Jesse Owens

Hitler used the 1936 Olympics as a propaganda tool, inadvertently creating the modern Games, complete with torch relays, grand stadiums, publicity films and screens set up outside to transmit the Games. What the Nazis couldn’t stage-manage were the outcomes, and wonderful story of Jesse Owens smashing Hitler’s theories of racial superiority on the 100m sprint is an oft repeated story. (Enthusiastic crowd reaction on this clip suggests that the German people are less Aryan-obsessed than Hitler.Although his coach warned Owens about a potentially hostile crowd, there were German cheers of “Yesseh Oh-vens” or just “Oh-vens” from the crowd. Owens was a true celebrity in Berlin, mobbed by autograph seekers.)

It is oft mentioned that the Nazi leader refused to present Jesse Owens with his medal, shake his hand and subsequently stormed out of the stadium. However, Hitler was not even in the stadium when Jesse Owens was securing his medals, and his absence was more to do with his row with the Olympic organizers than with Owens . Hitler had congratulated German athletes on the first day, only to be informed by the IOC officials that he should congratulate all athletes or none, in order to show neutrality as the presiding head of state. In a characteristic fit of petulance, Hitler refused congratulate anyone after the first day of the competition, not even the German athletes. (Hitler did snub a black American athlete on the first day; just before Cornelius Johnson was to be decorated, Hitler left the stadium.)

Jesse Owens tried his best to correct the myth-making that went on around him: he admitted that he received the greatest ovations of his career at Berlin. he recalled:  “When I passed the Chancellor he arose, waved his hand at me, and I waved back at him. I think the writers showed bad taste in criticizing [Hitler] …. Hitler didn’t snub me—it was FDR who snubbed me. The president didn’t even send me a telegram”. Such was an atmosphere of segregation back in the U.S. that Owens was never invited to the White House to be congratulated. When there was a ticker-tape parade in New York in his honour, he had to attend the reception at the Waldorf-Astoria using the back elevator set aside for blacks. (Even in Berlin, he was allowed to travel and stay together with whites).

Nuit et Brouillard

The photo was taken at the camp of Pithiviers, in the Loiret department, one of two main concentration camps for foreign-born Jews in France. At the foreground, unmistakably guarding the camp was a French gendarme, with a telltale kepi. If an image could ever perfectly encapsulated the culpability of the Vichy Government in persecution of the French Jewry, this was it.

But in 1955, it was too close for comfort, coming as it did after many long and arduous years when numerous ministers and prominent citizens were hauled in front of courts and tribunals. First featured in the documentary Nuit et Brouillard, the anonymously-taken photo was an unequivocal denunciation of French collaborationism, and the censors demanded that the kepi be cut. Director Alain Resnais first refused, but finally relented and decided to put a beam across the damning hat to hide it; on the other hand, he refused to change the narration that mentioned Pithiviers. The film was released to widespread acclaim and awards.

A few months later, the Germans demanded the film withdrawn from Cannes Film Festival. Both the German and the French governments viewed the film as divisive since it came during negotiations for the Treaties of Rome (eventually signed in 1957). However, unlike the censorship of the kepi which went virtually unnoticed and mentioned only once in press, the French press reacted unanimously against the proposed withdrawal, noting that the filmmakers were very cautious in defining the difference between the Nazi criminals and the German people.

In retaliation, the predominantly French selection committee asked Germany’s own submission Himmel ohne sterne to be withdraw and the Germans left Cannes in protest. Widespread protests from deportees’ associations, members of the Résistance and the Communist Party as well as the threat from the Festival organizers to resign finally forced the government to give in. The film was staged ‘outside the programme’ in the main Festival Hall auditorium, where it received a standing ovation. The Berlinale invited Resnais to stage his film there, defying its own government.

