United Colors of Benetton's "Unhate Foundation"

     This!! This is pretty sweet. Thanks to United Colors of Benetton's new foundation, Unhate, I can now gaze at my favorite world leaders as they make out. Claiming that universal tolerance is one of their "underpinning values," this luxury fashion brand professes that it is on a mission to combat hatred. Before concluding that another group of incredibly wealthy people have come up with a new ploy to make a whole lot of money, check out the images under the "Campaign" section of the Unhate website. Sure, they could be trying to get back on top of the market, but judging by these pictures, UCB is not messing around.

     Let's look at the images themselves. All of the campaign images are essentially close-ups of international leaders locking lips. Additionally, each pair of leaders kissing is currently involved in some sort of foreign conflict with the other leader.
     For example, the first image to appear under "Campaign" on UCB's website is one of United States President Barack Obama hooking up with the Paramount Leader of the People's Republic of China, Hu Jintao. It is no secret that things haven't been so hot between China and the U.S. recently. Not only have tensions been rising between the two leaders, but President Obama has reassured us at least once that he does not fear China's recent developments in advanced weaponry.
     Another image shows Supreme Leader of North Korea Kim Jong-il kissing President of South Korea Lee Myung-bak. Just months ago North and South Korea were firing their share of artillery shells over each other's respective borders. That happened a few months ago though. For UCB to really be pushing the limit, they would have to target an incredibly hostile and volatile conflict. Israeli-Palestinian conflict, anyone?
     This is simply the historical/current events aspect of the campaign. It doesn't analyze the images by themselves as much as it does the people who are in them.

     As I said before, these images are close-ups. There is no avoiding their sense of intimacy and physical closeness as an audience member just due to their size. When these ads have been put up in cities such as Milan, Paris, Tel-Aviv, and New York, they look to be at least/almost ten feet wide and six or seven feet tall. They are put up on projector screens and held by people as banners. UCB refers to this action on their website as "guerilla action."

     This entire campaign reminds me of Gillian Rose's article titled Visual Methodologies in her discussion of sites and modalities. She talks about the three sites at which images are made: sites of image production, the site of the images themselves, and the site of the images seen by various audiences. These are manipulated images of world leaders sharing a subjectively intimate experience for everybody to see. Unfortunately, and sort of ironically, many people in countries such as North Korea and possibly even China may never be able to see these images.
     As far as aesthetics are concerned, I don't think that these images were overly produced to have a "beautiful" appearance. In fact, they are pixelated and, in my opinion, pretty visually unsettling. However, that sends a message from UCB to their audience, to the world.

     I'm not sure how I feel about the campaign morally or ethically speaking, especially because it is likely just a plan to get back in the market for UCB. However, this is bold. In a way this is revolutionary.  Even in "liberal" Western cultures, billboards of men and women kissing is not generally acceptable. Men and men kissing? Forget about it! To think that some of the most significant and relevant leaders of out time, most of who are all males, are kissing on the lips, is such a foreign idea to all of us around the world.

     I think that this time UCB did it right. If world leaders are offended by these images, then it is clear that UCB has everybody's blood boiling - not the West, not the Far East, but the world at large.

   

Are You Disappointed?

     I remember when I first found out that there were allegations as to whether or not one of Robert Capa's Spanish Civil War photos  was "real" or staged. Well, I don't remember where I was or what I was doing. But I remember thinking about the possibility that a war photograph of such intensity was staged. It made me feel sick to my stomach. I didn't suddenly garner a deep hatred for Robert Capa, but I was fairly torn. Why would Capa go through that effort to create a war scenario that never actually happened? Would it have been for fame or recognition? It's hard to say. What I really though about, though, was the idea of staging battle for photojournalistic purposes. Does it still make it a war photograph? Sure, it might represent what was happening in the war at the time, but it simply isn't a real event. One of the main points of war photography - and I can't imagine that many people would disagree with this - is to capture the events taking place during a war. Specifically in the case of real battle, however, there is no worth in recreating something that may have happened or that could have happened. It either already happened, or it never did, and I think that as a photographer one must live with that truth. In my opinion if you missed that perfect moment during a battle then you should under no circumstances recreate the scene unless you specify that you are doing so.

     Then I think about other photographs that have supposedly been staged in the history or war photography. In Elliott Leyton's article "Touched by Fire: Doctors Without Borders in a Third World Crisis", Leyton makes mention of a few of these photos. He brings to the table the timeless photo of an American soldier kissing a woman in Times Square, as well as the photo of the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima. In mentioning these photographs, Leyton is questioning the need for people to criticize the practice of staging scenes. He then references the Canadian journal of record, which, in response to such criticism, poses the question: After finding out that these scenes were recreated, "are you disappointed?"

     To answer Leyton's question, yes, I was fairly disappointed to find out that many of these scenes were staged. In photojournalism, and specifically in war photography, there is often a great degree of spontaneity. Part of the reason why the photograph of the sailor kissing the woman in Times Square is that much better is because we assume that it is candid. The idea of it being staged removes much of the natural emotion contained in the image. I almost feel as an audience member that I am being duped. I'm not suggesting that a photojournalist can't take creative license with his photos, but rather that he be honest about the moment in which he captured an image. That piece of information changes the photo's message.

     The reason I left a link to Carl Mydan's photograph (click the title link) of American troops in the Philippines during WWII is because I find it to be one of the only acceptable examples of staging war history. Initially, when I read that it was staged, I simply cared less for the image. It didn't move me as much as it might have had it been completely natural. However, this is not a time of battle. Neither is it a seemingly spontaneous kiss. It is almost clear that this photograph is staged. Even if LIFE.com hadn't explicitly broken the news to me, I could have guessed that Mydan asked all of the troops to look at the camera. Yes, just like Robert Capa, Mydan was trying to communicate a message with his staged photograph. The major difference for me, however, is that Mydan's image suggests that it was staged while Capa's does not.

     I can't accuse Robert Capa of actually having staged that photograph, but in a hypothetical situation in which he did, I would expect more of a photographer of such journalistic prowess. I think that every photojournalist has the duty to provide the truth about their images, whether they were staged, manipulated, and/or both.