From left: "Brink" by David Butow; "A Dream of Europe" by Jacob Ehrbahn; "Dust" by Patrick Wack

NEWS PHOTOGRAPHER | JANUARY 2022

Three photo books illustrate challenges journalists, others face

A look at repression of Uyghurs raises free speech questions in ‘Dust’

By Stephen Wolgast

It’s always been true that the world changes. The last few years have shown us that it doesn’t always change for the better, at least not in the short term. Lately, when journalists aren’t reporting on dysfunction globally, they’ve been the subject of breakdowns in business models and trust.

Seeing the Nobel Peace Prize handed to two journalists in countries where journalism is a dangerous occupation was a bright spot, but three recent books demonstrate the challenges faced by journalists and everyone else.

Let’s start with the big question: What’s the price of freedom of speech — and of the press — today?

For American businesses operating in China, the answer may come down to revenue.

When Kodak posted to its Instagram account photographs by Patrick Wack of Xinjiang Province, in China, supporters of Beijing’s policies that suppress Uygher culture called foul.

Kodak had promoted Wack’s photos, which were shot on Kodak film, for their aesthetics. After removing the photos, the company blamed the posts on a “supervision loophole,” according to The New York Times.

Getting caught up in a disagreement about politics isn’t unusual for journalists, and getting a smack-down from the Chinese government can’t be surprising for Wack. One of the points he makes in his book, “Dust,” is the growing surveillance of Uyghers in Xinjiang.

The government uses tools that big data makes possible, including facial recognition, cellphone monitoring, DNA harvesting and video surveillance, writes Dru Gladney, an anthropology professor at Pomona College, in an essay in the book. Wack’s photographs, taken over three years, show how the Muslims’ domes and crescents, and women’s veils, went from ordinary sights on the streets to total absence, replaced by Chinese flags and banners bearing Communist Party slogans.

Like most controversies, this one has an effect opposite of the Chinese government’s intent. Published in Marseille, France, “Dust” is now known worldwide. Readers may be drawn to it because Beijing dislikes it, but the photographs are revealing for other reasons.

Wack started his project in Xinjian in 2016 working in the 4 by 5 format. The proportions, roomy compared to a 35 mm frame, give the eye more space to explore and review the faces, plains and architecture in Wack’s compositions.
The images take their time revealing their individual stories. Most of them are taken from a comfortable distance, delivering views of the scene around his subjects instead of zooming in for a quick emotional payoff. Then there’s the lighting. In the outdoor photos, daylight seems to fill every crook and crevasse evenly, minimizing the darkness of shadows and bringing details to the viewer’s eye.

By the end of his time in Xinjian, his compositions take on some urgency and feel more purposeful. He switched to the more energetic proportions typical of a 35 mm frame, helpful at a time when he had to elude Chinese authorities.

After Kodak removed Wack’s photos, the company said its Instagram page is used to promote film, not to be a “platform for political speech,” raising questions. When is a photograph political, and can a photo be nothing more than pretty? Even sunsets make statements about the environment.

Whatever they point their cameras toward, photographers document change every day. What some call progress, others call an affront.

Free speech advocates would also point out that Kodak’s decision to forbid political topics is itself a political one: Kodak has five businesses registered in China, The Times reports, suggesting that its use of Instagram is not simply about “promoting the medium of film.”

Wack, like the best photojournalists, promotes the dignity of the individual. That’s a political idea too, one thousands of years old but still unwelcome to some authorities.

