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| Saveta feeds the pig, but not in the Guardian (Judy Ford) |
The September/October 2022 issue of the Journal of the Royal Photographic Society has a section looking at newly-minted Fellows of the Society, with examples of their work. One of these is a double-page spread of photographs taken in Romania by Paul Hassell FRPS, submitted in the travel photography category (pp. 534-5). Although it is hard to judge on the basis of the 20 images making up his Fellowship portfolio (which can be found on the RPS website), including three in the magazine plus the cover, and accompanied by an introduction and a statement of intent, I found Hassell’s images problematic.
His statement of intent is couched in
pessimistic terms:
‘These are pictures taken in the remoter
villages in Romania. They hope to illustrate the challenge of everyday life in
such an environment. …Time stands still here, the change comes only from the
gradual moving away of the young to work in bigger towns and cities and abandon
their roots. The older residents struggle to survive, living from hand to mouth
with their traditions, their beliefs and history. These are photographs that
aim to depict survival, each one being a window on how everyday life unfolds…’
We do not learn whereabouts in Romania
these ‘remoter villages’ are, implying all remote areas are much alike, as
opposed to having strong regional identities.
The stress is on stasis and survival, and tending towards poverty
porn. Most of the photographs show
elderly individuals in a bleak snowy rural landscape, indicating the desertion
of the communities by younger people.
Even the young man in the photograph captioned ‘Boy with horse’ isn’t
particularly boyish.
In fact, the other two captions are very
odd as well, and indicate a misplaced sense of irony trading on stereotypes of
deprivation. ‘Romanian market’ shows an
elderly man standing in from of a lorry with a cow inside and a pile of felled
trees behind him; not much of a market one might think. ‘Local off licence’ features an old woman
sitting in a ramshackle hut with what looks like a home-made still making
illicit alcohol.
Hassell’s subjects are passive; his statement
of intent concludes: ‘...engagement allowed a relation of character and
community, but also circumstance, which is sadly based on their inability to
change.’ Perhaps the problem is not
their inability to change, but an economic system that depopulates the
countryside because, with occasional exceptions, there is a lack of will to
provide local opportunities to allow communities to prosper. Hinting at a lack of insight, he mentions
walking in the snow and hearing the sound of chainsaws, assuming it is the
locals preparing for ‘the long winter ahead’, when it could as easily have been
illegal loggers at work, unfortunately a thriving occupation.
The introduction notes that having made
several trips to Romania, he knew ‘there was a narrative to be told’, as if
somehow these issues had not been noticed before. Hardly anyone smiles in the 20 photographs of
the Fellowship submission because it would not fit the narrative of isolated hardship. How this project was considered worthy of a
Fellowship is something of a mystery because there is nothing new here, merely
portraits betraying a voyeuristic, privileged perspective, for all the talk of
the generous warmth of the people he met.
A much better example of how to photograph
in Romania was actually provided in the May/June 2022 issue of the RPS Journal,
in which Judy Ford LRPS has a much longer spread (pp. 290-301), a project
supported by the 2020 Joan Wakelin Bursary.
Also focusing on rural communities, while not airbrushing the problems she
goes deeper than Hassell to show a more rounded picture of life in the Romanian
countryside. For a start we are told
this is a specific region – Maramureș – as opposed to Hassell’s generic
‘remoter villages’, and it is obviously not populated solely by old people and
sheep, plus the odd horse, pig, chicken and cow.
Ford’s accompanying essay sets the rhythms
of life in this region in a wider context: the price of milk is so low it is
fed to pigs to fatten them; sheep are risky because of the depredations of
bears, wolves and wild boar. She
mentions issues of deforestation, depopulation, and the encroachment of unsympathetic
dwellings made from concrete which are generally funded by the middle
generation who have worked in western Europe, and are often left unfinished.
Her primary interest is the generations of
women, particularly the older ones, who are mostly widows, and how they manage
with little state support and inadequate healthcare. It is by no means a sanitised view. With families gone to larger cities or abroad,
many of whom do not return, loneliness and poverty are significant
problems. The middle generation of women
face their own problems, juggling what few local employment opportunities are
available with working abroad for part of the year, while bringing up families.
