RE: [Leica] Re: interacting with strangers -- a very important element of photography

["B. D. Colen" <bdcolen@earthlink.net>]

I'm genuinely curious.  What motivates people to want to take pictures of
others who are suffering?


Eric
>>>

Without even getting to the motivations in Rob's wonderful answer, there is,
of course, the unpleasant reality that seeing the suffering of others makes
some people feel better about their own dreary predicaments. How else does
one explain the fact that so much of "comedy" is based on the suffering and
degradation of the comic or those he/she humiliates?

Still photography has been, and to some degree continues to be, the medium
that forces us to confront many realities we would rather not confront.

While I understand what Rob is saying about Salgado's photographing
"poverty," rather than telling the stories of individual people facing the
adversity of poverty, Salgado's work does shove the issue of world poverty
into the faces of many folks who would otherwise turn away from the sight of
it.

B. D.

- ---
Rob wrote
>>
Then I became interested in people's predicaments and stories and began
trying to tell the stories visually. That was maybe more excusable, at least
I like to think so. The more I go into it, the more I'm interested in the
personal and particular, rather than in big themes like "poverty" or (heaven
help us) "migrations" which use people to illustrate a thesis (my dislike
for SS's basic project - not his talent - grows daily). So nowadays I take
pictures of people in trouble (when I do, which is not always by any means)
because I think it's valuable to highlight the injustices they have suffered
and how they deal with them. How noble! Interestingly enough, however,
people who have been unjustly treated (whether by bombardment or the bank)
very often want to tell their story and welcome an outsider to tell it to.

No doubt other people will have other reasons. Nonetheless, I see it as part
of the essential project of photography, to tell what it's like to wallow
and roll in the mud of life, as we all do.

There's a Zen saying (of course there is!): "suffering is the bread we eat".
Now wasn't that interesting.

http://www.robertappleby.com
Mobile (Italy) 348 336 7990

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