The Protest Is Visual
The Archive of Public Protests, photo Sebastian Cichocki
I got talked into doing a (German language) podcast, which was recorded today. I don't remember how this came up, but one of my main problems with photoland came up: its self-imposed insularity. While there are a lot of complaints inside photoland how it's difficult to sell books etc., there are very few efforts made to enlarge its audience. More often than not, photolandians make books for other photolandians (and prints for a small group of rich people).
It doesn't have to be this way. Another world is possible, even though one has to spend a lot of time looking for examples of what this could mean. This is where Poland's Archive of Public Protest (APP) comes in, a group of photographers who currently might serve as the prime model of photolandians breaking out of their bubble, while exercising their rights as members of a civil society (that is being pushed ever more into an uncivil direction by a neofascist government).
APP was recently co-awarded "most important visual artists in Poland today". There is an interview with a number of its members, which you want to read. Here's a smattering of what I thought are the most interesting statements:
"It is very rare to find interesting, critical texts on photographic projects. We feel that we often have to persuade ourselves and our audience to start a discussion, to create the space for it ourselves, rather than waiting for journalists or critics to do it. This is what is happening now when we consider where the images that feed A-P-P are placed in the context of, for example, critical art or activism." -- Karolina Gembara
I agree 100% with this. Interesting, critical texts dealing with photography are much too rare. All-too-often, a write-up centering on some photographic project is merely one step up from what you can find in a press release.
"I’ve been told that I should hand in my press card because what we do has little to do with photojournalism. The reason? Because it is not ‘objective’. But what does that mean? How am I supposed to be objective, if only as a woman and as a lesbian — and therefore a person directly affected by the majority of the demands at the protests?" -- Agata Kubis
This gets at the core of why journalism as a whole is currently failing societies: there's this idea that "both sides" have to be presented. But what if one side is openly attacking democracy? How can you present both sides, if 99.9% of all climate scientists say global warming is real, and only some fringe lunatics say it's not? What do you think your neutrality is in service of? If you're curious about someone smart discussing this in the context of US journalism, check out Jay Rosen.
"[B]efore the Archive of Public Protests came into being, I had a growing conviction that photography was an imperfect and ineffective medium. Despite the social and political dimension of my earlier projects, I felt that I was moving in a rather narrow niche that did not create a sense of change." -- Rafał Milach
The "rather narrow niche" -- that's photoland. An echo chamber that by its own choice mostly doesn't have any effect on the societies it operates in.
"I work well under stress, I can stand eight hours on my feet, with a camera in my hand. But after something like that, the adrenaline just keeps flowing. There were times when I would come home in the evening and not be able to sleep for the next few hours. A collective helps a lot at times like this. We write to each other, we talk and we see that others are going through it, too. Sharing what is difficult also gives us a lot." -- Michalina Kuczyńska
All-too-often, photographers are solitary "animals", maybe as a consequence of that model being created, celebrated, and perpetuated by the group of male photographers and curators who formed the discourse around the medium for most of the second half of the 20th Century. It doesn't have to be that way. There is so much to be gained from working in a group with other people.
"We are creating a community and that is the remarkable success of this project. Competitiveness has been covered up by care." -- Rafał Milach
"This concern also resounds in the stories we share after the protests. We talk about how we see them; we watch out for each other so that we don’t lose hope or enthusiasm for the work." -- Karolina Gembara
Nothing to add here.
The term "activist" appears a bit, and it also popped up in the podcast I spoke of. I find it interesting (and a bit sad) how it is treated as if it were a hot potato by so many people: people would love to be artists, but activism... You can tell: once the term appears people retreat.
But isn't all art a form of activism? As an activist, you engage with people, to make them see things and to possibly change their minds. You take a stance. What kind of artist would you be if you didn't engage with people, if you didn't want them to experience something, if there was no stance behind what you do?
Maybe it's just me, but the challenges we're currently facing collectively are enormous: our democracies at risk, huge economic inequalities, a pandemic prolonged by people demanding "freedom" (even if this means getting other people sick), increasing numbers of migrants and refugees at the borders of wealthy states, and then there's climate change. We're not going to get through any of this if we don't start working together.
In light of these challenges photoland's niche will become looking ever more pathetic: not only will we photolandians not reach the people we want to reach, but the luxury of talking about expensive books and vastly more expensive prints will look more and more obscene as the rest of the world is trying to deal with all the various fires that have erupted.
There will have to be more than limited-edition photo projects about any of the issues mentioned above. The Polish photographers who formed APP are showing one way of doing something more. Obviously, there might be a lot of other solutions, solutions that are waiting to be found and used. Let's do this!
Thank you for reading!
-- Jörg