{"id":2431,"date":"2010-05-20T07:18:02","date_gmt":"2010-05-20T07:18:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.foto8.com\/live\/?p=2431"},"modified":"2010-05-20T07:18:02","modified_gmt":"2010-05-20T07:18:02","slug":"marc-garanger-and-nyph10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.foto8.com\/live\/marc-garanger-and-nyph10\/","title":{"rendered":"Marc Garanger and NYPH10"},"content":{"rendered":"
\u201cJ\u2019ai tout expliqu\u00e9 dans les images!\u201d
<\/em>
Marc Garanger at New York Photo Festival, May 16, 2010<\/p>\n

In 1960, Marc Garanger, 25 and pressed into the French military service, found himself over the course of a fortnight making identity card portraits of 2000 women in occupied Algeria on the orders of his division commander. Each woman was photographed once, on a single frame, seated on a stool against a white wall. A language barrier prevented the photographer and subject from communicating verbally. But in these brief interactions were moments of extraordinary intensity; many of the women in the pictures glare at the camera, while others appear more placid. Even as they are literally being identified and cast as colonial subjects, they stare back, and so these pictures have come to be recognised as a celebration of pride and resistance in the face of power, dignity maintained under duress.<\/p>\n

\"Algeria,
Algeria, 1960 \u00a9 Marc Garanger<\/p>\n

On Sunday, at the New York Photo Festival in Brooklyn, Garanger, with a translator, fielded questions about \u201cAlgerian Women, 1960\u201d to a full house. He had been honored with the festival\u2019s Lifetime Achievement Award, and his pictures were a core component of Bodies in Question<\/em>, the exhibit curated by Fred Ritchin. Members of the audience politely but persistently asked Garanger to clarify details about the pictures. Did the women normally go veiled? (Many of the women were Berber, wearing a cheich<\/em> over the head but not over the face. However, many of the cheichs<\/em> were removed. This was the first time that many of the women had ever been photographed. Against their will, among soldiers who called them “monkeys”, it was in any case a humiliation.)  When Garanger returned to Algeria in 2004 to seek out some of the subjects, did they harbour any ill will against the army photographer? (No, they remembered and welcomed him and appreciated having the pictures.)<\/p>\n

\"Return
Return to Algeria 2004 \u00a9 Marc Garanger<\/p>\n

The questions \u2013 many of which I shared \u2013 were respectful, and did not appear to be attempts to undermine or otherwise cast doubt on the photographer\u2019s efforts, but rather were sincere efforts to better understand the work. I wanted to know how the women distinguished him from the other soldiers, who Garanger detested for their racism. Did they not just see him as another soldier? Was their rage not directed at him, the photographer? While he was a soldier, he was not an official military photographer, but was chosen for the task because he already possessed the skills.<\/p>\n

\"Algeria,
Algeria, 1960 \u00a9 Marc Garanger<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think these were bad questions but after hearing Garanger’s responses and after speaking with him, I realised that they were perhaps the wrong questions. Rather than trying to sort out how these pictures came to be and reconciling the contradictions of intentions and points of view, reasons and results (questions which were necessary for us to come to terms with this body of work), we should also<\/em> have been asking about the ways in which unlikely paths can present uncommon possibilities. These opportunities fueled by strong feelings may result in work that resonates even with future generations and in new contexts. For Garanger, the pictures were an important way to express his outrage; he says he had no choice but to take the pictures because he was ordered to by his officer.  But I suspect he had no choice as well as a matter of conscience; that is, his convictions forced him to make the pictures as he did.<\/p>\n

There is something about these pictures that asks us to consider them differently than archives such as the Cambodian S-21<\/a> genocide pictures, in that Garanger\u2019s hand is present both in the pictures and in their continued circulation. Identity pictures made by another photographer may equally have captured the outrage of many of the sitters but perhaps not the connection that resulted from Garanger’s nonverbal efforts, or the sensibility informed by Edward Curtis<\/a>‘ salvage photography.  Inspired by Curtis, the photographer commissioned by J.P. Morgan in the early 20th century to document Native American life and history before it was irrevocably transformed, Garanger wanted to make pictures that would first, by virtue of their existence, be a testament. In hindsight, the thread through his making the pictures \u2013 promoting them outside of France, having them recognised at Arles in 1981 and subsequently published as a book, continuously seeking out traditional societies to photograph since the 1960s, returning to Algeria to seek out the subjects of the identity pictures, and having those pictures shown in venues such as New York Photo Festival \u2013 seems a clean narrative. But Garanger, following his impulses and convictions in 1960, could not have anticipated this course. Indeed, it was his anger, confronted with the precariousness of the moment in 1960 as France and the Algerian National Liberation Front fought the war that would lead to Algeria\u2019s decolonisation in 1962, that made the pictures possible at all.<\/p>\n