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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

Scroll to see pictures and more book reviews

“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
Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake is surrounded by fellow Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington moments after Flake’s surprise announcement Sept. 28, 2018, that he would break ranks with his party and call for a delay in the confirmation process of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh to allow time for an FBI investigation into sexual allegations against Kavanaugh. | Photo by David Butow/BRINK/Redux
President Donald Trump speaks to the media Dec. 7, 2019, before boarding Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington. | Photo by David Butow
U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., joins other members of the prosecution team Jan. 25, 2020, at a news conference in the U.S. Capitol in Washington concerning impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump. | Photo by David Butow/BRINK/Redux
Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi is surrounded by staffers and media April 23, 2020, as she walks through the Capitol Rotunda in Washington in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. | Photo by David Butow/BRINK/Redux
A man faces off against law enforcement agents in riot gear outside the White House on May 30, 2020, the first night of demonstrations in Washington over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. | Photo by David Butow/BRINK/Redux
Federal law enforcement officers face off May 30, 2020, against George Floyd protesters who pushed up against fences set up in Lafayette Square in Washington as a buffer between the protesters and the White House grounds, which are a few hundred yards behind the officers. They are standing in front of a statue of Polish military leader Tadeusz Kościuszko, who aided in the American Revolution. | Photo by David Butow/BRINK/Redux

Then came Jan. 6.

He was on the west side of the Capitol, where the building was breached, witnessing the destruction of combat. Covering the attack, he found himself lowering his camera and, through his gas mask, just watched.

“I knew I was seeing something terrible and historic, and I had a job to do, but for a few seconds, or maybe it was a few minutes, I gazed at the scene with total, wide-eyed disbelief.”

Sometimes the chaos is so great that making sense of it is too big an ask. Reporting from the early expectations of the Trump candidacy to the wreckage of a democratic institution, “Brink” makes the connection from the Trump base, through politics way outside normal, all the way to their expression of distress, rage and fury.

cover.png

Brink
By David Butow
152 pp, $45, Punctum Press, 2021
Order the book
Accompanying exhibitions open at UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism on Jan. 31, 2022, and RIT City Art Space in Rochester, New York on Feb. 4, 2022

Scroll for more pictures and another book review

Supporters of President Donald Trump retreat from tear gas during a battle with law enforcement officers Jan. 6, 2021, on the west steps of the Capitol in Washington during the attack on the day of Joe Biden’s election certification by Congress. | Photo by David Butow/BRINK/Redux
Supporters of President Donald Trump battle law enforcement officers on the west steps of the Capitol in Washington during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the day of Joe Biden’s election certification by Congress. | Photo by David Butow/BRINK/Redux
A young woman covers her face during a clash between Trump supporters and police at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Supporters of President Donald Trump trying to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election clashed with police as the crowd stormed up the west steps of the Capitol in Washington as members of Congress certified the election. | Photo by David Butow/Redux
A U.S. Marine stands watch on the west front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 20, 2021, as preparations are made a few hours ahead of the inauguration of Joe Biden. | Photo by David Butow/BRINK/Redux

‘A Dream of Europe’ documents ugly realities migrants face

As topsy-turvy as our world has become, millions of people are still dying to get to the West. Economic migrants and war refugees, they leave home in developing countries and dangerous cities to find more accommodating places to find jobs and raise families.

Jacob Ehrbahn spent six years taking 19 trips to follow these populations on the move. A photojournalist for Politiken, a Danish newspaper, and Photojournalist of the Year in NPPA’s Best of Photojournalism 2021, Ehrbahn has photographed refugees and migrants as they crossed borders on foot and seas in dinghies, documenting their lives in refugee camps where the conditions are so unsafe and unsanitary that they’re called jungles.

His photographs show more than the challenges migrants face and the gumption to overcome them, along with the frequent disappointment when they don’t reach their goal. His book, “A Dream of Europe,” includes few close-ups or detail shots.

A family of refugees takes the chance and crawls under the border fence that Hungary was setting up along the border to Serbia. The barbed wire catches the little girl’s hair, and it costs some precious seconds to get her free. The man holding the fence doesn’t manage to get through before the Hungarian border police arrive at the spot, but an hour and 20 minutes later, he takes the chance again and crosses. August 2015 | Photo by Jacob Ehrbahn/Politiken
A dinghy with Syrians and Afghans arrives on Lesbos in Greece. There is a great sense of relief. Many weep with joy. One man lights a signal flare, and people dance, sing, pray and take pictures of one another. The joy is replaced by disappointment when they learn that they will have to walk more than 60 kilometers, or about 37 miles, to a reception center. June 2015 | Photo by Jacob Ehrbahn/Politiken
The reception center in Moria has nowhere near the capacity for the number of people who are arriving to the Greek isle of Lesbos. People wait up to five days under the open sky in order to come inside and be registered. There are no officials keeping a check on the many people outside, so a group of men with sticks functions as a kind of self-appointed police force trying to manage the queue and mediate conflicts. October 2015 | Photo by Jacob Ehrbahn/Politiken
Most of the passengers do not know where the train is heading, but rumor has it that it is going to Austria. September 2015 | Photo by Jacob Ehrbahn/Politiken

Instead, being close to people while using wide framing reliably gives the viewer a broader view of the situation before him than we are accustomed to seeing. While tightly cropped news photos highlight emotion and drama, Ehrbahn’s careful eye shows the Sudanese and Afghans and Eritreans step from one harrowing condition into another, often within view of border guards whose job is to repel them.