In a way, the controversy over Nuit et Brouillard altered Cannes’ history too. In that monumental year for self-inflicted censorship, films from Britain, Finland, Poland, Norway and Yugoslavia were also excluded. This debacle encouraged the organizers to reshape the Festival in accordance with cinematographic quality rather than diplomatic niceties.

Jack Sharpe

Jack Sharpe was sent to Singapore just a few days before the Japanese invasion there, and captured by the Japanese. He was sent to Thailand to work on the notorious Burma Railway and was nearly executed over an attempted escape. Before his court martial for escape, Sharpe defiantly proclaimed that he would live to see all of Japan surrender and that he would walk out of the prison on his own two feet.

Sharpe was sent back to the Outram jail in Singapore; almost no one survived it for two years, and it was from this infamous prison that Sharpe was liberated in August 1945 with the dubious distinction of being its longest survivor. True to his words, he walked out of the gates on his own two feet, and collapsed immediately afterwards. During his captivity, plagued by scurvy, dysentery and scabs, Sharpe saw his weight decreased from 70 kilograms to less than 25 kilograms. In September 1945, the world was stunned by the publication of Sharpe’s skeletal figure cheerfully smiling from the end of his bed. The photo told the story of appalling Japanese treatment of their prisoners, and also the indomitable spirit of Jack Sharpe, who eventually lived to be 88.

One in three POWs under the Japanese during the war perished — seven times that of POWs under the Germans and Italians. In fact, around 90,000 Asian labourers and 16,000 Allied POWs died on the Burma Railroad alone. The Japanese, coming from a shame culture which would rather commit suicide, never understood the concept of surrendering, and treated their prisoners with the greatest of contempt.

Dead Iraqi Soldier

The Gulf War had a great deal of TV coverage, but it was heavily restricted. Supposedly this was to protect sensitive information from Iraqi military tuned to CNN but the Pentagon also feared a Vietnam redux. The top military brass felt the war in Indochina was lost because of the press’s unrestricted access to the war. To reduce the number of reporters working on ground, the Iraq war was conducted under a pool system, where any press organisation that was a member of that pool had access to everyone else’s work. On the other hand, the Pentagon tightly controlled the pools with government approved reporters and provided military escorts for any field reporting.

Just a few hours before the 1991 Gulf war ceasefire, photographer Ken Jarecke was heading back to Kuwait from Southern Iraq. Jarecke came to cover the war for Time magazine twelve hours after the air campaign began and ended up staying throughout. Now, his journey nearing its end, Jarecke came across a single truck burnt out from airstrike in the middle of Highway 8. It was a place remembered as the “Highway of Death”, where the Allied aircraft pulverized the retreating Iraqi troops.

Jarecke told his military escort that “If I don’t make pictures like this, people like my mother will think what they see in war is what they see in movies”, and went over to the burnt tank and took the above photo. At that time, it was an image challenged the prevailing notion that the Gulf War was a ‘clinical’ attack avoided ‘collateral damage’.

Jarecke’s photo was sent to the AP office in New York. The AP thought that the photo was too sensitive and too graphic even for the editors of the newspapers that are part of the co-op, and that the decision on whether or not to print the photo should not be left for the editors. They pulled it off the wire. Because of AP’s decision, the photo was unseen in America (although AP staffers made copies for themselves and privately distributed it among the photo circles).

In the UK, the London Observer and the Guardian published it, and public debate was not only on “Is this something we want to be involved in?” but also on how graphic pictures should be. Jarecke responded: “If we’re big enough to fight a war, we should be big enough to look at it.”

Harold Evans, the editor-in-chief of The Times of London wrote a strong essay on why photos (and graphic photos) matter, over the moving documentary photos in 1997:

It was a solitary individual in the transfixation of a hideous death. In the absence of a photograph of this power, it had been possible to enjoy the lethal felicity of designer bombs as some kind of Video game. It had been possible to be caught up in the excitement of people rushing to escape the Scuds. There was no escape from the still silence of the corpse in Jarecke’s photograph. Once seen, it has a permanent place in one’s imagination. Anyone who can replay moving images in his mind has a very rare faculty. The moving image may make an emotional impact, but its detail and shape cannot be easily recalled. Anyone who saw that still photograph will never forget it.

