Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/03/01
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]I wouldn't worry too much about it Lee. Just go with your instincts. You obviously care enough about the people not to exploit their suffering. I like the "Church Steps" photo. I think the subtlety and composition really come together. Mike Durling - ----- Original Message ----- From: "Lee Bacchus" <lbacchus@home.com> To: <leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us> Sent: Wednesday, February 28, 2001 2:16 PM Subject: [Leica] WEEK 9 (OR WHATEVER). This week's shot and its alternate are from a small project I'm working on for a local community service group that toils in one of the Western world's most notorious neighborhoods, Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. It's a small area with big problems: drug use that leads to more than 200 overdose deaths a year, epidemic HIV infection and the ravages of poverty. For me, it presented a difficult photographic problem < and not just the danger from the more paranoid crack addicts who like cameras about as much as they like detox (I've been confronted three times, threatened twice but never assaulted). For me the problem is in how to portray a neighborhood like this without dredging up the standard tough-love, in-your-face imagery of needle injections or the hard-core grotesques that play to middle-class fears but little else < or worse, dispensing candy-coated images with cornball cliches. Most of what I've shot so far are simple and straight shots of people on the street (whom I've asked) but a few are of the unavoidable evidence of the place's hellish, sometimes hidden nightmare. I'm trying for a quiet reminder here in these images, not a loud exclamation. But perhaps they are too melodramatic even at that. I'd appreciate any responses. Scroll to the bottom of http://www.photo.net/photodb/presentation.tcl?presentation_id=52810 to view. Thanks for any help, Lee Bacchus Vancouver