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Photo Book Reviews

The Real and the True: The Digital Photography of Pedro Meyer Digital pioneer Pedro Meyer has embraced digital photography for over 10 years and sees it as the future of the photo world. Article rating: 6.56

Just last year, Pedro Meyer packed up his darkroom equipment and placed it in storage for his grand children and great- grand children to awe at in the future and possible ponder, that’s how they use to make photographs? Meyer embraced what he calls the future of photography – digital – more than a decade ago. Over the span of his 40 year career, this pioneer is best known for his documentary photography work. He has had over 125 exhibitions; published three books such as Espejo de espinas and Truths and Fictions: A Journey from Documentary to Digital Photography along with several CD-ROMs like I Photograph to Remember – the first CD-ROM published to blend elements of continuous digital sounds and images. As the curator and creator of ZoneZero.com, Meyer provides a forum that is highly respected among peers for photographers around the world to build communities and display their work. With this new form of photojournalism, he uses computer programs to manipulate his photographs in order to capture the truth.

The book opens with many busy images and candid portraits of people in Bangladesh standing in the market place and before rich walls of colorful murals. None of the selections in the first portfolio seem edited since there aren’t two years next to the titles. The first year marks when the image was taken and the second is the year it was altered. Six other portfolios are interspersed throughout critical essays by Louis Kaplan and Alejandro Castellanos; a conversation with Meyers and noted photojournalist Ken Light by Douglas Cruickshank; and several editorials from the ZoneZero web site. All of the portfolio pieces are from the photographer’s travels through India, Russia, Africa, South America and many other countries. The black and white and vibrant colorful photographs have a unique unedited beauty to them and whether they are altered or not, together evoke emotions and provoke thoughts (separate from as well as coupled with the text) on everything from socio-political issues to simple inner conflicts.

In many of his editorials, Meyer tackles the issue of the photograph’s credibility. It is a common notion that documentary photographs are suppose to record the truth or what really happened. Meyer thinks otherwise and argues that photographs are not at all credible. He opens doors for readers to think above and beyond the traditional notions of photography with his discussion that deception is not just in the digital manipulation of an image, but in the subject, reproduction and even the interpretation of the whole photograph. “Face it, all photographs are and always have been the product of manipulating reality. They are simply interpretations of the photographer who made them,” Meyers writes in the book. He goes on to say that the manipulation of documentary photography can make the image truer and defends the photograph’s validity shouldn’t be attributed to the artist’s integrity. But what does the reality of what of what really happened matter if what was captured creates the emotion the artist intends it to?

These topics are continued in an intense interview between Meyer and Ken Light, the founder of the International Fund for Documentary Photography, curator and teaching fellow at the Center of Photography at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California Berkeley, titled Trust the Photograph, Not the Photographer.  The two debate on topics like what constitutes copyright infringement, sampling, and moments in history such as when a photo of John Kerry (which was Light’s) was Photoshoped into a faux new article where he was supposedly preparing for a speech with Jane Fonda in the backgrounds at a Anti-Vietnam War rally and spread all over the internet; the importance of the amateur civil rights photographers that documented the struggles despite the media’s ignorance and lack of coverage; the Time Magazine O.J. Simpson cover; and the controversy behind the Brian Walski Iraqi photograph which he composited other images in for the Los Angeles Times. The photo inevitably got him fired.

“To sit there in front of my computer screen, and to manipulate those pixels, has been the most direct experience I have every had with the notion of what photography was always intended to be, at least from the stand point of those who made up the word to describe the process called photography,” Meyer writes in the Becoming Photo-Digital section. While the photographer does manipulate his work he assures that everything he works with was actually taken by him and with in the frame of his camera. For those who have looked through the book guessing which photographs are alter and which aren’t (which can be tricky at times), there is also a section called the Developing Pictures where he walk the reader through the steps of how he has created some of his signature photos with two or three photos and sometimes addresses the inspiration behind them. 

One very entertaining ZoneZero editorial was the Vanishing Evidence: Photographing at Night in Mexico City. Initially, Meyer was supposed to venture into the nightlife of Mexico City and document the activities between 8 P.M. and 6 A.M. The photographer desired the challenge of shooting at night because he would be forced to rethink shots in a low light environment and he was eager to try out his new Nikon lens, which was supported by a vibrant-reduction motor giving him the capability to add three f-stops. Despite the thrill of shooting at night, Meyer was aware of the danger of carrying expensive equipment in dodgy neighborhoods, so he sought the services of two undercover cops. Unfortunately, he had to rethink his whole approach to the project when just days before he was scheduled to begin shooting, he tripped and ripped his Achilles heel. He was laid up for a few days, but he still decided to continue the project only from a wheel chair.

While driving around the streets of Mexico City, Meyer was attracted to photographing prostitutes. This was not well received by their pimps who chased Meyer’s car down. The undercover cops threatened the men to step away from the car, which they did, but only a few miles down the street Meyer and his entourage were surrounded by several police squad cars. It turns out the police were protecting the pimps but there was poor communication from the higher ups since they had not notified the other officers that their own were protecting Meyers. All sorts of deception ensued to get out of that conundrum with out shots being fired.

The photographer goes on to prove in many of his editorials (which can be lengthy but are very engaging) that photography should be approached like journalists do writing and filmmakers do films – with editing. If you open up your dictionary, the very definition of photography is essentially “writing with images.” Meyer often compares photography to writing through out the book and has caught loads of heat from traditionalists because of his work. To support an argument in a ZoneZero editorial he references Ralph Waldo Emerson quote, “Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.” He believes this and that documentary photography has been redefined by technology. The future of photography lies in montage and goes on to defend in the Digital Critical Realism section that “Montage [is not] merely a formal resource, but rather a creative detonator that allows the artist to link his work directly to perception.” With embracing the further exploration of time related issues and accepting the convergence of the computer and photography, he writes, “We will discover an unending array of new threads to our present lives, and in the process create some exciting new images." 

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Really fasenating i am writeing my dissertaion for my BA Hons photography degree and this artical was really helpful. Posted by: Lorna Newman Oct 16, 2007 @ 7:30 PM EST

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