Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2002/01/02
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]I would agree that many folks who watch the God-awful people on Jerry Springer etc. in the afternoons are looking for folks more miserable than themselves (and read some true crime books if you want to find folks who are MUCH worse off than yourself), much in art, music, and literature is based on pain, tragedy, anguish, and conflict, and I think that it is more from a sense of empathizing. Jeffery Smith - -----Original Message----- From: owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us [mailto:owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us] On Behalf Of B. D. Colen Sent: Wednesday, January 02, 2002 11:21 AM To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us Subject: RE: [Leica] Re: interacting with strangers -- a very important element of photography 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 - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html