For the middle and younger generations,
caught between the traditions of their forebears and a broader European
perspective, exposure to western European fashions and goods tends to undermine
the values espoused by the older generation.
There is a neat photograph of young girls at a religious event focusing
on their footwear, with a pair of strappy heeled shoes among the opinci.
This is not a static world, but one where custom and modernity mingle in
not always obvious ways. Theirs is a difficult
choice, to stay or seek wider horizons elsewhere, especially for those who
would like a professional career.
Ford notes that in some respects society
has gone backwards since 1989. This is
not only in terms of mass migration, but also because under Ceaușescu there was
investment in rural infrastructure. With
his fall much of that was swept away in a tide of privatisation, and large
companies squeezed out small agricultural producers. Schools closed, reducing educational, and
therefore career, opportunities. Over 30
years on, the legacy remains, and the future is uncertain.
However, despite these problems, the local
economy and society still function, underpinned in Ford’s view by three
characteristics: ‘a strong connection with land and animals, a rich traditional
culture and deep-rooted faith.’ One
might add a toughness of character. The
photographs accompany text which is balanced, Ford having achieved a connection
with her subjects far removed from Hassell’s uniformly dreary view of stoical
individuals in a grimy landscape.
The most significant difference with
Hassell’s photographs is that whereas his subjects are anonymous, the captions
describing the situation and reinforcing the sense of stagnation, Ford nearly
always provides the names of the individuals she photographs, suggesting a
greater degree of empathy with them. One
ends up feeling that whereas for Ford the emphasis is on those she photographs,
for Hassell it is rather about his progression as a photographer.
The Joan Wakelin Bursary is jointly
administered by the RPS and the Guardian, and a heavily abbreviated
version of Ford’s RPS article appeared in the newspaper on 9 May 2022. Its editorial choices compare unfavourably to
the tone of the RPS Journal article and it substitutes a pessimistic
slant undercutting her concluding sentiment: ‘For those of us aiming to live
more quietly and sustainably on this planet, there is wisdom to be found
here. My journey in Romania has been one
of self-discovery – of unearthing values buried by the noise of our frantic
world.’ The Guardian does have
several of the same images, or similar, but omits some showing women being
active, like Saveta feeding her pig, and adds a number not in the RPS article aligning
more with Hassell’s approach than Ford’s supportive message.
To begin with, the title – ‘There is
wisdom here’: Romania’s last peasant women – a photo essay’ – indicates the sub-editor
has decided this is a dying way of life.
To reinforce this impression, there is a photograph taken in an
abandoned house, another of an oil lamp, the caption referring to the lack of
electricity and running water in many older dwellings. A couple of posed portraits of wizened elderly
women, one wearing traditional dress, in this context symbolise the ‘last
peasant women.’ A blouse hanging from
the ceiling, photographed through reflections, takes on a ghostlike
transparency, as if its owner had simply vanished. None of these images appears in the RPS
article.
The photograph of the girls’ footwear at
church has been omitted; instead there is a shot of a different group of children
at a religious festival, wearing traditional costume. Ford’s subtle point about old and new
coexisting has been replaced by an image of a cultural practice that can be
read as quaintly exotic, and sure to disintegrate under the pressure of
external influences.
The sense of a couple of Ford’s sentences
have been changed as well. Where she
says some teenagers and young women, ‘have older sisters already working in
western Europe and are happy to work on the family homestead while other family
members are abroad,’ the Guardian
version says they ‘had older sisters already working in western Europe and were
likely to follow the same path,’ the opposite of what Ford had written, as if
young people cannot wait to flee the countryside for a better life abroad.
The other major change relates to a
reference to Ceaușescu. While conceding
life in rural communities had been hard under the communist regime, Ford points
out that there were positive aspects.
Keen not to say anything good about the pre-1989 period, the Guardian sub-editor has substituted:
‘Their culture survived because the communities were too small and remote for
the traditions to be eradicated by Gheorghiu-Dej [not mentioned by Ford in the
RPS version] and Ceaușescu under communism.’
While it is nice to have a spread in a major daily, Ford might be
forgiven for being annoyed at the cavalier manner in which her analysis has
been distorted to suit the Guardian’s agenda.
