Re: [Leica] kyle's lost his @#$@#$! mind - week 35

[Jesse Hellman <palio@miata.net>]

I am a psychiatrist and work with a number of women who have cut
themselves. Photographing a young woman cutting herself is tacitly
condoning what she is doing. The photographer is using her for his
purposes, including his voyeurism and sadism. Is there a message to her
that he cares more for his photography than for her? I would not know
what went on in her mind, but do understand that standing by and
watching, even more profiting from it, is a very destructive thing to
have done.

Can anyone imagine Kyle standing by and photographing her hanging
herself, after having photographed her putting up the rope?

The reason she seems so blank is that she is so unable to feel, and is
not relating to the photographer. The women who have done this often
told me later that they were trying to feel something, that they felt so
blank.

There is a difference between being in a public situation, as a
documentary photographer, where others are acting to help, using your
skill to record the events, and that of trying to profit from an
intimate situation such as this.

It is very difficult to photograph the emotions which a woman such as
this feels. The camera does not record inner feelings, only outward
manifestations. Since the person does not show her emotions, but acts
them out via the cutting, indirect means must be used to try to convey
what she feels. I have rarely seen photos that succeeded. The intense
emotions felt by some schizophrenics have been more successfully
recorded.

Kyle's photographs are not even good, in any event. I hope that this is
because, in spite of his effort to be unencumbered by ethics, he was
made sick by what he was doing.

Jesse