Carol Guzy
As Eugene Smith once said,
“Let truth be the prejudice.” The photographer Carol
Guzy reminded, continuing, “A photograph
can be a powerful witness and an eloquent voice for those who have none.
Pictures inform, educate, enlighten, captivate, and spur governments into
action. They are historical documents and poignant reminders of our human
frailties. Sometimes they touch our very souls.”
Carol Guzy
Carol Guzy
grew up in a working class family in Bethlehem and studied in public schools.
Her father died when she was young remaining alone with her ill mother. Instead
of becoming a nurse as she was asked by
her family, she enrolled in the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, completing a
two-year photography course. Eventually, he professor Walter Michot introduced
her to photojournalism. The Miami Herald first
recognized her talent, hiring her in the journal. In the following years she
travelled to Africa, Louisiana, Kosovo, Germany, Albania, States , and many other places, witnessing the
suffering and grief of victims in many places around the world and at the same
time recalling the marvelous highlighted side that each of them has the right
to shine.[1]
However, the place that she found most attractive and inspiring for her work
was Haiti. In an interview she said, “It’s not me, it’s Haiti. I have been to a
lot of places. Haiti is the most intense—both positive and negative. The
Haitian spirit touches your soul. After the quake, the Haitians mourned, they
prayed, they cried, they picked themselves up and moved along. It’s unnerving.
“After eight years from her graduation in Fort Lauderdale, she moved to Washington
where she won her first Pulitzer in 1986 for news photography in Haiti.
However, she later won other two Pulitzer Prizes.
The
artist released many interview and wrote herself many essays that help to read
her pictures. However, the perception of her work is very immediate. In fact, through
the interviews of the artist, it emerges her
intent with the camera and her idea of photography, which confirms her intent
of spontaneity ,not intended to alter the pictures and facts represented. In
fact, she stresses, the human side, which, as she says, is “a privilege” for
the photographer and the viewer to “witness” and report to the world.
In
terms of photographic style, her pictures show that she gives lot of importance to the “moment “rather than looking for the
right aperture or shutter. This is, in fact, again explained in more than
one interview of the artist, when she
talks of the value of the “light we
glimpse within every being” which is more important than the objective “right
light” to catch in the atmosphere. This attention to the soul, putting her
not behind the lens, yet as a human, within all the feelings and emotions, witnessing with the lens of the camera the
same moment that helpless people experienced with their real eyes, is what
makes her photographs unique. Also her profound motivation to follow her
artistic vacation of photography, overcoming the necessity of her family to
have her to have a concrete job compared to art, strongly emerges through her images.
Carol’s
concern seems to be to bring out the
issue of separation between reality and media; sufferance and lack of empathy with the sufferance of
people who cannot leave their reality. Her images become a place of meditation,
a place to experience; a didactic-empathic-aesthetic guide toward the life most
us think is helpless. Furthermore, she
seems to bring out issues that concern human behavior that she finds
“horrific”, in order to pose a quest and stress how it is an individual responsibility to change things.
“At times I reflect on just why we do this. There’s certainly an emotional toll from witnessing man’s inhumanity, especially covering stories in places like Haiti and Rwanda.”
Carol Guzy
Guzy’s often uses the rule of the third in her photos, however always giving importance first
to the emotions of the characters portrait and their spontaneity, and as a
mirror effect, provoking the same sensation in the viewer. Sometimes, in order
to convey a great deal of emotions, her choice is to use only one hue of color instead of a more
realistic bright colors choice. [2]Furthermore,
she seems to naturally arrange the light
in the compositions in order to stress the role of the characters and grab the viewers’ attention. Other methods found
in Guzy’s style, to put in evidence her focal point, is the adoption of a brightening effect that she puts on the
subject of her interest. For instance, we can see this in the picture that won
the Pulitzer Price in 2000, where, in fact, not the boy is brightest element of
the composition attracting the viewer’s attention over the rest of the image.
