"Desaparecidos" (Disappeared) displays the work of Gervasio Sánchez

The CCCB (Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona) is currently showing the work of Gervasio Sánchez, a Spanish photojournalist that has spent a large part of his career documenting the "disappeared":

The Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, La Casa Encendida de Obra Social Caja Madrid and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León simultaneously present the exhibition “The Disappeared”, curated by photojournalist Sandra Balsells. This photographic show by photojournalist Gervasio Sánchez addresses the theme of forced disappearance in Chile, Argentina, Peru, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Iraq, Cambodia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Spain between 1998 and 2010.

“The Disappeared” represents a forceful document against forgetting and aims to salvage the suppressed memory of people disappeared during various wars and processes of repression. The presentation of the exhibition forms part of a major cultural action which, for the first time on the Spanish expository scene, involves the simultaneous exhibition in three cities (León, Barcelona and Madrid) of a macro photographic project centring on a single theme, by the same author.

Each centre will show a broad but completely different selection of photographs, making it a truly new expository proposal (MUSAC: 79 photographs and installation of portraits, "Cruelty and Pain", the joint work of Gervasio Sánchez and Ricardo Calero; La Casa Encendida: 73 photographs and 4 murals with 40 portraits; CCCB: 103 photographs and 4 murals with 40 portraits). The three exhibitions share the same narrative structure and thematic blocks, and all three end with a significant epilogue devoted to Spain, dealing with the present-day process of search for and exhumation of people who disappeared during the Civil War and the Francoist dictatorship.

In addition to photographic material, the exhibition includes two audiovisual recordings explaining the testimonies of the families of disappeared people and reproducing the ambient sound of detention centres and burial places.

In the framework of the exhibition, the three centres will also be organizing conferences to reflect on and debate the phenomenon of forced disappearance.

More information here (English) and at the photographer's personal blog (Spanish). Sánchez's blog, Los desastres de la guerra, which takes its name after the famous Goya grabado, contains detailed descriptions of some of the photographs displayed in the exhibit.

In this video, Sánchez describes his work on the "disappeared," the importance of documenting absence and the effects of forced disappearance on the victim's family members.He also discusses the world of (photo)journalism today.

January 28, 1986

Photos here

I have a mixed relationship with the sciences. Until high school, I loved participating in science fairs, contemplating black holes and listening to "2001: a Space Odyssey" and a National Geographic record called "Space Sounds." My scrapbook was full of newspaper clippings on new planetary moons, shuttle launches and supernovas. My sister and I would lie upside down on my canopy bed and pretend we were getting ready for lift-off. While most of my friends were busy seeing themselves as teachers or nurses, I proudly stated that I wanted to be a paleontologist, and then, an astronaut. In junior high, I participated in a science fair with a project on natural dyes. Another year, I made crystals. By the time I was ready for high school, I had won a few science prizes at my school and was really jazzed about the idea of studying biology. Unfortunately, chemistry and physics altered my earlier relationship with science, and although I still maintain a love for all things "outer space," I have long considered myself to be essentially a "language person," which is really kind of silly.

On January 28, 1986, I was not yet a teenager. That day, classes were cancelled due to snow -- as they often are this time of year in northeast Ohio -- and my mom had taken my friends and me to the ice skating rink where I had taken lessons for the past few years. At some point, I recall an adult coming to get us early, and being disappointed because we weren't ready to go. When I got home, my mom was crying and glued to the TV, which my father was also watching (a rarity, as he was not a big fan of TV). The space shuttle Challenger had exploded just 73 seconds after liftoff (video here). Perhaps because both my parents were teachers, they took this news especially hard; on the Challenger, teacher Christa McAuliffe would be making her first flight into space. In addition, one of the astronauts, Judy Resnick, was from Akron, just over an hour away from us. My reaction, outwardly, was measured. But inside, I just could not believe it. I felt crushed, as if I had been a partner in the same project as the astronauts -- space! Glorious space! How could this happen?

