Still photos of Katrina's wrath

[richard_ilomaki]

Hello

 

I have just been looking at some videos, then still photos of the

devastation and misery after the hurricane. Videos, while vivid and

more "actual" left only fleeting impulses and feelings, while the

still images hit the gut much harder, specially when they were seen

close up and panned, sort of like a video, but of a still image.

 

I knew the video image would change and eventually stop, but the

still image was, and always will be there, that instant fixed, and

as someone said, a seering, viscious, indelible "Decisive Moment".

 

The image of the blotch above the head of the Spanish soldier, the

agony on the face of the napalmed Vietnemse girl, the blazing eyes

on the sooted skin of the Bengali ship breaker carrying the steel

bars, the wearyness of the myrmidian Brazilian gold miner in the

teeming pit, the fist of Joe Louis: the peircing gaze of Che

Guevera:- all powerfull and everlasting.

 

Video is transient, but still lasts for ever.

 

Regards

[johnny massey]

I think Kim Phuk was Cambodian (and now lives in The Netherlands) but I agree whole-heartedly with your comments. Johnny.

[richard_ilomaki]

Hi

 

No, I think she lives here in toronto, or at least did last year.

 

Cheers

[johnny massey]

Richard, someone will corroborate. Also, although I said 'whole-heartedly' I've since thought of two exceptions - let me run them past you:- 1. A panned telephoto shot following JFK's limo through Dallas. 2. Neil Armstrong jumping off the ladder onto the dusty surface of the moon. I think these are defining MOVING images every bit as evocative as the stills you mention, but I am hard pushed to think of any more. I only hope that all the (perhaps) millions of personal tragedies caused by Katrina are where it ends. I'm concerned it might not be.

[tim_franklin]

Indeed. Another one (for me at least) is the footage captured from street level of the first

airliner crashing into the WTC on 9/11. No still photo could compete with that terrible

sight.

[jtk]

Greg Robinson, who died at the hands of Rev. Jim Jones' lunatics at Jonestown, Guyana, was a heroic 27 year old photojournalist. He cut his teeth on television news camerawork in San Francisco. I figured he'd be a fine still photographer when I first saw his mundane TV footage. I never met anyone so passionate about 35mm still work.

 

There's no telling how many videocam operators will become Robert Capas. Respect them.

 

The TV cameramen who operated the 16mm Mitchells in Birmingham, recording dogs and firehoses loosed by Bull Conner against clean cut young black people fed up with oppression, produced documents that fed roots of the Civil Rights movement. Not incidentally, that TV footage helped stimulate the heroic young northern whites, many Jews among them, who risked and sometimes lost their lives on behalf of black Americans...and for their own self respect.

 

The cameramen who brought the then-revolutionary Eclair 16 and other advanced cameras to Vietnam were as responsible as anyone for waking the conscience of a few Americans. The famous street execution and napalmed girl were shot on 16mm, but we never see that because it's so revolting.

 

http://redcat.org/about/press/10.5.04war.html

[EricM]

Kim is Vietnamese, lives in Canada somwhere, likes Vancouver but works out of TO, and is an ambassador for UNESCO. A book called "Love" was put out by MILK (Moments of Intimacy, Laughter and Kinship) that that contains some of the best portraits i've ever seen...many by Leica as well...before film died...

[johnny massey]

Thanks, am updating my info!

[_cire_.]

If you can find the above mentioned book, you wont be disapointed, John.

[bob in seattle]

I would comment that, after hours of witnessing, in disbelief and shame, the avoidable tragedy of the the Superdome and similar dramas across the Gulf Coast on live and replay TV, I was spellbound by a still photo essay (without narration, just subdued music over)of the devastation.

 

Sorry to say I can't recall if it was CNN, Fox or one of the other 3-letter networks. But that 90 seconds of still color shots stayed with me.

 

I suspect we'll see more.

 

Too many unrestricted minicams, digicams, phonecam, point and shoots etc. out there for the White House to embargo.

 

We probably WON'T see the sheriff from St. Bernard Parish firing his sidearm to turn back a group of 60 tourists (now witnesses for a future inquiry), business visitors and poor, black residents who tried (twice in two days) to walk across the freeway bridge to the other side and sure evacuation. That's a shot I'd love to see on Reuters...

 

They eventually made their way out, but only after a night of terror under a bridge, including a helicopter that came out of nowhere and blasted their belongings away so as to "encourage them" to move somewhere else (they cam upon an abandoned bus) to spend the night.

 

Where are those shots when we really need them?

 

Bob