Photojournalism Now: Friday Round Up – 13 November 2020

This week on Photojournalism Now: Friday Round Up – Emmanuel Angelicas’ Silent Agreements -Marrickville-50-Home opens in Sydney and the third and final instalment in the Bronx Documentary Center’s digital exhibition Trump Revolution The End of Truth.

Plus the 2021 National Press Photographers Foundation Scholarship (US) applications are now open. Deadline for entries is midnight eastern time (US), December 1, 2020 For details and to apply, visit NPPF.

Exhibition: Sydney

Silent Agreements – Emmanuel Angelicas

Silent Agreements – Marrickville – 50 – Home (C) Emmanuel Angelicas

From the time he was given a plastic Diana camera at the age of seven, Emmanuel Angelicas has taken photographs. That was in 1970. Since then he’s used his home suburb of Marrickville, in Sydney’s inner-west, as his canvas. 

For 50 years he’s documented his family, neighbours and strangers, capturing images of Marrickville, its humanity and its dark secrets, without censorship.

Even now when he turns his lens to document his much-loved neighbourhood, he says “I am still this seven year old boy curious with his camera…”

Silent Agreements – Marrickville – 50 – Home presents a selection of images from what is a vast archive. As curator Alan Davies notes, Angelicas “is probably best known for his artistic images of dark fantasy with their frisson of danger but this exhibition also shows a serious documentation of the people and places in his neighbourhood. His camera reveals the changing culture and character of his environment. Family photographs provide a grounding to his artistic expression.”

Silent Agreements – Marrickville – 50 – Home (C) Emmanuel Angelicas

Silent Agreements – Marrickville – 50 – Home (C) Emmanuel Angelicas

Silent Agreements – Marrickville – 50 – Home (C) Emmanuel Angelicas

Silent Agreements – Marrickville – 50 – Home (C) Emmanuel Angelicas

I have one of Angelicas’ prints on my wall (I’m looking at it as I write), a reminder of the beauty in the quotidian, and the generous spirit of the photographer who made a gift of the picture back in 2015 when we first met. 

Opens Saturday 14 November at 6.00pm – 2 weeks only 

ATLAS Community & Cultural Centre 96 Illawarra Road Marrickville 

A Head On 2020 featured exhibition, Curated by Alan Davies former Curator Of Photographs, State Library of NSW 1989-2014. Angelicas is also the co-founder/director of the Australian Museum of Contemporary Photography. 

Exhibition: Online

Trump Revolution The End of Truth

“PBS News 1960 Nixon vs Kennedy Presidential debate – 2020 Trump vs Biden Presidential debate
In 1960, Presidential candidates Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy participated in the fourth general election debate, which was broadcast on television and radio. The two outlined policy positions and defended against criticism, making their case to American voters. In 2020, the televised debate between President Trump and Joe Biden was reduced to an ugly TV spectacle that broke from any norms of substantive political debate. The
President incessantly interrupted his opponent and made numerous false claims, while Biden spent more time defending himself from Trump’s attacks than outlining a plan for America’s future.”

Trump Revolution The End of Truth is a three-part exhibition curated by Bronx Documentary Center Founder/Executive Director, Michael Kamber and Exhibition Coordinator, Cynthia Rivera. The final instalment in this fascinating, and disturbing, exhibition that “documents the country’s shift toward conspiratorial thinking by examining the rapidly changing roles of traditional and social media over the past 25 years” is now live.

As Kamber observes, the transformation from truth to disinformation and “fake news” has happened in a frighteningly short period of time. “Several factors converged over two decades to destroy many Americans’ belief in professional journalists reporting the facts: in 1987 the FCC revoked the Fairness Doctrine, sparking the birth of conservative talk radio; 1991 saw the birth of the World Wide Web, a bottomless source of unfiltered, free information ready to be passed on to others; in 1996, the nakedly partisan Fox News, and its rival, MSNBC, were launched; conspiracist Alex Jones radio show was syndicated nationally in 2001; 2004 witnessed the birth of Facebook and the explosion of an unregulated social media that would become the primary source of information for many. Almost simultaneously, thousands of newspapers began to close across the country.”

“Pizzagate – Screenshot of a video by © CBS Evening News False conspiracy theory: John Podesta, chairman of Hillary Clinton’s campaign and other members of the Democratic Party are engaged in human trafficking and a child sex ring operating from various restaurants across the United States. One of these was allegedly Comet Ping Pong, a pizzeria in Washington D.C., which held a chid sex ring in its basement. Facts: Comet Ping Pong does not have a basement or underground tunnels, nor did it run a child sex ring. The Metropolitan Police Department of D.C. debunked the rumors and conspiracies around the pizzeria in November 2016. Spread+effect: The owner and employees of Comet Ping Pong were harassed with daily phone calls and death threats. The accusations continued even after the conspiracy was debunked by Washington Police.”

“The Washington Post reports that (Trump) has made more than 20,000 false or misleading statements while in office. He has repeatedly denounced credible news outlets staffed by professional journalists, editors and fact checkers, while pledging support for notorious conspiracy websites such as Infowars. President Trump’s Twitter feed, reaching 87 million, is a sea of misinformation and outright lies. Still, it is important to remember that our leader is a product of our disinformation landscape, and not the cause.”

“KTBC news report on Texas shooting in 1966 / CNN report on Inforwars host Alex Jones’ false claims about Sandy Hook in 2018 Walter Cronkite, of the CBS Evening News, was known as the most trusted man in America through the 1960s and 70s, and tens of millions of Americans tuned in at 6pm every evening to learn the day’s events from Cronkite.This was many years before the invention of household computers, cellphones and social media. He believed facts were all that made up the news and took great pride in reporting them as accurately as possible, without his opinion. Today, Sean Hannity is one of the most watched men on TV, averaging 4.7 million viewers in August 2020. Fox News, which broadcasts Hannity’s show, started in 1996, when Rupert Murdoch, an arch conservative business mogul, hired Republican operative Roger Ailes to create the channel. Ailes created a TV format based on opinionated and controversial pundits, which was a break from traditional news values and anchors like Cronkite, but garnered immense ratings.”

The exhibition is articulated in three sections: TIMELINE, FALSE CONSPIRACY THEORIES, and MEDIA COMPARISONS. You can view it here.