Napalm Attack

I have already covered this event before, and Nick Ut’s photo I posted back then was the definitive photo of the event. However, I just recently came across other photos in the series and became instantly intrigued. Although they were not seen in the most famous photo, there are other photographers in the background trying to take the picture (one of them was David Burnett, who missed the famous scene because he was changing his film).

The photographers were of course to cover the Battle of Trang Bang. The first photo, in all its hazy demonic fire, showed the moment when napalm bombs were fired. The second photo was the shot. The third photo was taken moments after, as you can see by the distance from the billboards on the right. The crying girl had stopped crying; two children running together had sort of split up and veered to the left while the little kid at the back was now wayback, having either stopped running or turned back. The runners either overtook the photographers, or the photgraphers arrived from the righthand side, where there is a big commotion.

In the last photo, there was ITN reporter Christopher Wain who captured the scene on video.

9/11 – Thomas Hoepker

Photographs can speak a thousand words but without a narrative device framing them, they are mute. These days, we have a lot of photoeditors and pundits to tell us what they think of a particular photograph and what it actually means. The trouble is sometimes situations are complex, and it is not easy to understand the stories behind photos. The above photo is one such:

On the morning of September 11, Thomas Hoepker, a Magnum photojournalist, crossed from Manhattan into Queens and then Brooklyn to get closer to the scene of the disaster. He stopped his car in Williamsburg to shoot a group of young people sitting by the waterfront as the plume of smoke rose from across the river. The result was a pastoral scene of five youths chatting amicably as the towers burned. Hoepker expressed concern that they “didn’t seem to care,” and did not publish the shot at the time, feeling it was “ambiguous and confusing.”

The photo was published as the fifth anniversary of 9/11 approached. In The New York Times, Frank Rich wrote he sees the photograph as a prescient symbol of indifference and amnesia. “This is a country that likes to move on, and fast,” Rich wrote. “The young people in Mr. Hoepker’s photo aren’t necessarily callous. They’re just American.”

David Plotz, deputy editor of the online magazine Slate, reacted vehemently. “Those New Yorkers Weren’t Relaxing!,” read the headline. The subjects, he interpreted, “have looked away from the towers for a moment not because they’re bored with 9/11, but because they’re citizens participating in the most important act in a democracy — civic debate.” Plotz argued that Rich took a “cheap shot,” and he called for a response from any of the subjects.

Shortly thereafter, Walter Sipser wrote to Slate. “It’s Me in That 9/11 Photo,” the magazine said in the headline posting Sipser’s e-mail message, which explained that “we were in a profound state of shock and disbelief, like everyone else we encountered that day,” and denounced Hoepker for not trying to ascertain the state of mind of the photograph’s subjects and for misinterpreting the moment. Hoepker responded on Slate that “the image has touched many people exactly because it remains fuzzy and ambiguous in all its sun-drenched sharpness,” especially five years after the event. He wondered, was the picture “just the devious lie of a snapshot, which ignored the seconds before and after I had clicked the shutter?”

Yet, the photo remains the focus of a debate on a metaphorical level. In Underexposed, Colin Jacobson observed, “It took a photographer of courage and subtlety to stand back from the immediate crisis and show another side of the story. The calm scene challenges the conventional wisdom that ‘ nothing in America will ever be the same again’.”

Food Theft

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In 1998, yielding to the international pressure, the Sudanese government allowed good aid to be distributed to the south. British photojournalist Tom Stoddart travelled with Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) to a camp in Ajiep, where more than 100 people were dying every day. There he took the above photo of a crippled boy who had queued hours for food, only to find it robbed away from him by a fit man who strides confidently away.

