Re: [Leica] Salgado

[S Dimitrov <sld@earthlink.net>]

"Peter A. Klein" wrote:
>
  With Salgado, there's also the issue of taking awful suffering and
> making it maybe too beautiful.  Then again, in a world where we've been
> exposed to so many images of suffering that we have become immune to
> them, maybe making them too beautiful is a valid way of attracting our
> attention.  We have several centuries of religious art as precedent for
> that.
> 

And therein lies the problem, in that precedent. Many of these so called
conscientious photographers will also work for an NGO, often time
contracted out by a government. Or if not a government, then a
subcontractor who receives a grant from a governmental organization who
then hires out a group on the ground to perform the task. That contract
often pits one group against another in the service area. 

I think the photographer, in this instance, is a part of an abusive and
exploitative process. This kind of photography isn't much different from
the work of the  missionaries who went out in the 18th and 19th century
telling non westernized peoples they were naked and/or godless. While in
the past, the mendicant was nothing  more than a precursor of the acts
of dehumanizing outrages that will follow, in our contemporary instance
we have inverted the process. The mendicant/knight is now a knight/
mendicant combination. Now that though we can no longer hide from our
acts, we create an industry to placate and assuage our guilt. 
In my own opinion that's were I see this kind of photographic work. 

 Slobodan Dimitrov