PICTURES FROM MY WINDOW. THE END OF THE PHOTO NEWS?

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I don’t really mean the end of Photo News, it will always exist; I mean the end of the photographer specialized in this kind of pictures. Here you can see two pictures I took from my window: a fire in the house in front of mine and a motorbike accident. In the same way I took them, any of the several neighbours with camera, (I’m sure there are plenty) or pedestrians with a mobile phone, could have taken them. Not so long ago there were photographers specialized in this kind of images, with a scanner connected to the police radio, that always were the first to arrive. Not today. There will always be someone with a camera closer to the accident; and in this kind of situations to be fast is the most important thing.

/ PICTURES FROM MY OTHER WINDOW. THE END OF THE NEWS PHOTO?

FOTO: JAVIER ELVIRA

This is another News Photo taken for my brother Javier Elvira from a window of my parent's home , where I lived before, and where my brother lives now with his family. Though working as an engineer, Javier is a good photographer with a good amateur camera, a Panasonic DMC-FZ5. A spectacular fire occurred just in front, at the end of the last year. Fire-fighters arrived just after 5 minutes. The pictures of Javier are unbeatable. It was impossible for any photographer working for a newspaper or from a picture agency, to learn about the fire and come in just 5 minutes, and also to beat the privileged point of view of my brother. Javier called me right away and I put him in touch with El Periodico de Catalunya. He sent their photos by e-mail and one of them was published the following day and, very important, got paid for it. There are many people taking photographs that, of course, do have other professions, that don't charge any fee, just happy to see their photos published, with the consequent damage to the professionals who do try to live on the photos they take. And there are others who send their pictures to Banks of Images of 1 dollar a picture, which is putting in serious distress many of the traditional photo agencies.

Today, for every incident that happens there is always a ,better or worse, photographer with a camera. And in the News Photo, to be there at the moment makes all the difference.

(LEER EL RESTO / READ THE REST OF THE ENTRY)

/ CARTIER-BRESSON : THE MYSTERY OF THE "MISSING" PHOTO.

Henry Cartier-Bresson, Berlin 1962

It was one the first books that I bought when I was beginning my photographic career. The title was "The world of Henri Cartier-Bresson”; the careful printing was done in Lucerne, Switzerland, and the Spanish edition belonged to Lumen. Fascinated, I kept on admiring his pictures: "On the banks of the Marne 1938", “Behind Gare Saint-Lazare, Paris 1932", "Hyeres" ,"Dimanche Matin"... But I had a favourite one, five children playing besides the Berlin Wall, an image that Cartier-Bresson took in 1962. This photo was printed full-page as one of the importants in the book.

The years passed by and I had plenty of chances to meet again with the work of Cartier-Bresson: in Paris, in London, in the Piazza del Duomo in Milano, in Amsterdam, in the exhibitions in Barcelona at the Picasso Museum, at Caixa Forum ...I reviewed all the books that kept showing retrospectives of his work, but never went back to see the photo of the children playing near the Berlin Wall.

IS ROBERT FRANK’S “THE AMERICANS” THE BEST PHOTOGRAPHY BOOK?

ROBERT FRANK. NEW JERSEY 1955-1956

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On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Americans, the National Gallery of Art will organize an exhibition of Robert Frank at Washington, San Francisco and New York in 2009. Speaking of this important show, responsibles for the National Gallery described the Robert Frank work as the single most important book of photographs published since the Second World War. And in a recent article, published this month in The New York Times by Philip Gefter, entitled Snapshots from the American road, emphasizes:”No one has had a greater influence on photography in the last half-century that the Swis-born Mr.Frank, though his reputation rests almost entirely on a single book published five decades ago.” In the Spanish recent reissue by La Fábrica, they went even further and described the book as "the work summit in the history of photography." Despite my admiration for the photography of Robert Frank, I have serious doubts about this assertion.

The Americans was published in France, by Delpire, in 1958 and in America in 1959, but before that, in 1952 in Paris and 1954 in New York, Henri Cartier-Bresson had already published his The Decisive Moment. Aside from the importance of the creation of the Magnum Photo Agency, Cartier-Bresson brought a new style of photography based on the new 35-mm rangefinder cameras, as Leica, and his theory of The Decisive Moment is still in force today. I agree that the principles of the French photographer could not remain immutable forever, but, don’t the images of Frank, that I show here, remember quitte a lot to the ones Henri Cartier-Bresson took a few years earlier?

