World conquests

As the war on Iraq enters its third week, and the scuds continue to terrorise a crumbling city, there is one conspicuous winner in the battle for fame and power. The image.

The moving images flickering on television screens across the globe have caused heads to turn and eyes to open, but the impact of the captured image -- moments of terror frozen forever in time -- have vanquished in the battle for control of the world.

"To collect photographs," Susan Sontag wrote in On Photography, "is to collect the world. Movies and television programs light up walls, flicker, and go out; but with still photographs the image is also an object, lightweight, cheap to produce, easy to carry about, accumulate, store."

And photographs, according to this logic, last forever. They are, in a superficial yet profound sense, infinite.

But if, as Sontag insists, "photographs really are experience captured," and if, as she goes on to say, "the camera is the ideal arm of consciousness in its acquisitive mood," then is there any such thing as good and bad? An ongoing collective exhibit, Egypt through the eye of a lens, provides the observer with a platform through which to explore this point.

Showcasing the works of six foreign residents of Cairo, the exhibit captured Egypt as reflected through the eyes of an outsider.

"The contrast," said Leanne Molinero, one of the six photographers. "That's what Egypt is to me. The contrast between rich and poor, modern and ancient." The contrast of colours and smells and sounds.

Molinero's work captures the dynamic energy of the desert's moving sand and dunes, the contrast of colour and light as it hits the Nile, the statuesque presence of clay olal (drinking pots) marking their turf and making their presence felt. She also displays some shots of Egypt as an ancient land: the columns of Philae Temple, the four gods of Abu-Simbel, the latter under what she calls a "typical sky".

Where reflections of Egypt degenerate into stereotypes, Abu-Simbel, the expanse of desert, and the ancient temples ware among the foremost candidates. But what claims precedence of one Abu-Simbel collection over another? What makes just the sky of Molinero's Abu-Simbel "typical", yet the entire picture of Madeleine Peijis' so?

"There are photos that make the cut, and others that don't," Australian-born Molinero says. "Technically, there are elements to consider, such as depth and how the picture is divided. Then of course there is lighting. The way light hits things is probably the most important thing."

If photography is about capturing light and life, and if that in itself is an art, then what, one asks again, is bad and good?

"Well," Molinero laughs, "I suppose there's no such things as a good photo and a bad one because it's relative. Different pictures appeal to different people," she continues. "A picture has to move a person in a certain way."

While one browsed the 121 prints adorning the walls, the sound effects filtering the air paid tribute to that fact. There were "mmms" and "aaahs," and some utterances of "yuck". Then there was silence.

"It's just blah," was the best expression one viewer could use in reference to Peijis' desert shots, which came across as rather flat. Molinero's, however, which appeared deceptively similar, were, in that viewer's expression, "wonderful", full of depth.

The difference was seemingly minor, but Molinero's prints captured movement, light, the warmth of the day and the undulating sands as they reformed themselves and assumed altered personas. This blend of the elements, and the technical properties of the lighting, proportions and the division of the print into thirds, captured not just a still of a single spot in the desert uninfluenced by man and the power of the senses, but rather, in addition, a moment in the photographer's life.

"To photograph is to appropriate the thing being photographed," Sontag writes. "It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge -- and therefore like power."

"Photographed images do not seem to be statements about the world so much as pieces of it, miniatures of reality that anyone can make or acquire." And in this regard, the Egypt exhibit appropriates that statement; the six women, Carrie Zaghow, Eleanor Landstreet, Katherine Sombold, Laura Abul- Ata, Leanne Molinero, and Madeleine Peijis, do not profess to be professionals, or masters of the art. Rather, with their varied backgrounds -- geologists, photographers with degrees and experience, or without, and "moms" -- they all bring to the craft one thing or another: life, history, perspective, mostly their own.

Carrie Zaghow, for one, skillfully produced a collection of portraits: the lines on the faces, the softness of young cheeks, the glimmer in the eyes and the shy smiles. And she captures the spirit of youth and the treasure of age, their seeming blueprints on a person's face. But the pictures were not moving in the way Eleanor Landstreets' protraits were. The latter emitted spirit, the former did not. And maybe that is the difference between one set of scenic prints and another: not so much the spirit of a place as the spirit of the photographer as invoked by a particular place. Molinero's desert reflected passion, life, energy. The sands showed movement and the light showed life. Peijis' were noticeably static: not exactly the reflection of an unmoved soul, but of one frozen into stillness by the expanse, the aloneness, the stillness; the possible mirror of a soul overwhelmed by a particular spot on the earth which will remain that way for just a split second, and even when captured, will have meaning to no one but that soul, for as black and white photographer Rob Gray wrote, " 'Meaning' cannot exist without the involvement of a human."

If a photograph evokes emotion in its audience, then that in itself gives it meaning. And even if it doesn't, even if it comes across as aesthetically displeasing to the eye, not a work of art, not a "good" photograph, its value remains viable in that it reflects the photographer's own notion about light, texture and geometry.

"In deciding how a picture should look, in preferring one exposure to another, photographers are always imposing their standards on their subjects," Sontag writes. "Although there is a sense in which the camera does indeed capture reality, not just interpret it [as writing, for example, does], photographs are as much an interpretation of the world as paintings and drawings are."

That notion spans the entire spectrum of photographic endeavour: from the family snapshot, to the passport photo, to the tourist memento, up to and including, of course, such things as war shots and scenic images. We all believe we know what is transpiring in Iraq. We all hold images in our heads of the reality of the horror. But the 200 wounded people notwithstanding, we may well be missing the rest of the scene of 2000 not. Beside the close-up of an injured boy, we may be missing the rest of the portrait of 200 uninjured.

As we zoom out of the horror and look at depictions of life through a lens, we may look at one desert shot and commend the photographer, and look at another and put the next woman down. But Sontag's words in mind, and the self-consciousness of photography-as-art in mind, one person's Van Gogh may be another's expression of critique and scorn. And while one desert print may invoke no reaction, the infiniteness of its existence, and the magnitude of the fact that the photographer may be the only person in the history of time to ever see that particular place on earth, is reason enough to give the piece value.

That value is enhanced by the fact that it is an image in a woman's head, and it is part of the anthology that makes up her life in pictures. Perhaps the answer to the anxieties generated by war is to look not only at images from the war zone but of others, good and bad, as well.

Egypt through the eye of a lens is on show at the CSA Gallery, #4, Road 21, Maadi, Cairo. Until 17 April

Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 10 -16 April 2003 (Issue No. 633)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/633/cu4.htm