Photographic evidence

To immediately understand the reach of Photo L.A., the mammoth photography show at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium this weekend, you need only start with one exhibit.

In one image by Didier Lefevre from “Doctors Without Borders: Photographs From Afghanistan (1984-2004),” a medical caravan makes its way through an Afghan mountainscape, pack animals laden with supplies and a gun slung over a man’s back.

In another Lefevre photo, a tiny boy stares helplessly at the camera, his teenage sister bleeding by his side. The caption reads: “Ahmadjon has no visible wounds, but dies from internal bleeding only minutes after this photograph is taken. His sister survives.”

Both photos from 1986 tell part of a two-decade story of conflict in Afghanistan as well as the involvement there of Doctors Without Borders, which was established in 1971 by a group of French physicians and journalists to establish medical services in needy countries. Now a vast, international organization, it works as a kind of physician exchange program, with doctors from around the world serving in foreign locations for limited stints.

The exhibit will feature photos taken by a dozen photographers over the last 20 of the program’s 24-year involvement in Afghanistan. The group pulled out of the country in July after five of its staff members were killed.

“The photos in the show are really illustrative of the reality of the day to day in that country,” says Los Angeles native Brigg Reilly, epidemiologist and program officer for Doctors Without Borders, “and images, in general, tend to convey what is really lacking with words. As an organization, Doctors Without Borders has a double mandate, which is both to doctor and then to bear witness to these events, and tell the story of the plight of these people.

“The photos are able to really illustrate what these people are undergoing every day and bring those issues to the attention of the larger world.”

In organizing Photo L.A. this year, gallery owner Stephen Cohen has tried to bring in work that reflects an ever-expanding global community.

He also attempted to appeal to a wide variety of tastes. There are the photo canon classics -- prints by Edward Weston, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Man Ray -- as well as modern, experimental work from a cast of relative unknowns.

“We try to make the experience as wide as possible,” Cohen says. “We have book publishers and private and public dealers from over 20 cities. We also have over 90 galleries that are showing their work.”

A section of the event will be devoted to “vernacular” art, which is essentially found “folk” photography; snapshots culled from family photo albums, dated commercial work and even the local thrift shop.

“ ‘Vernacular photography’ is sort of a catch-all phrase for photos that were not taken, intentionally, as artwork,” Cohen says. “There are different types of these kinds of photographs, the flea-market finds and the industry and commercial photographs. They can be kitsch and camp, but they can also be very profound. Their content takes on a different meaning with the passing of time. And with an untrained photographer, sometimes there is a freshness to these images, a fresh, unschooled eye, that can be quite revelatory.”

A kind of collector’s free-for-all, gallery clubhouse and traveling museum, Photo L.A. was conceived in 1992 and has since grown into something much grander and more sprawling than Cohen ever expected.

“The first event was at Butterfields,” Cohen says, “but it grew from there and the demands for space just got bigger and bigger. Even the auditorium is too small for what the potential audience could be.”