Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2010/03/21
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Sonny et al. -- Interesting that my remarks led to memories of the civil rights movement. It'd be grand to start a gallery of some of those images from all of you if you have any scanned. My point was not about photographing the marches, however. I thought Dr. T had put forward the usual bromide about how nice and decent and well behaved everyone was 40 years ago but I think THAT idea (which he modified later by revealing to me he meant CANADA for god's sake, hell, it's always decent there if you're not French and decent a lot of the time even if you are) anyway the "everyone was so decent back then" idea I think is, you know, fer da boids. Those days were vicious, as many of you got to observe and document first hand it sounds like. The Chicago convention, someone noted. They beat delegates on the floor of the convention hall. Then the nation, apparently not satisfied with this display of raw power by the authorities, gave "law and order" candidates (read: put down the blacks and the lefties) Nixon and Wallace a combined 60 percent of the vote. Today is a little different. One of the things I was noticing in the photos of the Dr. King march in 68 -- that who was it? Jeffery? posted -- was how much (overall, the general mean) darker skinned the African-American population looks in those photos than they look now, say, in Harlem, where I lived for a long time, or even New Orleans or Virginia which I've visited in the last decade. There's been a lot of racial mixing in the last forty years in this country. Anyway those were certainly not, socially, between people and among strangers, our kindest hours. Now is much much better. The New York City of the Kitty Genovese days is long gone and in fact for many years now I have sworn to skeptical out-of-towners that I have never been to a place where people are more likely to go out of their way to help a stranger than they are in the New York City I have known. Those old days were not at all nicer than now but they were a helluva lot smarter*. We're generally nicer now but uncomplainingly stupider, which is why it's easy to get some meaningless hysteria stirred up a la Burlington, and to get the police way over involved, etc. The society has worked very very hard to make itself as stupid as it now is, and guess what: the effort's paying off. Note the distribution of wealth (we're back to the 1890s basically) and social mobility (last among OECD nations, so much for the "American Dream"), then versus now. Note that Johnson got Medicaid through Congress in 1965 a lot more easily than Obama can push his half-assed bill against the interests of money and corporate control. So, I hope it's clear that my remarks had nothing to do with criticizing or commenting on the work of great photographers forty years ago or now. It's about the radically altered milieux in which they work. * Footnote: Someone left a 1966 copy of Playboy in the lobby of our building when we were still at 109th street. Most of the nudie pictures had been clipped out which was sad but the table of contents is a list of many of the most important and interesting and controversial writers and critics of that day -- an extraordinary lineup. And they did this 12 months a year. And people actually did read some of that stuff. They certainly didn't *resent*it as they would now. They'd have admitted to some guilt, I suspect, or shame actually is more correct, if it was revealed that the editorial copy was too hard for them or over their heads. There isn't an American magazine now, including The New Yorker, that is doing even a tenth of what that one was doing in a single issue. On Sat, Mar 20, 2010 at 9:39 AM, Sonny Carter <sonc.hegr at gmail.com> wrote: > On Sat, Mar 20, 2010 at 12:58 AM, Vince Passaro <passaro.vince at gmail.com > >wrote: > > > Whadda load of horse crap. > > > > Vince, I wasn't there for the firehoses, but I was for the marches. I think > you owe all of us who made it possible for you to get out there and shoot a > little break. > > > > > -- > Regards, > > Sonny > http://www.sonc.com > http://sonc.stumbleupon.com/ > Natchitoches, Louisiana > (+31.754164,-093.099080) > > USA > > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information >