multivocal histories

bas vroege multivocal histories

In 1990 Julian Germain graduated from the Royal College of Art in London with a book called Steel-

works. The book describes the effects of the radical economic changes in and around Consett, in the

north of England, as a result of the ruthless Thatcherite politics of the time. The title of Kevin Smith’s

2004 book on that period, Civil War Without Guns, describes the nature of the brutal social confrontation

that took place in the UK between 1980 and 1985. What was ground-breaking about Steelworks was the

fact that Germain mixed his own work with photographs made by Tommy Harris, a photographer who

had worked for decades for the local newspaper, and with vernacular photographs from workers’

family-albums, and a reportage made by star reporter Don McCullin for the Sunday Times Magazine.

Without the intention of doing so, Germain thus gave birth to a photographic practice that could be

labelled ‘postmodern visual history writing’. Its essence resides in the fact that no one voice can be

authoritative: history is by its nature the product of multiple voices and of recombining records from

different moments in time. Or, as Frits Gierstberg recognized in Perspektief No. 41 in 1991:

“By juxtaposing different types of photography Germain brings up for discussion their separate

claims to authenticity and historical reality within the presentation itself”.1

Making use of vernacular photography became increasingly popular during the 1990s. Still, most of the time the

material was used for its ability to reveal common culture from a non-intentional point of view, as circumstantial

evidence, part of a personal archive or simply as a fashionable way of suggesting authenticity. Despite photogra-

phers’ growing (and not always voluntary) independence from the press, few chose to combine vernacular

photographs with other image material to tell stories or write visual history. Among the exceptions was Magnum

photographer Susan Meiselas, with her 1997 project Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History, with which she established

the non-existent Kurdish national visual history archive in the form of an exhibition, a book and a website.

Germain’s own pictures represent some 20% of the images in Steelworks. In the case of Kurdistan, however,

Meiselas’s own work only appears sporadically and her role can therefore better be described as editor and visual

researcher than as photographer alone. The traditional division of roles between curators, editors, photographers

and researchers have become blurred here. The result is a visually rich and challenging book and project. To this day

Kurds, living somewhere in diaspora, can make contributions to the project, in the form of the website

(www.akakurdistan.com), adding their memories, their documents and their stories to the ever-larger picture.

Both Meiselas’s as well as Germain’s project can also be perceived as examples of ‘slow journalism’. As the press

could no longer cater to having photographers and journalists working on in-depth stories at remote locations,

photographers not only needed to look elsewhere to get their stories funded but also needed to look for alternative

venues for their work, other than print media. Slowly, yet increasingly, museums and the cultural sector at large took

on part of the social responsibility of showing the results of those endeavours. Showing socially committed work

under completely different formal circumstances (a museum space is radically different from a magazine article, not

only as such, but also in how anything shown in it is perceived by a viewer) requires a fundamental rethinking of its

presentation. Who should be in charge of this process? The curator (or the photographer) has to become an editor,

a producer of an often complex production with multiple designers (web, book, exhibition) and possibly other image

or filmmakers, or even sound designers. It is a job description that is far distant from the classic museum curator’s,

let alone conservator’s task. But it is not exactly a photographer’s job either.2

Multivocal Histories brings examples of these practices together, by looking at an historical example, by showing

projects by a new hybrid generation of photographers/curators/researchers trained at the Master’s in Photographic

Studies (MaPS) at Leiden University, and by kindred spirits from elsewhere, as well as in new combinations of image

makers and projects shedding another, nuanced light on various conflicts from the past decade that we thought we

knew well.

From the social confrontation and its aftermath in the UK (Julian Germain) to the war in Chechnya (Taco Hidde

Bakker combining found postcards and text fragments, together with photographer Stanley Greene, filmed by

Stephen J. Bell, on the occasion of the publication of his book Open Wound). And from images of the 1979

revolution in Nicaragua that survived their temporary role (Susan Meiselas) to research showing the changing

symbolic value of the keffiyeh (Wouter den Bakker).

Florian Schwarz started from a set of photographs showing his grandfather in a Nazi uniform, and followed his

trail as POW to the town of Asbest, Siberia.

Vojta Dukát’s unique material documenting the Soviet troops leaving Czechoslovakia in 1991 is complemented

by Ales Vasicek’s still photographs from 2008, from a prize-winning film on the fall of Srebrenica. The French-

Polish-Italian film was partly shot in Milovice, the former Soviet camp that Dukát covered in 1991.

Andrea Stultiens discovered the archive of a remarkable Ugandan man, Kaddu Wasswa, in 2008 and tries to

unravel the story of his multifaceted life.

Anastasia Khoroshilova’s juxtaposition of portraits of children who survived the massacre at the school in Beslan

(North Ossetia) in 2004 and the ID-pictures of those who died in the event is dramatic.

ID-cards were also the starting point for Jian Jiang in a series that he will continue making, on orphaned children

in China’s Henan province.

For Sleeping Soldiers Tim Hetherington and Magali Charrier (editor) juxtaposed photographic stills and video

footage from his long-term engagement with American forces in Afghanistan. The multi-screen installation

makes the horror and stress of war felt in an unprecedented manner.

Anthropologist Jay Ruby concluded his article ‘Sharing The Power’ with the words: “The grandiose expectations we

had about documentary media are exhausted. It should be possible to construct a practice with modest aspirations.

One that neither pretends it has the power to change the world nor a desire to pity but instead aids in our attempt to

comprehend and critique a world grown increasingly incomprehensible. Documentarians will have to learn to share

their power to represent or they may lose it altogether.”3

‘Sharing The Power’, subtitled ‘A Multivocal Documentary’, proposed the photographer stand next to his subjects,

having them represent themselves, thus collaborating with them on an equal level. Multivocal Histories is dedicated

to Ruby’s important 1991 call. It is not that all these projects comply fully with his radical requirements. In fact, in

many of these cases the multivocality resides in two or more professionals (image-makers, editors, curators, etc.)

working closely together, in combination with a form of collaboration with the subjects and/or material generated by

them. It has been an evolution (in a somewhat adapted version) rather than revolution, one may argue. But, in fact,

that is quite similar to how most historical processes develop….

Endnotes

1 Gierstberg, Frits, In: Perspektief, No 41, Rotterdam, 1991: p. 38-39

2 Fueled by these developments the University Leiden and the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague founded the Master’s in

Photographic Studies (MaPS) in 2003. The one year Masters aims at training students and professionals with a BA from art

schools as well as universities in historiography and theory of photography as well as contemporary curatorial practice.

With financial support from the Wertheimer Foundation, Susan Meiselas was appointed as extraordinary professor in 2008.

3 Ruby, Jay, Sharing The Power - A Multivocal Documentary/Delen in de macht - De meerstemmige documentaire.

Perspektief, No. 41: p. 4-17