- Understanding a foreign location and developing a narrative/theme for a series of photos
- Planning how photos can visually communicate the features of the situation.
- Compiling and presenting a sequence of photos.
I have chosen to write about a series of photographs by Fernando Moleres "No children in prison" for various reasons:
- plenty of material: the article included six pages of photographs plus an interview with the photographer;
- people are the principal subject, with a mixture of portraits and people in a specific environment;
- I felt the compositions were effective in communicating points in narrative;
- these photos are displayed on his website, which I could link my comments to.
Fernando Moleres is a photographer based in Barcelona. He took up photography in 1991 after previously working in hospitals in third world countries. This project was inspired an exhibition of photographs by Lizzie Sadin at an earlier Perpignan festival about young people in prison around the world. He obtained funding from a municipal council in north west Spain intended to encourage tolerance by photography of social realities around the world. The photographs were taken in a particular prison in Freetown, Sierra Leone over a period of forty days. I have just selected a few that impressed me.
Behind bars (my description as the photographs are not titled)
This image shows the faces of two young prisoners standing behind the bars cell with a background filled with the faces of the other prisoners. The faces are looking directly at the camera engaging the viewer strongly.
This image shows part of a cell where 65 prisoners are sleeping on the floor of a small cell. They lie in a mixture of heads, feet, legs and arms. Just one person is alert and looking at the lens.
A group of prisoners are standing out in the rain, with arms outstretched, shouting out in exhilaration, it seems. The prison has limited water supply so rain is a rare opportunity to wash. The elation displayed by the mens postures in this photograph contrasts with the (understandably) solemn expressions in most of the other photographs.
This photograph of a man asleep on his desk in a room stacked with piles of papers was placed as the final photograph in the sequence shown in Photo magazine. The caption says that this is the man responsible for release of the prisoners, but he has little motivation to properly process their release. The hopelessness of the young prisoners situation is aptly conveyed by this scene of utter disorganization.
Conclusions
I was impressed by the visual qualities of these photographs, only a few of which I have mentioned above as illustration.
The photographs show a surprisingly frank view of the situation for someone visiting for a relatively short time.
They convey pictorially the key points of the situation in the prison. It shows the hardships of the prisoner's lives, but without using the camera effects to over-dramatize their circumstances.
Whilst the photographer has a deliberate "agenda" to show the plight of the prisoners, I feel the sequence of photographs are relatively neutral, showing glimpses of daily life, good and bad, as well as the indifference of the guards and administrators.
I would assume that the presence of the photographer has excluded the worst realities of life in this prison. Nevertheless, it is better to have some insight into the conditions in such a place rather than none at all.
It would be interesting to understand the ethical standards used by the photographer in relation to this photojournalism assignment. I did not find information on this in the article or the website, but I assume the photos represent a "controlled" situation "undisturbed setting, but photographer influences the scene e.g. "hold that pose".
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment