Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2008/04/03
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]> Would it be better to deliberately not photograph them and pretend > they don't exist? Or, because you say, "general public still > refuses to see "ugly things"" , maybe we need to keep confronting the > general > public with what actually exists so they can't refuse to see it? I > know for a fact that the agencies I have worked with in Central > America and in Africa have made a definite difference in the lives of > thousands of people who now have clean water, dry houses, healthy > livestock, and children who may live to grow up since they've been > inoculated against preventable diseases. Without making people > aware of conditions in those countries, the agencies would never have been > able to raise the money needed to make a difference. Yeah. What she said. It is a very sad fact here in the Western World that many of us judge the severity and significance of social problems solely by how often they are shoved into our faces. To the extent that they CAN be ignored, they WILL be, and those who have the great good fortune (read: luck, for that's all it really is) to live in places where they do not see such things every day will quite happily forget they exist at all, if allowed to do so. Talking about the problem, at the moment, doesn't make HUGE amounts of change happen. Certainly not enough and not quickly... NOT talking about it, however, is a very fast way to make sure NOTHING happens. And to me that's a helluva lot more morally unacceptable than showing the smug and self-righteous jerks photos of a world they don't want to be reminded of. But then I'm one of the reality-based contingent. -- R. Clayton McKee http://www.rcmckee.com Photojournalist rcmckee@rcmckee.com P O Box 571900 voice/fax 713/783-3502 Houston, TX 77257-1900 cell phone # on request