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Increasing visibility
DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHERS FIND SUPPORT FOR IMAGES THAT MAINSTREAM MEDIA PASS BY
By Jack Fischer
Mercury News
Posted on Sun, May. 18, 2003
J.B. Russell may be the last photographer in Iraq still covering the 1991 Gulf War. For years, Russell has been combing southern villages to document an alarming number of Iraqi children born blind or deformed. Their common denominator: exposure to depleted uranium used in the armor-piercing munitions of the Allied military.
For a documentary photographer like Russell, getting the pictures is only the beginning. More intractable is getting them published. With an ever-smaller number of large media corporations dominating news coverage and video supplanting still photography, independent documentary photographers like Russell have had to struggle to find an audience.
Now a fledgling non-profit foundation in San Francisco called FiftyCrows hopes to solve that problem.
Using new technology such as satellite-dish television networks and the Internet, as well as traditional gallery shows and books, the 18-month-old non-profit offers the best bet in many years to give present-day documentarians a shot at the audiences once enjoyed by their great predecessors Lewis Hine, Dorothea Lange and W. Eugene Smith.
Offering a large variety of independent editorial voices is more important than ever in the wake of the war in Iraq and with the continuing war on terrorism, say its backers, who believe it is the only way the public can develop informed opinions about U.S. policy.
"These stories are not part of the current mass media narrative,'' Andy Patrick, the 40-year-old founder and executive director of FiftyCrows, said of the documentary projects the foundation hopes to help. Patrick said the mission is to broaden the national debate about significant but often neglected social issues by providing the international perspective that photographers from around the world can offer.
Last month, the foundation's flagship program, the International Fund for Documentary Photography, announced the six winners of its annual competition, all long-term projects on topics ranging from the government displacement of the Bedouins of the Negev in southern Israel, to the impact of AIDS in Southeast Asia, to the ways the multinational oil companies have shaped life in Nigeria. Each will receive $7,000, an exhibit at FiftyCrows' San Francisco gallery, and distribution of their work on TV and the foundation's Web site. An additional 20 finalists will have their work presented on the Web site. (Russell did not compete this year, but FiftyCrows decided that the work, which was having difficulty finding a publisher, was too timely to go unseen in the wake of the Iraq war.)
"The budgets for this work aren't there,'' Patrick said of the mainstream news media. He said cost-conscious public media companies are reluctant to invest the money in having photojournalists spend months on a single project. Worse still, in Patrick's eyes, the proliferation of channels all pushing the same or similar, often superficial, reports, can leave the public, which is inundated with images, unaware of what it's missing.
"Image banks like Corbis and Getty have made it so editors at media outlets can go get a single image instead of sending a photographer to go dig out original information and be a story teller,'' Patrick said.
No less fascinating, in its way, than the photographers' stories is the story of their patron, Patrick. A University of Indiana finance major and son of Ohio Republicans, he came to San Francisco, became a dot-com millionaire and realized the world's injustices were "eating away at me.''
In 1996, he had moved a small Web design firm west from Madison, Wis. Within two years, the firm had grown to more than 70 people and its client list was a roster of the new and hip: Apple, Patagonia, Rollerblade and Specialized bicycles, to name several. The following year, the company was sold to a larger firm, minting 20 new millionaires. Patrick was the only one among them over 30.
Casting about for a new direction, he considered giving rural farmers in India Internet kiosks so they could compare crop prices and share health information. Then he walked into his first meeting as a board member of the muckraking Mother Jones magazine. The first order of business was to consider killing its 10-year-old Fund for International Photography. Times were tight, and the fund had lost such key supporters as famed documentary photographer Sabastia~o Salgado over what Patrick will describe only as philosophical differences.
It took Patrick, savvy in entrepreneurial models, new media and selling, exactly a day to craft a proposal telling the magazine he wanted to take over the fund. The name FiftyCrows comes from an odd experience Patrick had had several months earlier, while visiting family in Ohio. Awakened in the morning by squawking outside his bedroom window, he looked out to see about 50 crows in a tree cawing at him. A little research revealed that, in some Native American traditions, the crow speaks out on issues that seem out of harmony. And, doubtless, Patrick knew a catchy name when he heard one.
Under Patrick and a new board of directors, the foundation took a program that gave the photographers a cash grant and a single show and added the television and Web-based distribution.
The result: Sometime in June, FiftyCrows TV plans to inaugurate its broadcasts of documentary photography projects with a five-minute short of Russell's work over Worldlink TV, a non-profit television network received by more than 18 million households, and Free Speech TV, another non-profit network with 11 million households. The shorts, designed to be broadcast between other programs, feature a slide show of the winning photographers' work with voice-over narration by the photographers. There's also a deal with a major television news program in India, and other deals are in the offing. Patrick has spoken with Bill Moyers about the possibility of airing FiftyCrows segments on his program, but so far no agreement has been reached.
After the initial broadcasts, one-minute versions of the projects will be distributed on the World Wide Web. The Web versions will direct viewers to a site where they can connect with other people in their ZIP code who may want to act on what they've seen.
The foundation has also begun crafting book deals to promote the work and other initiatives. Salgado and other documentary photographers there at the old documentary fund's founding have returned to the fold. Beyond the annual award winners, the FiftyCrows gallery on Folsom Street will feature the work of other documentary photographers, such as an upcoming show on Tibet.
For now, support for the foundation comes from membership dues, major donors, a couple of outside foundations, print sales and out of the pocket of Andy and his wife. But he has plans that he hopes will make it self-sustaining. Grant proposals are being written, the program to sell original photographs is being re-launched and, later this month, the Swann Gallery in New York City will hold a benefit auction.
For the photographers who will benefit, many of whom finance projects on their own and live on freelance assignments while they pursue them, FiftyCrows is a godsend.
"Even serious news magazines give less and less space to documentary photography and more space to lifestyle, entertainment and celebrity subjects,'' photographer Russell said in an e-mail. "Quite simply, news and documentary don't sell. It doesn't please advertisers, on whom the magazines depend, to have their ads placed next to images of sometimes difficult subject matter . . . .
"Crows Foundation is another means to get these stories and work out into the public domain,'' he continued. "That after all, is why we produce these stories -- to inform the public, to promote better understanding and to document the human condition in order to improve it.''
The controversy over the dangers of depleted uranium munitions is far from resolved. The World Health Organization is still exploring it, the Pentagon denies it, and Congress has recently introduced bills to study it. But it's impossible to look at Russell's photographs of the children's pale blue sightless eyes and not be moved.
And, for Patrick, that's the point.
"When you see a really good photo essay, your heart cracks open just a bit and that's when we have a moment to engage people,'' he said. "You can't just tell people, they have to see it. Images help to find the common humanity.''
FiftyCrows Gallery
Where: 1074 Folsom St., San Francisco
When: Noon- 6 p.m. Wednesday-Friday
Through: Selections from FiftyCrows fine prints program, through June 15. Opening July 11, "The Spirit of Tibet: Portrait of a Culture in Exile,'' photographs by Alison Wright, through Aug. 15. Beginning on Sept. 5, works by this year's winners of FiftyCrows Foundation's International Fund for Documentary Photography, through Sept. 26.
Tickets: Admission is free. For more information call (415) 551-0091, visit the Web site at www.fiftycrows.org or e-mail info@fiftycrows.org.
Contact Jack Fischer at jfischer@mercurynews.com or (408) 920-5440. |
