Cuban Rap

Towards the end of 2014 United States President Obama announced that America would restore full diplomatic relations with Cuba, more than 50 years after President Eisenhower imposed a trade embargo on Cuban exports during the cold war.   What this means for the future of Cuba is uncertain, but it will no doubt mean that a big change is on its way.  

Cuba and the US have had a long-standing love/hate relationship but in it's cultural heritage, especially through music, Cuba has managed to bridge any divisions and reach a truly international, even global audience.

When you think of Cuban music, you think of the wealth of fantastic talent that has come out of Cuba over the years - artists like Willie Colon, Celia Cruz, Irakere and Buena Vista Social Club.  Nowadays, there is a big Reggaeton scene in Cuba (as there is elsewhere in Latin America) but what many people don't associate with the island is a flourishing Rap and Hip Hop scene.  Perhaps typical of Cuba, this American import has been enthusiastically adopted by Cubans and is steadily increasing in popularity.  In 2002 the Cuban government recognised the significance of the Rap music scene and even provided a degree of endorsement through a Ministry of Culture sponsored record label to promote local artists.

However, not all Cuban Rap artists are so enthusiastic about what they see as the State sponsored, somewhat sanitised version of their art form.  Alongside the officially recognised Rap scene there exists a slightly more subversive, slightly more critical scene.  Ironically, a lot of the artists aren't anti Castro or anti communist, but simply critical of the state and its methods of control.

Some years ago I travelled to Cuba with Zoë Murphy and we produced a picture slideshow for the BBC about the underground Rap Music scene.

What's an image worth?

What's a picture worth?  It depends.  Like most things, it's only worth what someone is prepared to pay for it.  Sure, there are industry 'norms' which dictate how much a newspaper or a publisher will pay a freelancer to go and shoot a feature, there may be 'typical' fees for commercial shoots, which might vary depending on usage.  Stock libraries have a fee structure for contributors and buyers and so on.  But in a world where the photographic image is a commodity which has become so readily accessible, it is hard to put a figure to the true value of a photographic image and the photographer's skill in creating that image.  There are even stock image libraries that place so little value on photography that they guarantee buyers to supply images for as little as $1.00 each.  The point to consider, in my opinion, is what the impact of a good shot is, over that of a rubbish one.  Good shots can easily be overlooked, but a bad one will stand out like a sore thumb.

When I teach, I often meet students who tell me with great pride that once they've learned how to use their cameras they'll be taking all the staff portraits at their place of work for use on the new company website or corporate brochure or whatever.  This depresses me.  Clearly the head of marketing or PR at their companies would rather save the fee of getting professional shots done and instead use the keen amateur.  That's not always the case, but it is an example of the shift in people's attitude towards the value of photography.  The thing is, we all have smart phones which are able to take relatively decent pictures without us having to understand the technical, or indeed creative processes that inform our decisions when we take a shot.   Add to that the huge number of applications which make our pictures look a million times better than they really are and most people think of themselves as able to take a decent photo.  So when faced with a 'real' camera people are easily led to believe that its owner is able to do as good a job as a professional.What's more, people generally take the view that because photography is something that photographers enjoy, they're prepared to do it for less, or even free.  I'm often asked on jobs to take additional pictures which weren't in the initial brief, 'while I'm here'.  Such requests raise a minor dilemma.  Is it better to provide the extra shots without question for the sake of good relations and the possibility of developing an on-going working relationship with a particular client, or is it worth trying to explain that any additional shots would incur additional costs and so risk upsetting and possibly losing a potentially regular client?  The fact is, if you get a professional decorator to paint your living room, would you ask him to do the hallway too, 'while he's here' and not expect to pay him?  Why should it be different for a photographer?  Yet the prevailing attitude remains that pressing the shutter release button a few more times costs nothing.  Never mind the additional time spent in post production, or re-arranging lights, backdrops or camera possibly to another location, simply 'while you're here'. However, not all photography is quite so readily undervalued.  On the contrary, where there's money to be made, the value placed on photography can rise to stratospheric heights.

I was recently talking to a friend of mine, a freelance art director who not so long ago was working for a major agency on the re-branding of one of the largest supermarket chains in the UK.  A large part of the brief he told me was to increase customer awareness of fresh produce which had always been one of the weakest selling points for them.  He went on to tell me that they were using a food photographer who charges £5k per day.  £5k per day to shoot fresh fruit and veg in an attempt to convince customers that their fresh produce is of the finest quality!  Admittedly, the pictures they'd been using to date were terrible (more because of poor styling than poor photography) but is £5k per day really worth it? Where product photography as part of a large advertising strategy leads to increased sales and profit it seems that the value placed on photographs is not insignificant and clearly is worth it.

Because when people choose to use a professional, what they're actually choosing is more than simple camera skills.  What the professional offers over and above knowing how to take a photograph is consistency, reliability and the ability to deliver a product which correctly interprets the brief, as well as problem solving skills and the benefit of experience (I've heard it said that one of the things that separates the pro from the amateur is not that the pro doesn't make mistakes, but that the pro knows how to correct them!).

So the question of what a photograph is worth goes largely unanswered.  It's worth what someone is prepared to pay for it.  Perhaps a better question would be "What's a Photographer worth?'

