An Incomplete Education

by Judy Jones

  This is the most problematic kind of photography for everybody, especially Susan Sontag, who couldn’t bear the idea that the camera might tell an occasional fib. It’s what most people think of when they think of photography at all, and what most photographers start out wanting to be, and then spend a lifetime trying to retire from. The word—an awful-sounding hybrid (why not “journography”?)— was invented by Henri Cartier-Bresson so that he wouldn’t be accused of making art while he made art, and it wrongly implies that one or more photographs can tell a story. Without words—usually a thousand or more—pictures are powerful but dumb.

  Life magazine started the whole myth of photojournalism’s storytelling power, but in truth Life was just a very good illustrated press, in which photographs were never allowed to wander unattended. The patron saint of photojournalists is Lewis Hine, who made pictures of child laborers and sweatshops at the turn of the century. Its greatest hero was W. Eugene Smith, who combined an honest concern for human suffering with a canny eye for dramatic composition and lighting, and a very cranky disposition. Now the reigning saint of the form is Sebastian Salgado, whose harrowing coverage of starving Ethiopians and miserable Third World workers manages, somehow, to be as glamorous as any high-fashion shot. When the question arises about whether this sort of agony ’n ecstasy is ethically and morally proper, it’s best to mention Picasso’s Guernica, which ought to derail the conversation long enough for you to slip away. PORTRAITURE

  Cartier-Bresson (not to mention Coco Chanel) observed that after the age of forty, we have the faces we deserve. Portrait photographers tend to divide up between those who hide the evidence and those who uncover it. Bachrach and Karsh represent the first group, Avedon and Penn the second. Portraits of known people are more interesting than all the rest because we have a chance to decide whether what we see jibes with what we think we know about them—thus the outrage and/or delirium caused by Avedon’s warts-and-all celebrities. The best of the nineteenth-century portraitists, and one of the best ever, was Nadar, a Parisian hobnobber whose pictures of that great self-imagist Sarah Bernhardt are unparalleled. Then again, since faces are the landscapes of lives, the best portrait ever made is probably mouldering in your family attic. Should an argument develop over who is the Greatest Portraitist of Photography, come down staunchly on the side of the aforementioned August Sander, a German who wandered the Wälder before World War II, chronicling his countrymen in a series of haunting stereotypes. Add Manhattan neurosis and the Age of Anxiety and you have Diane Arbus. Throw in mud-wrestling sitcom stars, body-painted movie stars, and the blithe belief that anything celebrities do, however silly, is worth recording for the ages, and you have Annie Leibovitz. Pile on hype and homosexuality and you have Robert Mapplethorpe. DOCUMENTARY

  In one way or another, all photographs are documentary, so all photographers are documentarists. Some, of course, are more so than others. A documentary photographer is a photojournalist whose deadline is a hundred years hence; posterity is the point. The first great large-scale documentary work was done by Matthew Brady and a group of photographers he hired to cover the Civil War (including Timothy O’Sullivan, who, as has been noted, later played the first, best notes in what has become the Ansel Adams songbook). The most famous and exhaustive documentary project was the misery-loves-company team put together by Roy Stryker to photograph sharecroppers, sharecroppers, more sharecroppers, and occasional other types during the Great Depression. This led to the discovery of the bribe in photography: If we take everybody’s picture, maybe they’ll go away and leave us alone.

  Ironically, one of the great working-class heroes of documentary photojournalism was Walker Evans, a patrician sort who did much of his paying work for Fortune magazine. It seems highly likely that Evans viewed the whole idea of photography with some embarrassment, since many of his pictures show empty rooms, or people photographed from behind.

  Much of the devotion and energy that used to fuel documentary photographers has been co-opted by television. Generations X, Y, and Z figure that it’s way cooler to gather up old photographs, film them, add music and the voices of movie stars, and get famous. After all, Walker Evans never won an Emmy. SURREALISM

  In one way or another, all photographs are surreal, too, since that isn’t actually Uncle Frank smirking on the beach, but just a little slip of paper coated with chemicals. But some photographers insist on being official surrealists. The harder they try to put things together in odd and unsettling ways, the more miserably they fail. Jerry Velsmann’s cloud-covered ceilings are pretty obvious stuff. The problem is that life as we know it is already odd and unsettling. So for true surrealism, we are right back with documentary photography—especially when done by people who know where to look for the kind of juxtapositions the rest of us pretend we don’t see.

  Robert Frank is one of the great unofficial surrealists (his shot of a glowing jukebox certainly has the Magritte touch), as was Diane Arbus. Bill Brandt wasn’t bad, though the credit is due mostly to the fact that he’s a genius at the terrible print. The reigning king of the form these days is Joel-Peter Witkin, a masterful monster monger with a disturbing taste for amputees, dwarves, and severed heads. Somehow, Witkin presents your worst nightmares and makes you want to shell out big bucks to take one home. Surreal, isn’t it? WOMEN

  The best of all women photographers is my aunt Isabel, who for several years was the only person on earth who could take my picture without causing me to vanish instantly. Other notable women are:

  Lisette Modell, one of the world’s smallest photographers, who had such a gravitational attraction to large people that her first pictures made in the resorts of southern France look like monuments come to life. As is the case with certain gifted photographers, Modell was as good as she would ever get on the first day of her career. She has been called the mentor of Diane Arbus, which she used to admit and deny at the same time, for reasons known only to her.