The culture contex, the stereotypes , and the individual
biases are all elements that the artist fully respects and of which promotes
the value. In fact, her work adheres to the professional standards that photojournalism
requires, yet, takes and asks for each individual moral responsibility to do
so. Her pictures respect and celebrate
the private moment and essential content of it .In fact, she demonstrates
dignity, sensibility, objectivity, to visually
reports the people, the environment, and the so intimate and universal sufferance
of the human being she represents.
Figure 1
Agim Shala, 2, is passed through barbed wire fencing
at an Arab camp as members of his family are reunited after feeling Kosovo.
This image is part of the portfolio that won the 2000 Pulitzer in feature photography.
According to Guzy, “Family members were greeting relatives they had through
were dead…It was a happy moment.” [3]
This picture is one example in which Guzy shows a
preference for colors and brightness, especially in the main
focus of the composition, the baby. In fact, this contributes to creates in the
viewer a feeling of empathetic emotional link, also thanks to the movement of the baby toward us which almost call us to grab him.
Here, the realistic effect is strong
as in all her photographs. However, this is due more to the moment captured
than to the technical skills , which however is represented at best, embodying
perfectly the right composition ,colors, light to represent at best the
subjects and their profound feelings.
Figure 2
An earthquake killed 230000 Haitians, left 1,5 millions
homeless, and flattened cities and towns, particularly the county’s capital,
Port-au-Prince. Guzy caught a couple walking hand in hand past burning building
littered with dead bodies. “It was a sweet moment, amid Armageddon. So
Haitian-they up and move on, regardless of what befalls them.”[4]
In this picture the focus is on the couple and the
photographer creates a contrast using
the pre-existing light coming from the background, giving to the picture an impression
of delicacy and reality. The eye is drawn spontaneously on the focal point
of the composition, as per her style, since she probably did not even set rationally the rule of three
even if here it seems to dominate. However, what first grabs our attention,
are the emotions permeating the scene;
in fact, she is able to capture the
moment and fix the feeling to make it perceivable to us. The dynamic aspect of the picture, as in the previous one,
is a common aspect of her photographs, stirring up the physical immobility, encouraging a movement of hope and reaction.
In this picture, the characters vanish both into darkness and into whiteness.
As Arnheim points out in his studies on visual perception, this effect reminds
of the Japanese painter Sesshu(image 3) [5],
where mountains emerge from fog so that viewers
imagination is required to complete the meaning of the image. As figure 2
shows, the appearance and disappearance sensation, provokes and invite the
viewer for a reflection not to forget the suffer of these people.
Image 3
Image 4
Memunatu Mansaray imitates the Statue of Liberty,
America’s symbol of freedom, during a charity boat tour. She came to the United
States with a group of Sierra Leonean war amputees to receive prosthetic limbs
in 2000. They had endured rebel brutality, but their vitality and spirit
remained intact. [6]
This picture shows a swallow depth of field with the young girl sharp depicted in the
foreground. The use of black and white for this photograph gives more
importance to the feeling, since here color
might have had represented a distraction from the main and only focus of
the composition. As we can read in the caption, Guzy calls by name the little
girl, giving importance to one over many similar stories which have been
forgotten and that otherwise would not be considered. Furthermore, she shows
respect toward the sensibility of the Sierra Leonean war amputees, portraying the most vulnerable victims,
a young girl , imitating the Statue of Liberty at her shoulder with the unawareness
and innocence that only children have. In this way she open the doors of hope
even in a tragic story, being able to catch the essence of a moment of joy. Everything
preserves the natural, untouched,
vulnerable looking and Guzy’s subjects confirm this; the most spontaneous being
in the world, victims and children.
Work Cited
“Carol Guzy.”
The Washington Post. The Washington Post Company, n.d. Web. 10 Feb. 2013.
Gross, Larry P. Image Ethics in the
Digital Age. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2003.
Arnheim,
Rudolf. Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye. New
Version, Expanded and Rev. ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974.
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