Later on in the day, we had to go to the store for something. It was a store with audio equipment of some kind and there were TVs playing. One of my vivid recollections is seeing and hearing the TVs playing the story. That night, and in the coming weeks, I did nothing but write in my journal about the Challenger disaster, recording details about the flight and the astronauts and my reaction to the new information being revealed. Even though I was still a child, I had the sense that something major had occurred that would change what happened in years to come. I wanted to be able to say, "I wrote about this when it happened and here are my reflections."

The Challenger disaster changed the face of the entire space program in the United States. It meant the end of this sort of golden era of space exploration (or at least, what we had seen as such) -- and this feels quite evident in my childhood scrapbook, when there are no longer any newspaper articles on new moons, photos of planetary rings or shuttle launches. As a professor, explaining this change (in terms of memory) can be a challenge.

In several of my classes, when we've spoken about photography and collective memory, I show a series of well-known photographs with no captions and ask students to identify the event depicted in the photo and also, to provide an approximate year or time period for the image. To me, the trails of white smoke against a dark blue sky (seen in the photo at the start of this post) are immediately identifiable as the Challenger explosion. Yet quite often, students are unsure what this is -- some recall the 2003 Columbia disaster instead.

It is unbelievable to me that today marks 25 years since the Challenger disaster. Though so much time has passed, it is easy to recall the pit in my throat that day when I learned about the explosion and what it meant for the seven astronauts and their families. In some ways, Challenger was my first real experience with death. It is one of those moments where I will "never forget where I was" when I heard the news.

Since 1986, space exploration, though it may have evolved considerably in some ways (the Hubble telescrope, the International Space Station, no moon exploration, suggestions of going to Mars, etc.), is still very much influenced by national and transnational politics. In the U.S. January 28, 1986 was a defining moment of 80s history (in addition to the images of the catastrophe, think of Ronald Reagan's "heroes" speech that night -- "a day for mourning and remembering"). The space program was suspended for several years. We no longer pursued shuttle launches and explorations with the same frequency or sense of "news-worthiness." In some ways, this is evident even in the manner in which the Columbia disaster was covered in February 2003. Today, it is difficult to say what is in store for NASA or future shuttle missions, particularly after proposed cuts by the Obama administration.

New Photos of 9/11

From: The New York Times

February 15, 2010

Editorial
9/11 From Above

In the days and weeks immediately after Sept. 11, there was, in many people, a deep hunger to see and see again what happened as the World Trade Center towers burned and then fell, a hunger fed by disbelief and shock. But as the years have passed, 9/11 has resolved itself into a collection of core images — photos, impressions, memories — whether you were in Manhattan that day or not.

This is the condensation that time nearly always accomplishes. So it comes as a surprise — just what kind will vary from person to person — to see the photographs taken that morning by Greg Semendinger, then a New York police detective, from a Police Department helicopter, the only aircraft allowed over Manhattan once the crisis had begun.

The dozen photos — obtained by ABC News from the National Institute of Standards and Technology — were shot from several different angles: over the Hudson, crossing Manhattan north of the towers, looking back toward Brooklyn, and up the island. They capture an aerial glimpse of a burning tower and then the immense plumes of smoke, ash and dust that engulf the sudden vacancy where the trade center stood.

Because they’re shot from on high, they capture with startling clarity both the voluminousness of the pale cloud that swallowed Lower Manhattan and the sharpness of its edges, a reminder of the beauty of the morning out of which so much tragedy so quickly roiled.

It is surprising to see these photographs now in part because we should have seen them sooner. It took a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain them from the national standards institute, which provided the official, technical analysis of why the towers fell. These photos also remind us of how important it is to keep enlarging our sense of what happened on 9/11, to keep opening it to history.

They will be part of what we hope will be an enormous and publicly accessible archive at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum.

From: The New York Times
February 10, 2010

Aerial Photos of Trade Center on 9/11 Released
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, in the NYT

Newly released aerial photographs of the World Trade Center terror attack capture the towers’ collapse, from just after the first fiery plane strike to the dust clouds that spread over Lower Manhattan and New York harbor.