ROBERT FRANK. CHICAGO 1955-1956

CARTIER-BRESSON. NEW YORK 1947

ROBERT FRANK. INDIANAPOLIS 1955-1956

CARTIER-BRESSON. LOS ANGELES 1946

ROBERT FRANK. LONDON1952

CARTIER-BRESSON. NEW YORK 1947

And as someone who does shatter the style of the founder of Magnum, I would distinguish William Klein and his New York book published in France in 1956, 2 years before than the one of Robert Frank.

NEW YORK 1954-1955. WILLIAM KLEIN

NEW YORK 1954-1955. WILLIAM KLEIN

NEW YORK 1954-1955. WILLIAM KLEIN

And, even though it is also a personal opinion, I would stress also Sweet Life the book that the Dutch Ed Van der Elsken published in 1966.

SWEET LIFE. ED VAN DER ELSKEN 1959

SWEET LIFE. ED VAN DER ELSKEN 1959

SWEET LIFE. ED VAN DER ELSKEN 1959

It is true that the photographic historians suggest that Robert Frank introduces what they call the perishable moments instead of the decisive ones. But I think one of the other reasons for the consideration of Frank's book lies in the excellent text by Jack Kerouac, one of the leaders of the Beat Generation, which accompanies it. Kerouac wrote: "after seeing these pictures you end up finally not knowing any more whether a jukebox is sadder than a coffin”. Is a very bold phrase, but, is it so good the jukebox photo? Does that photo really hit us in the same manner as Eugene Smith’s Tomoko in the bath or Country Doctor, for example?

JUKEBOX. ROBERT FRANK NEW YORK 1955-1956

COUNTRY DOCTOR. EUGENE SMITH 1948

TOMOKO EN EL BAÑO / TOMOKO IN THE BATH. EUGENE W. SMITH 1972

In my personal rating I would place first in The Decisive Moment, followed by New York, Sweet Life and, finally, The Americans.

THE OUTBREAK OF THE HOUSING BUBBLE IN SPAIN

Students and young photographers ask me, very often, which subjects could do and many believe that if they go to exotic locations will be easier to sell their photos. Today I want to show this fine story about the outbreak of the housing bubble in Spain, planned and photographed by Xavier Cervera, as a clear example that you don’t need go to the other side of the planet to find great subjects. Xavier worked in advance previewing that this story will be of a capital importance and used all the photographic resources (composition, the quest for the best lights ...) to develop it. This story was published in La Vanguardia Magazine and the text, accompanying the pictures of Xavier Cervera, was written by one of the most prestigious Spanish journalists, José Martí Gomez.

It got to happen. While the whole world praised the rapid growth of the Spanish economy, far above the European average, I sensed serious problems due to the foundations of that growth.

Much of the development was based on Spanish construction. The flats and apartments rose in price, well above inflation, and people was buying them for investment. "To buy apartments and houses is the safest investment; their prices can’t never go down” they used to say. The price of the soil to build was revaluating without stopping. The city councils got money to finance them converting agricultural land into building land, which generated huge profits and big gains which shared political, brokers and builders. The international mafias bleached their dirty money in land while Spanish politicians looked to the other side. All corrupt and all happy. Everyone? While that happened, the flat prices were going skyrocketing out of the reach of young people, who were seeking to leave their parents home, and that earned low salaries; the apartments were also too expensive for the emigrants who served as cheap labour, to continue building non stop, and that crowded together in small flats.

The global financial crisis exploded and damaged, especially, countries like Spain or Ireland highly dependants of the building industry. Nobody wanted to invest in flats anymore, neither the rich nor the mafia, and the people who really needed them to live in or had no money or was unemployed or the banks did not lend them money to pay the mortgage, and ,besides all that, there are a million empty apartments in Spain. For the same reasons people was not buying cars and there were massive lay-offs in the major Spain industries: construction and automotive where many workers were fired. As these industries were losing money, they stopped investing in advertising that is what sustains mainly the written press. Newspapers and magazines, especially, were affected by this publicity cut off, stopped contracting freelances and started firing staff journalists and photographers. Should I go on…?

All this sad story has already face and eyes because of the story of Xavier Cervera and José Martí Gomez published in The Vanguardia Magazine.

AFTER JOSE CENDON LIBERATION.

