December 27, 2009

Best of the Bag Decade: Contributors & Friends, Pt. II

By Karen Hull

(The Best of the Bag Decade is our end of
the year, end of the decade look at some of the best BAGnews posts and
analysis.)

This edition of Best of the Bag Decade completes BAG’s examination of the great photography work contributed to the site.  In this edition, we re-post the amazing work of long-time BAG friends Lori Grinker, Mario Tama, Peter van Agtmael and examine the great recent posts by new contributors Matt Lutton and Jason Andrew.

LORI GRINKER

1.

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At the start of the Iraq War, Lori spent weeks aboard the US Navy hospital ship Comfort as its crew members tended the wounded while anchored in the Persian Gulf. BAG posted her photos in The Comfort, The Comfort.  As BAG wrote of the above photograph:

On the surface, the subject matter seems somewhat ambiguous.  What’s so
exciting?  Perhaps a football game?  The picture sheds any bit of
innocence, however, when one discovers the date is April 9, 2003, and
these crew people are witnessing this.  (Meaning, this.)

The uniformed, cheering crew members, a TV perched on an oil drum, the obvious break from work, all interesting in and of themselves, but an unseen guest to the party, the toppling statue of Saddam Hussein, provides the image with an added layer of meaning. Such is Lori’s fascinating ability to present and search behind the easy meaning of the image, to engage the viewer in context and nuance.

2.

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This is also true of this simple shot of a McDonalds sign on the US Army base in Guantanamo Bay, an image that speaks volumes to the branding of a war and a country served by an omnipresent military/industrial complex.

Lori has contributed photos of the effect of the war on Iraqis in More Exiles, a look at a former Iraqi interpreter who worked for the US but now is unable to return to his country or leave his temporary home in Jordan, and in The Forgotten Iraqi Exiles showing a young Iraqi burn victim, accidentally injured in the War yet unable to obtain treatment in Iraq.

3., 4.

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The effect of the war on Iraqis as well as US soldiers and veterans are ongoing projects for Lori. The latter is the subject of her 2005 book, Afterwar: Veterans from a World in Conflict.

Lori Grinker is the recipient of a World Press Photo Foundation Prize, a W.
Eugene Smith Memorial Fund fellowship, the Ernst Hass Grant, The
Santa Fe Center for Photography Project Grant, and a Hasselblad
Foundation Grant, among others. Her photographs have been exhibited
in solo and group exhibitions around the world and are in many private
and museum collections including: The International Center of Photography
(ICP), The Jewish Museum in New York City, The Museum of Fine Arts,
Houston, and The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She is on the faculty of the ICP in New York
City.

More of Lori’s images on BAG can be found here.

MARIO TAMA

5., 6.

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Over the years, BAG has posted many images from the talented and versatile Mario Tama, even examining his work in a 2009 BAGnews Salon.  Mario has photographed the despair of Katrina in N.O. Demolition (above) and the hope inherent in the inauguration of Barack Obama in On to Washington.

7.

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He tracked the vote in Alabama during the 2008 presidential election in the wonderfully evocative images of civil rights leader James Armstrong and voter Emmitt Coleman, posted in BAG on the eve and day of the election.

8., 9.

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While Mario examined the African-American perspective of Barack Obama’s
election, it’s hard not to notice that his work documenting the major
players and institutions who perpetrated the 2008 financial meltdown
features a near entirety of white males. In Ground Zero, he touched on the “blasphemous” contrast between the protected American financial system and cold, hard reality.

10.

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In The Horror, a revealing capture of the face of  former GM CEO Fritz Henderson leaving a federal  bankruptcy court in New York, Mario gave the public a realistic peek at an economic situation usually obscured in numbers and headlines.

11.

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Mario joined Getty Images
as a staff photographer in 2001 and has
since covered global events including September
11, the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq,
the funeral of Pope John Paul II and Hurricane
Katrina – before, during and after the storm.
He has received numerous awards from Pictures
of the Year International, NPPA’s Best of
Photojournalism Competition and the White
House News Photographers Association. His work on Baghdad’s
orphans was exhibited at Visa Pour L’Image
in Perpignan and his photographs from Hurricane
Katrina were featured in National Geographic,
Newsweek and newspapers worldwide. In 2008
he won Cliff Edom’s New America Award for
his work in New Orleans.

More of Mario’s images posted on BAG can be found here.

PETER VAN AGTMAEL

12.

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Two of Peter’s images from his time embedded in Afghanistan and Iraq have been posted on BAG. The photo above, taken in Afghanistan in 2008 brings into

sharp focus the haplessness of the U.S. engagement, but crystallizes it
and shouts it out. The faces and the framing convey the American troops
as directionless, ultimately on their own and verging on humiliation.
Adding the really young-looking fourth guy to the mix ( an Afghan
translator, perhaps?) drives home the sense of these troops as lost and
scared (and, to many right wingers, emasculated) children. And then,
the make-shift, light porous roof it that much more evidence of a
fundamental lack of a foothold (especially for the fourth guy) from the
fuzzy situation just beyond.

13.

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The second post, a collection of bathroom graffiti Peter photographed at a US base in Kuwait, provides a glimpse into the range of emotions felt by US troops on their way to and from war.