The images were taken from a police helicopter carrying the only photographer allowed in the air space near the towers on Sept. 11, 2001. They were obtained by ABC News after it filed a Freedom of Information Act request last year with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which investigated the towers’ collapse.

The still images are “a phenomenal body of work” that show a new, wide-angle look at the towers’ collapse and the gray dust clouds that shrouded the city afterward, said Jan Seidler Ramirez, the chief curator of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, which is compiling a digital archive of attack coverage. The photos are “absolutely core to understanding the visual phenomena of what was happening,” Ms. Ramirez said.

The images of the dust clouds rising as high as some downtown skyscrapers “are some of the most exceptional images in the world, I think, of this event,” she said.

ABC said the photographs were among 2,779 pictures on 9 CDs the Institute of Standards gave the network. Some of the photographs had not been released before, it said.

The network posted 12 photos this week on its Web site, all taken by Greg Semendinger, a former detective with the New York Police Department’s Aviation Unit, who was first in the air in a search for survivors on the rooftop. He said he and his pilot watched the second plane hit the south tower from the helicopter.

“We didn’t find one single person. It was surreal,” he told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “There was no sound. No sound whatsoever but the noise of the radio and the helicopter. I just kept taking pictures.”

View photos here

The mask of Ira Hayes

This is another image (left) I have shared with classes on occasion, mostly due to its iconic status in U.S. collective memory and the way it was later re-staged during 9-11 (below).

This article just appeared today on one of the men behind the Iwo Jima photo, who was featured in the recent film Flags of Our Fathers. The Ira Hayes story is a tragic reminder of the ways in which politics and politicians can manipulate the image of the "war hero" while disregarding the human being behind that image of patriotism and loyalty.

Iwo Jima flag raiser's body 'was never sent to rest'

By Dennis Wagner, USA TODAY

When Ira Hayes was alive, his image was captured in one of the most famous war photographs ever taken — the World War II image of U.S. military personnel raising the flag over Iwo Jima.

Last month, 54 years since his death, his family learned that another image of Hayes, a face mask, had been cast in plaster while he lay in a Phoenix mortuary. The mask of Hayes, a Pima Indian from Bapchule, Ariz., was made without the family's knowledge and ended up on display at the Gilbert Ortega Museum Gallery of Scottsdale.

"In Pima culture, when you pass on, everything you own is supposed to go with you," says Sharon Cook, a Hayes family member. "They say because of this, Ira's body was never sent to rest."

Kenneth Hayes, 78, received his brother's mask in November from the gallery. Hours later, relatives returned it to the Gila River Indian Reservation where Ira Hayes was born and died, according to Larry Cook, Hayes' grand-nephew.

The mask was broken to bits and buried near the graves of his parents, Sharon Cook says.

The discovery of the mask adds one more chapter to the odyssey of Hayes, who has been depicted in books, films (including Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers) and music.

Amid the final battles of World War II, Cpl. Ira Hamilton Hayes, four other Marines and a Navy corpsman were captured by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal as they raised the Stars and Stripes.

The 1945 picture, which came to symbolize American courage and patriotism, transformed a troubled Indian kid into an unwilling national celebrity. Hayes was one of only 27 of the company of 250 to survive the battle on Mount Suribachi, according to historical reports.

President Harry Truman declared Hayes a hero and ordered him back to the states to join a tour raising money through the sale of war bonds.

According to S.D. Nelson, who wrote, Quiet Hero: The Ira Hayes Story, the 23-year-old corporal considered his fallen comrades the true heroes. After his discharge from the Marine Corps, Nelson wrote, Hayes returned to his home in the poverty-stricken Gila River Indian Community, seeking solitude — and often turning to alcohol. Hayes died of exposure in 1955 at the age of 32 after getting into a drunken fight during a poker game. His body was found lying in a creek, Larry Cook said.

Gilbert Ortega Jr., the gallery president, says the history of the mask can be found in a one-page document written in 1986 by Shirley Nelson of Yuma: A Phoenix artist named Hortense Johnson went to the funeral parlor and made a cast of Hayes' face. It was her intent to make a bust of Ira.

