Although there is a sense in which the camera does indeed capture reality, not just interpret it, photographs are as much an interpretation of the world as paintings and drawings are, said Susan Sontag in her 1977 book, “On Photography.
Sontag’s words artfully capture the essence of “Moving Walls: A Documentary Photography Exhibition currently showing at the Contemporary Image Collective Gallery in Mounira.
The exhibit brings together and overlaps the arts of photojournalism, photo portraiture, and photo documentary, focusing on a variety of grim realities from around the world, each one darker and more affecting than the last.
But there is much to be taken from this.
The project brings together journalists and artists in touch with, and in control of, their subject matter.
Lori Grinker’s collection of prints gathers peoples’ mental and physical memories of war.
His upper body exposed, a disfigured Russian war veteran named Oleg using his handless arm to support his head so he can pose for the camera, while lying on a treatment table to receive acupuncture.
It is an image as shocking as it is compelling, and is strangely positive in so far as a quote from Oleg tells of his acceptance of his situation, his acquired comfort with his own body, and his contempt for the war in Afghanistan that produced it.
It depends on your tolerance for the unsightly whether the collection grows darker from here, but Andrew Lichenstein’s “Life Inside the Prison Boom, which paints a photo portrait of life in America’s high security prisons, is certainly no bag of laughs.
Pictures show inmates confined to shoe box cells, strapped down with bags over their heads, or bearing arms covered in scars. The feelings of claustrophobia and despair emanate off the prints and into the soul.
The collection is both deeply affecting and morbidly fascinating to view.
The stark reminder that over two million Americans live like this grafts onto the humanity in Lichenstein’s work a political dimension, and positions the collection within the realm of social justice.
Aleksandr Glyadyelov’s portraits of Ukraine’s street children are plain upsetting.
Pictures show children curled up in crawl spaces beneath railway stations or wandering aimlessly around junkyards.
The most distressing image, and the most artistic, is that of two nine-year-olds sniffing glue in a busy subway station. Aside from the tragedy of their drug abuse, they are parentless and alone amidst the hustle and bustle of commuters who have places to go and people to see.
Glyadyelov’s project is to get inside the viewer, to make him or her consider for a moment the lives of these human beings, and to get them to care. It is a resounding success.
One of the exhibition’s most beautiful pieces is “Yonas from Eric Gottesman’s collection depicting the effects of AIDS on the lives of victims in Ethiopia.
From behind the subject, we see him looking calmly out the window, but with a curtain blocking both his view of the outside world, and the outside world’s view of him. The isolation and stigma surrounding AIDS in Ethiopia – like everywhere – is strong.
In the speech below the picture Yonas tells how both he and his lover are infected with HIV, but how their love has only grown in spite of it. “We were created for each other. Finding this in our blood will not separate us.
“Moving Walls runs until Nov. 22. For more information go to www.ciccairo.com, or call (02) 794 1686
