W.M. Hunt

 #somereallygoodones, #garyknight, #kosovo, #evidence, #jamesnachtwey, #ronhaviv, #anthonysuau

There are at least a half dozen published versions of this scene with the the outline of a body in Kosovo in 1999.  Photographers like Gary Knight, James Nachtwey, Ron Haviv, Anthony Suau, Ilka Uimonen and Wade Goddard all found themselves in the same spot, witnesses to a grisly history.  There was a murder, a house burned down and was rebuilt.  The outline of the body couldn’t be removed, leaving inescapable evidence of horror and terror.  The silhouette became its own photograph.   

There were many sets of eyes on the same subject.

I am a big fan of photojournalists.  They are my heroes bringing back reports of man’s inhumanity against itself.  They see for us.  

In 2007 Stephen Mayes, director of the Photo Agency VII invited me to organize an installation with works by its members for the debut of the New York Photo Festival in Brooklyn,  The venue was the Galapagos performance space, which had just been redone in a Civil War era warehouse.  It has a 10,000 square foot interior with a 1,600 square foot lake — water — with a seating area designed like a series of lily pads. 

We had six video projectors set up in a circle all facing out and away from each other, and we ran separate loops through them with a total of seven thousand (!) images.  Each photograph was shown once for two seconds mimicking the assault of imagery we encounter in our daily lives.  

The photographers hated it, but it was mesmerizing.  You could go through the cycle in about twenty minutes — nothing repeated.

It was impossible to see everything.

Afterwards to my considerable surprise, audience members would tell me about their favorites they had seen, the four or five images they remembered.  They could describe them.  I thought this was impossible because everything went by so quickly.  But people looked, and they saw and remembered.

The lesson for me was how we don’t really begin to recognize the complexity of vision.  The eye is quicker than we imagine.  I cannot fathom how much we really see.

©2021

#somereallygoodones, #theunseeneye, #wmhunt, #collectiondancingbear, #collectionblindpirate, #greatphotographs, #howilookatphotographs, #photographsfromtheunconsicous, #collectingislikerunningaroundinathunderstormhopingyoullbehitbylightning, #aphotographsogooditmakesyoufartlightning, #photographychangedmylifeitgavemeone, #garyknight, #kosovo, #evidence, #jamesnachtwey, #ronhaviv, #anthonysuau