Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/08/02
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]I think before you should prejudge you should visit the McCullin exhibition and see his images which brought tears to the eyes of virtually every person who viewed them, and has done a tremendous job raising public and, more importantly, political awareness to a major problem. They were done on behalf of a major charity who are reaping the benefits in their donations and therefore able to do more great work. It is only by the efforts of photographers like Salgado and McCullin that tragedies of this magnitude are brought to the attention of the masses and kept in the forefront of their thoughts. After all, if McCullins photographs are so banal why was he stopped by the Ministry of Defence in the UK from covering the Falklands crisis because he would send back images which would show it as it really was instead of the controlled images that they desired for their political ends. It is photojournalism that explains man to mankind and man to himself (not my quote) and to belittle the work of such great people in this way is disappointing in the extreme. Gerry > I think it would be more surprising and delightful to see the > unexpected, e.g. McCullin going to Africa, covering the AIDS epidemic and bringing > back - beautiful pictures of people - in colour - albeit the obvious misery and NOT > reproducing the average African- poverty/misery- in-B/W scheme. > Something that > gives these victims of photojournalism back their dignity. > Something that one > would NOT expect. Something that would let us ask: what is really going on > there?