I can’t believe it! Jose Cendón, after being released, narrated his experience in La Vanguardia and in a radio interview for the chain Ser. The photographer Tino Soriano publishes in his blog the first 40 comments about Cendón from readers. It is unbelievable. The call him gaudy, vain, Indiana Jones, James Bond, unbearable, Superman, macho man, vulture, and one says that Rambo at his side is an altar boy ... One of them writes: “I want to be like him. Go around the world visiting dangerous places and return here to explain it while I wear my flashy brown jacket" What do bother them? Cendón good looks and his apparent lack of fear while describing his capture? It should be remembered that for taking the pictures Cendón made, and makes, you have to be special. He's been working in one of the most dangerous places in Earth. José Cendón financed his own trip to the Congo where he photographed the psychiatric hospital who earned him the World Press Photo Award. Surely if Jose Cendón had not had that character, he would have stayed in their native Galicia shooting press conferences and regional football games (that said with all my respect for the colleagues who do).

I looked back and found pictures of the ones that, undoubtedly, have been the best war photographers in history: Capa, Don McCullin and James Natchwey. I do not know very well the personal motivations of Natchey, who began his international career photographing the riots caused in Belfast (Northern Ireland) for the death of the IRA militant, Bobby Sands, after a hunger strike in 1981 (I also covered the story for the Interviú magazine). Natchwey looks like an actor playing the role of war photographer.

JAMES NATCHWEY

Capa and McCullin were adventurous (I’ve read the biographies of both) and they weren’t exactly what you would call modest. The photos I show of them in the blog simply reinforce my assertion. All of them were very special, brave photographers with a great talent, like Cendón. (Without stating that he is already at the level of the above photographers).

ROBERT CAPA

DON McCULLIN by MARK SHAND

What do they don’t forgive about Jose Cendón? That he doesn't appear like a victim? His good looks? The fact that he didn’t got killed? His brown jacket?

THE NIKON NOTEBOOK

I started to worry. We were already in the middle of January and I had not yet received my Nikon notebook as each year. I did the count: I had received the agenda, sent from Nikon to the photographers, members of the Nikon professional club, since 1990. I had saved them all because many of the entries bring me memories of situations experienced, far away countries and very special photos. It seems that the delegation of Nikon Spain had a problem with the list of people they send the notebook to. Fortunately, thanks to good work of Nuria Gras, the editor of the Nikonistas, everything was arranged and I received the precious notebook.
Here are some examples of why I have so much affection to the Nikon notebook.


In September 1997, Jordi Socias, the editor of El Pais Semanal, called me because he wanted me to go Northern Ireland. And he gave the phone a legendary journalist, the correspondent of El País in London Juan Carlos Gumucio, who previously had lived in Beirut and Jerusalem. During 10 exiting days Juan Carlos and I worked together in a fine story.

BELFAST 1977

In March 1992, a Croatian living in Barcelona, Katunarich, who was working on the Marina travel agency, got us, the journalist Albert Cañagueral, the boat tickets from Rieka to Dubrovnik, besieged by the Serbian army at the Balkan’s war, and where we made a story that was published in El Periodico Sunday Magazine.

DUBROVNIK 1992

These are the notes I took in July 1999, in a paradisiacal place, Natal, in Brazil, while I photographed it for the El Periodico Sunday Magazine.

NATAL 1999

And these, are the other notes I wrotte, in October 2001, in Germany, while making a report about the humanitarian organization Friedensdorf that made the cover and 10 pages in the Magazine of La Vanguardia.

DUSSELDORF 2001

And finally, this is the cell phone of the Spanish army captain Vazquez in Kabul (whith some deleted numbers) who gave me the access to the funeral of the Spanish soldiers’ funeral, that got killed in the crash of the Yak 42 in Turkey, and that was held in the Christian cementery in Kabul.

KABUL 2003

JAVIER CERCAS & EUGENE RICHARDS . BOOKS AND PHOTOS

PHOTO by EUGENE RICHARDS

In the same way that there are pictures that go straight to your heart, the same happens with some books and with some specific phrases within them.

