[Leica] what we talk about when we talk about women

["kyle cassidy" <kcassidy@asc.upenn.edu>]

>Well said Photo Phreak ... on a subject that is
>"taboo"... to a point that a woman's beauty, is
>becoming politically incorrect to comment on.

there's nothing wrong with commenting on a woman (or anyone's) physical
attractiveness. it is the derisiveness of some of these comments which
bothers me. when you say "wow, nice tits doll" you are not commenting on
someone's beauty, you're deriding them.

while i'm certainly guilty of objectification of my subjects -- and i don't
think that's necessarily wrong -- i do respect them. they're human beings,
they're my friends, and they've trusted me. it's a betrayal of that trust if
they then become the victims of oafish commentary. like the photographs or
dislike them, but realize what risks models take when they put themselves in
front of our cameras, especially when we ask them to take off their clothes
first; they're making themselves vulnerable because they trust us to make
something beautiful or meaningful -- as photographers and (hopefully)
artists we are influencing how people around us think and how they behave.
this is an awesome responsibility. i hope that i do justice to my subjects
when i represent them. there are enough girls out there every day getting
run over by the modeling industry, who get talked into doing things they
don't really want to do by unscrupulous people, i don't want to contribute
to that.

and please remember, this mailing list isn't ted and b.d. and me and marc
and whoever sitting on your back porch drinking beer at 1:00 in the morning
at a hunting lodge in the remote wilderness of wyoming, it's a worldwide
forum with thousands of people listening and a searchable archive. whatever
you think you may be saying to just a few other people is going into the
mailboxes of many.

i may not be serious about much, but i'm serious about how photographers
treat their models. and if i've taken someone who trusted me with the image
of their own self worth and opened them up to mockery, i've failed in that
contract and i need to go back to photographing bugs.

i would suggest that when commenting on someone's physical appearance, even
when you think you are complementing them, (and by this i mean the royal
"you," meaning "all of us") imagine someone else is saying it about your
wife or daughter before you commit it to the public record. because that's
who we're talking about -- we're talking about the way that we, as artists,
are conditioning the world to look at all women.

i happen to think that's a beautiful shot -- and were i to see colleen, i'd
say "hey, you look great."

just my .02

kc






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