From: Judy Seigel (jseigel@panix.com)
Date: 09/14/00-03:18:08 PM Z
Hi again y'all... It is my pleasure to pass along these thoughts from a
travelling fellow subscriber (isn't the Internet wonderful??!!) [Judy]
>From Andre Fuhrmann (Konstanz, presently Rio) -- sent via Judy Seigel.
Dear List,
interesting discussion this is! Can t hold my breath any longer -- though
perhaps I should.
I just went to see an exhibition of part of the Exodus series of Sebastiao
Salgado. He depicts a lot of misery in this world. More than once he has
been accused of profiting from that misery by living (comfortably) from
photographing it. I think that accusation would be valid, if each of his
photos carried a subtitle: "That´s how it should be like!" But it doesn t.
So depicting misery doesn t in general seem to be morally wrong.
Same with photos of the nude female body. If such a photo carried a
subtitle (explicitly or implicitly): "This is a symbol of what women should
be like: exposed, sex slaves, powerless" -- that would be pretty
objectionable. Some (many, most?) photos of female nudes carry such a
subtitle. But some don t. There is nothing wrong with the latter. So
depicting female nudes doesn t in general seem to be morally wrong.
A more interesting question -- to my mind -- is whether there is
"artistically" something wrong with photos of nudes. I believe that Weston
once said something to the effect: "Never photograph the obvious!" -- like
Montblanc at sunset, or Sugar Loaf Mountain, or ... the nude body. Just as
it is difficult -- to put it mildly -- to produce an artistically valid
photo of Sugar Loaf Mountain, so it is with the nude female body. Whatever
the excitement may be that I (male) derive qua voyeur from flipping through
an album of full frame b/w tritone nudes on heavy paper, I cannot help
thinking that the majority of such albums are fairly boring from an
artistic point of view. In short: the subject is difficult -- too
difficult for most of us.
Andre
PD Dr André Fuhrmann
until Oct. 3:
c/o Prof. Dr. Wilson Mendonça
IFCS -- UFRJ, Filosofia
Lgo de São Francisco de Paula, 1
20051-070 Rio de Janeiro, RJ
fuhrmann@ifcs.ufrj.br
thereafter:
FG Philosophie
Universitaet
78453 Konstanz
andre.fuhrmann@uni-konstanz.de
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