Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/01/06
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]- --- Emanuel Lowi <mano@proxyma.net> wrote: > I too find the whole fashion and fashion photo > business highly offensive. Its > practitioners are the most potent arm of the > marketing of overpriced useless trinkets > (something none of us Leica users know anything > about, eh -- we whose expenditures > stem from our totally rational needs). > > While there are still millions of children in this > world who own no shoes, the idea > of the expense and trouble expended to get folks > over here to spend a thousand > dollars on some piece of cut and stitched flimsy > material is utterly sickening. You could sell your Leica gear, buy a Yashica T4 and the surplus money could buy hundreds of pairs of shoes for those same children. People involved in the fashion industry, photographers, models, designers, make choices, (including the kid from Canada, looking for his big break). The victims are the seamstresses in sweatshops in the developing world who make substandard wages in poor working conditions. We choose to buy expensive equipment, and part of the enjoyment we get from using a finely made mechanical item is akin to the enjoyment some get from wearing/looking at couture. Yeah, we could all use Arguses and Weston meters, and use the money for a "better" purpose. I don't deny there is exploitation involved; of workers and the self image of many women. But we chose to look at ads and buy periodicals and buy the clothing advertised within. If you don't like it, don't look at it, don't buy it, and teach you children values that matter. There's a bit of envy involved in criticizing fashion photographers, no? They're making a living shooting film/digital images, which some of us on this list, (me included), wish they could do. Maybe it's a grey area morally, but empirically, whose job isn't? Mother Theresa's? Jimmy Carter's? The patron and the artist have been inextricably linked for millenia. Contemporary fashion photography is an extension of that lineage. Patrick __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html