[Leica] IMGS: Children of the World

[nod at bouncing.org (Philip Clarke)]

Ken Frazier wrote:
> On Thu, 2009-04-16 at 14:41 +0100, Philip Clarke wrote:
>
>   
>> I don't have an agenda.
>>     
[snip]
> Also, please rethink your earlier remark about photojournalism being
> "unbiased."  Surely you do not mean that?
>   
I'll clarify that, Good photojournalism is unbiased, I believe a good
photojournalist should be able to take pictures on their own doorstep as
well as halfway around the world, if the intent is the identification of
other children as human beings then the series shouldn't have been
limited to the poor in foreign places. If my agenda exists then it is
only so far as to point out an error. I do have an Indian wife who only
remains in the west because of my medical condition (which ironically is
treated by another Indian doctor in London). I was a photojournalist
once and I travelled, and I took pictures to illustrate whatever I was
working on. Now here's the funny thing, when Salgado won his first World
press photo (before I became a photographer), he won with a portfolio of
starving ethiopians travelling across a desert and he showed them with
dignity, endurance, determination and humanity. All that I feel when
looking at Tina's pictures is "load of poor people (some happy) in
miserable conditions", so the only saving grace that I can see is if we
take the identification theme and put in some photos in the USA, then it
becomes a body of work with depth and meaning, she's stated that the
organizations work in the US so the pictures are available (if
"international" is a must, then I'm sure that they'll be some immigrants
available).

Is that biased ? I can't decide, categorically stating things can be
just as bad in the first world is more of a factual representation. We
now have Tina's explanation about the crying child and the clinic, about
the people being taught to be self sufficient, we wouldn't have had that
if I'd just patted her on the head, but it highlights that she hasn't
told the story with the pictures on show, she's just captioned them with
a child's name and location. So maybe Tina has got some great pictures,
but it's not photojournalism in it's current form and in my opinion it's
not suitable for showing to children. If unity is a theme then there
should be a representation of all classes, creeds, castes and colours;
that's certainly not my agenda, the pictures miss the intended points
and though there may be stories behind them and they may be good stories
the showed compilation doesn't work.

Some people feel that a photograph should warrant no further
explanation, in this case the name and location of the picture with the
intended objective and no further explanation are seriously detrimental.

Oh, my father used to say that "charity begins at home", I'm more biased
to the "charity begins with helping those who have had a building fall
on their heads". I am biased towards charity for emergency relief, for
countries sorting out their own problems first and towards
photojournalism as a clear portrayal of the intended subject matter. I'm
not really good at "agenda" or bias, I am good at spotting a mistake.

Last time I did a photographic assignment (7~8 years ago) it was in
India and it was about colour and flowers and the unification of the
classes, how the poor had gainful employment picking the flowers that
ended up in the middle class tables to the high class homes. The job was
"these are flowers, this is how they travel through human hands", not
"the poor live in these crappy conditions and the rich are exploiting
them". I don't think anyone would have drawn that conclusion from the
images because it wasn't true, I reckon I could have gone the other way
and gone "these are the poor exploiting the frivolity of the wealthy for
having perishable goods". I was much more "these are the flowers, they
are pretty whatever the location", yes I'm biased towards flowers being
pretty even though I get hayfever, it was a sacrifice I was prepared to
make. If anyone can work out what happened when Sygma London was bought
out by Corbis and then in turn by Microsoft, then I'd be able to trace
the pictures and get them digitized.