© jmse
By José Manuel Serrano Esparza
July 16, 1979. Forty years ago.
Susan
Meiselas, a Magnum photographer, is in the city of Estelí (west of Nicaragua),
covering the war between the National Guard of dictator Anastasio Somoza and
the insurgent Sandinist Guerrilla.
A group of
Sandinist fighters is attacking the headquarters of a Somozist National Guard
regiment located in it.
Five of them
are now beside a defensive Somozist barricade (made up by piled up big sacks of
sugar and a four-wheeled T17E1 armoured car with 37 mm gun) which has just
being assaulted by the guerrilla men, who are protecting themselves behind the
sacks while being under enemy fire.
Suddenly, 20
years old Pablo Araúz, one of the guerrilla fighters, known by his comrades
with the nickname " Baretta ", lits a cocktail Molotov made with a
bottle of Pepsi-Cola full of gasoline and grabs it strongly with his right hand
to throw it against the nearby Somozist soldiers of the National Guard shooting
at them from behind the outer wall of the headquarters, while he holds a 7.62 x
51 mm caliber FN FAL assault rifle in his left hand.
© jmse
Susan
Meiselas is crouched, very near him, at a distance of around three meters, with
two photographic cameras :
© jmse
a Leica M4
coupled to
© jmse
an 8
elements in 6 groups Summicron-M 35 mm f/2 SAWOM 11308 lens and loaded with
Kodachrome 64 colour film
© jmse
and a Leica M2 attached to
© jmse
an also 8
elements in 6 groups Elmarit-M 28 mm f/2.8 Second Version 11802 lens loaded
with Kodak Tri-X 400 black and white film.
Stress is
maximum and the photographer presses the shutter release button of her Leica M4
with Kodachrome 64 colour film a split second before " The Molotov Man
" throws the Pepsi-Cola bottle full of gasoline against the soldiers of
Anastasio Somoza´s National Guard shooting at them.
©
Susan Meiselas / Magnum Photos
She has just
created one of the most influential pictures ever made, with a number of
significant elements turning it into an everlasting iconic photograph:
a) The focus
is not perfect, because the photojournalist has had to react very quickly to
get the picture.
That lack of
utterly sharp focus bears the classical Leica hallmark and doesn´t mind at all
in this kind of photojournalistic images in which the important thing is the
defining instant captured and to be at the core of the action, as near as
possible.
b) Pablo
Araúz´s countenance appears convulse, fraught with rage, with the black beret
worn by guerrilla fighters of FSLN (Sandinist Front of National Liberation).
c) His body
is powerfully slanted to the left, to gain momentum and throw the Molotov
cocktail as far as possible with full strength.
d) Both his
right hand and the Pepsi-Cola bottle appear blurred because of the wisely
chosen slow shutter speed attaining motion feeling and adding tons of drama to
the picture, in synergy with his necklace featuring a cross flying tremulous
and likewise depicted blurred over his chest.
© jmse
Moreover,
the superb 140 megapixel Kodachrome 64 colour slide film provides outstanding
realism to the image (depicting reality more faithfully than the highly
saturated in colours and exceedingly contrasty Fuji Velvia 50), with its
contained colours and relatively high contrast, its very deep blacks visible on
the middle area of Pablo Araúz´s assault rifle, in the lower zone of his beret,
and in the hair of the guerrilla fighter wearing beret on far right of the
image.
e) The
surrounding ground is full of hundreds
of automatic assault rifles, bolt rifles and sub machine guns bullet shells of
different caliber strewn on it, clearly indicating that a lot of previous
shooting exchange has taken place until the guerrilla fighters have been able
to assault the defensive National Guard position.
f) The top
area of the big sugar sack just over the head of the FSLN member wearing
glasses and holding a bolt rifle, has been torn out by the impact of bullets
shot by the guerrilla fighters to capture the enemy defensive position.
g) The
Sandinist fighter wearing glasses sitting on the floor and covering himself
behind the sugar sacks has his mouth open and his facial expression reveals to
be stricken with tension while he watches Pablo Araúz, who is about to throw
the Molotov cocktail.