Stoddart received overwhelming criticism for his image, people demanding why he did not intervene. He responded, “I am a photographer, not a policeman or an aid worker. All I can do is try to tell the truth as I see it with my camera.” However, Stoddart requested that the papers that print his Sudan photos run the credit card hotlines of aid agencies next to the photos. On the day the above photo appeared in the Guardian, MSF had 700 calls and £40,000 was pledged. The Daily Express raised £500,000. Le Figaro ran 10 pages of his pictures, Stern magazine nine pages.

On a deeper level, the photo is a symbol of Africa’s continuing problem — the big man with the stick rules. Large amount of food aid disappears from the camps in much needed areas and appears for sale in the market places in neighboring countries. Not to be anecdotal but I once volunteered in an African country that should remain nameless. Food and medical aid that Western governments sent there were regularly pilfered by corrupt bureaucrats and sometimes aid is withheld or rediverted to areas that don’t need them because the governments there like to use foreign aid as a bargaining chip to subdue/cleanse tribes and ethnicities they don’t like. Yet, Western governments and aid agencies continue sending aid because sometimes getting a little aid to affected areas is better than cutting off aid.

I put some links to donation webpages of some international organization helping aid efforts in Africa. Just click on their logos:

 

 

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Now that you are here: I am doing something crassly commercial here. I just signed up for Patreon. Patreon is a fundraising platform. In their words, “Patreon is an Internet-based platform that allows content creators to build their own subscription content service.” As you may notice in last few years, I have been posting very infrequently. But I want IP to go on for a long time and be sustainable. Linking a monetary value to a new post (not a ‘monthly salary’ — which is another way of doing Patreon) should give me a marginal incentive to write more. As far as the blog is concerned, nothing will change. No paywalls. Patreon is more useful for YouTubers and podcasters, but let’s see how it goes for me: https://www.patreon.com/iconicphotos 

Bloody Sunday

In 1972, predominantly Catholic Civil Rights Association planned a series of high-profile marches to regain political initiative from those intent on violent. Ironically, a march in Londonberry on January 30 came up against an army barricade. A number of rioters threw stones at the soldiers, and British paratroopers appeared on the scene and pursued the rioters. They opened fire, killing 13 civilians and wounding 12 others, one of whom died later.

In the immediate aftermath, the British embassy in Dublin was burnt down and the Mid Ulster MP Bernadette McAliskey punched the home secretary, Reginald Maudling, accusing him of lying to the Commons over what happened. Bloody Sunday was the boost to IRA recruitment and fuelled violence in subsequent decades. Lord Cheif Justice’s subsequent inquiry, the Widgery Report, which exonerated the soldiers further fuelled the theories that the killings were conceived at the highest levels of military command, civil service and the Cabinet. In fact, it later transpired that the then PM Edward Heath lobbied Lord Widgery, saying in Northern Ireland, Britain was ‘fighting not only a military war but a propaganda war’.

In 1998, Tony Blair appointed Lord Saville to head a second inquiry as part of Northern Ireland peace process. Twelve years and nearly 200 million pounds later, the Saville inquiry returned its full report today — condemning the soldiers unequivocally. In Westminster, Prime Minister David Cameron offered an extraordinary apology. Yet, the report will forever be marred by the refusal of the soldiers involved to give evidence, the refusal of the Army to release thousands of photographs taken by army photographers who were ordered to give ‘maximum coverage’ that day.

The iconic images to come out of Bloody Sunday were the video of Father Edward Daly (later Bishop of Derry) waving a bloodied white handkerchief as he tried to lead the injured to safety and that of Barney McGuigan dead from a bullet wound to the head. The latter photo was taken by Gilles Peress, on his first professional photo assignment for Magnum.

