[Click photo of Steve Anchell to enlarge. Photo and text copyright 2009 Jesús Manuel Mena Garza. All rights reserved.]
By Jesús Manuel Mena Garza
Wearing a Leica M7 named “Sonny” around his neck; Steven Anchell strolled into the Gallery at the Creative Center for Photography in Los Angeles for the opening of his exhibition titled, Route 66. The photographer and author, noticeably late, was cordial and available to discuss his work with the modest gathering. Anchell is a photographer with an international reputation. He leads numerous photography workshops including one scheduled for Cuba in 2010. He is the author of several books on photography including The Darkroom Cookbook. His portfolios include; documentary, landscape, food, fine art, commercial and architectural photography.
The exhibition consisted of forty black and white photographs typical of documentary photography. Documentary photography is a couple steps removed from family snapshots taken with a Kodak Brownie, but those steps are crucial and hard-fought. They allow his work to ascend into the realm of fine art.
A fine art photographer needs a keen eye, an advanced sense of composition and mastery over current technology. Anchell is facile in both digital and analog photography. Anchell, as his publication credits indicate, has mastered the darkroom. The 57-year-old photographer noted, “My favorite developer is D76H. I make it from scratch. It is much better than the stuff that is already prepared.” Having feet firmly planted in both camps is typical of photographers of his generation.
In this series, the photographer used a variety of film formats to capture his images. They included 6x7 roll film, 4x5, 5x7 and 8x10 inch sheet film. The photographer said, “Though I use both, I prefer film over digital. Film is more personal.” He added, “The photographs for this series were taken over several years. Sometimes I would go out for a couple weeks, sometimes a month, to take pictures.”
The 16x20 inch silver gelatin prints explore the remnants of Route 66, the iconic American highway as it meanders from Chicago to Santa Monica. Shot under natural light, the auteur has captured retro diners, vintage cars and quaint restaurants. Witnessing the state of decay of the infrastructure within various communities was paramount in this production. Roland Barthes, in his classic essay, Rhetoric of the Image explains, “What we have is a new space-time category: spatial immediacy and temporal anteriority, the photograph being an illogical conjunction between here-now and the there-then.”
In Sting Spot of the West, New Mexico, Anchell captures a dusty car from the forties parked for what seems decades in front of an Indian trading post. This image illustrates excellent gradation of tones limited only by the variable contrast Ilford paper. If the negative were printed on a graded fiber based paper like Ilfobrom Galerie, the final product would have been improved. I feel his paper choice was one of convenience.
Another print that I found compelling was Wigwams, Rialto California. The quirky faux Plains Indian residences were definitely out of place and kitsch. A small pathway leads the eye towards the three pyramid-shaped dwellings. The closest tipi was darker offering a contrast to the brighter row of tipis arcing gracefully behind.
The fact that the images were not framed in a traditional manner but simply nail mounted by the staff of Freestyle Photographic Supplies limited the aesthetics of the exhibition. The use of Plexiglas sheets also caused annoying glare to interfere with viewership. Overall the show was well produced, though poorly attended. I counted only a dozen people that were not staff at the event. The silver gelatin prints were for sale at $650 each. Other sizes were available starting at 8x10 inch prints mounted on 14x18 inch, 4-ply museum board for $224. Additionally, digital prints mounted on a similar board were being offered at a lower price.
Having exhibited my documentary photographs at venues across the nation, I find a certain kinship with his work. Anchell, like me, apparently enjoys capturing the subtle textures and cultural symbols that mark a fading American landscape. With the encroachment of cheap foreign products, the epoch of the Pontiac and tipi are fading, only to be captured as mementos by adventurous documentary photographers.
Derrick Price, referring to Martha Rosler, an influential Rutgers University author and artist states,
“To understand it [documentary photography] we need look at history, and she characterizes documentary as a ‘practice with a past’. A past, we might add, which, despite changing technologies, practices and fashions, was always concerned to claim for documentary a special relationship to real life and a singular status with regard to notion of truth and authenticity.”
