Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2007/01/19
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Here's an article from The New York Times on Thursday, Jan. 18, with a large photograph of a homeless man, who was sued for $1 million by a Manhattan antiques dealer for parking himself in front of the store and making customers shy away... _http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/18/nyregion/18suit.html?_r=1&oref=slogin_ (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/18/nyregion/18suit.html?_r=1&oref=slogin) When I was much younger, I took many pictures of the destitute in various foreign countries and never gave it a second thought. As I look upon it now, I believe we have a responsibility to the unfortunate and must give them their right to the same privacy that we want for ourselves. On my honeymoon in Peru ages ago, I took photographs of Indians in the doorway of their humble huts, although they did not exactly welcome it. In Puerto Rico around the same time, when one of the popular tunes on the radio was: "Cuando llegar? la televisi?n?" When will television come?, I took pictures in the slums of all the television antennas on the rooftops of all the shacks...But when I gave a slide show there of these and other upscale photographs , my wife [who is Puerto Rican] and all her friends were very critical of the slum photographs...It was the first -- and last -- time I've shown the pictures... Still, as The New York Times story demonstrates, the homeless remain a major challenge and if we treat the subject with care, I, for one, do not believe we should bury it as we used to do with the drugs and alcoholism that plagued the blacks in Harlem. The rats from the slums have a habit of finding their way to Park Avenue... -- bob cole From: "Kyle Cassidy" Subject: [Leica] photographing the homeless > It's a strict violation of the 10 Commandments of Plug Photography to > photograph the homeless, because it's such a cheap shot at making a > shortcut to meaning. It allows us to appear socially conscious while > keeping 50 milimieters of distance between a wrecked human life and our > own. Maybe I should change that rule to "Don't photograph the homeless > with anything wide than a 15mm". If you're going to do it, you should > have your face up in it.