The Simpsons do iconic photos

I saw the following photo in one of the Simpsons reruns the other day and thought why don’t I look into the Simpsons’ parodies of iconic photographs. The problem was although I used to watch the Simpsons, I stopped watching it. (That is not entirely true. I restarted watching the last one (their 21st — wow!) which is definitely better than their last few seasons. But I digress…). So I used Google to see if they had used any other iconic images in their equally iconic show and here they are:

This photo of Abe Simpson in Woodstock started it all. As seen in D’oh-in In the Wind (Season 10, Episode 6). Original. It is funny how they even had the butterfly and some spectators in similar poses.

Although Bart was leading Martin Prince in polls, on the election day only Prince and his friend Wendell bothered to vote, handling the class presidency to Prince by two votes. As seen in Lisa’s Substitute (Season 2, Episode 19). Original.

At the height of Boy Band craze in the 90s (oh, seems so long ago, ain’t it?), Bart, Nelson, Millhouse and Ralph Wiggum forms a band. This inevitable parody of Joe Rosenthal’s iconic photo was part of one of their music videos. (New Kids on the Blecch, Season 12, Episode 14).

In one of the more random gags, Homer buys the New Yorker magazine because it has Lenny’s photoshoot by Richard Avedon(!). As seen in The Sweetest Apu (Season 13, Episode 19).

The Simpsons family dog destroys Marge’s ancestral quilt, which has this Capa photo as one of the patterns. As seen in Bart’s Dog Gets an F (Season 2, Episode Sixteenth). Original.

Homer is more interested in catching this Nessie like catfish General Sherman than going to a Christian marriage counseling class. As seen in The War of the Simpsons (Season 2, Episode 20). Original

When Mr. Burns sells his nuclear power plant to the Germans, he leaves this photo for Smithers. As seen in Burns verkaufen der kraftwerk (Season 3, Episode 11). Original.

Season 4, Episode 4, Lisa the Beauty Queen has the most references. Bart strikes a Betty Grable pose as he teaches his sister how to win a beauty contest. When the tournament winner was eventually incapacitated, Lisa was sworn in as Little Miss Springfield like Lyndon Johnson did after the JFK assassination. (Marge wears a similar dress Jackie Kennedy wore). Meanwhile, Barnie drives Duff Blimp and turns it into a Hindenberg. Kent Brockman was there to provide neccessary, “Oh, the Humanity!”

This is a couch gag from Season 14: The Dad Who Knew Too Little (Episode 8 ) and The Old Yeller Belly (Episode 19).

When Bart’s antics offend the whole of Australia, the family and the staff leave the U.S. embassy in a Saigonesque fashion. Bart vs. Australia (Season 6, Episode 16).

I know this is not a comprehensive list. (I left out the photos from the episode where Krusty pastes his head on many iconic photos for his election campaign (Mr. Spritz Goes to Washington).  Then, there is Marge’s photoshoot with Playboy (related to The Devil Wears Nada), and I also saw this while surfing the ‘Net. I think I might cover that O. Winston Link photo in the near future.) I might do another post like this again, but this post is probably the one I took the most time to complete — I have been ‘researching’ (and having tremendous fun rewatching) on this for like three months. If you know more photos, be sure to leave a comment.

Queen Elizabeth II

Queen Elizabeth’s portrait graced the currencies of 33 different countries, more than that of any other individual. Canada was the first, in 1935, when it printed the 9-year-old Princess Elizabeth on its $20 notes. Mother England was slower to adapt. Only in 1960, the Bank England issued a new note which was the first to have the Queen’s image. Five different portraits of the Queen have been used on banknotes since: (above, l. to r.) Robert Austin (1960), Reynolds Stone (1963), Harry Ecclestone (1970 and 1971) and Roger Withington (1990). Over the years, 26 different portraits — most commissioned with the sole purpose of putting them on banknotes — have been used in the U.K. and its current and former colonies, dominions and territories, not without some controversy. While many countries update their currencies to reflect the Queen’s advancing age, others kept her young.