Moments of Truth

It’s long been said that the camera never lies.  That’s not true.  It may not be the camera itself that does the lying but the person holding it is certainly manipulating the truth every single time the shutter is released.  Take for example the famous pyramids in Giza.  I’ve never been there but I’m reliably informed that Cairo’s urban sprawl encroaches right on to the edge of that so often photographed vista in the desert.  The fact is, most shots of the pyramids are taken from an angle that excludes views of Africa’s second largest city.

Whenever we take a photograph it is up to us as photographers to make decisions, often sub-consciously, about what we include in the shot, how we frame it, how we expose it, what camera angle we choose and so on.  But just as important is what we choose to leave out.  That is often a more conscious decision and one that can lead to much controversy if not taken carefully.  And it’s not only photographers who manipulate truth and reality in this way.  When it comes to reporting current affairs, Picture Editors decide which images best tell the story that they want to be told, thereby immediately introducing a second level of decision-making in to what is finally presented to the picture consuming public.

Take for example the emotionally powerful image of a four-year old refugee taken at the beginning of the current conflict in Syria, seemingly lost and alone in the desert and found by UN workers.  In reality he had become separated from his family but was far from alone in the desert.  The image had been cropped to represent a "cropped" version of the story.  So while the camera itself isn’t actually lying, it is being used as a tool that is selective about what is represented.  And as such it is able to focus the viewers’ attention on specific elements which are particularly significant or effective in creating a response.

Similarly, images posted on twitter in 2014 depicting state violence and brutality towards civilians in protests in Venezuela were a mixture of both truth and fiction.  Alongside genuine shots of the Venezuelan protests, images of police brutality from other protests around the world were also used, presumably in an attempt to create a stronger reaction and thereby generate sympathy and support for the protesters, especially given the lack of media attention they were receiving.   However, if people are trying to tell the truth through the use of photographic images, they aren’t doing themselves any favours when they use them in this way.

But the question of “telling the truth” goes far beyond using images from other conflicts in a different context and claiming they are genuine, or cropping in to a small section of a wider scene for maximum effect.  It starts with what a photographer chooses to represent in an image.  The history of photography provides many examples of staged scenes depicting a supposed truth.

The obvious example is of Robert Capa’s famous picture of a falling soldier shot during the Spanish civil war which has often been accused of being faked, although Capa himself denied this.  Fred Morley’s image of a chirpy milkman delivering milk through ruined London streets during the Blitz is on the other hand a confirmed fake.  Nevertheless, both are powerful images which reflect a genuine representation of real events.

By contrast, in 2004 the Daily Mirror published fake pictures of British army brutality in Iraq, resulting in the newspaper sacking it’s then editor Piers Morgan.   In this instance the intention was less about offering a genuine news story or an insightful perspective on a conflict situation, more about selling newspapers through the use of shocking imagery.  Shock, like sex, sells.

But it’s not only the question of staged scenes which cast doubt over the authenticity of photographs.  Photographers are often accused of photo-shopping images as if it’s a crime.  There was huge debate about truth in photography in relation to Paul Hansen’s winning image of the 2012 World Press Photography Award on the basis that the image had been overly photo-shopped.  For a detailed discussion of the controversy, click here.  This year again, the debate is revisited in the same vein, with 20% of images being disqualified in the penultimate round due to manipulation in post production.  

The fact is that photographs have always been manipulated in some way or another.  It is in the very nature of photography to be selective in what is represented in and by an image.  If a photograph has been digitally processed to enhance tonal contrast or increase saturation for dramatic effect, that’s no different to dodging and burning techniques used by dark room technicians in the days of processing film and making prints.  The extent to which an image is re-touched during this process is subject to endless debate in terms of what is acceptable and where to draw the line.  There is no end of debate surrounding fashion photography and the impact that has on image-conscious teenagers with aspirations to look like something that could never possibly be achieved without the aid of Photoshop and the damage that can lead to.

The point is, photographic images are powerful tools and their manipulation has existed as long as photography has.  Manipulation here refers not only to the image itself but also its use as a medium to communicate information.  If a photograph can lead us to question what we see and in so doing nurture a better understanding of the world and the events that take place in it, that is surely a good thing.  Furthermore it can also shine a spotlight on our reactions to those events and help develop a better understanding of our collective sense of morality.  The difficulty can be in filtering the good from the bad, the genuine from the fake, especially in an era where so many image manipulation options are so readily available to so many.

We as consumers have become so used to seeing powerful and arresting images that we are becoming increasingly desensitised to them.  After Kevin Carter shot his Pulitzer Prize winning image of a starving child in Sudan in 1993 it was used by an international aid charity as a poster campaign to raise awareness of dreadful human suffering and tragedy.  I wonder if it would have the same impact today.  The fact is, that image was also slightly misleading.  The child was starving.  There was a vulture in the background.  But the child was in a camp where international food aid was being distributed, not alone in the desert as the image might make you believe.  And if you’ve been to certain parts of Africa, you’ll know that vultures are as common there as pigeons are in Trafalgar Square.

The success of the shot lies in the photographer’s decisions on how to take the shot for maximum impact in order to tell the story, in this case an undeniably true story of human suffering.  It’s precisely that ability to make those decisions that defines great photographers.  Sadly, Carter committed suicide only three months after taking that picture.

So while truth may or may not exist independently of a person’s interpretation of what they think it is, and the camera remains a tool used to selectively represent reality, a great photograph is still one person’s moment of truth captured at around 1/125th second.