U of S | Mailing List Archive | alt-photo-process-l | Re: More than 2¢ worth - much more

Re: More than 2¢ worth - much more



What's interesting to me is that among the people who wrote to scold those of us who were having a little fun about the jargon the call for entries was couched in and to explain it to us in rather patronizing tones, there doesn't seem to be any agreement about what the show is supposed to be about. Some seem to think the show is intended to call the idea of photography-as-documentation into question (a bit late, it seems to me, but that's how I read it as well) and others seem to think the show is intended to celebrate the dying art of documentary photography and maybe breathe new life into it, even to urge its use as a political tool. It would be two different shows, or it would be one very confusing show without a clear focus. And the more people talk about it, the more confused it gets, which I think was kind of my point: it's hard to make a clear statement about anything, when you use jargon to communicate.

So, okay. The Reuters photographer who had all his photographs pulled because he was doctoring them in Photoshop-- where does his overcloned photo fit into all this? I'm inclined to suspect that he was a victim of too much jargon himself; the fact that he thought nothing of filing such an obviously doctored picture with Reuters suggests that he probably went to a school where he learned about semiotics and social resonances and about there being not that much difference between fiction and nonfiction, and took it all way too seriously. He's probably surprised as heck to find his career up in smoke now, just because he wanted the smoke in the picture to look bigger and darker.

Katharine Thayer


On Sep 7, 2006, at 9:21 PM, Ender100@aol.com wrote:

Catherine,

I wouldn't exactly consider myself profoundly conservative.....far from it.

I wasn't dissing academia.

I have nothing against complex ideas.

I do occasionally find that dressing up a simple idea by cloaking it in pretentious language is somewhat tiresome.

Mark Nelson
Precision Digital Negatives


In a message dated 9/6/06 11:40:40 PM, crogers@optusnet.com.au writes:


Unfortunately, dissing academia and more difficult ideas
(and the expression of more difficult ideas) is great sport in this age of
profound conservatism.