Authorship in the Current Media Landscape
By: Liza Faktor
Tags: Media, Photography, Authorship, Visual Journalism, Documentary

THE VALUE OF PERSONAL TAKE

- When did you realize that your subjective take on the story and deep understanding of the context have value in the current media landscape? Have you been hired specifically because of your long-term projects?

AF: Once I was professionally comfortable with working editorially, there was room for my own voice to emerge more. I think this was part of me maturing more than something dictated by clients. My clients have always given me the room to explore and be authentic.

When I look back over my career, I was too inexperienced and naive to actually realize that I had the freedom to call it or tell it how I saw it. Now, it seems the more I infuse personal style or voice into my work the better it is received. In the current state of photography, the only currency I have is my authorship.

ZC: I’m a better photographer when I know the place and the landscape and the players and the language. Parachuting into a story that is brand new to me isn’t ideal and I’ve found I can be of much more service to the story and to the current media landscape by focusing my energy on a place or a theme. Flint was the right fit for me at the time and I tried to maximize my work there. After years of working in that area, I know how to operate. And I think the work reflects that. It’s personal. It’s about a place I care about and want to see if I can play a role in its recovery.

RE: I began to receive regular editorial commissions after the publication of my first book. I was asked to embark on stories that traced history rather than depicted current events. When I look back on many of my assignments I realize that I often photograph people and things that are no longer there. I have to find a way to visualize the invisible, just like the oil pipeline, buried 10 meters underground, yet its presence is felt strongly above ground.

While visualizing the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi in India I traced his ghost across the Indian subcontinent in my attempts to put flesh and bones on his dreams and ideas. In Chernobyl I focused on still life images — victuals, household items, relics of the disaster to portray the long-term effects of the Chernobyl nuclear accident, as well as nature’s ability to thrive with life, not long after destruction. Even during the Georgia-Russia War (2008) rather than focusing on the fast pace of unfolding events, I photographed interiors of abandoned, shelled homes in a tenement buildings bombed by Russian warplanes. Which objects were taken and which were left behind when the people fled the shelling? What survived the blasts? Love letters, ghost frames, kitchen paraphernalia piled up with corrugated metal and blasted cement. For me those empty interiors with things that were not there, were very evocative in their articulation of the fear and loss of war.

Last year in Siberia I was asked to photograph a story about the only man in Russia who took legal action against Joseph Stalin for the murder of his great grand father in the NKVD purges of the Great Terror. Most protagonists of this story have long been dead or gone, the places are buried with layers of history, almost untraceable. I enjoy this kind of challenge. It makes my brain work in a different way, looking for visual clues everywhere.

PLACING YOUR WORK AND NAVIGATING PLATFORMS

- Where do you position yourself strategically in the media landscape? Which platforms and audiences are crucial for you to make your work meaningful?

LA: I still feel strong resistance from the market about the stories I make. For me finding corners, strategies and holes in which to deliver these stories in doses, is part of the work itself. The feeling of breaking barriers and going against the current does not just disappear. I always have the reader, the visitor, and their experience in mind while … and how they are consuming my work. Without an audience (a recipient) no exchange is created.

I am the daughter of the generation that saw the fall of the traditional editorial system. That was happening as I was on the verge of becoming a professional in that system myself! It was a necessity to manage platforms and different languages. In my case, it was a blessing. I am much more interested in the platforms crossing over, since they mix targets. The worlds of communication and art merge, the realities overlap, and through all this new possibilities are opening for the artist and experiences are enriched for the audience.