© Susan Meiselas
/ Magnum Photos
h) The
previously knocked out four-wheeled T17E1 armoured car with 37 mm gun, placed
just beyond the sugar sacks, adds drama to the scene, since its gun appears in
the image aiming at Pablo Araúz´s head.
k) Both
Pablo Araúz´s automatic assault rifle and the bolt rifle used by the guerrrilla
fighter wearing glasses are with their barrels upwards. It conveys in the image
a meaningful and straightforward message: People are in arms to overthrow
Anastasio Somoza´s dictatorship.
l) A lonely
telephone cable crosses the image from right to left with a diagonal descending
trajectory until reaching a rather old wooden phone post. A very wide
percentage of the Nicaraguan population hasn´t got telephone and extreme
poverty is widespread across the whole country, which has been ruled by the
Somoza family since 1934 in the midst of rampant corruption.
m) The depth
of field of the image, probably taken at f/8, enables even to glipmse two
further guerrilla men on the left background, advancing towards the wall of the
National Guard regiment headquarters.
n ) Even
stones have been thrown during the previous clash, as the granite big one
visible on the lower left corner of the image, which does convey among other
things an atmosphere of hatred pervading everything.
p) The FSLN
fighter on the right appears thoughtful, utterly aware that he can be killed at
any moment during the definitive attack against the National Guard regiment
headquarters.
© jmse
ONE OF THE
GREATEST DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHERS EVER
Susan
Meiselas has been capturing ordinary people immersed in the turbulent tide of
history for almost fifty years, becoming a chronicler of their lives, often
through long-term projects in which she has managed to achieve a praiseworthy
rapport with the subjects of her photographic essays.
In this
regard, her famous reportages on Nicaraguan Revolution (1978 and 1979), El
Salvador (between 1979 and 1983), The Genocide of Kurdish People (a picture
essay made between 1991 and 1997, with images of the plight experienced by
them, particularly in northern Irak, when they had been attacked in 1988, three
years before Meiselas´s first trip to Kurdistan, by Saddam Hussein´s regime
using aircraft dropping bombs and lethal gas, killing roughly 95,000 Kurdish
men, women and children, so Susan Meiselas looked for visual evidence of the
massacres, destroyed villages, refugees living in the ruins, relatives
searching for the bodies of their beloved ones, the uncovering of mass graves,
and so forth), The U.S/México Border (1989), The Encounters with the Dani
(1988, a picture essay on a remote tribe of West Papua, whose isolated people,
having an almost classic Neolithic culture and dwelling in the high mountains
of the Grand Valley of the Baliem, with very little or no contact with the rest
of the world), and others, are highly representative of her way to understand
photography and its most significant goals.
During her professional
trajectory as a documentary photographer all over the world, Susan Meiselas has
seen a lot of horror and gruesome situations suffered by people as a
consequence of wars and conflicts.
© jmse
Like in this picture taken on a hill in the outskirts of Managua called " Cuesta del Plomo " (Plumb Slope)
in 1979 and showing the lower half of a human body on the grass. This was an
eerie place in which many executions of suspects were carried out by the
National Guard.
© Susan Meiselas / Magnum Photos
Or
in this one depicting a woman of Monimbó neighbourhood (Masaya, a city located
at 27 km from Managua), attacked with bombs by Somozist aviation, taking home
the body of her husband on a wheelbarrow to bury him in the back garden in
1979. Another outstanding image in which the observer can crisply behold the
destitution and poverty accompanying human beings living in countries whose
civil population is permanently poverty-stricken, in the middle of a prevailing
social and economical chaos.
© Susan Meiselas / Magnum Photos
With the photographer always plucking up courage to point at unacceptable
facts, defending human rights and documenting the grim reality, striving upon
approaching as much as possible to it, bringing about the focus and attention
of viewers, who are unable to take their eyes off her pictures, greatly
stemming from her uncommon visual instinct, her concern about human suffering
created by the war and that she highlights in her images, and a fervent desire
to bring out stories and new forms to tell them, overcoming obstacles, often
against all odds.
© jmse
Two children rescued from the rubble of a humble house in Managua (Nicaragua)
destroyed by a 1,000 pound bomb dropped by an aircraft of Somozist aviation.
Both of them would die in a few minutes.
© Susan Meiselas / Magnum Photos
A
mother flees with her baby from the bombing of the city of Estelí (in the west
of Nicaragua) by National Guard aircraft. Susan Meiselas has masterfully
captured with her Leica M rangefinder camera attached to a 35 mm wideangle lens
the trudge across the road of this woman, who has to simultaneously take with
strenuous effort both her little son (holding him in the air with her right
hand and forearm) and a very large backpack with the personal belongings she
has been able to gather.
