[Leica] Photographic Freedom

[lew1716 at gmail.com (Lew Schwartz)]

Without diminishing the importance of Bharani's arguments, I feel that
I must point out that we are giving scant attention to the issue of
populations and social structures that stand passively by while these
misguided, iconoclastic authorities appropriate and erode our rights.
It is, unfortunately, far simpler to champion the individual
photographer whose rights have been trampled (on our behalf) than it
is to visually document the complacency of the public at large who
have elected and support those authorities in the first place. It is
the current trend in street photography and the media in general to
depict the public as composed of self determining, empowered, and
'beautiful' (if only inwardly) individuals, however, it is these
individuals who are supporting the forces of their own repression in
exchange for seeming material wealth. IMO, we are witnessing the
corrupting effect of capitalism ... everyone mouths the principals of
democracy and freedom, yet, at the same time we wink at the everyday
compromises we must make for our families, automobiles and mortgages
(like the fellow doctors in Bharani's hospital). As the exchange
becomes more tenuous, the problem will become more evident. The
greater issue for a concerned photographer is how to document this.

Here's Carl Sandburg (from The People, Yes!)

The people yes
The people will live on.
The learning and blundering people will live on.
    They will be tricked and sold and again sold
And go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds,
    The people so peculiar in renewal and comeback,
    You can't laugh off their capacity to take it.
The mammoth rests between his cyclonic dramas.

Unfortunately, his "nourishing earth" is in increasingly short supply.

-Lew S