One of these books is Soldiers of Salamis by Javier Cercas that, incidentally, has as a cover a Robert Capa’s photo. Cercas's book was a bestseller largely due to the from mouth- to- ear phenomenon. The same Mario Vargas Llosa said that the last 8 pages were among the best he had ever read in a novel. In addition to the great pleasure I’ve experimented reading his novels if, as in Fahrenheit 451 , I had to choose only one book to save from destruction , this would be Vargas Llosa's The War of the End of the World, to me the contemporary Iliad, which I reread with the same pleasure every two or three years. Turning to the Soldiers of Salamin final's splendid pages (I totally agree with Vargas Llosa) there is a phrase that sparked me very deeply. When the protagonist meets Miralles, the old communist, he tells Cercas how all his young friends died in the war and says: Since the end of the war I haven’t spent a single day without thinking of them. They all died so young.... Dead. Dead. Everyone. None tasted the good things of life: none had only one woman for him, none knew the wonder of having a child and that his son, with three or four years, tucks up in the bed between him and his wife, a Sunday morning in a room with lots of sun ... I have lived this experience, and Cercas is right: it is one of the important things in life that every man or woman should have lived. But, apart from my own experiences, I had seen that image somewhere else. I stirred my library and I found it: is a photo taken by Eugene Richards, one of the greatest world photographers and the author of books as shocking as Cocaine True, Cocaine Blue or Americans We, but who has also represented, in another language, the so very special moment described by Javier Cercas.

CRISIS AND FREELANCE PHOTOGRAPHERS

STAFF AND FRELANCE PHOTOGRAPHERS IN THE BOBBY SANDS BURIAL. BELFAST 1981

On Tuesday February 17 El Pais published an article signed by Elisa Silié entitled The counter is stopped for freelances. It began like this: "The counter is changed with the turn of the century for freelancers. Since then, for almost all the unions, the rates have raised far below the standard of living. For most, being freelance has a halo of romantic, exciting and liberating-the alarm clock does not ring deafening every morning, you don’t have to obey an odious boss and you get organized as you please-, but when the recession shakes the foundations of companies, they freelances are the first to falter. “

Jose Flores, the president of the Association of the Freelance European Journalists says that they had been forced to reduce prices by between 20% and 30%.” He continues: "The biggest problem is that inside the freelancer’s world, there's a lot of intrusiveness. Today, professional equipment is not really expensive, you can purchase a good one for about 6.000 Euros, and in the newspapers the scholars are not only writing texts but making the photographs as well. Already in the 1992 crisis, Michel Guerrin, Le Monde journalist author of Profession Photoreporter said: "When a in a newspaper the advertising goes down, the photographers are the first to be fired."

What can we do, the freelancers, in front of the crisis? I think one of the answers came from a photographer friend of mine that e-mailed me before going abroad to shoot a travel story: "I will try to enjoy during the trip because this year things look fuckin’bad. Nobody is buying travel stories anymore; I have lost customers and those who are left are paying less and they are not asking me to shoot new stories" But later, she explained something that happened: "Sometimes you do not know why, a whole day's work leaves you no pictures. The day is gray, there's nothing interesting, and you're almost about to go home with nothing and in a bad mood. Many times is like is. It is usually like this. But sometimes, despite the horrible day that you have had, you decide to wait a little longer, endure the cold and stay longer to see if anything happens. And suddenly the sun comes up, you're in a beautiful place under the light, you look and shoot... and you hardly know how, but you make a magic picture."And my friend finished her thoughts sending me a really wonderful photo.

It is very clear, albeit in a subconscious way that the photographer has described perfectly the attitude to be taken in front to the crisis: to resist, do not get discouraged and wait for the sunrise. That and keep in mind that the market is changing at a vertiginous speed. We must also change and evolve with it.

THE YEAR AT A GLANCE

ZANZIBAR 2002

Once the journalist Huertas Claveria wanted to use a picture of mine for one of his books and told me: "Do you remember in what year you took it?” Huertas had a nice surprise when the next day I told him, not only the year, but also the month in which the photo had been taken. The staff photographer may be neither methodical not tidy. After all, he has an entire organization behind him: archivists, secretaries, accountants… For free-lance photographers order and good organization are crucial.

In 1992 I discovered the Quo Vadis desk-diary. It has a double page with the following header is written: "YEAR-PLANNING" The organization of the year at a glance. Here I wrote down all my jobs, and I keep in a perfect order all my desk-diaries. I assign a colour to each category of work (I have been changing over time): Yellow is pictures and stories for various publications. Blue is for the Photography classes I impart. Green for photography books and pink for institutional assignments. So I can see in just a glance that, for instance, in 1998 I took pictures in Northern Ireland from 21 to April 25 for the Sunday issue of El Periodico. Or that from the 12 to the 19 of July 2002 I was taking pictures in Zanzibar that I published in the La Vanguardia Magazine.

BELFAST 1998

This is how I could easily find the date of the photo that Huertas Claveria asked me for.