Susan Meiselas / Magnum Photos
But aside
from her world-famous reportage on the Nicaraguan Revolution (made with Leica
M2, Leica M4 and Olympus OM-2), Susan Meiselas did at the beginning of her
career one of her best and most meaningful long-term picture essays, in which
Leica philosophy of getting pictures played a key role:
An
amazing picture made by Susan Meiselas in the middle of a stripper show, being
very near the stage. The photographer has achieved the dream of every good
documentary and photojournalist photographer : to become invisible during the
photographic act, to such an extent that neither of the 17 men has detected her
presence while shooting with her mirrorless Leica M2 rangefinder camera coupled
to a Leitz Canada Summicron-M 35 mm f/2 First Version and loaded with Kodak
Tri-X 400 black and white film rated at iso 1600 to overcome the very low
luminic levels of the place. Needless to say that the almost inaudible noise of
the camera shutter, fruit of twenty-four years of evolution between 1934 (year
in which Dr. Ludwig Leitz and Willi Stein presented a patent for a self-capping
horizontal focal plane shutter with the non rotating shutter speed dial of the
future Leica M cameras) and 1958 (year in which the first Leica M2 cameras were
launched into market) has been of invaluable help, because this image would
have virtually been impossible to take with a reflex camera, whose shutter
noise is much louder and whose swivelling mirror wouldn´t have enabled the very
slow shutter speed used by the photographer to get this picture shooting
handheld without flash and keeping enough depth of field to depict spectators
beyond the woman´s legs and shoes.
© Susan Meiselas / Magnum Photos
"
Carnival Strippers ", between 1972 and 1975, throughout three consecutive
summers, photographing striptease performing women in some town carnivals of
New England, Pennsylvania and South Carolina, getting pictures of both their
public shows and their private lives.
This black
and white reportage was made with a Hasselblad 2 1/4 x 2 1 /4 (6 x 6 cm) medium
format camera and Carl Zeiss lenses (for the posing portraits of the women) and
with a 24 x 36 mm format Leica M2 rangefinder camera coupled to an 8 elements
in 6 groups Leitz Canada Summicron-M 35 mm f/2 First Version SAWOM 11308 lens,
which was used to make photographs of the girls doing their shows and often
interacting with the paying customers.
© Susan
Meiselas / Magnum Photos
Sometimes
even the managers appear counting the money earned exploiting the girls.
In a kind of
environment like this,
© Susan
Meiselas / Magnum Photos
with a high
percentage of the male audience drunk,
© Susan
Meiselas / Magnum Photos
women under
stress dancing with little or no clothes on them for many hours in exhausting
working turns
© Susan
Meiselas / Magnum Photos
© Susan
Meiselas / Magnum Photos
to earn
their livings,
©
Susan Meiselas / Magnum Photos
and greedy
bosses steadily pressuring them to manage to arouse the paying customers anyway
to overcrowd the space to earn as much money as possible with tickets, getting
pictures can be really difficult and above all dangerous, in the midst of a
strained ambience in which photographs must be taken with available light,
because flash could result in a violent reaction by attendees.
© Leica
Camera A.G
And it was
to document these crammed striptease shows when Susan Meiselas used a Leica M2
rangefinder camera, because irrespective of the model, a Leica M camera was
then and keeps on being today the most optimized photographic tool to
unobtrusively do the work shooting handheld with available luminic conditions,
being at a very short distance from the heart of the action, thanks to its
exceedingly small size and low weight for its 24 x 36 mm format, its remarkable
shooting stability on lacking a swivelling mirror and boasting a practically
vibration free horizontal travelling shutter, the whispering almost inaudible
noise produced on pressing the shutter release button and enhancing discretion,
© jmse
the
amazingly sharp and bright 0.72x magnification viewfinder
© jmse
coupled to a mechanical-optical masterpiece rangefinder made up by more than 150 high-precision parts, which results in a top-notch quality of observation even under the dimmest light conditions, the exceedingly short lag of 17 milliseconds between the moment in which the shutter release button is pressed and the beginning of the exposure (a remarkable achievement in comparison to usual shutter lags in the range of 80-100 milliseconds inherent to professional full frame digital reflex cameras) and its specific and very wide frame-line for 35 mm focal length ( non existent in the Leica M3) filling almost the entire image in the viewfinder.
