One would have expected a more varied approach of one of Holland’s most famous photo journalists, Ad van Denderen, when tackling the complexities of the countries around the Mediterranean region. In his latest project So Blue So Blue – Edges of the Mediterranean, which I saw at the http://www.nederlandsfotomuseum.nl/”" target="_self">Netherlands Photo Institute last July, the intention was to provide images different than those “etched on the retina of the average tourist”. In other words, not the sandy beaches and the holiday resorts, but all together a http://www.steidlville.com/books/772-So-Blue-So-Blue.html“" target="_self">different picture of a region which finds itself within significant transition, as it straddles the fault lines of geopolitical and economic change. Van Denderen visited Gibraltar, Spain, France, Italy, Croatia, Albania, Greece, Cyprus, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco over the course of a few years. Yet let’s be clear about one thing: does not counter one stereotype by replacing it with another….
Indeed, what was most flawed about the exhibition was that tourist images were replaced by generic media images: if not the sandy beaches with bikini-clad babes on the Med coastline, then the veiled women bathing in Egypt. If not the sexy girls dancing in the nightclubs of holiday towns, then the pot-bellied British white trash tourists indulging themselves (fries and beer, anyone?) in Spain and Greece. If not Beirut as the Paris of the Middle East, then Beirut as a war-torn hell hole. Surely a complex and multi-layered image of the Mediterranean lies within these two extremes. With such an approach everything becomes sadly monochrome, and then “So Blue So Blue” only engenders a cultural reduction of a region that is already prone to xenophobia, islamophobia, orientalism, and every other phobia and angst Deep Europe loves to wallow in.
An important point of exhibition design needs to be made here. With images already bordering on the cliché newsroom stock images, one does not want the captions to further aggravate the pain. Captions are there to contextualise, provide further information, or aid where an image or work does not – or cannot - fully speak for itself. Yet captions should never be pedantic either towards exhibition audiences, or to the subject or objects it is describing. In my irritation I forgot to notice whether the captions were the same as those in the “Blue So Blue” publication, but I do think they were. Curatorial laziness, uncriticality or sloppiness? Let others be the judges.
The one above says it all. The image, which is not present here, portrays a Lebanese mid-aged couple, the woman in hijab (of course), walking through the snow in Bcharre, Lebanon. The photographer has decided that a snapshot is sufficient a formula to generalise and encapsulate the (very complex) Lebanese demographic/secterian make-up: “Christians ski down the slopes while Muslims walk or ride sledges”. Not only is it arrogant to assume that visual markers only could indicate who is Christian or Muslim, but to subscribe behavioural traits to the latter is ridiculous, if not racist. Having spent considerable time in Lebanon I can vow that my Muslim friends do ski, and my Christian friends do walk in the snow and sleigh! What a shame van Denderen does not provide any winter activities for my atheist, Jewish, Buddhist, whathaveyou friends in Lebanon. In hindsight is a great pity that an exhibition such as “So Blue So Blue” leaves one singular sensation, namely seeing red with anger.
Otagowane jako:
ad van denderen, mediterranean, photography, stereotypes
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But the more i look at it i find it’s not a problem of image content—some of the images are quite good actually—, it’s the way the project photos have been curated that ruined it all. It’s a failing of “text” that might have conferred the status of a “stereotype” on the images. The way they have been arranged and tagged: “men and women”, “religion”, etc...and—i agree, the were fatal—they are pathetic! Captions, the photograph’s worst enemy.. Anonymous User | 11 wrz 2008