14.

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Back in the US after three embed tours, Peter contributed the above shot of the media frenzy outside of Heath Ledger’s apartment following the celebrity’s death. Peter related his experience shooting the scene and participated in the comments.  Of the young women captured above, he said

I think this second photo is the best one I took that night.  Posing
for a picture, these two girls are clearly smirking but pretending to
cry.

Part of the reason I decided to go down to photograph the scene
was a certain feeling of bitterness.  Last year, I shot a story about
the life and death of a friend, a young army medic I met in Baghdad,
who died of a drug overdose.  The circumstances of his death were
equally ambiguous, but there is no doubt that his life was a mess, with
severe PTSD from two tours to iraq coupled with the disintegration of
his marriage.

When I heard about Ledger, the two stories seemed to fuse in my
mind, saying something about how lives are valued in this country.

Peter van Agtmael is an award winning Magnum photographer. Since the beginning of 2006, he has documented the consequences of America’s Wars, at home and abroad.  A monograph of the work, 2nd Tour Hope I Don’t Die was published in 2009.  In 2008, he helped organize the exhibition Battlespace, a retrospective of unseen work from 22 photographers covering Iraq and Afghanistan.

More of Peter’s work posted on BAG can be found here.

MATT LUTTON

15.

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Matt provided shots of public reaction to Obama’s inaugural train ride as it passed by Delaware crowds (above) in To Catch Sight of the Freedom Train and after it left in And, After the Train Goes By.

16.

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These photos revealed both the joy and the otherness of the black experience of Obama’s election. As BAG wrote in the second post:

And
then, there is another dimension to the second image that is important
to address. The fact this black face is wearing a black face warmer or
ski mask, and casting a questioning look at the photographer, seems
suggestive of the way African-Americans remain all-too-easily
stereotyped by America and American visual media. As I mentioned in my
“Starting Off At The Chili Bowl” post
the other day, part of taking on the visual challenge of an Obama
presidency is to also take, head-on, the dynamics of race in the visual
media.

American photographer Matt Lutton lives in Belgrade,
Serbia working on long term documentary projects. He has traveled widely and has been recognized
by the Alexia Foundation for World Peace, College Photographer of the
Year, The Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar, the Photoshelter Collection,
Photolucida Critical Mass and others. He is a co-author of dvafoto.com.

More of Matt’s contributions to BAG can be found here.

JASON ANDREWS

17.

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Jason Andrew is BAG’s most recent photographer contributor, providing original photos of the Pittsburgh G-20 conference, documenting the heavy police presence outside the meeting in four posts.

18.

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In The Show Remains All Too Familiar,  BAG contributor Robert Hariman noted that Jason’s photos “provide an opportunity to reflect on how such demonstrations
are routinized, and how they are all the more revealing for that.”

Jason’s photographs often have this alternative tonality from the
visual cliches governing so much of the coverage. Instead of the usual
street theater, you see what goes on but isn’t offered as part
of the show: shopkeepers taking precautions, media personnel setting up
and otherwise doing their jobs, people waiting for the next act.
Instead of drama, routine; instead of politics becoming intensified,
economic practices diffusing dissent; instead of the power of the
people, it comes down to money and organization. Perhaps the protests
are a lot like the establishment after all.

Jason lives in Brooklyn, New York. In 2006, he interned with VII photographer James Nachtwey. He has contributed photography to AOL, Courrier Internations, Grazia Daily, Le Monde 2, National Geographic Books, New York Magazine, Transworld Surf, and Ventiquattro.  He was awarded honorable mentions in Magenta Flash Forward and the International Photography Awards. In 2008, he was identified as an emerging artist in Reportage by Getty Images.

More of Jason’s contributions to BAG can be found here.

–Karen Hull

(photo credits: Lori Grinker: 1. Lori Grinker/Contact Press Images. Persian Gulf. April 2003. 2. Lori Grinker/Contact Press Images. Guantanamo. March 2002. 3. Lori Grinker. Amman, Jordan. April 2007. 4. Lori Grinker. Amman Jordan. April 2007. Mario Tama: 5., 6. Mario Tama/Getty. 2007. BW Cooper Housing Project. New Orleans, Louisiana. 7. Mario Tama. January 18, 2009. Birmingham, Alabama. 8. Mario Tama/Getty. October 31, 2008. Birmingham, Alabama. 9. Mario Tama/Getty. November 4, 2008. Birmingham, Alabama. 10. Mario Tama/Getty. January 28, 2009. NYC. 11. Mario Tama/Getty. June 1, 2009. NYC. Peter van Agtmael: 12: Peter van Agtmael/Magnum. For the New York Times. 13. Peter van Agtmael/Polaris Images.  Kuwait. 2006. 14. Peter van Agtmael/Polaris Images. New York. January 2008. Matt Lutton: 15. Matt Lutton, January 2009. 16. Matt Lutton, January 2009. Jason Andrew:  17. Jason Andrew/BAGnewsNotes. Pittsburgh, PA. January 25, 2009. 18. Jason Andrew/BAGnewsNotes. Pittsburgh, PA. January 25, 2009.