Re: [Leica] no politics

[Dave Jenkins <djphoto@vol.com>]

Johnny Deadman wrote:

Brian, is the politics of photography ok? I mean this seriously...
Oddmund's
'magnum' remarks raised some interesting issues about the way images are

used these days.

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I suspect I would not agree very much with either Johnny or Oddmund on
the specifics of politics, but there is something here that goes to the
very heart of Leica use. Are we to use our cameras only to make pretty
pictures, or can we use them to make a difference? If so, how? These are
most appropriate issues for Leica users to discuss.

The Leica has always been, above all else, a tool for reportage. What
photography can do supremely well in the hands of a capable practitioner
is to show, not the root nature of human problems, but the effects of
those problems as they are played out in the lives of people.

For instance, what is the correlation between poverty and crime? Experts
disagree. And photography cannot tell us either. But it can show very
persuasively the effects of both poverty and crime as they are played
out in the lives of human beings.

This documentation of the human condition is to me the highest and best
use of photography, and the Leica does it supremely well. In fact, a
very high percentage of the photographers who have created great
documents of humanity have been Leica users. It is not necessary to know
the politics of the photographer in order to appreciate his photographs
of human need or suffering. The problems exist, and would be the same
whether photographed by a communist or a member of the John Birch
Society. That the victims of religious persecution in the southern Sudan
are being systematically eradicated would be true whether photographed
by a propagandist for the Islamic government or by a journalist from a
mission agency. But photographs made with the skill, heart, and vision
of a true photojournalist arouse my admiration totally apart from the
political viewpoint of their creator.

It is in the interpretation of problems and in proposals toward their
solutions that photography falls short. What the camera cannot do well
is suggest answers to the problems it reveals. Many great
photojournalists have been left-wing in their thinking, and have assumed
that the answer lay in government fixing problems. But such an
assumption bypasses individual responsibility, as defined by Jesus'
answer to the question "Who is my neighbor?"

I am privileged to have a friend, Don Rutledge of Black Star, who is a
great photojournalists, yet is practically unknown to the world at
large. Don's first big story was the book "Black Like Me," for which he
and his Leica followed the author, who was disguised as a black man,
through the South of the 1950s. Don has spent his life using his camera
to not only reveal problems, but also to show what people as individuals
and groups are doing to help.

The biggest problem, I think, is that many people care only about their
own little worlds. Others are overwhelmed with the problems of the world
and do not realize there is anything they can do to help. In either case
they don't want to look at our concience-arousing photo essays, and
advertisers do not like to have their ads next to pictures of reality.
So the market for photojournalism grows smaller and smaller.

Dave Jenkins