FW: [Leica] Political Correctness

["Peter Choy" <pmcchoy@earthlink.net>]

Dear LUG,

At the risk of kicking a dead horse, I am attaching below Sean Kernan's
reaction to Tina's plight.  Sean is a friend and teacher and a long-standing
Leica shooter (to whom I introduced Tom A's Rapidwinder, which he promptly
wore out but restored to good working order by emergency surgery conducted
under real-time telephone guidance from Tom himself).  In addition to his
fine-art and commercial work (see <www.seankernan.com>), Sean also teaches
at Santa Fe Workshops, where Tina had her collision with political
correctness.

Peter.


> ------Original Message------

(snip)


> My project is "Las Familias" - an exhibit (possibly book) of my photographs
> of Honduran families.  I learned that many galleries will not accept my
> project because it is politically incorrect - I am a photographer from the
> first world photographing people in the third world.  To make the project
> more acceptable it was suggested that I involve the families in the project
> by (a) giving them a camera and letting them photograph their own live (b)
> getting them to write comments about the photographs.  (a) wouldn't work
> because the people I visit don't have time to take photographs - they spend
> all of their waking hours trying to feed their families (b) might work with
> a tape recorder but many of the people I photograph don't read or write -
> and several of the families in the project were killed by Hurricane Mitch -
> do I exclude those photographs?
>
> What do you think about political correctness?  Gallery owners and
> publishers who reviewed our work seemed to think it is an important issue,
> but it honestly never occurred to me.
>
> Leically,
>
> Tina
>
>
> Tina Manley, ASMP
> http://www.tinamanley.com




How deadly!

I have been working on a project in Mexico, and sent some of the work to
Doubletake. There was quite a flurry, but in the end they were returned
because they were incompatible with the "style" of the magazine.

What all of this suggests is that there are a number of slots prepared to
receive work. The architecture of the slots has little or nothing to do with
the work that might be being done at any time. Another way to say this is
that the art business can be a stranger to art.

My dealer won't handle my Mexican work because she can't sell it. I
understand and respect that. But I didn't do it to sell it, I did it to
learn things , and I have continued with it and learned.

The story is told that when Mondrian was young he did some paintings over
his old canvases. When a friend pointed out that he was wasting perfectly
saleable canvases, he said, "I'm not trying to make paintings, I'm trying to
find things out."

I think that in order to learn from your project you have to do it your way.
To tailor it to business risks undercutting that learning. It's not that the
suggestions are outlandish or wrong-headed, and there might be some learning
in them, but to do them for either correctness or saleability seems to risk
diluting thye power of your vision.

In any case the answer probably isn't simple, and will be arrived at through
doing.

Sean Kernan