Re: [Leica] Images of Africa WAS salgado et al.

[S Dimitrov <sld@earthlink.net>]

Wonderful, a philippic from B.D., or would that be a, er...never mind.
We're off to diner for now, but I'll gladly address the slice, chop and
dice when we come back.

Slobodan Dimitrov


"B. D. Colen" wrote:
> 
> Say WHAT?!?
> 
> Does the name Matthew Brady ring a bell? Lewis Hine? To name only two of
> the early/founding greats of what came to be called photojournalism.
> What, pray tell, do they have to do with "colonialism?" Or are you
> limiting the discussion to overseas work by photojournalists?
> 
> And why, pray tell, does HCB somehow have to end up in every discussion
> of virtually anything?
> 
> And refuse to go outside of the immediacy of your environment? Why?
> Because you trust what others tell you or show you about the rest of the
> world? Bad move.
> 
> And why tell photographers who are starting out that they don't need to
> go to Stonehenge to see Stonehenge? I certainly tell young photographers
> that they don't need to go to war, to go to the 'third world,' to take
> moving, meaningful photographs of suffering and man's inhumanity to man.
> That, of course, we can find in the house next door far too often. But
> as a general rule to say that you don't need to go somewhere to see
> something? I know that after a good three plus decades of seeing photos
> and film of Stonehenge, when I finally made it to Stonehenge I felt that
> I had been horribly misslead by all those photos, etc....Up close and
> personal Stonehenge was much smaller, meaner, and far far less
> impressive than it is in the photos. So, yes, I had to go to Stonehenge
> to see Stonehenge.
> 
> And, frankly, I had to go to the Third World to better understand what
> poverty and suffering really are, as compared to what we in the U.S.
> think they are.
> 
> B. D.
> 
> S Dimitrov wrote:
> >
> > Main reason why I refused to go outside the immediacy of my environment.
> > The Third World is always a short distance away, physically and
> > mentally. I always tell photographers who are starting out that you
> > don't need to go to Stonehenge to see Stonehenge.
> > Photojournalism has its very foundational antecedents rooted in the
> > Colonial experience. It was developed to show the great strength of
> > Empire by using the personal and intimate in ways that script authorship
> > had yet to catch up to. The schools which teach it, teach ONLY
> > mechanics, and are as devoid of critical thinking as another post
> > humanist entity.
> > One of my problems with HCB, is that he was a colonial who never
> > publicly addressed the issue. He directly comes out the colonial
> > experience, that borders on the pied-noire. His photography, I always
> > felt, was an extension of whatever Republic he was living under at the
> > moment. As the notion of the Republic faded so did his work output.
> > Ortega y Gasset wrote very critically on the issues in a tidy collection
> > of lectures posthumously published under the title--Una interpretacion
> > de la historia universal. Well worth a read if one is going to engage in
> > this kind of debate.
> >
> >  Slobodan Dimitrov