Fine Arts

T ictures for Solomon

John Running

Flagstaff, AZ: Northland Publishing, 1990.144 pages, color and black and white photos. LC 90-53283. ISBN 0-87358-511-9 $35.00.

Review by Andrew Clarke University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

p i c t u r e s of Solomon is pictures of people on three different conti- nents, Asia and South and North America. In his introduction, photographer John Running quotes another, Edward Steichen: ”‘The mission of photography is to explain man to man and each man to himself.”’ Of h s collective subjects Running says, ”On the surface, the three groups seem very different, but in my experience, they are very much the same. . . . We all share a common set of emotions, joys, and fears” (p. 5).

But not the same conflicts. Some people live where it rains all the time, others where there are more people than trees, and water is more precious than oil. Some never see guns or war, others don’t know life without them. Some know only their homeland, others have never even seen their own.

By the time you have browsed through the book once-first the Palestine, then the Trinidad, then the Mexico pictures-the last two stops have left you with a feeling of Gauguin’s Tahitians and Hemingway’s Old M a n and the Sea, of people under the sun, toiling

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out their existence with acceptance, at sea holding the fishing nets, walking down a tropical road, at home having a drink, all in their homeland, without a thought, you feel, of other lands. But when you go back a second time to the beginning and the story of the Palestine pictures, you feel that this section comprises the thrust of the book, and it is different. In fact, more of these people are pictured in other lands (Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, even Arizona) than in the ancestral territory.

The author’s sentiments are evident from his opening description of Palestinians, “an entire nation of people who were suddenly and forcefully evicted from the land of their birth.” And although the Solomon of the title is Mexican, the man on the front cover wears a Palestinian qufjyalz. It was other photographic ventures that took Running to Mexico and Trinidad previously, and in both cases he returned to shoot. But he says of Palestine:

I went to the Middle East with my own funds. I went to see for myself and to learn. I went to find out who the Palestinians are. I went to make pictures and to bring them back. . . . I want you to look at the people who say, ’I‘m from Palestine.’ (p. 8)

Running says, ”I make photographs from an advocate’s point of view .... I make pictures for the people I photograph (p. 8). And in the case of the Palestine section of Picturesfor Solomon, the pictures and the juxtaposed quotations are passionate and partisan. “What does it mean to say, ’I’m from Palestine?’. . . It means that your story is not told in the world press.” He seeks to disprove the image of Palestinian as refugee, invader, or terrorist. “I found myself inspired by the Palestinian people. Their strength and ardent love of their land motivated me to make pictures for them (p. B).”

The Palestinian pictures are formal, almost all in color. And not all of them have a political reference. Unlike another excellent, different book, George Baramki Azar‘s Palestine: A Photographic Journey (see DOMES, pp. 80-82), Pictures for Solomon has no pictures of Israeli soldiers, guns, or tanks. There is only passing mention of Israel. For the visitor with the camera, the subjects appeared in their rooms and doorways with their produce, musical instrument, or tool of trade: tomatoes, bread, flute, hammer, wrench. There’s an appeal in the unpretentious, frank demeanor: See, I am a person, and this is what I do. At least half are portraits-quite often only heads-of men and women and children.

But many of these pictures are fringed (so to speak) in the black of mourning. As in classical Greek tragedy, the action has taken place off-stage; what we see only are pictures within pictures

Fine Arts

of the dead (the youth victim of armed conflict) held in the hands or worn around the necks of the living. Three young men (p. 46) hold the framed photograph, cradled in a Palestinian flag, of a fourth, with the simple caption: "Four brothers from Burj-el-Barajaneh, Lebanon." The only corpse in the book is in a painting within a photograph (p. 42).

photographer unabashedly. He manifests it in the pictures themselves, especially in the Palestinian pictures, which are expressly posed, either simply and straightforwardly or in composed arrangements such as eyes peering over an Islamic ikon or over a photograph, as described above, of a lost son or brother (there are several of these). And in an appendix of Photographer's Notes, Running lists the camera, lens size, opening, and film used and describes the circumstances of the taking. For example, the shot of Baqaa Camp (p. 6), with its close-quartered houses the color of rose adobe in late afternoon sun: "I had spent all of my time walking through the camp. One afternoon I walked up on a hill adjacent to the camp and looked down. Nikon F-2, Kodachrome 64, 180mm lens" (p. 124). Or his picture of Arafat: "I had never seen a kind portrait of Yasser Arafat in an American newspaper or magazine. I was determined to make one" (p. 124). These notes, like the journal excerpts juxtaposed here and there, or even just the captions, ripen the visual fruits. And sometimes they add another dimension, e.g., with the picture of a man holding an olive-tree plantling (p. 27). As such, a tranquil picture of a man and his produce. But the note at the end of the book enhances the depth: "This man was growing olive trees in tin cans to replace the trees that had been torn from his olive groves on the Occupied West Bank (p. 125).

As for the layout of the book, the pics are given generous margins, setting the photographs in relief (in this age of hypertype and overcrowded pages, that is a relief): a big white frame, a picture, a few words. Running might have put his explanatory comments alongside each picture as it appears. But he chose to do it the other way, perhaps to subdue the political and highlight the beautiful aspect of these human lives. Picluresfor Solornon provides easy entertainment if you loll through it in the languorous spirit of the tropical sections. For the reader who wants more, it's there for the finding.

From beginning to end, Running celebrates his role as a

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