Yesterday, I spoke with Ken Light about his Texas Death Row project from 1994. Ken was the first photographer to gain access to the Texas’ death row facilities – a privilege since unrepeated.

Cameron Todd Willingham in his cell on death row, in 1994. He insisted upon his innocence in the deaths of his children and refused an offer to plead guilty in return for a life sentence. Photograph by Ken Light.

You can look forward to a full article detailing the specifics of Ken’s project in October here at Prison Photography.

In the meantime, you should read the New Yorker’s article ‘Trial by Fire’ about Cameron Todd Willingham – an inmate Ken photographed fifteen years ago.

Willingham was accused of setting his house alight while his three children slept inside, tried for arson and murder, found guilty and sentenced to death. He always professed his innocence. Willingham was executed on February 17th, 2004. Before and since his execution, evidence supporting his conviction has been brought into question. Eye-witness testimonies conflicted and the fire forensics for the case are considered unreliable.

The article asks, “Did Texas Execute an Innocent Man?”

Ken and I talked about how the project still lives (and dies) even fifteen years on.

The New Yorker only had one photographer to turn to for an image of the incarcerated Willingham. Without the Texas Death Row project, we would have no photographic record of the lives and experiences of Texas’ institutions for the condemned.

Ken Light has worked as a freelance documentary photographer, focusing primarily on social issues facing America for almost 40 years. His work has been published in seven books, including Delta Time, To The Promised Land, With These Hands, Texas Death Row and most recently Coal Hollow. He is also the author of the text Witness in Our Time: :Lives of Documentary photographers. His work has been in numerous photo essays in newspapers, magazines and a variety of media (electronic & film), and presented in exhibitions worldwide including a one person show at the International Center for Photography (NYC). He is an adjunct Professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at U.C. Berkeley and director for its Center for Photography, and cofounder of the International Fund for Documentary photography and Fotovision. see Ken’s work

Estoy terminando el libro de Anne-Celine Jaeger Image makers, image takers (1), una colección de entrevistas a fotógrafos reconocidos en diversos géneros – arte, documental, moda, publicidad, retrato – y a un conjunto de curadores, directores de agencias y editores de medios como Libération o el New York Times Magazine, la agencia Magnum y la prestigiosa casa editora Steidl. Sin perjuicio de las críticas que puedan hacerse al trabajo de Jaeger – cierta falta de profundidad al preguntar – es un libro que disfruto mucho. Como fotógrafo, las entrevistas me parecen siempre estimulantes.

Image makers, image takers tiene un antecedente de fuste en el conocido libro de Paul Hill y Thomas Cooper Dialogue with Photography (2), notable por la lista de fotógrafos entrevistados y por la riqueza de las conversaciones.

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Entre ambos libros hay algo sucesivo y complementario. Hill y Cooper hablan con fotógrafos nacidos en torno al año 1900, muchos de ellos iniciadores de un modo de fotografiar – Man Ray, Brassai, Kertész, Cartier-Bresson, entre otros -. En la mayoría de los casos se trata de individuos cuyo background es, en comparación con la actualidad, menos fotográfico (varios eran o habían sido pintores) y relativamente local.

Jaeger, en cambio, dialoga con fotógrafos nacidos entre mediados de los años treinta y principios de los setenta, aproximadamente (falta en su libro una mínima biografía de cada uno de los entrevistados). Autores que emergen en el marco de una cultura fotográfica insoslayable – a pesar de que muchos dicen buscar su inspiración fuera de la disciplina – y en un contexto de referencias globales.

Los primeros inauguraron estéticas, fundaron agencias y contribuyeron a crear los primeros departamentos de fotografía en museos y universidades, en una época en la que todo estaba por hacerse. Los segundos luchan por encontrar su voz en un mundo saturado de invenciones fotográficas. Es una descripción muy suscinta, pero por ahí puede pensarse la diferencia entre dos generaciones distanciadas por medio siglo y más de incesante trabajo fotográfico.

Vale agregar a esta pequeña lista el extraordinario libro de Ken Light Witness in our time. Working lives of Documentary Photographers (3). El autor, que comparte con sus entrevistados pasión y profesión, circunscribe su diálogo a fotógrafos documentalistas contemporáneos (Salgado y Richards reaparecen en Image makers…). La especialización le da al conjunto consistencia y profundidad. A diferencia de lo que ocurre en lo que llevo leído de Jaeger, los autores entrevistados por Light aparecen como menos instalados en la dorada esfera del éxito que como tipos enfrentados a dilemas, conflictos y limitaciones en los que cualquiera puede reconocerse, lo que da los testimonios una cálida proximidad humana.

(1) Anne-Celine Jaeger, Image makers, image takers. Thames & Hudson, 2007. La editorial Océano lo publicó en castellano el mismo año bajo el título Creadores de imágenes. Se consigue en Montevideo (lo encontré en Yenny, de Punta Carretas Shopping, pero puede estar en otras librerías).

(2) Paul Hill y Thomas Cooper, Dialogue with Photography, 1979. Editado en castellano por Gustavo Gili con traducción del uruguayo Homero Alsina Thevenet. No lo vi en Montevideo, pero seguro se consigue en Buenos Aires. La porteña librería Cúspide vende por internet y envía por correo.

(3) Ken Light, Witness in our time. Working lives of Documentary Photographers. Smithsonian, 2000. No conozco traducción castellana. Se encuentra en www.amazon.com

“Today so many pictures are being taken that no one is really interested in what has gone on before. Man’s witness of his own times dies with him. Added to that, the technological advances in camera design have made photography seem easy. It has become so popular–so used and abused–that because of its popularity, it is in danger of losing its own self-respect as well as the trust and confidence of viewers in its veracity and artistry. The role of the photographer is to witness and to be involved with his subject. There are many concerned photographers all over the world whose work will provide the visual history of our century–the first century of which such a documentation will exist. The concerned photographer finds much in the present unacceptable that he tries to alter. Our goal is simply to let the world also know why it is unacceptable.” by Cornell Capa

If you want to get more information about social documentary photography/photojournalism, Witness in Our Time by Ken Light (currently teaching at Cal Berkeley) is a perfect book to read. I was introduced to this book by Brian Doan (currently teaching photography at Massachusetts College of Art in Boston), author of the The Forgotten Ones (gives the world a window into the lives of ‘left-over’ Vietnamese refugees in the Philippines). It’s relatively short, only 200 pages but contains great information. This is not a coffee table photo book. It is packed with brief history and personal essays from a numerous photographers about social issues during their times (e.g. WWII, Depression, Civil Rights Movement, KKK, Black Panthers). You’ll be amazed by how hard these photographers had worked to bring their images and stories to the readers. The book includes both well-known and less recognized, and you will find many links to many other great documentary books.

“Social documentary photography offers the future a view of the past and a voice to the dispossessed. It bears witness in an age when publications turn toward entertainment and celebrity photography and when individual expression is often drowned out by huge media companies. It amazes me that an individual with a camera and a few rolls of film still has a powerful and enduring voice.” by Ken Light