by Stuart Heady
Be The Media. A great and smart bit of advice about grassroots action. But what does it really take? The oddysey of photographer Alan Pogue is a case in point that should be more widely known.
Were it left up to conventional media, this body of work spanning 35 years would never have been sustainable. Left up to conventional photographers, this work would never have been ventured. Left up to a conventional university press, this work may never be promoted or recognized as it should be. Without the blogosphere, this work may not reach much beyond the local environs of Austin, Tx, the circulation of the Texas Observer and websites of groups like Veterans for Peace.
"Witness to Justice" by Alan Pogue, a coffeetable edition has just been published by the University of Texas Press. This publication should be reason to celebrate the potential of grass roots efforts to overcome the inertia of mainstream mediation, and I hope everybody contacts their local librarian and bookseller about it. Please check out the online preview and Alan's website at
http://www.documentaryphotographs.com
This body of work is not just a breakthrough at the intersection of culture and politics, but it reveals that there is something deep in the American way of seeing that has caused Iraq to follow Vietnam, which could cause Iran to follow Iraq and will continue to create more disasters until it is addressed; but is something which can be healed by simply having the courage for honest seeing. It moves beyond polemic into a great act of artistry and is beautiful. The introduction by noted scholar and commentator on photography, Roy Flukinger, points out that Alan Pogue is an important American artist. Hopefully, this opinion will become more widely shared.
But, having contacted fine art galleries and found them reluctant to take on promoting the work of an artist with real courage, a question has emerged, beyond the obvious one about why gatekeepers of fine art seem so stuck in convention, so determined to keep blinders on.
How does the cultural zeitgeist get addressed when the liberal elites who fund and direct what is or is not "culture" in the form of fine art, who prefer work that avoids engaging the caring- and yes political - conscience, how does culture change when the "elite" prefer to monopolize the scene with abstractions in "post modern" tones hoping to blend in with corporate interior decor?
Can real cultural direction setting, which lays the foundation for political change that is needed on a paradigmatic scale happen when the so-called liberal elite is not aware of their own complicity in supporting a "Bush zeitgeist?" Or is it that they lack the courage to support an artist with courage? This is actually a classic question in the history of art, but it may say something about why our culture has gotten stuck in both Iraq and Vietnam and might get in worse if Bush and Cheney attack Iran: why we can't wake up from this mythic nightmare.
The photographs in this book were first produced for alternative press publications such as the Austin, Texas counterculture newspaper "The Rag" or the Texas Observer or for flyers and posters used by groups organizing protests or political mobilization efforts.
For the first ten years or so after he came back from Vietnam, where he served as a battlefield medic, Pogue lived in a janitor's closet that he rigged up as a darkroom with salvaged kitchen sinks and counters from demolished chow houses. His bunk bed was slung over his print washing bin. When he was paid for photographs, it covered the cost of doing the work - sometimes.
I first met him during that time and realized that this was not really about photography but something more. Alan was ever-present at political events in Austin and had an uncanny knack for knowing when a turn of history was at hand. But I also realized that it wasn't just about politics at an obvious level. It is about what drives the politics fundamental to issues of social justice and war from election to election, from local to national to international levels, decade to decade and from Vietnam to Iraq.
There is a vital element of injustice that results from the way America's view of the world and its relation to other peoples becomes reality. This is revealed at certain moments at certain places, and it takes a great amount of dedication and courage to be in those places and a visionary insight, an ability to capture such moments on film that can't come from going to art school.
As a medic, one has to be able to look at wounds honestly, clearly and to also relate to the whole human, to see the dignity and the beauty that is there, to bring out the hope that is life.
Alan, as a frontline battlefield medic, had not just seen battle wounds in Vietnam's most intense firefights, such as the Tet Offensive, but the way local people were treated by the US military. A local village girl was gang raped and would have been killed had not the medics intervened and gotten her away. Alan had to learn how to treat phosphorous wounds even though this ordinance was officially not in use.
Alan Pogue never set out to be an artist, he just came home in 1968 and began putting one foot in front of the other. He started going to meetings with other GIs who returned from the war and who wanted to join the protest movement to help end it. (There is a documentary in the works, called "Sir, No Sir!" that has some of Alan's photos from that period of the late sixties and early seventies in it.)
He started a central Texas chapter of Veterans for Peace and served on the group's national board.
Soon after he began working, he began to be invited to the Rio Grande Valley to work among the migrant farm workers who were beginning to think about organizing.
This remains some of his best work, and it changed the way Texas related to the migrant Mexican laborer in the field. For me, shopping in the vegetable section at the time became a revelation. Alan's photos gave a face and a working class dignity to people who were mostly thought of in dismissive terms, if at all. Enlarged photos became posters that marchers could hold as they came to the state capitol to press for better working conditions and wages.
In 1973, several farmworkers who had walked up to a ranch house to see if they could talk about increased wages were shot. This brought in Cesar Chavez and more activity at the state Capitol in Austin. Alan's photos are not only records of that history, but were part of the political effort to create political momentum for change. One of Alan's best portraits resulted from a visit Chavez paid to Alan's studio. This isn't a post modern approach, and isn't "objective." The power of the work comes from its commitment and caring.
He has been to Iraq many times, to Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan, to Haiti, and various Latin and South American countries. He is still printing photos from a tour of South American prisons, and is off soon, on an extended journey to visit migrant labor operations around the US.
Now, after thirty five years of hard work, finally there is a coffeetable book out, published by the University of Texas Press. The catch is that the Press seems to have little confidence in the book, and hasn't exactly caught fire with astounding enthusiasm and zeal to reach out near widely enough or to promote Alan's true work - which is raising political awareness.
Large academic institutions don't feel deprivation or desperate urgency. They have money and prestige and are likely to see world conditions in an abstract, distant sense, perhaps filtered through the work of anthropologists or sociologists or historians.
But, at least they did publish a finely printed hardback retrospective of Alan's work (even if in a short initial press run of 2,000 copies.)
But again, that is the reason for the networking action that is possible over the web. Please bring this book, this work of justice witnessing to the attention of your local librarian and your favorite bookstore. Participate in the work of raising consciousness, and witnessing for justice. Help change the cultural dishonesty that has led to wrongful war.
Please check out Alan Pogue's website:
www.documentaryphotographs.com
-Stuart Heady
Writer, political activist, formerly of Austin, Tx
Designer of Alan Pogue's website