Imperial Courts – Dana Lixenberg

With Lixenberg’s Imperial Courts, we see another subtly different approach to documentary photography.  Here, the photographer spends a long time becoming an insider in the community she is photographing.  Unlike previous examples where images have been shot of subjects either without them knowing or being aware of the implications of being photographed, Lixenberg used a 4×5 camera.  My own experiences of the two cameras that I own are that they take a longer time to set up for a shoot and cannot be used discreetly.  This meant that Lixenberg had to have the cooperation of her subjects.  She shot Polaroid images as part of her workflow, which is a common way of checking composition and exposure with these cameras.  By gifiting them to her subjects, she was able to win their trust.  Most of all, though her photographs are not conceived with any additional drama or sensationalised as the notes put it.  The subjects are shot in simple poses with enough background detail to place them in contextual terms but not in a way that steers the viewer to feel a particular range of emotions.  Lixenberg’s intention was to create a body of work that showed the people in their daily lives.  It wasn’t until she returned later in the project to shoot the environment and social impacts on the people who lived in Imperial Courts, do we see a combination of images that document life.  When I look at the imagery, I see a flow of story-telling centred around how the people in her photographs had changed over the many years of the project.  In the a video interview [1], one of Lixenberg’s subjects talks about three images in sequence in the book.  The first is of her son, who she states was murdered in the neighbourhood.  The second is of her that she describes as ‘breathing but not ok’ and the final image is of the place where her son was shot dead.  In three images we see a young man full of life, a mother holding onto her dignity and the tragic reality of the area. For me, Lixenberg’s skill in the series is as much about the honesty of the photographs and the clear affection she has for the people than the story she is telling.

References

[1] Unknown, 2015, “Deutsche Boerse Photography Foundation Prize 2017: Dana Lixenberg”, MUSEUM MMK FÜR MODERNE KUNST, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUhX56bbkrg