Leonie Purchas: A Malian Family in Paris

Photograph © Leonie Purchas-All Rights Reserved
Today's feature is a change from the travel/documentary photography features I've posted this week. It's essentially a collection of social commentaries by the talented Leonie Purchas, a British photographer, who after taking an honors degree in the history of art, went on to work as a full-time assistant to the British photojournalist Tom Stoddard. She followed this with a diploma from the London College of Communications in 2003, gaining the first distinction to be awarded in five years.

Leonie is currently an artist in resident at Fabrica, Italy. Her work has been featured in a range of publications, including Portfolio magazine, The Sunday Times Magazine and Newsweek.

Out of her body of work, I chose the story of Tall Abdou, a Malian who had come to France in the 70's leaving his wife Tall Feinda in Africa. He legally married Tall Hamssatou after a few years living in Paris, who had already been married and had 8 children. A few years later his original wife Tall Feinda joined them in Paris and together they now have 15 children.

Be sure to read the introduction to the gallery, which examines the clash between French politics and African traditions.

Couscous: The Movie

I don't normally mention movies on TTP, but I recently watched an outstanding French film called Couscous (or La Graine et le Mulet) directed by the talented Abdellatif Kechiche, and produced by Claude Berri.

It's the story of Slimane Beiji, an ageing North African immigrant in the southern port French city of Sète, who opens a restaurant on a discarded boat. Hafsia Herzi acts the part of Slimane's step-daughter, and steals every scene she's in...an incredible performance for which she was awarded a Cesar.

To fully appreciate this movie, one needs to be fluent in French since the sub-titles are never accurate...but what a treat! One of the memorable lines in the movie is said by an elderly musician who, when told that Slimane was trying to get the town's permit to open the restaurant, makes the point that provided it's not a mosque, it would be easily granted.

Here's a short review in The Guardian.

The Rise of "Amateurs"...& "Tenacity"

Photograph © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved
Alissa Quart has penned a topical and interesting article in the Columbia Journalism Review titled Flickring Out, which ponders as to what becomes of photojournalism in a digital age and "amateurs"?

So far, I haven't seen it mentioned in the photo-blogosphere, so here are a few excerpts:

Photographers have "been struggling with downsizing, the rise of the amateur, the ubiquity of camera phones, sound-bite-ization, failing magazines (so fewer commissions), and a lack of money in general for the big photo essays that have long been the love of the metaphoric children of Walker Evans."

" Some (but not all) photographers also complain about the insistence that they go “multimedia” and that their still images are sometimes getting overwhelmed and undone (although also sometimes improved) by the sound and moving images that accompany them. The most salient critique of this practice is not the rise of the slideshow, but how it is replacing the still image."

Instead, we will have amateur photographers—some lucky people at the right awful place at the right awful time (Nigerians who are at the next explosion of a pipeline, say). And I hope that innately gifted photographers will emerge as well—a Chinese Kratochvil, a Nigerian Gilles Peress.

We all know that the industry is in a state of dramatic flux, and that photographers are trying to swim against this overwhelming tide of change brought about by all that is mentioned in the first except. What I'm surprised about is that there still seems to be some of us who moan about multimedia...to me, embracing multimedia is one of the ways to survive. It's as simple and straightforward as that. As for the emergence of a Chinese, Nigerian or an Iraqi photographer unto the world stage like Antonin Kratochvil or Gilles Peress, I think (and hope) it's about time.

Elsewhere, Nevada Wier has written a post on how to become a professional photographer (without starving).

She stresses the need of having what she calls the "tenacity quotient". As she writes: "Photographers must want to be a photographer; they live to be a photographer, and they will die being a photographer." That's very true.