Mikhael Subotzky around the world

Mikhael Subotzky around the world
By Samantha Claasen
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Web 2.0 is very useful for its information sharing capabilities on the World Wide Web, and it is this very capability that allows bloggers to have discussions and share articles on the Web which can reach millions of people around the world. South African photographer Mikhael Subotzky, who has recently shot to fame with his photo stories on the inside of a prison and on the town of Beaufort West, owes much of his popularity to Web 2.0 and its effectiveness in spreading his name and work. This essay will look at how three different blogs from three different places report on photographer Mikhael Subotzky and the ways in which their reporting techniques and layout styles contrast one another.

The South African blog that was looked at was ArtThrob. ArtThrob claims to report on the “national art scene and the involvement of South African artists in the international art world”. The editor, Sue Williamson posted her article on Subotzky for ArtThrob entitled “Modus Operandi” in August 2007. The article begins by explaining the young artist’s rise to fame, his art background and his current projects. Some of his achievements are being invited to be a Magnum photographer, winning the 2007 City of Perpignan Young Photographer Award, the F25 Award for Concerned Photography and receiving a residency at Fabrica, Treviso. The list goes on. The article also dealt with trying to paint of picture of how Subotzky immerses himself into specific projects, staying with his subjects for months on end before producing a final photo essay product. The article is directly followed by Subotzky’s Curriculum Vitae of his exhibitions, competitions, grants and residences and collections.

Visually the blog is easy to read, with the article placed in the middle, on the left is a column of Subotzky’s photographs and on the right hand side is a column of links to other South African artists. The article was quite short and had sub-headings such as “Artist’s Statement” and “Next Up”. This also makes it easier to read and not too text heavy. It engages with Subotzky’s work purely as art and does not relate it to a photojournalism point of view at all. This blog’s article is less about critically analysing his photographs, and is more about promoting Subotzky and showcasing him as a South African artist to be proud of, and who has been acknowledged internationally for his work.


Mikhael Subotzky, Pasvang, Pollsmoor Maximum Security Prison 2004.
The African blog looked at was the Nka Journal of Contemporary African Art which is an internet version of the print published Nka Journal which is released three times a year since 1994. This is a good example of print going digital. Nka states that “where no art history exists, critical journals and other related platforms are crucial to moulding its discourse and involve all the intellectual processes that such an undertaking implies”. Nka is edited by scholars on African art, Okwui Enwezor, Chika Okeke-Agulu and Salah M. Hassan. The article on Mikhael Subotzky posted on the Nka online journal was written by art critic Ivor Powell in April 2008. This article dealt with Subotzky’s photography a lot more critically as well as analytically.
Whereas ArtThrob praised Subotzky’s rise in the art world, Nka’s article regarded it with a more weary perspective, saying that it is “wise to be sceptical of such fairytale success... [because] the burden of recognition can weigh heavily and very dead indeed once the spin stops spinning”. However, the article did go on to praise Subotzky’s talent as an artist and his achievements, but it do not do so by merely providing a list of his achievements, Powell critically engaged with Subotzky’s work and used specific individual photographs for an in depth analysis. This is something that the ArtThrob article did not do, but that made the Nka article more text-heavy.

The Nka article written by Powell gives a lot of historical background to photojournalism in South Africa, from apartheid to present day. Therefore, this article is not only based on analysis, but brings in historical theory too, in order to see the bigger picture, the bigger frame of reference to Subotzky’s work. In Powell’s article he argues that photojournalism in the classic tradition of being responsible for recording of history is more layered than that in the South African context. He says that Subotzky’s practice as a photographer is deeply rooted in the “spiritual history of photogprahy and journalism in the context of the South African psychodrama.”

With regards to using in depth analysis to discuss Subotzky’s work, Powell uses Subotzky’s degree portfolio ‘Die Vier Hoeke’ on Cape Town’s Pollsmoor Prison, as an example of the “uncompromising and palpable rectilinearity that both binds and oppresses the images on an entirely formal level”. Powell says that the heavily weighing straight lines in most of these photographs have the effect of both “formally and actually confining and limiting the action and/or movement of the protagonists”. This is a clear demonstration of how the article on Nka engaged more with Subotzky’s art than the ArtThrob article did. The Nka layout is also a lot easier to read, it is more simplified than ArtThrob and not as clustered with images and text.


Mikhael Subotzky, Cell 33, E Section, Pollsmoor Maximum Security Prison 2005.
The international blog that was looked at for the purpose of this essay was Conscientious. Conscientious is a weblog about fine-art photography which was created by Jorg Colberg. His article on Subotzky is the most recent of the three; it was posted on the 18th February, 2009 and entitled “A Conversation with Mikhael Subotzky”. It is an actual interview that Colberg had with Subotzky. Formally, Colberg’s blog is a three page interview with Subotzky’s photographs in between some of the paragraphs. The article is on most of the left hand side of the page and there are two columns of links on the right hand side of the page. Showing the photographs in this way is better than how they appeared on the ArtThrob blog; they were quite small and it was difficult to see detail. On this blog they were larger and actually embedded in the article, therefore they demanded more attention.

What makes Colberg’s blog and his article on Subotzky in particular so different from the other two is that it is an interview with Subotzky himself. Instead of doing a sort of promotional pat-on-the back list of his achievements or an analysis of a selection of some of his photographs, Colberg looks at Subotzky’s works as a whole and questions his motives as a photographer and the South African context within which Subotzky is working. Colberg’s questions to Subotzky came from a non-South African point of view, which made his interview very different from the articles by Sue Williamson and Ivor Powell. Colberg takes an outsiders view by saying: “from the outside - and far away – it seems like South Africa had such a bright moment of hope when apartheid was dismantled and when Nelson Mandela was elected president, and so much has gone wrong since then, for whatever reason.” Colberg asks a few questions about Subotzky’s relation to South Africa, like asking him how he places his work in the context of other photography form South Africa, and the somewhat difficult question of “how would you put photography from South Africa in a larger African context”.

One of the questions Colberg poses to Subotzky is whether he sees it as his responsibility to record what is “going on” in South Africa today. Subotzky replies that he does not believe that photographers can effectively take responsibility for such things. He feels that they have the power to bear witness and he sees the responsibility as a responsibility to oneself, to try to make one “as conscious as possible”. Comparing Colberg’s interview to Powell’s article on Nka, one realises the difference between how Powell has interpreted Subotzky’s art and how Subotzky explains it himself. This is a good example of how the analyser or viewer makes the art mean what it means for them, derived from a basis of their own background, interests and knowledge. Perhaps this is where the ArtThrob blog post of Sue Williamson’s article on Subotzky comes handy, because it is an almost neutral account of his works and achievements, it does not give too much insight into Subotzky or his works, and in so-doing leaves the viewer’s mind largely uninfluenced and therefore clear for their own interpretation of his work. It is not to say that in-depth analysis is not useful here, Powell’s article related Subotzky’s work to South Africa as a whole as well as zooming in and focusing on the formal qualities and their effects on the interpretation of the images.

On the whole, these three different blogs from three different places were not similar in their layout style or their way of reporting. This is a good thing for now one has three diverse views on Mikhael Subotzky and his work, from a list of his achievements and a formal analysis of his photographs to a direct interview with him. Web 2.0 has been one of the tools that has helped Subotzky gain acknowledgement from countries outside of South Africa, by peoples’ ability to harness the sharing of information that is so integral to Web 2.0 and its effectiveness in reaching and connecting people all around the world.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. ArtThrob
2. Nka Journal of Contemporary African Art
3. Conscientious