CAMERA AS A GUN - Patrick Zachmann

CAMERA AS A GUN:
Patrick Zachmann


"I became a photographer because I have no memory. Photography allows me to reconstruct the family albums I never had, the missing images becoming the engine of my research. My contact sheets are my personal diary."

Patrick Zachmann, born in 1955, is a french freelance photographer who became a full member of Magnum in 1990. Prior to his work for Magnum, Zachmann explored the challenges of integration facing young immigrants in the northern neighbourhoods of Marseille between 1982 and 1984. In 1987, he published his second book following seven years of work on a personal project regarding Jewish Identity. In 1989, Zachmann was awarded the Prix Nieple for his entire body of work on the events at Tiananmen Square in Beijing. 

During February 1990 Nelson Mandela was being released at the jubilation in Cape Town, South Africa. Zachmann was photographing at the jubilation, which was during the apartheid era of policing in South Africa. When things became a little heated, they nervously reacted consequently shooting Zachmann twice. At the precise moment he was struck by the rubber bullets he photographed his last image at the event capturing the relationship between shooting and being shot. 

Zachmann was photographing a big cultural event for the international cooperative Magnum photos. Considering the nature of the event, the client and overall purpose would suggest that the photos were of the photojournalism and documentary genre. There are certain aesthetics that would also evidence this such as the traditional monochrome, 35mm approach also adopted by the likes of William Klein, Daido Moriyama and Robert Frank. The 'snapshot' aesthetic also implies the idea of documenting in a similar way to family holiday photos that act as a physical record of what was in front of the photographer. 

'The last shot', 1990

   

In the images original context, I find that his choice to photograph in black and white represents cultural and political issues surrounding the event - the idea of monochrome representing the racial segregation that anti-apartheid Nelson Mandela was fighting against. The motion blur caused by the movement of Zachmann during the shooting suggests a lot about the chaos that ensued. White figures in the foreground are illuminated by a strip of high key lighting leaving many figures in the background in low key shadow and darkness which implies a lot about the dominance of the apartheid police as they appear confrontational. 

More recently, 'The last shot' has been taken into a more philosophical context. It is part of the 2013 Shoot! - Existential Photography exhibition in which it has been used to explore the idea that 'to be photographed is to be killed'. It is considered by Philosopher Roland Barthes that metaphorically every photo is a death - 'the photograph mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially'. The exhibition is considering the relationship between the camera and a gun with regards to the theories of Barthes. Zachmann's image is a much more literal and personal analogy, he is literally shooting the image at the precise moment of being shot meaning we view the image from the viewpoint of the target.