  Imogen Cunningham, who lived so long that rumors circulated that she had been archivally processed. Like photographs, photographers almost inevitably benefit from great age (although they fade, their value inevitably rises). Cunningham was never better than just all right, but she had covered so much time and territory that eventually she became the art-photography world’s unofficial mascot, a position she labored at by becoming adorably “feisty.” As a result, feisty old Johnny Carson displayed her to the world on The Tonight Show, shocking the millions who thought women photographers looked like Faye Dunaway in The Eyes of Laura Mars.

  Berenice Abbott, who made the best portrait ever of James Joyce, single-handedly saved the work of Atget from the trash bin, and who, whether she liked it or not, became an institution without ever being a great photographer.

  Helen Levitt, almost unknown, shy, brilliant, virtually invisible in shabby coat and furtive mien, who crept around New York for forty years or more taking in street life. She’s a genius in black-and-white or color, and when you state emphatically that Levitt is America’s greatest woman photographer, you will have the rare pleasure of being both esoteric and right.

  The natural inheritor of Levitt’s mantle (and shabby coat) is Sylvia Plachy, a Hungarian immigrant with a wry, Frank-like eye but a far kinder heart. For years Plachy chronicled life at ground level, from sex workers in Times Square and tourists in Central Park to peddlers in Romania and refugees in war-torn Eastern Europe. Today, Plachy has moved uptown from the Voice to work for the New York Times, but she retains her edgy downtown sensibility, cranking out images that are sharp, surprising, and slightly off-kilter.

  Finally, we’d better mention Nan Goldin, a photographer whose body of work is the antithesis of Plachy’s (and who has famously shed her coat—as well as the rest of her clothing—for a series of nude, postcoital self-portraits). Goldin has internalized the personal-is-political mantra of Sixties feminism to spin intimate stories shot in tight, interior spaces. Drawn to the social underbelly, she explores it through pictures of herself and he
r close friends; her photo diary is both an intimate snapshot and the portrait of an era. One Goldin series documents the trajectory of her relationship with an abusive partner; another chronicles the demise of a friend from AIDS; still others capture the world of drugs and drag. The beloved poster child of the seedy counterculture, Goldin is not likely to age into an adorably feisty guest on the Jay Leno show. CELEBRITY

  Last and least among photographers are the paparazzi. But while it’s perfectly all right to hold them in contempt, it’s not OK to ignore them; they know where life is going, and for that matter Life (or what’s left of it), People, and Vanity Fair. Andy Warhol predicted that someday everybody would be famous for fifteen minutes—the paparazzi work hard at reducing that to 1/125th of a second. Valedictorian of all celebrity photographers is Ron Galella, who has been sued by Jackie Onassis, punched by Marlon Brando, and deplored by even the most deplorable of his subjects. None of this has affected him adversely. Jackie and Brando are gone, and Ron, whose photos have recently been legitimized by an expensive art book, a major gallery show, a museum retrospective, and the sheer passage of time, now gets star treatment himself. Let’s face it—celebrity snappers may be pond scum, but pond scum evolved into the likes of Albert Einstein and Greta Garbo, so there’s still hope. On the other hand, in the age of Rupert Murdoch and reality TV, the ever-smarmier paparazzi would have to catch Al and Greta doing the nasty in the back of a Hummer to win a few minutes of audience attention. So much for evolution.

  Now, What Exactly Is Economics,and What Do Economists Do, Again?

  Economists are fond of saying, with Thomas Carlyle, that economics is “the dismal science.” As with much that economists say, this statement is half true: It is dismal.

  An equally helpful definition of economics was offered by American economist Jacob Viner, who said, “Economics is what economists do.”

  More to the point, perhaps, is the fact that economics concerns itself with the use of resources. It is about changes in production and distribution over time. It is about the efficiency of the systems that control production and distribution. It is, in a word, about wealth. This alone should be enough to engage our attention.

  Over the past several decades, economics has experienced a substantial surge of interest and notoriety. Suddenly economists have found themselves not only studying wealth but also enjoying it. This is largely a result of their relationship with politicians. Where once rulers relied on oracles to predict the future, today they use economists. Virtually every elected official, every political candidate, has a favorite economist to forecast economic benefits pinned to that official’s or candidate’s views.

  Besides, even if being in a position to feel on top of current events doesn’t constitute a sufficient lure, people still want to be able to understand why their neighbors are all rushing out to buy mutual funds. Not that, as contributor Alan Webber is about to show, the economists are necessarily ready to tell them.

