Ensaios
Sobre o Silêncio
Fotografo assíncrono dos eventos que dão propósito ao lugar, entre o último visitante e o próximo. Na sombra que se estende, tudo me parece abandono, esquecimento, tudo me parece insólito, num estado de latência ilusório, fora de tempo.
Fábrica de memórias
Os elementos visuais de um espaço, de uma paisagem, representam um papel fulcral na construção da familiaridade a que chamamos memória. A paleta cromática, a densidade rítmica, a distribuição vertical e horizontal das formas, assumem em cada lugar a singularidade de uma impressão digital.
O Tempo
A visão fotográfica é subtraída à nossa realidade concreta num decalque modulado pelo fotógrafo. A fotografia é refém do momento presente, mas este aspecto fulcral da sua natureza, não nos impede de representar o tempo nos seus vários humores, quer através dos recursos técnicos da câmara, quer pelos referentes culturais e de contexto, pela edição ou pela narrativa.
Apologia
As fotografias eram muito diferentes das idealizações heroicas dos desenhos e ilustrações com pontos de vista apenas possíveis na imaginação do artista. Os editores viam-se forçados a justificar-se perante os seus leitores, a justificar a fotografia.
Authenticity
While the emergence of photojournalism in the early twentieth century arose from economic, cultural, and aesthetic conditions, the justification for the use of photography followed strategies that had informed news journalism from its beginnings – the impulse to minimize any sense of mediation between the reader and the news in order to enhance credibility, while at the same time celebrating the heroic roles of the photographers involved.”
Credibility
“But photojournalism is more than a practice that emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century and underwent a massive expansion in the 1930s; it must also be seen as a new phase in the search for credibility of news publications in general. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, news publications consistently adopted new forms of coverage which were heralded as being more faithful to the events themselves.”
First World War
“When Collier’s Weekly refused to send him to Europe to cover the First World War, Jimmy Hare turned to the magazine’s competitor, which seized the opportunity and made the most of his reputation: ‘Everybody knows him for the greatest man that has ever reported war with the camera (… )’ He made himself famous by his wonderful work in the Spanish-American war, and he has been in the firing line in every war since – and he always gets the best.”
The Greatest of War Photographers
After beginning as an ‘artist,’ in the opening years of the twentieth century Hare became a ‘war photographer’ whose journalistic commitment and willingness to take risks were powerful arguments for disseminating new images of questionable aesthetic merit. Twenty-four years before Robert Capa was declared ‘the greatest war-photographer in the world’ by Picture Post (1938), Leslie’s Weekly introduced Jimmy Hare to its readers as the ‘greatest of war photographers’ (1914).”
