PHOTOAUTOMAT

Buno, Korengal Valley, Kunar Province, Afghanistan,2008.

Tim Hetherington. (5 December 1970 – 20 April 2011).

British-American photojournalist, filmmaker. 

Second Part.

When shooting the war documentary Restrepo with Sebastian Junger in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley. He created a series of photographs of man bonding and the sleeping soldiers. Most of these intimate photographs depict American soldiers in , while others capture images from the Liberian civil war. As Junger puts it, “the artistic choices he made were incredibly risky, but he was very sure of himself and wound up completely re-inventing his craft. The title of my film, Which Way Is the Front Line from Here?, refers as much to Tim’s artistic instincts as to any combat situation he may have been in.” (Read full article here).

"...the war machine is too put a group of man together in extreme circumstances, and get them to bond together and they will kill and be killed for each other"

"at the end of the day you realize that it was just a group of young men that were pout in this mountain and they are trying to do is survive just looking after for each (...), and that was it really, nothing to do with war, nothing to do with politics."

-What are you doing?

-Don't you get it?

-(...)this is what the american publics never gets to see, (...) we want to see the soldiers as strong, we don't wanna know that they are also this vulnerable boys."

Murphy, Korengal Valley, Kunar Province, Afghanistan, 2008.

Kelso, Korengal Valley, Kunar Province, Afghanistan, 2008.

The PhotoAutomat section is edited by the Brooklyn-based photographer Andreína Restrepo. 

PHOTOAUTOMAT

Tim Hetherington

Other side of war photography

Libya, April 9, 2011. (Self-portrait by Tim Hetherington. - ©TIM HETHERINGTON / MAGNUM)

Tim Hetherington (5 December 1970 – 20 April 2011).

British-American photojournalist, filmmaker. 

"Hetherington was known primarily for his coverage of conflicts in West Africa and the Middle East, employing photography, writing, and film to bring awareness to the human side of war and the suffering it invokes. His work was humanistic, foregoing any attempt at a holistic view of conflict. Instead, Hetherington worked to portray the lives of soldiers and civilians who were caught in the unfolding drama of political and social unrest." By Lindsay Comstock on April 12, 2012 for American Photo Mag. 

We are used to see very graphic images when we think of war photography, that somewhat dehumanizes people and make them fit into stereotypes of the good and the evil, and fulfill the characters everyone expect to see: the victims, the assassins, the corpses, the blood, the misery. What separated Tim Hetherington from this, was the urge to look further; to look deep into the life these people lived while surviving conflicts, find their humanity, show their routines. He looked for camaraderie in soldiers, for the human side of warrior children, the consequences of war in the series and how they overcame it.

This month will be dedicated to Tim Hetherington and in this first post I share with you one of the things that I consider helped him convey his message, his search: the used of medium format.

Photos taken in Liberia, 2003-2004. Via YOSSI MILO GALLERY, NEW YORK.

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The PhotoAutomat section is edited by the Brooklyn-based photographer Andreína Restrepo. 

PHOTOAUTOMAT

All photographs belong to Hedi Slimane via his website. All Rights Reserved ®

Hedi Slimane. Born in Paris in 1968 from a Tunisian father and an Italian mother (dress maker), discover photography when he got his first camera at 11. Five years later he started making his own clothes -inherit trade from mom maybe- later he went to the École du Louvre and studied Art History. Organically he become involved in the fashion world, evolving and creating amazing pieces and changing menswear making it darker, more exciting and all together more rock.

I got to know him for his super contrasted Black & White online photos, a few years ago. Later I learned that he was taking a break from a very successful career as Artistic Director of Dior Homme, a fact that was described by Fashion Wire Daily (2007) this way: “Slimane leaves Dior with the well-earned reputation as the single most influential men’s designer this century, the most copied of his peers and the only one to achieve the status of a rock star.” You can read about this here and here.

 

Before abandoning the fashion world in 2007, in that hiatus from Yves Saint Laurent in early 2000 he moved to Berlin and started a residency at Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art, where he fell in love with photography again and started publishing books.

In his website you can loose yourself browsing the endless gallery of young musicians, models, artists and actors. Consistently with his inclination towards menswear his photos of guys are more frequent and very intimate. 

Men stand out and are deeply moving in an unusual way while being photographed in soft, ethereal,  almost too feminine poses, while remaining manly and sexy. Women are also sexy but strong, is a powerful combination of ambiguity and modernity with no space for cliches.

All photographs belong to Hedi Slimane via his website. All Rights Reserved ®

Go ahead take a walk in Hedi Slimane's world, and read Austin Considine's wonderful piece about him in The New Yorker: A Fashion Designer's Second Act.

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The PhotoAutomat section is edited by the Brooklyn-based photographer Andreína Restrepo.    

 

PHOTOAUTOMAT

Francesca Woodman (April 3, 1958 – January 19, 1981) 

Was an american photographer born in a family of artists, she started taking pictures at the sweet age of 11, enrolled in the Rhode Island School of Design and lived in Italy for a year where she became hugely inspired. She returned to live in NYC, where she worked as an assistant to fashion photographers, while continuing to develop her personal and prolific body of work. 

Even though she tragically decided to end her life at the age of 22 (exactly 33 years ago this week), she left behind a very mature and insightful photographic legacy. Her most notable pieces are her self-portraits.

The first time I came in direct contact with Francesca Woodman's work, it was at the exhibit at the Guggenheim, a couple of years ago. These beautiful huge blueprints were my absolute favorite in the whole show, in them you can see the influence of the Italian renaissance art had on her.

“Caryatid” (1980). Credit: Courtesy George and Betty Woodman

 

The thing I like the most about her work is how mature it was for her age. Her photographs had a certain naive yet bold character that made them unique and absolutely personal. They are a reflection of that time in life, between childhood and adult life. That brief period when you are for the first time in real contact with true yourself, discovering who you are, and exploring your limits.

If you want to know and see more of her work, here the article in The New York Times and about the Guggenheim exhibit that I was lucky to visit; the official Guggenheim video about the exhibit called Through the Lens of Francesca Woodman that examines the relation between the still and moving image in Francesca Woodman's and other artists' production during the 1970s, particularly as associated with Post-Minimalism, performance, and video; and finally the  trailer of a documentary about her family entitled The Woodmans, describe as  an inspiring portrait of one family's fall and redemption in the often brutal world of art.

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The PhotoAutomat section is edited by the Brooklyn-based photographer Andreína Restrepo.