©
Susan Meiselas / Magnum Photos
A master
shot belonging to her essay " Carnival Strippers " and made by Susan
Meiselas with her Leica M2 coupled to an 8 elements in 6 groups Summicron-M 35
mm f/2 Version 1 SAWOM 11308 lens from a very near distance. This is a much
more difficult picture to get than it could seem at first blush, because of a
raft of key factors:
a) The man
in the background (an attendee to the strip-tease show being performed by the
woman whose legs, shoes, lower area of her T-shirt and left hand leaned on her
hip are visible in the image) can see the photographer, so a violent reaction
could happen.
b) The
photographer manages to get unnoticed, something amazing not only since it is
an almost utterly frontal shot with respect to the man, but particularly
because a vertical framing has been chosen to get the picture, so the presence
of the rangefinder M2 camera is more apparent, making discretion more difficult
than with it in a horizontal position.
c) The
photographer has masterfully selected a highly defining instant in which though
the man has got his head oriented towards the woman, he isn´t looking at her at
the moment.
He is
engrossed in his thoughts, with both of his arms crossed. Here, Susan Meiselas
proves once more her tremendous psychological and humane insight, selecting a
highly meaningful moment but simultaneously confirming that her images go far
beyond the specific time in which she created them, placing each one of her
photographs in its story context, revealing an even higher interest for the
subject than for its depection, and making observers react through generations,
as well as asking questions like what has taken the main character of this
picture to often visit this type of shows.
d) The
photograph bears the Leica hallmark aesthetics of image. Focus isn´t
perfect, since the photographer has had
to shoot very quickly to capture the fleeting instant that she has turned into
everlasting, and top priority has been to get the picture.
But that
lack of technical perfection doesn´t matter at all here, because the important
thing was to capture that unique instant, and in addition, the Kodak Tri-X 400
film great acutance has been able to keep excellent sharpness of contours of
both persons appearing in the image, enhanced by the synergy with the developer
optimized for enhancing Mackie lines and border effect, so albeit the picture
was made shooting handheld without flash at a very slow shutter speed (as
proved by the left shoe of the woman, appearing a bit blurred in spite of being
a gentle movement) and a wide diaphragm, everything is discernible from foreground
to bakground, with a commendable preservation of textures, and the added bonus
of an outstanding correction of the coma apparent in the bulbs on top left of
the image (where there isn´t any trace of off-axis point sources, even in the
once located on the very upper left corner of the picture) and an impressive
correction of the geometric distortion, sensationally implemented by the
optical wizard Walter Mandler (designer of the Summicron-M 35 mm f/2 Version 1
in Midland, Ontario, Canada) and specially apparent in the utterly faithful
depiction of the lines on the wooden stage on which the woman is doing her
show.
©
Susan Meiselas / Magnum Photos
Another
eloquent picture taken by Susan Meiselas inside the narrow dressing room of the
strippers. It´s a shot made from a very short distance, with the Leica M2 and
the Summicron-M 35 mm lens, clearly depicting the boredom and tiredness often
ruling this kind of work, as well as showing the frequent bad working
conditions in which these women have to earn their livings.
© jmse
But the most
important thing regarding this milestone " Carnival Stripper "
reportage made forty-five years ago is that Susan Meiselas was able to build
relationships by dint of making many visits and taking an interest for the life
and personal circumstances of these women. And it was thanks to their trust how
the photographer had access to their shows and dressing rooms to get the
pictures, subsequently showing them the contact sheets and some prints of her
images, in such a way that the girls could see everything she was shooting, so
a mutual interaction and dialogue was set up, making possible to tell the story
through photography.
For other articles on this blog please click on Blog Archive in the column to the right
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Allen Liu wrote:
ReplyDeleteI had seen the Carnival Stripper collection at SFMOMA just a few months ago, i truly enjoyed her work.
Great article! Fortunately for us all, Ms. Meiselas continues to work (and administer Magnum, NY). She has returned to Nicaragua to find those people pictured in her war work there. I believe she even tracked down Pablo Araúz, the Molotov Man! That's "follow-up"!
ReplyDelete