ages, maybe too thorough, since she looks like a decrepit zombie. But the overall artfulness of the cinematography lets them get away with it.

Ironically, the book by German author Bernhard Schlink is too cluttered by words. Director Stephen Daldry reads aloud with a clear voice and the emotionally heart of the story shines through.

April Rule of the Month

No rules this month! Anything goes!

Suggestions welcome for a killer rule in May.

‘Raising Sand’ by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss

I’ve only listened to ‘Raising Sand’ once, but I love it. How many new albums can you say that about?

Call it Country, Folk, Bluegrass or Rock. Whatever you call it, this is sheer musical genius.

The laid-back vibe is tantalizing. Only two artists with such rich pasts could have assembled thirteen such amazing songs about love and loss to create a fresh new entity.

Plant leaves the rock star exaggeration behind to deliver perhaps his most rich and mature vocal performance to date.

Krauss arguably leads proceedings. Her beautiful clear voice shines out. She leads love songs that were originally written from the man’s perspective. There’s something exquisite about this.

Plant clearly learnt a lot from her. After all, this is more her musical territory than his.

T Bone Burnett’s backing band provides the perfect spaced out country vibe for the singers to shine. Instrumental highlights are songs with banjo by Riley Baugus and those with fiddle played by Krauss herself no less.

The magic really happens when they sing together. Their voices are distinct yet perfectly harmonious at the same time.

INTERVIEW WITH MUSICIANS

Metallica’s ‘Ride The Lightening’ – 25 Years On

A spotty 21-year-old James Hetfield howls ‘Flash before my eyes, now it’s time to die’. The year is 1984. It’s the album’s title track. No prizes for guessing what ‘Ride The Lightening’ is about. There’s a shiny electric chair on the album’s cover for God's sake!

If debut ‘Kill em All’ was a furiously fast paced statement of intent, then ‘Ride the Lightening’ sees Metallica take the thrash metal genre to a whole new level.

Lars Ulrich’s drumming is frenetic yet so intensely focused that the double-bass roles seamlessly augment Hetfield’s violent riffage. The snare is so dry it has you gasping for water.

Rhythm-section other half Cliff Burton pumps his bass like a heavy calibre oozy throughout. Just listen to those belches on ‘Trapped Under Ice’ and the 9-minute horror instrumental ‘The Call of Ktulu’. It’s arguably the best mixed Metallica album – the bass riffage is clearly distinguishable throughout. Next album, ‘Master of Puppets’ maybe the bands seminal work, but it’s so damn heavy Hetfield and Burton are basically at one – aurally at least. Then Burton died in that crash and bass took a back-seat in the Metallica sound.

Lead guitarist Kirk Hammett departs from the pentatonic speed-blues soloing of ‘Kill em All’ to a rawer more haunting model attack. And where would metal be now, without the awesome guitar harmonies that feature throughout the album? They perfectly complement the move to longer more symphonically arranged pieces.

‘Fade to Black’ and ‘Creeping Death’ are the album’s classic groundbreaking compositions. The former was the first thrash metal ballad and the latter the nihilistic clarion call to metal heads the world over. For 20 years a Metallica set-list without ‘Creeping Death’ was like the arrival of the four horsemen without the apocalypse!

Ride the Lightening is when the Metallica sound was born. No such coherent force could be heard on early 80’s Slayer or Megadeth albums. It wouldn’t be until 1986 when ‘Reign in Blood’ and ‘Peace Sells, but who’s buying’ would be released and by then of course the brutal intensity of Metallica’s ‘Master of Puppets’ was all-powerful.

Seven albums later, Metallica have been through a lot – MTV success with ‘One’, chart success with their eponymous album, an arty 90’s phase and a struggle to adjust to the disparate metal scene of the nought’ies. But last year’s ‘Death Magnetic’ sees Metallica back to thrashing good form. Death is undoubtedly their best muse. Ironically, thrash metal is never more alive than when death is in the air.