From: Steve Bell (veracity000@earthlink.net)
Date: 09/22/02-09:45:46 AM Z
Marco,
I hope you won't mind if I interject in this discussion.
I just have one question for you regarding one of your statements:
"some street photography seems designed to make
people look ugly, venial, ridiculous, etc."
I don't know if this is necessarily a bad thing. I certainly do value an
artists vision, and if this happens to be the way that the photographer
sees people and the world, is it such a bad thing? I shot a good many roll
of film at the A22 Protests in DC last year, and many of them were of
police officers. These photographs certainly show the officers in a bad
light, as that was how i saw them, and it was also my intention.
So if some photographer sees people as, say petty, stupid wastes of space,
or any other negative idea, why is it prohibited that they express said
feelings?
I hope i'm not completely off the mark or out of line here. And also,
please don't take this message to think that my ideas on people are that
they are petty, stupid wastes of space. I only think that when i'm driving
during rush hour :)
Steve
> [Original Message]
> From: Marco Milazzo <mmilazz1@elp.rr.com>
> To: <alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca>
> Date: 9/22/2002 11:22:41 AM
> Subject: To Judy -- Ethical issues of street photography
>
> Judy,
>
> Thanks for responding to my message with civility. I'll do the same. But
> for the moment, let's skip over personal issues of my feelings and yours,
> and just look at street photography, or really candid photography in
> general. At bottom, I'm just asking a question. It may be a question
that
> was answered in "Criticism 101," but I didn't take that course, so maybe
we
> can discuss it for a short while here.
>
> This is my premise: Sure life isn't fair -- that's a "given." But I think
> we're supposed to try to make it as fair as possible. Having an
> unflattering picture of you taken without your permission hanging on a
> gallery wall may seem like small potatoes compared to some injustices
> society can deal out, but it has potential for real abusiveness.
>
> The real point is that freedom to photograph people without their
permission
> also implies freedom to distort their image, to catch them at their worst,
> or to tack onto their picture, some title just a bit short of slander.
> That's all perfectly legal.
>
> (By the way, most of us got the "Arrington vs. the NY Times" case wrong.
I
> later learned that an appeal court decided that ending up on the cover of
> the Times Magazine is the price we may have to pay for living in a society
> with a free flow of information.)
>
> Not all street photography is abusive. I see lots of street photography
--
> Cartier-Bresson's for instance -- which (pardon the corniness), seems
like a
> celebration of life. But some street photography seems designed to make
> people look ugly, venial, ridiculous, etc. in one way or another.
>
> As I sit here this Sunday morning, caffeine- and carbohydrate starved, my
> brain is unable to come up with a resounding summation, so let me stop
here,
> and say that if any of this strikes a note in your symphony, please
> respond -- I'm all ears. If not, well it was just an idea.
>
> Marco
>
--- Steve Bell
--- Veracity000@earthlink.net
--- http://www.unbeknownst.org/~insurrective /
http://www.angelfire.com/zine2/insurrection
--- In fact, rock, rather than being an example of how freedom can be
achieved within the capitalist structure, is
an example of how capitalism can, almost without a conscious effort,
deceive those whom it oppresses...So
effective has the rock industry been in encouraging the spirit of
optimistic youth take-over that rock's truly
hard political edge, it's constant exploration of the varieties of
youthful frustration, has been ignored
and softened. --Michael Lydon
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