Dust crop.jpg

Dust
By Patrick Wack
176 pp., €47, André Frère Éditions, 2021
Order the book

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“Kashgar, 2016” Women in native dress exit a train platform in the Xinjiang city of Kashgar in 2016, before the Chinese government forbade Uyghers from wearing it. Photo by Patrick Wack

“Karakoram Highway, 2016” The mining and petrochemical sectors drive the Xinjiang economy. A truck drives along the Karakoram Highway. Photo by Patrick Wack

“Turpan Depression, 2016” Xinjiang province is China’s largest political unit, covering 624,000 square miles. Outside its major cities the population density is about 32 people per square mile. Photo by Patrick Wack

“Sayram Lake, 2017” Of the 40 ethnic groups living in Xinjiang, the Uyghers, who are Muslim, are the largest, followed by ethnic Chinese and Chinese Muslims. Photo by Patrick Wack

“Hotan, 2019” Women wait in line in Hotan in 2019, after China restricted the use of face scarves among Muslim women. The government has also posted banners promoting the central government. Photo by Patrick Wack

“Theme park, Shanshan County, 2019” To encourage ethnic Chinese to visit Xinjiang, the government entices tourists to theme parks such as the one in Shanshan County. Photo by Patrick Wack

‘Brink’ tries to fathom Trump presidency, his allure

Reporting on politics can get American journalists called out by Americans for being political. That’s a tautology, one we’ve all been caught up in because it’s what we do: When something out of the ordinary happens, a journalist’s job is to make sense of it. Making order out of chaos is our job.

Making order out of the Trump presidency became the job for David Butow. A Dallas native who made Los Angeles his home, Butow moved to Washington, D.C., after covering the closing weeks of the 2016 presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton and the candidate few expected to win.

Before he could know that he would publish his work in “Brink,” he photographed rallies in the Upper Midwest. Towns like Benton Harbor, Michigan, became a focal point for him. Across Lake Michigan from Chicago, Benton Harbor lies a 100-mile drive from the city and is one of the places media critics say the media never covers.

Yet before the critics spoke, Butow was there. A town of 10,000, Benton Harbor has seen two riots ignited by race, in 1966 and 2003, and in the last decade had had to cope with the tainted drinking water of nearby Flint. During the presidential campaign, Butow came across one of the town’s motels, and it struck him.

“A lot of the people staying there were from the town, which is notoriously segregated, but the motel was a melting pot of American economic despair,” he writes. “Their personal stories were complicated and defied stereotypical categorizations.”

A sign in support of the Trump campaign hangs on a house that's more than 100 years old off of a highway in southern Michigan on Oct. 1, 2016. | Photo by David Butow/BRINK/Redux

A couple rest in bed after waking from a nap Oct. 2, 2016, in a motel room in Benton Harbor, Michigan. This picture was made while the photographer was traveling in the Upper Midwest swing states ahead of the 2016 presidential election. | Photo by David Butow/BRINK/Redux

Supporters of GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump gather for a rally June 1, 2016, in an aircraft hangar at the Sacramento, California, airport ahead of the June 7 California primary. | Photo by David Butow/BRINK/Redux

He couldn’t have realized it, but the tired main street, the churches and the preponderance of camouflage were telegraphing support for a politician pitching a return to the past instead of the one promising the future.

His reporting from the region makes up the first portion of his book, demonstrating how people who had lost in the gambit of globalization become, in Clinton’s infamous description, the deplorables.

Moving to Washington, Butow covered Capitol Hill and the White House for the first time. He looked for the scenes that happened outside the frames of television and came away with the kind of images that were once a staple of legislative photojournalism across the country: small rooms packed with politicians trying to convince a holdout to see it their way.

Further behind the scenes were the actions of the administration. Butow’s pictures remain scrupulously disinterested politically, but his own feelings are clear in his writing. “While I expected the incompetence, I underestimated the treachery.” Eight of President Donald Trump’s close associates and aides have been convicted of felonies, including his national security adviser.

Candidate Donald Trump’s face is obscured by a teleprompter during a rally at an airplane hangar in Wilmington, Ohio, on Nov. 4, 2016, a few days before he would win the presidency. | Photo by David Butow/BRINK/Redux

Former FBI Director James Comey leaves the hearing room June 8, 2017, on Capitol Hill in Washington after testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee on details of the Russia investigation and his subsequent firing by President Donald Trump. It was the first time Comey had spoken in public since his firing. | Photo by David Butow/BRINK/Redux

A White House staffer with her daughter after visiting to watch Marine One carrying President Donald Trump land on the South Lawn. | Photo by David Butow/Redux