Tish and documentary photography

I have watched Tish, a documentary on the documentary photographer Tish Murtha. 

I have heard of the movie by chance, from someone pointing out I look like her; the reason I actually went for, is because she was a woman, documenting working class and misery, in England, and so faithful to her ideals that couldn't make a living out of photography (a hero!). 

Tish couldn't "sell herself and her values" to anything. She wanted to tell the unheard stories, the one that often "don't fit the print", in other words that are "not interesting for the market" or counterproductive for the politicians in power. She was in mission through all her life.

They way she does it is for example by capturing childhood within a disadvantaged England, the beauty among the ruins. She didn't brutalise the subject, quite the opposite. Anyone can empathize with that humanity, and feel called to care for it. Her "way" of photographing says so much of her. 

While I watch the movie, I listen to the words she wrote in her diaries and I resonate so much with... I remind myself that I should make something good out of witnessing her (apparent) "unsucces" and her beautiful images (how comes that H. Cartier Bresson who was all esthetics, but without "mission", is so known, and she's not? Gender and social class inequality, have a play in this?)

Tish is a mirror, a reminder to me. Many questions she had, I have, are still unanswered.

Some questions serve as a guidance: What's mine to do? In a little step?

Some others are generic. Is there a way to really bridge the gap, between a genuine (humanitarian) documentary photography, and the political, economical world of media?

If no doubts the good fights are worth the effort of fighting them... How can the "good fights" be effective in a system that decides against their visibility? Or  they're given visibility only if they carry the same type of violent, patriarchal, polarised, sensationalised way or words that are the standard nowadays? Or they carry that "visual flatness" of some type of documentary photography, aseptic, deprived of any emotion, and often even of humans (equally "violent" in a different way: being a series of still life or landscapes, clean and empty like photos of commercial and residential property)?

What can one, as a media-producer, achieve by exposing the falsity (and violence) of a world that treats us as consumer, rather than as a human? What would be the right "container" for this awareness, so to grow and stay with the readers?

I feel I have been stuck (and felt alone on this) for about 10yrs in this dilemma in the photography arena. How to be the photographer I want to be, when photography is mostly used against my values? With an unethical code that I don't approve? With an esthetic that either silence the human feelings, or make them too loud, sensationalistic and grotesque? How one can be sensible with a camera?

So far, I couldn't find tools or long lasting strategies to find my voice, at the point that the gift of my love for photography has become poisoned in its own environment. For living I have been rather happier to use my photography for a good purpose, (digitising for historical research purposes) but this lead me away from documenting social topics. 

I have seen that building up "a name" by selling what's sensationalised, or even unimportant, or a very polarised version of a presumpted truth, was not what could make me happy or true to myself. Recognition is a fuel only when we can fully believe in its value. And a mask, even the mask of a winner, has never made anyone truly happy.

During this time of hibernation, discovering Non Violent Communication by M. Rosenberg has helped me not only to find the words for my inner world but also the type of communication, the key, I would like to see in the media-world. Right now, hateful speech is the standard in TV or social media. Everything seems to ruin so far that cannot take the time to listen or read a long article.

Non violent communication invited starting from pure observations, to speak in terms of common needs that connect all of us, recalls the empathy we have as humans, inviting us to fully exist without submission or rebellion. Framing with a lens is for me a way of allowing people to tell the stories from their perspective, making them part of the process on how to tell the truth or even rediscover it.

Miki Kashtan has given me again faith that we do matter, all of us, our vision (not intended as opinion, but as the world we want to live in) matters, and we're not alone. She's lighten up a way out of patriarchy rebuilding a sense of togetherness.

So, moved and revitalised in my "photographic core", today I go back to Social Documentary Photography, and Zeke magazine which collects documentary reportages on many unheard stories. I hear that Glenn Ruga, the director (one of the few personalities I have met, in the photography field, most tuned with my own sense of photography) has organised zoom talks, like this:

...which I find very refreshing (and true to my ears).

Responding to the call of our times, in photography, implies many things. One of them is "never alone again"; because now a connection between people that think as you, Tish, is possible. 

Tish died of aneurysm, aged 57, while was searching (without success) a job in a kitchen, after years of living in poverty without even switching on the heating.

Although Tish has passed away, her story and photography is incredibly alive, and needed. It nourishes that place within me, that wants to know an alternative is possible.

In my vision, no other mission-driven photographer like you, should be left poor and alone and unheard. Instead they should be paid for telling us about the world we live in, paid for not being indifferent (in the Gramsci's way), or at least their needs be met outside the market economy. What are the obstacles and barriers to remove, for this to happen, it's ours to discover and do..