Stephen Ferry: "There is a close relationship between photography and the construction of historical memory of the crimes committed."
July 04, 2013
In 1995, Stephen Ferry offered in Bogota, Colombia, the first of a long list of workshops for the New Journalism Foundation (FNPI). For the photojournalist, the trip was significant in many ways: he met a country that fall in love - both currently living much of the year there - offered its first workshop for FNPI and, especially, had a first approach to the internal war that shakes the Colombian people for years, so many that we lose sight of their origins.
To recover that memory and demystify manipulated versions , Ferry drew up Violentology, a manual of the Colombian conflict, a book of photographs and articles that he presented on Saturday June 29 in the auditorium of Fundación Proa.
Also in Argentina, but in 1988, Ferry coverage the incipient work of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team. In front of an audience almost filled, the reporter noted that this work marked a before and after in his career. From this work, he began to understand and use photography as "artifact" testimonial, as an information tool AND XXXX . "There is a close relationship between photography and the construction of historical memory of the crimes committed," summarized. An afirmation that involves not only the case of colombia, but also in argentina and the rest of the hedges arranged by Ferry around the world.
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For over ten years, Proa is promoting a program of training in partnership with Iberian American New Journalism Foundation. In this context were made workshops and seminars by renowned journalists as Ryszard Kapuscinski, Tomás Eloy Martínez, Javier Darío Restrepo, Hector Feliciano and Susan Meiselas. Under this agreement, Ferry offered a workshop about Non-fiction Photography since 24 to June 28, and as closing the course, a farewell to your next visit, reviewed by the public each of the images that makes Violentology.
About his work, he insisted on considering the book as a form of "reaction" against the ephemeral nature of internet content. In that sense, he XXXXX that some of the pages wich he obtained information to the research were canceled or removed from the network time later. For Ferry, Violentology value XXXX in its capacity to store a true and documented evidence of the armed conflict in Colombia for the next generations. In the introduction to the book, explains: "A lot of people suggested that this work would look better in a web site. But Violentology belongs to the tradition of the press, these photographs must be printed in XXX that penetrates the pores of the paper, as liquid as the blood coming out of these dead. The physical nature of the press doesn`t allow any output, it keeps us in the same matter than murderers and victims whose images have in hand".
One of the main virtues of Ferry's work is the great ability to evoke of the images took over ten years working in Colombia. While observing and reviewing the photographs with the public, Ferry stops at the bleak poetry of "those faces who have been through the war." One picture portrays a woman horrified after the explosion of a car bomb planted by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) that killed eleven civilians. Around the woman who stays upright and clutching her bag, there are hundreds of tree leaves, shaking prematurely after the explosion, covering the street and the sidewalk. "Litter", murmurs Ferry after fixing his gaze thoughtfully at the picture for a few seconds.
The armed conflict in Colombia is so extensive and complex that the book edited by Ferry, as its title announces, it works like a real manual and order a military trial on which there are too many prejudices. The most popular is that it relation the war with to drug trafic. In Violentology, the author is responsible for dismantling the myth of the "drug war" and establishes understanding broader parameters to interpret the events. Unless the section dedicate to the "Narcosubmarines" - against which Ferry "could not resist" - the rest of the book is structured around sections beyond the common sense and seek to clarify specific aspects of the conflict. For example, "False Positives", intended to portray the innocent victims whose bodies are then dressed as paramilitaries, or the segment destined for death threats, illustrating its use by XXXX as a pressure and social control.
Some of the images in the book are dark. As one that shows the body of Pablo Escobar shot and, on it, a group of policemen and soldiers who exhibited like a trophy, or the recovered picture from the phone of a guerrilla member showing the XXappalling human dismemberment pedagogyXXX, or the photograph of another photograph, which shows a severed head and lacerated. In XXRegarding the Pain of othersXX, Susan Sontag says that while the dissemination of images of war promotes awareness by the public, hundreds morbid repetition of media while also carries the risk of desensitizing the viewer. That is, the opposite effect to that intended. Regarding this issue, Ferry explained that for him it is a form of "caring for the dead", to preserve their memory and document its erratic existence in a conflict wichn, at the moment of editing Violentology , counts the creepy figure of 34 thousand people missing.
In an interview with Angel Berlanga, for Radar Supplement of Page 12, when the journalist asks if Ferry crossed risk situations during the Colombian conflict, he didn´t responds; XXX: "It was an attempted abduction of the guerrilla National Liberation Army. They kept me one day and the commander had every intention in the world to take me. Two Colombian colleagues managed to complicate the situation, and the thing was resolved. The risk is real, and soon was one of the reasons why it took me so long to make the book, I was cautious. " Later, during the conference, more relaxed, said: "Nobody takes seriously photojournalists." About that, in his book, Terry recognizes that the most vulnerable are local journalists, who are ruthlessly killed by any of the warring factions.
The last image of the book, which also closes the conference provided by the author, exposes Ferry's wryly resignation about the conflict: in the background, painted on the wall, a dove, symbol of peace, cut the rude gestures of a group of armed men whose hide in his look the possibility, always present, to be victims or perpetrators.
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