Graeme Robertson Opens Immanuel?s New Photography Suite

Tuesday, 17th March 2009

Immanuel College marked the opening of its new photography suite on 17th March by inviting Graeme Robertson, a senior photographer on ?The Guardian? newspaper, to share his passion for photography with the Sixth Form. Mr Robertson, the winner of ten major photographic awards in the past ten years, spoke of his determination to take good photos irrespective of their subject and proved an uncompromising champion of truth, - not for him any digital manipulation of his subject matter.

The first photograph he screened depicted the arrest by US soldiers of the insurgent who tried to kill him at the end of his journey in an army convoy from Basra to Baghdad. His audience winced at the depiction of the face of a martyr in Afghanistan who had stitched together his eyelids, mouth and nostrils. Whether showing child victims of famine, children living in rubbish dumps, a child being lowered into a coffin or a child staring at him through a hole in the wall of a refugee camp she has never left, Graeme Robertson?s observational acuteness and compositional values never wavered.

Our pupils plied him with questions. ?Were there photographs he wished he had never taken?? ?Did he have the permission of his subjects to take their photographs?? ?How could he take photographs of such extreme suffering?? ?Which of his photographs had earned him the most money?? Graeme?s answers were straightforward. His job is to take the best photographs he can. He distances himself from the subject matter, hiding behind the camera. The presence of suffering or a corpse in a photograph does not in itself make it good. His attachment to artistic criteria to determine what made a good photograph was clear in one of two frames he was able to take of the crash of an army helicopter he was travelling in, as it was in the single shot he was able to take, as he fell to the ground from a blow from a policeman?s baton, of a demonstrator lying prone on the floor, held in a vice by his captor.

There were lighter photographs; for instance, studies of beagles, part of a series about hunting, had a poignancy related to, but very different from the shots of children starving in Ethiopia taken for Comic Relief, a shot taken from a harness suspended from the roof of the Albert Hall of the First Night of the Proms and penetrating photographs of political leaders.

By the close we understood the passion and achievement of an artist who sees his mission as showing what happens. When the UN building in Baghdad was blown up, he abandoned his curry meal in a nearby the restaurant, guided two children to safety and then took his photographs. ?He wasn?t there to save people; he was there to show what happened.?

Such is Graeme Robertson?s integrity and his devotion to his Art that I understood his priorities and conceded that this function is a necessary one. His iron self-discipline and unwavering attachment to a truthful and moving aesthetic make him a powerful witness, someone who can conjure conscience and persuade us to try to mend the world. Our speaker had explained why we should have a photography suite at our school.