Schneider Museum of Art
Orby, 1991 El Salvador
(Dennis Dunleavy)
Elderly Hospice, 1987 Santa
Rosa de Capon, Honduras
(Dennis Dunleavy)
Measures of Time/The Light Becomes Us
For Love of Light and Life: “Measures of Time” and “The Light Becomes Us” (continued)
Measures of Time
For more than four decades, photojournalist David Burnett has traveled the world in search of moments of truth. In his exhibition, Measures of Time, Burnett’s pictures epitomize the precision and process that helped to define the culture of photojournalism, both as an occupational group as well as a form of creative expression. Burnett’s work reflects some of the more salient and emblematic moments of the latter-half of the twentieth century. In this exhibit, Burnett’s style captures the “vigor and richness” of light and life that Cartier-Bresson so often highly prized. Burnett is a master of the decisive moment, but he is also a conscientious observer – someone given to a minimalist approach that emphasizes an appreciation for understanding the underpinning social and political context of an event.
Burnett’s images have a strong and definitive center of focus – framed by the carefully composed geometry of light and shadow. The pictures before us demand our attention because they force us to recall events and people from our past as well as our present. This is what news images require of viewers – pictures give us pause to think, feel, and hopefully move us toward compassion and caring. Burnett's photographs, however, do not only reflect a high level of photographic technical and compositional skill, they also serve as ideological and sociological benchmarks of our culture. Therefore, the pictures become interesting and valuable not only based on aesthetic appeal, but also for the context in which they were made.
In an article discussing the use of large format (single frame) cameras in sports photography, Burnett keenly observes a process that is evident in all of his work: “Waiting and watching is the key….The sense of discipline, the patience to wait, and capture ‘The Moment’. Sometimes you get it, as in all photography, and most often you don't.” Fortunately, for us, and for the photographer, there are many more moments grandly captured than casually missed.
The Light Becomes Us
Documentary photographer and educator Dennis Dunleavy explores another facet of photojournalism – the long form visual narrative tradition. Noted photographer Paul Strand observes, "What I mean by the word documentary is, I believe, a certain definite approach to the realities of the world we live in. This must not be understood as mere record-making, but as a problem of clarifying and creating a new art form with the camera.”
Interested in telling the stories of recent immigrants to the United States from war torn Central America, Dunleavy spent nearly a decade (1987 – 1996) documenting displaced and repatriated refugee families. For many documentarians the ability to produce images over long spans of time is motivated by the desire to foment change in society. This approach presumes that the work employs an interrogative and alternative perspective that goes beyond the blare of a quickly forgotten headline or the triviality of a sound bite.
In Dunleavy’s exhibition, the pictures remind us that despite persistent conditions of deprivation, abuse, and dislocation, hope and dignity prevail in the determined faces of others. In defense of his documentary approach to photojournalism, Dunleavy observes, “Photographers – many of us, anyway—are social reformists and idealists, and for me, the camera has always been not only an extension of my eye, but also my heart.”
Dunleavy’s approach to documentary work is sentimental and sympathetic – a style of photography that attempts to promote a strong sense of identity through a series of casual portraits and candid snapshots. Although concerned with composition and light, the work’s greatest strength comes through the strong relationships created between the observer and the observed, the seer and the things seen.
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