Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2002/01/02

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Subject: RE: [Leica] Re: interacting with strangers -- a very important element of photography
From: "Jeffery L.Smith" <jsmith45@bellsouth.net>
Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2002 15:20:43 -0600

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

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