Ehrbahn succeeds in revealing just how alone the migrants are. Even in groups of dozens or hundreds, as newcomers in strange lands they often receive no help at first, and that’s if they make it past the fences, razor wire, batons and harsh border enforcement enacted by nationalist politicians.

Yet despite the hostile reception they continue coming. The hope of the West outshines the reality of their homes. One message in the book is that even if we Westerners continue to pretend there’s no immigration problem, the migrants will keep coming. It’s time to recognize reality and help them instead of hindering them.

In the city of Bihac in northwestern Bosnia-Herzegovina, the International Organization for Migration has established a camp in a former refrigerator factory. The camp housed around 2,200 migrants and refugees with 1,700 of them being young men mostly from Pakistan. They live in large tents pitched inside the factory. All the refugees here are trying to cross the border into Croatia and continue through Slovenia to Italy, a notorious refugee trail known as the western Balkan route. December 2018 | Photo by Jacob Ehrbahn/Politiken
A group of five boys from Eritrea sneaks onto a goods lorry at a petrol station on the outskirts of the French port city of Calais. They hope that the goods lorry will drive them to England through the Channel Tunnel or aboard one of the many ferries that sail day and night. The boys are well aware that they will probably be discovered at a checkpoint before they leave France. That is why they hide one member of the group extra carefully. May 2017 | Photo by Jacob Ehrbahn/Politiken
At sea for three days and out of petrol, food and water, these refugees tell of three people who had been on the dinghy who died the day before and that they are now gone. Almost 130 people on board are in a panic. They beg and pray for the Sea-Watch team in the motorboat to come closer and help them. Some begin to shout and will not sit down. A fight breaks out. The people are so desperate that the rescue team is afraid that chaos will break out. June 2017 | Photo by Jacob Ehrbahn/Politiken
At the Moria camp on Lesbos in Greece, around 5,000 people live under very primitive conditions in and around the reception center, originally converted to accommodate 2,800 people. In the makeshift area of the camp, known as “the Jungle,” a group of Afghan men meets every night for prayer. Imam Seead Enajatollh Hossini leads the prayer, accompanied by the singing of Mahdi Mohammadi, age 10. June 2019 | Photo by Jacob Ehrbahn/Politiken
Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) and several smaller nongovernmental organizations estimate that 35% to 40% of the residents of Moria camp on Lesbos in Greece are children. Though people live under inhumane conditions, life goes on, and sometimes children forget the time and place as they laugh and play. August 2020 | Photo by Jacob Ehrbahn/Politiken
Atop this ruin of a building, which was built to be a nursing home, boys warm themselves by a fire. Sil from Pakistan wants to go to Italy. He has crossed the border to Croatia six times. They call these attempts “the game.” Sharif, 15, wearing a red cap, is from Afghanistan. He has crossed the border five times. Three times he made it all the way to Slovenia before the police captured him and drove him back to Bosnia-Herzegovina. They have been living in this building for three months. They have been beaten several times and had their belongings taken by the Croatian border police. Sharif would like to go to France. August 2020 | Photo by Jacob Ehrbahn/Politiken

Another message is in the faces of his subjects. No matter where they come from, no matter how poor they are or how different their cultures are from ours, they are part of the family of man. The title of that 1955 exhibit sounds outdated to us, but the work of those 273 photographers made the case, albeit sentimentally, that we are all related.

The migrants in Ehrbahn’s photos are our sisters and brothers. Instead of treating them as outsiders trying to take what’s ours, aiding them in their time of need would make people everywhere a little more welcoming and a little more accommodating.

Book001.JPG

A Dream of Europe
By Jacob Ehrbahn
296 pp., incl. 3 gatefolds, $79, Dewi Lewis, 2021
164 color & 4 black and images
295mm x 295mm
Order the book

Scroll for more pictures and a link to more News Photographer stories. Thanks for reading.

Stephen Wolgast holds the Knight Chair in audience and community engagement news at the University of Kansas. His email is [email protected]. He has been an NPPA member since 1994.

Ahmad Hadi, 29, from Iraq, is trying to get to Italy by following the Balkan route through Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia. He says that he has been in Croatia more than 20 times and has been caught every time. He has been beaten many times by the border guards and had many cuts and bruises from moving through the pathless terrain in the Croatian woods. Now he is recovering in the former PVC factory in Velika Kladuša before his next attempt. December 2018 | Photo by Jacob Ehrbahn/Politiken
In a park in the Turkish town of Edirne, a Syrian family from Damascus has made a makeshift tent out of a tarpaulin. The two sisters, 8 and 10, play inside the tent. The father is afraid to give their names. The family doesn’t enjoy the tent for long; that night, the police demolish the camp. March 2020 | Photo by Jacob Ehrbahn/Politiken
In the summer of 2019 around 5,000 people were living in the Moria camp in Lesbos in Greece. Now, in 2020, approximately 20,000 refugees and migrants are bunched together in or around the official part of the camp. Most are Afghans, but there are also many Syrians and people of other nationalities. March 2020 | Photo by Jacob Ehrbahn/Politiken
The last residents of the Moria camp In Lesbos salvage what they can and leave the burning ruins. No deaths related to the fire were reported. September 2020 | Photo by Jacob Ehrbahn/Politiken

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