W.M. Hunt

 #somereallygoodones, #ronhaviv, #lostrolls, #twilightzone

Announcer (Voice of Rod Serling): "You’re traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination ... (where) cameras are cameras, some expensive, some purchasable at five  and dime stores. But this camera, this one's unusual because ... It happens to be a fact that the pictures that it takes, can only be developed in ‘The Twilight Zone’.” *1 

Meet the Photographer, stopping by his drug store or lab to pick up films he dropped off earlier in the week. 

The Guy at the Counter says “We developed and printed EVERYTHING.” 

The Photographer says “ What do you mean? I only dropped off a couple of rolls”. 

The Guy says “No, no, you remember, you brought in bags full of film, and we did ALL of it — rolls with single shots, film with mildew, stuff that had been x-rayed — all of it.” 

The Photographer who we will now name as Ron Haviv has entered his own private Twilight Zone facilitated not by The Guy at the Counter but by Blurb, the publisher. Mr. Haviv has finessed himself what might have otherwise have turned into out a Faustian pact. BLURB agreed to pick up the tab to process ALL of Haviv’s films that had been stuffed in the bottoms of drawers for who knows how long. 

BLURB has given it life, and here is that report. 

What happens if a tree falls in the forest and no one remembers? 

Traditionally photographs present as depictions of the truth. But Ron Haviv’s film rolls were purposely discarded and set aside. He completed the assignments, arrived home, unpacked, and the extra rolls shot on secondary cameras were tucked away. He never thought much about sorting through them and for more than twenty years the rolls sat.

He was faced with a unique situation of looking at that material and trying to make some sense of it. What was the truth? Some of the events and people were immediately recognizable — places, sometimes; people, maybe not; and time, even less. There are no GPS coordinates or time-dating APPS to rely on here. This is analog territory. These are rolls that had one or two exposed frames, which survived or were the victims of time, airport x-ray machines, or the accumulation of dust and humidity. 

“The Lost Rolls”, the book, is an edit of lucky accidents — surreal with images out of time and from another dimension. But because the maker is consistent — Haviv is an award-winning photojournalist — the talent and sensibility are the same. There is coherence to the vision. This is an odd montage of images from a singular sensibility. 

Collectively the images offer up a review of Haviv’s life and travels, from Eastern Europe to Africa, Mexico to the United States. There is a dream-like quality to the sequence with one thing telescoping into another. We bump along accepting the journey. And we linger on the individual images. 

There is the black-and-white portrait of the sad-eyed mother and child. It reminds the viewer of the others like this, the ones we’ve seen and the ones we haven’t seen but know are out there. Memory is a slippery business. Do we know these two souls? Haviv has no actual memory of the time, place or event for this striking image. Kosovo? Perhaps. 

It is a capture of some memory, visual evidence of two people without any attendant information. It has a stand-alone purity, because it doesn’t reference facts only our associations with other things. 

We conjure up all those Dorothea Lange migrant mothers in the US and news photos of “Family of Man” Eastern European refugees. This is a trope in humanistic photography. One of the wandering children in W. Eugene Smith’s “Walk to Paradise Garden,” has been scooped up to be held by an unknown, soulful caregiver. 

This is like opening a trunk in your attic and finding photographs of unknown family members spilling out on to the floor. All those histories and those memories, but whose?  Lost.

Look at the strong image with the red flag. Haviv remembers the event, if not the exact moment. It is a good marker for an important and dynamic period for the photographer. It covers the face of someone and the Soviet-era statue in the background, both of which lack any specificity.  That actually may enhance the experience of the work and gives it a timeless quality. The event may be lost and forgotten, but it is a good strong image and worthy of our attention.

Memories are inexact and incomplete. Then we encounter images that may have been a memory, but in this reconsidered in this context they become new. 

The reddish hue of the handcuffed gang in the El Salvador image offers an unintended effect of “rose-colored glasses.” The result makes for a theatrical and appropriate memory, a perfect accident. The joined arms are muscular and give the image strength, but it only exists in this contemporary consideration.

Is the image beautiful — decorative — and do you hangout on your wall?

In another photograph the corona of light surrounding former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani gives him a radiance, which the viewer may or may not agree with politically, but at least it is ironic and new. 

The deteriorated film stock for the bandana-wearing protesters actually increases the drama of the image, giving it a rougher, even brutal quality. 

Survival lies at the very heart of the image. The confusion of nationality gives it an enigmatic edge too. 

What buried treasures are to be found in the one hundred and sixty  rolls of film, a hundred of which yielded results? The whole range of films were represented: color neg., color slide, black & white, 

Haviv confesses to a range of feelings here, from bemusement to bewilderment, with this chance to revisit stories that he imagined were complete, and published. Any new insights? Not really. Andre Agassi at the US Open on the earliest “lost” roll, a forgotten exchange with the late and legendary journalist Marie Colvin, an Ed Koch press conference, a Hassidic wedding and some old girl friends. 

There are the images of now forgotten people. Who is this? Where? When? No regrets either except for some missed portraits of displaced people in Kosovo on 2 1/4 black & white film.  This experience comes with a sense of completion. 

There are the damaged films, with light leaks and moisture creating semi abstract works like those of contemporary Matthew Brandt, in which the chemistry has left wholesale changes to the images rendering them colorful and ghostly. 

