RE: [Leica] Re:Nachtwey was Sally Mann, digest V17 #195

["B. D. Colen" <bdcolen@earthlink.net>]

Selling your soul to the devil is building a reputation - and making a lot
of money, taking nude photos of your kids and peddling them around the
world....NOT making a record of man's inhumanity to man....I agree
wholeheartedly with Martin's assessment of Nachtwey's work coming across as
taken by someone shocked, numbed, by what he was photographing..Someone
saying - Okay, world, what are you going to do about this?

B. D.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
> [mailto:owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us]On Behalf Of Martin
> Howard
> Sent: Monday, June 26, 2000 1:50 PM
> To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
> Subject: Re: [Leica] Re:Nachtwey was Sally Mann, digest V17 #195
>
>
> ARTHURWG@aol.com jotted down the following:
>
> > Nachtwey seems to hold himself superior to his
> > subjects; like one critic said, it's difficult to distinguish
> the living from
> > the dead.
>
> I don't get that from his stuff at all.  Instead, I get the
> feeling that the
> pictures were taken by someone who was almost numbed by shock and
> horror at
> the existance of those kinds of events and conditions.  In some of his
> pictures, there ISN'T much distinguishing the living from the
> dead.  Animate
> corpses.
>
> Rather than come across as someone who is flaunting their superiority, or
> taking pleasure in the horrors he sees, Nachtwey (through his pictures)
> strikes me as someone who has the courage to not only face these scenes
> (rather than pretend that they don't exist), but the composure to take
> photographs and communicate it to and audience too.
>
> What I think is important about his pictures is that they are not at the
> height of the action: They are not the usual, violence and sacrifice-
> glorifying pictures of the fighting and war as a whole, but
> pictures of the
> civilian population, collateral casualties that otherwise are never known
> about.  Individuals who too are humans, only forgotten ones.
> Ones that are
> not even acknowledged.
>
> (I don't understand your stuff about sin and the devil and selling your
> soul.  I don't see what they have to do with contemporary photography.)
>
> M.
>
> --
> Martin Howard                     |
> Visiting Scholar, CSEL, OSU       | People don't like to be parameters
> email: howard.390@osu.edu         | in an equation.
> www: http://mvhoward.i.am/        +---------------------------------------
>
>