Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2007/01/19

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Subject: [leica] photographing the homeless - yo yo yo, hold up!
From: richard-lists at imagecraft.com (Richard)
Date: Fri Jan 19 18:11:15 2007
References: <2E02CF93448C9B4AB3CE1DD46241236E606E@EXCHANGE7.asc.local>

Dang you, just when I thought I have you figured out, you have to post 
something to prove how wrong I am!>

I think the question to ask is: in the end, are you doing it for your own 
benefits, their benefits, or other people's benefits?

And the answer is affected by whether it has been done before (e.g. a 
single Migrant Mother is more powerful than 10,000 similar ones), or 
whether it's a different perspective (e.g. Ansel Adam's pics of the 
Internment Camp vs. Lange's) or whether you are exploiting or documenting 
the situation.

Most homeless pics are exploitation because it doesn't say anything that 
has not been said before, just with a different face. Homelessness in, say, 
Palo Alto, may be interesting because one of our esteemed Councilcritters 
actually said there is no homeless problem in our town a few years ago, but 
I ain't the one doing it.

At 05:33 PM 1/19/2007, Kyle Cassidy wrote:
>...
>i apologise to larry -- he walked into a party in progress. it's 
>heartwarming that so many people will stand up for me, but it's really my 
>bad.  i'm sorry about that larry.
>
>anyway -- i'm very interested in carrying on a discussion of how we as 
>photographers approach delicate situations -- when are we taking advantage 
>of people?  when are we doing a service? when do you photograph tragedy, 
>and when do you put your camera down.

// richard (This email is for mailing lists. To reach me directly, please 
use richard at imagecraft.com) 


In reply to: Message from kcassidy at asc.upenn.edu (Kyle Cassidy) ([leica] photographing the homeless - yo yo yo, hold up!)