What is this curious Twilight Zone, Mr. Haviv, our Photographer, has ventured into? 

Is it as if he had kept journals, stored them carelessly then looked at them again one day only to find them incomplete, damaged, and out of sequence, offering up a discombobulated history and skewed look back? 

But Haviv is not disorganized. He is systematic. These films were returned to him by clients without any regard for timing. There was nothing more to do with the material than to toss it in the drawer. There were, in fact, no real surprises. 

Ron Haviv is a consistent and distinctive character. He manages to look startled in a wonderful way, meaning filled with wonder. His eyes light up, he smiles. You see his signature knit cap, his watch cap, and long cotton scarf draped around his neck, standard issue for any stylish photojournalist; however, he does not have long blond hair or piercing blue eyes which also seem requisite sometimes. He lives on your block and is refreshingly real. You would recognize him, even in his zone of clarity and responsibility. 

He trades on his smarts and dumb luck. He is bright. He is articulate. And oh boy, can he land on his feet. More of that later. 

Here he is responding to a question asking if there is a place where, now that you have the ability to edit your work yourselves, that you won’t go? Do you think about that? 

“I think that I take a responsibility, in extreme situations, I take my being there as a responsibility, as being there for you. And so I am very loathe to make a self edit in that I will not photograph the situation, but I try to photograph it in a way that you will be able to understand it, that you will be able to have an emotional connection to it. Not in a way something like graphic violence or a dead body, in a way where you will just turn the page because it’s too gruesome to look at. Then there’s no point. 

“So I try to find a way, whether it’s a detail or a shadow or something it’s very important to make sure that I come out of the situations with an image to be able to tell you what’s going on. And it’s not up to me to say, ‘oh I can’t do that because it turns my stomach or something’.”*1 

Here he is describing his classic 1992 image of the from the Balkans of the Serbian soldier kicking three freshly shot Muslims. 

“As we moved through the street of the town there were already civilian bodies not the sidewalk, on the stairs of homes. ... I’m not sure if they were Muslim or Serbian. Eventually we reached ... a mosque and they went into (it) and took down the Islamic flag and put up a Serbian flag. They posed for a picture. ... I heard a commotion in another room ... they had taken a young man (prisoner) and they were telling me he was a terrorist ... they said he’s Kosovar; he’s Albanian, so for them guaranteed he was a terrorist and as they were interrogating him I was taking photographs. ... I heard more shouting, so I went outside and across the street a middle-aged woman and man had been brought out and everyone was shouting. The woman was shouting. The soldiers were shouting. And then ... multiple shots rang out ... the man went down. ... At the same time they were all yelling at me, ‘No photographs, no photographs!’ 

“I realized that even though I had a few frames of the victims, I needed verifiable proof that this was being done by these guys. ... I just wanted a photograph of the paramilitaries and the bodies of the people as they lay dying in the same frame and [for this] I had to go into the middle of the street. ... I lifted up my camera and from my left came this young guy who is now a d.j. in Belgrade, wearing sunglasses, cigarette in hand and he brought his boot back and I took a couple of frames... .”*2 

He did a classic bait and switch to keep the film from being confiscated. The work was published immediately and was used as evidence in later war crime trails. 

This marks Haviv's first major chance to bear witness. 

To work like this you have to live and work in a special place.  

One classic Haviv story concerns his first assignment in Panama City. Chris Morris, well known photo journalist, befriended an eager but raw and untested Haviv, getting them both to Panama City for elections, all at Morris’ expense. Haviv was working for the Unification Church at $50 a picture, freelancing for AFP (Agence French Press). It’s long day. Morris is frustrated and heads out for McDonalds to take a break. All hell breaks loose and Haviv gets the pictures, and they get printed all over the world. 

How’s that for your own personal “Twilight Zone” episode? 

I had only been working as a photojournalist for a short time when photographs I took were published on the cover of Time, Newsweek and US News & World Report in the same week a rare occurrence in the industry. 

“At first it was only exciting to me in terms of career success.  But the realization that photography could have impact on history, that the photographs I took were in fact bigger than the single moment in which they were taken.  That hit me when I saw then President George W. Bush speak about my work in his address to the nation regarding the decision of the United States to invade Panama.

“It was then I realized that the photographs I produced had the potential to play an integral role in the worldwide conversation on was and human rights, that documenting events on the front lines of history could have impact and affect the decisions of ordinary people and world leaders. It crystallized for me what I was choosing to do was about the people in the images. 

“As I grew older and more experienced, I began to appreciate the responsibility and the privilege of being able to tell people’s stories, the idea of helping to effect change.  That understanding completely solidified my desire to be a photographer and set me on the path I have been on for the last two decades.” *4

This man is definitely in the zone.

*1 “A Most Unusual Camera", "The Twilight Zone": Season 2, Episode 10, December 16, 1960. This season 2 opens with this narration: "You’re traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's the signpost up ahead  your next stop, the Twilight Zone!" 

*2 "Capturing a war crime", by Anthony Feinstein, Special to The Globe and Mail, Published Jun. 21, 2015. 

*3 Symposium at the Center for Photography at Woodstock held on October 10, 2011. *4 Statement to the author October 14, 2013. 

Adapted from an essay originally commissioned for “Ron Haviv: The Lost Rolls, ©2014

©2021

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