Oh yeah, photography! and Mikhael Subotzky

So, I kinda forgot about photography.  I tend to do that, despite the fact that it seems like it is everyone else's favorite of all the visual arts.  I came across Mikhael's work and immediately appreciated his talents as a photojournalist-style photographer. These images could be right out of National Geographic.  Aside from being visually striking photographs, Subotzky's work tells a pointed story.  His images are filled with the sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes heart warming realism of the human condition.

Oddly enough I don't feel pity for the people in the images (maybe I should). I think it is the way the Mikael takes the images. They are full of truth, undeniable visual complexity and beauty, and humanism.  I think it has something to do with the fact that Mikhael himself tries as best as he can to immerse himself into the environments he chooses to photograph.  Maybe I should be seeing these people lives as something to rectify, but part of me just wants to learn more about what it is to be human, how humans live, can live, what we can endure, what makes us different, what makes us completely the same.  Still I don't know what all I feel when I look at images like this... I feel suddenly very white, very guilty, kinda ashamed of myself....


The Mallies Household, Rustdene Township, Beaufort West 2006. Chromogenic color print, 32 1/4 x 39 3/8" (81.9 x 100 cm). 


In this image, a young female stands half framed in a doorway as older adults flank her on either side.  The focal point of the image is the female in the center of the picture plane.  The light of the sun shines through an unseen window and hits her on the right side of her body, she stands as the tallest human figure in the room.   Smoke from her own, and an unseen person's cigarette drifts through the air catching the sunlight.  The colors in this photograph are deep and gem-like. Green walls contrast beautifully with the orange of the door frame.  On either side of the door frame pictures hang high on the walls.  One is of Jesus and The Sacred Heart. All the surfaces in the room are textured and blotched and peeling with decay and wear. Bottles and ask trays and glasses litter the surfaces in the foreground and background.  It gives the image a depth, and busyness, and anxiety that adds to the narrative of an uncertain, tumultuous life in West Africa.

Residents, Vaalkoppies 2006. Chromogenic color print, 41 9/16 x 50 11/16" (105.6 x 128.7 cm). 

Beaufort West Police Station. 2006. Lightjet C print 126x147cm 

Interesting how he wears his hat.  That style is identical to style that certain youth in America wear their hats. I'm sure it stands for the same confident, swagger that it does here.