In the digital age, the photograph is subject to artistic compliance. Can a documentary photographer capture “real life or truth”? This “claim” is invariably tainted by subjective analysis and invariably exposed in production. Yes, documentary is not as contrived as studio photography and there can be an “authentic” and “special relationship.”
The photographs from the Route 66 series could be retroactively published in Life or Look magazines. These two magazines were popular in the mid-20th century and were filled with lavish photographic essays. They consistently presented the documentary works of talented photographers ranging from Margaret Bourke-White to W. Eugene Smith to Robert Capa. Anchell is of a generation that would have been exposed to these magazines. They may have influenced his work. These coffee table staples have long disappeared like the malt shops on Route 66. Their remnants or facsimiles are now only accessible as curiosities.
The role played by Anchell and other documentary photographers is comparable to that of a hunter. Their goal is to travel to an exotic or even banal location and “shoot” their quarry. They return home triumphant with the desiccated representation and proudly nail it to the wall. In the city or ‘burbs, far removed from the original context of the image, locals leer at the circumstances presented in two-dimensions. The photographer’s purpose is to entertain a largely disconnected audience with great stories and brilliant images, all claiming a parallel reality. The “show” is the successful culmination of a long and tedious photographic odyssey. In her essay in Public Information Desire, Disaster, Document, Abigail Solomon-Godeau wrote, “There is a risk that irrespective of the photographer’s intentions the subject becomes an object and spectacle.”
Anchell’s Route 66 exhibition does not explore more explicit forms of documentary photography popular today. In the genre, the presentation of the image of a starving African or Asian against a sterile museum wall is typical. The juxtaposition and its effect on viewership are intentional and profitable. Eminent photography historian Naomi Rosenblum wrote, “Efforts to focus on ‘real life’ with all its grittiness, as opposed to the idealized world visible in print ads and on television, increased the voyeuristic tendencies that had always been inherent in photography.” As potential photographic subjects, at what point does our reality transition to grittiness and becomes condescending?
We are bombarded by information every day. Photographers have been given a unique opportunity, a chance to explore the corners of a ground glass and gain intimate knowledge of a select subject. For an instant in time a photographer can ignore the harassing confusion surrounding them and focus on a scene others may have dismissed.
The process of photographic production, especially documentary photography, is an opportunity to inject yourself into discussions about our transitioning world. According to Minor White, in Susan Sontag’s seminal book, On Photography, “the photographer projects himself [herself] with everything in order to know it and feel it better.”
Some may find the decaying infrastructure photographed in Route 66 not worthy of exhibition. While others would relish the opportunity to capture a scene headed towards oblivion, to witness and preserve it for future generations. A great documentary photographer can facilitate the transfer of valuable information from one generation to another. The photographs in this show have given me additional impetus to continue taking pictures in my sphere and to expand my role as messenger and voyeur.
Bibliography
Anchell, Steve "," Route 66 (Email response, October 19, 2009).
Anchell, Steve, interview by Jesús Manuel Mena Garza. Route 66 Hollywood, CA, (November 15, 2009).
Barthes, Roland. "Rhetoric of the Image." In Classic Essays on Photography, edited by Alan Trachtenberg, 269-286. New Haven, CN: Leete's Island Books, 1980.
Price, Derrick. "Surveyors and Surveyed: Photography out and about." In Photography: A Critical Introduction, edited by Liz Wells, 65-112. New York, NY: Routledge, 2006.
Rosenblum, Naomi. "Documentary Photography: Past and Present." In Photography's Multiple Roles, 84-119. Chicago, IL: The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College of Chicago, 1998.
Solomon-Godeau, Abigail. "Inside/Out." In Basic Critical Theory for Photographers, 125-132. Oxford, England: Focal Press, 2007.
Sontag, Susan. On Photography. New York, NY: Picador, 1977.
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