  EcoSpeak

  One reason economics is so hard to get a grip on is that economists speak in tongues whenever possible. They are, after all, being paid to come up with a lot of fancy guesswork, and they know how important it is to keep everyone else guessing about what they’re guessing about since, in the end, your guess is as good as theirs. Anyway, here’s what a few of their favorite terms really mean.

  CETERIS PARIBUS: One of the things economists like to do is analyze a complicated situation involving a huge number of variables by changing one and holding the rest steady. This allows them to do two things: first, focus on the significance of that one particular element, and second, prove that a pet theory is correct. “Ceteris paribus” is the magic phrase they mutter while doing this. It means, literally, “Other things being equal.”

  COMMODITIES: Commodities generally fall into two categories: goods, which are tangible, and services, which are not. An easy way to remember this distinction: These days, goods are Chinese and services are American; they make textiles, we make lawyers.

  CONSUMPTION AND PRODUCTION: Consumption is what happens when you actually use commodities; production is what happens when you make them.

  EXTERNALITIES: Effects or consequences felt outside the closed world of production and consumption—in other words, things like pollution. Economists keep their own world tidy by labeling these messes “externalities,” then banishing them.

  FACTORS OF PRODUCTION: Ordinary people talk about resources, the things— like land, labor, or capital—used to make or provide other things. Economists talk about factors of production.

  FREE- MARKET ECONOMY VS. PLANNED ECONOMY: In the former, decisions made by households and businesses, rather than by the government, determine how resources are used. Vice versa and you’ve got the latter. As long as you are living in the United States, it’s probably a good idea to associate a free-market economy with the good guys, a planned economy with the bad guys. If you find yourself in Cuba or parts of Cambridge, Massachusetts, simply reverse the definition to get with the prevailing theology.

  GROSS NATIONAL PRODUCT (GNP) VS. GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT (GDP):GNP is a dollar amount (in the United States, an enormous one) that represents the total value of everything produced in a national economy in a year. If the number goes up from year to year, the economy is growing; divide that number by the number of people living in the country and you get per capita income. An alternative measure, GDP, leaves out foreign investment and foreign trade and limits the measure of production to the flow of goods and services within the country itself. As a result, some economists believe it affords a more accurate basis for nation-to-nation comparisons. Either way, GNP or GDP, the basic idea is that more is better.

  HUMAN CAPITAL: At first blush, “human” and “capital” may seem like strange bedfellows. But in the land of economics, human capital refers to the investments that businesses make in their workers, such as training and education, or, more broadly, to the assets of the firm represented by the workers and their skills.

  INDIFFERENCE CURVE: This shows all the varying combined amounts of two commodities that a household would find equally satisfactory. For example, if you’re used to having ten units of peanut butter and fifteen of jelly on your sandwich, and you lose five units of the peanut butter while gaining five of the jelly, and the new sandwich tastes just as good to you as the old one, you’ve located one point on an indifference curve.

  INFLATION: One of the traditional villains of current events, inflation is most simply understood as a rise in the average level of all prices. Getting the definition down is one thing; getting the rate of inflation down once it has started to levitate is another.

  LAISSEZ- FAIRE: It seems that whenever economists want to describe an imaginary world, they turn to a foreign language (see “ceteris paribus,” above, or try to read the Annual Report of the Council of Economic Advisors to the President). Literally translated “let do,” this phrase invokes the notion of an economy totally free of government intervention, one in which the forces of the marketplace are allowed to operate freely and where the choices driving supply and demand, consumption and production are arrived at naturally, or “purely.” A kind of economic fantasyland.

  LONG RUN VS. SHORT RUN: It’s appalling, but economists take even perfectly obvious terms like “long run” and “short run” and try to invest them with scientific meaning. The short run refers to a period of time too short for economic inputs to change, and the long run refers to a period of time, as you may have guessed, long enough for all of the economic inputs to change. The terms are important when you get to thinking about how individuals or companies try to adapt to circumstances—and whether or not they can do it. For some economists, the long run, in particular, comes in handy when defending a pet theory. For example, during times of economic downturn and high unemployment, economists might argue against any form of government intervention, saying that in the long run the marketplace will adjust to correct the situation. The problem, of course, is that most people live
in the short run, and that, as economist John Maynard Keynes once cautioned, “In the long run, we’re all dead.”

  MACROECONOMICS VS. MICROECONOMICS: Further evidence of the tendency of economists to see things in pairs. Here, “macro” is the side of economics that looks at the big picture, at such things as total output, total employment, and so on. “Micro” looks at the small picture, the way specific resources are used by firms or households or the way income is distributed in response to particular price changes or government policies. One problem economists don’t like to talk about is the difficulty they have in getting the two views to fit together well enough to have any practical application.

  MARKET FAILURE: This is one of a number of terms that economists use to put down the real world. Here’s the way it works: When things don’t go the way economists want them to, based on the laissez-faire system (see above), the outcome is explained as the result of a “market failure.” That way, it’s not the economists’ fault—they had it right, it’s the market that got it wrong.