Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2002/04/29

[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]

Subject: [Leica] fire in the belly
From: "Rob Appleby" <rob@robertappleby.com>
Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2002 09:03:16 +0200

Allan

>>>>>>
Scott, help me out here. If I understand correctly, you are a 34 year
old graduate student with fire in his belly to go to Romania and
photograph homeless people? If that's correct, could you give me a sense
of why Romania? Why not, for example,  Paterson, NJ? Is it for the
travel? What does Romania offer as a photographic venue that Paterson
does not? What is it you are champing at the bit for? Is it to overwhelm
the portfolios of your classmates with a National Geographic location? I
know you state that the project is going to be big. What does "big" mean
here? Big change for the people of Romania? Big help for your career
plans? I just don't know what big means in this context.
>>>>>>

Allan, do you actually _do_ documentary photography? Do you know what it's
like to have an idea and think about it to the point that whenever you hear
the word "Romania", for instance, on the news or come across it in a
bookstore, you feel sick inside because you're not there doing your project?
You feel obsessed and frustrated, nothing else is remotely as interesting.
You get into stupid arguments with your wife, you're bad tempered. Your
family is sick of hearing you talk about this thing that has nothing to do
with their lives. By the time you get there, you've already taken all the
pictures in your head, then you find it's all completely different from how
you imagined it and how it was described to you. Everything you put together
in your head is useless. You feel scared and exhilarated. You probably even
take a couple of days getting up the courage to go and start working. Then
you push yourself off and get stuck into it, feeling totally inadequate to
the task. But you are totally focussed and driven to to do that one thing -
you don't even take an afternoon off to go look at the museums or whatever.
Then when you meet NGO people who tell you they can't talk to you today
because it's Sunday and Sunday's their day off, your mouth hangs open with
amazement that anyone would want to take a day off!

And the fact is, that while there are millions of worthy stories to be
doing, it's the ones the photographer has that kind of feeling about that
result in the best photography. Whether they're in his backyard or someone
else's.

I don't think anyone here has the right to criticise or question Scott's
urge to do this story. If he really wants to do it, he'll find a way with or
without the LUG, I believe. It might not be this year, but next year. But
sniping at him because of your ideas about what's appropriate in some
abstract sense... Do you think, I don't know, a photographer or journalist
who goes to Afghanistan and risks his life to tell a story does it for
money, or thinking of his career? Well, either he's really stupid, or he
does it because it's the thing he wants to do more than anything else at
that time in his life. He can't _not_ do it. It's "big". That's what having
a fire in your belly means, and that can't be criticised or questioned.

PS - if anyone wants to fund me to take pictures, I have a list of projects
as long as my arm... ;-)

- -- Rob

http://www.robertappleby.com
Mobile: (+39) 348 336 7990
Tel: (+39) 059 303436

See City of Crows online at The Digital Journalist:
http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0204/city_intro.htm

- --
To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html

Replies: Reply from Ted Grant <tedgrant@shaw.ca> (Re: [Leica] fire in the belly)