After Johnson's death, her husband gave the mask to Nelson and her mother. "My mom and I were the only people who knew what it was, so he gave it to us," she says.

In the early 1980s, artist Robert Yellowhair expressed an interest in making a sculpture of Hayes. Nelson says she gave the mask to Yellowhair.

Yellowhair never created the sculpture and in 1995 gave the mask to Gilbert Ortega Sr., owner of Native American art and jewelry stores.

"My dad always prided himself on the mask," Ortega Jr. says. "There's no way to put a value on something like that."

Larry Cook and his great uncle, Kenneth approached Ortega Jr. about donating the mask to Ira's descendants. "I believe it still has the spirit in there, and that's what led the family here," Ortega Jr. says.

Wagner reports for the Arizona Republic

Kent State Shooting Site as a National Historic Site?

Type in "Kent State" in Google images, and the first picture to come up is this one:

I have used this image in several courses when talking about the concept of collective memory, as well as postmemory. Most of my students have seen this photograph, but many aren't sure of the historical period or the place. And though I myself was not even born when this photo was taken, it has a certain significance for me because I hold two degrees from Kent State University, and my uncle was a student here when the shootings occurred. In fact, not only was he a student, but he witnessed many of the events that took place. From my grandmother, I learned about the craziness and anxiety of the weekend of May 4, 1970, and how she and my grandfather struggled to get in touch with their son, hoping he was okay. My uncle was a journalism student, and the journalism building was (I think it still is) located very near to where some of the (fatal) shootings took place -- in an area that is now a parking lot. In 1995, I attended a vigil to mark the 25th anniversary of the shootings; Mary Ann Vecchio, the woman in this photograph -- who, at the time, was a runaway from Florida, not a student on the campus -- was one of the speakers.

Looking back, it seems that every year the campus became divided over whether or not this event ought to "be forgotten" or "be remembered." Letters to the editor of the Daily Kent Stater and the Record Courier complained that the campus and town were stuck in the past or only affiliated with the shootings. Others spoke of the importance of continuing to preserve the memory of those who were wounded and killed so as to prevent something similar from happening again. Still others juxtaposed the tragic loss of life in Vietnam with the "four dead in Ohio." Personally, I never understood why the debate had to be so confined to the "forget/remember" dichotomy. I often think that it was at Kent State that my interest in memory began -- long before I began to study it in graduate school, and in the Spanish context.

My mother just sent me an article regarding putting the Kent State shooting site on the National Register of Historic Places.

From: Cleveland.com (AP)

Kent State shooting site recommended for place on historic register

By Associated Press

December 04, 2009, 2:40PM

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio is asking that the site of the 1970 Kent State University shootings be added to the National Register of Historic Places.

A state panel on Friday formally nominated 17 acres of the Kent State campus where Ohio National Guard members opened fire on students protesting the Vietnam War. Four students at the northeast Ohio school were killed and nine were wounded.

State historians say the area where the shootings occurred has national significance and should be preserved.

Ohio's recommendation goes to the National Park Service for review and a final decision on whether the Kent State site is put on the historic places register. Ohio Historical Society spokeswoman Kim Schuette (SHOO'-tee) says that process is expected to take 90 days.

To me, what is more interesting than the article itself are the comments left by readers following the article -- "they need to give it up and move on" versus "After reading several of these shallow comments, Ohio needs more than ever to guarantee that this site is guaranteed a place on the National Register of Historic Places if only to make us all THINK!" Many of the comments are politically-charged, mostly railing against "leftist" or "communist" college professors and students, implying that the National Guard was right in firing upon the crowd. There are also remarks on Vietnam and Cambodia and George Bush and Iraq.

The debate stirred up every time one mentions Kent State reveals how entrenched the memory of a traumatic event can become, on both a personal and a collective level. It also highlights the place where politics and memory meet and how one historical period can become conflated with another. Does "remembering" Kent State imply, for some, the promotion of a particular political agenda, which they still associate with 60s-era movements? Is this debate over ownership of the past and the narratives created about that past? Who gets to decide who remembers and why?