Shortly after Queen Elizabeth ascended to the throne, she sat for a single portrait session with Dorothy Wilding, the first woman to be awarded a Royal Warrant to be an official royal photographer. Appearing on magazine covers, banknotes, stamps and coins in slightly different forms, photos taken during that session became some of the most frequently reproduced images in the world. (In the above photo, the Queen was wearing the George IV State Diadem and the necklace presented for her wedding by Nizam of Hyderabad).

On the stamps, Wilding image was used until a second series was made in 1967. John Hedgecoe took a series of profile shots of the Queen in 1966 after being commissioned by the Postmaster General. Once the Queen had selected her favourite, the sculptor Arnold Machin made it up into a plaster relief, which Hedgecoe then photographed. It is this shot which has since been reproduced on some 200 billion (and counting) stamps, making Hedgecoe and Machin most copied artists in history. The image was also put on a banknote; when Bermuda decided to redesign its currency in 2009, it somehow decided to use this portrait which was already 40 years old!.

Professor Hedgecoe died 3rd June 2010.

Her Majesty marked her 84th official birthday yesterday.

Happy Birthday, Ma’am!

Grace Jones

In the 1970s, Jean-Paul Goude made so many iconic and popular album covers for his then-partner Grace Jones that he would eventually become known as the man who “created” Grace Jones. Working with basic tools and without computers, Goude anticipated the current era of photoediting. The above photo of Grace Jones holding a microphone while nearly naked was published in New York magazine in 1978, and was so loved by Jones that she used it on her 1985 album Island Life.

Few people knew that it was not a photograph, but a photocollage. Goude remembers about the photo he called “Nigger Arabesque”: “Unless you are extraordinarily supple, you cannot do this arabesque. The main point is that Grace couldn’t do it, and that’s the basis of my entire work: creating a credible illusion.” He photographed her in a variety of positions, using boxes to help prop up her body, and pieced these images together to create the incredible illusion.

Dora Concentration Camp

Although many of his photos and film have been shown repeatedly on television across the world, the name Walter Frentz remains unknown. Hitler’s photographer, Frentz had been there all along — from the beginning of Hitler’s dictatorship to those hectic final days in the Fuhrerbunker. In between, he took photos of Hitler and his dog, the private lives of top Nazi leaders, party rallies in Nuremberg, the 1936 Olympics, von Ribbentrop’s historic mission to Moscow and Hitler’s triumphant entries to Warsaw and Paris.

Yet, notably absent were the atrocities; Frentz reportedly witnessed a massacre of Jews in Minsk while traveling with SS leader Heinrich Himmler. There is no photographic evidence of this incident, and Frentz himself was sworn to secrecy. In taking photos of forced labor in the construction of the V–2 missiles at the Dora concentration camp and Mittelwerk underground factory near Nordhausen, Frentz came closest to the harsh realities of Second World War but they too were sanitized versions of history — a history Nazi leaders wanted to see.

Today, the slave labor behind V2 rockets is almost forgotten — in fact, 2,000 prisoners, worked on it and almost half of them didn’t survive. When the first V2 rocket hit Britain in 1944, it was one of the most complex weapons ever employed. However, after 15 years and huge sums of money, it did not prove to be the decisive weapon that Hitler had hoped would force Britain out of the war. The prisoners working on the missiles sabotaged some of them that around 20% of rockets that left Dora had flaws.

Frentz’s close friend, Armaments Minister Albert Speer sent him to film the Dora mines in the summer of 1944. Speer hoped the photos would persuade Hitler to maintain support for the V2 program. In an early use of Agfa color film, Frentz took staged photographs to showcase the efficiency of forced labor. Instead of stick-wielding kapos, back–breaking excavation and construction work, piles of emaciated dead bodies, corpses burning on open pyres, and public hangings, the Nazi leadership were instead shown skilled assembly work and healthy prisoners in clean clothing. The photographs also omit the presence of the SS and Wehrmacht in the factory. These Dora photographs lay forgotten in an attic for more than 50 years until February 1998, when Frentz’s son discovered them in a suitcase.