From: Judy Seigel (jseigel@panix.com)
Date: 09/22/02-03:59:52 PM Z
Marco,
Because some so-called street photography could be used to mock or
diminish people is hardly a reason to deny it -- after all, some marriages
are abusive, some teachers are sadists, and so forth, yet we don't outlaw
these institutions.
As a matter of fact, the street photography that comes to my mind for the
most part romanticizes people, makes even the fat and retarded look
appealing -- as for instance Faurer's "Eddie" and most Cartier-Bresson.
Even Robert Frank probably shows folks as would please them. The one
photographer I think of who consistently destroys people is William Klein
-- he is the genius who shows that if you stick a wide-angle lens in
anyone's face they look freakish: well, duh. If you wanted to ban his
photographs from face of the earth you'd be doing humanity and photography
a favor -- because at least in those I'm familiar with there's NO OTHER
IDEA, except hey hey look at the freaks. He's a one-trick pony -- bent on
freakizing quite normal looking people.
So I again conclude that refraining from this mode is a kind of
squeamishness on the part of the photographer somehow made into a
principle of *ethics* (your word) -- perhaps to cover the inhibition.
I'll add that I myself have often chickened out, and I certainly don't
find the mode tension free -- tho in my work at Times Square I found ways
to station myself so as not to be noticed, or minimally.
Meanwhile folks on this list have also claimed the best work requires
total *immersion.* I'm not claiming "best" or any ranking for myself, only
discussing the principles -- but the project, for what it's worth, was
total immersion -- in more than 4 years I knew every inch of that ground,
every store front, & many of the hangers out... if that matters, which
some folks around here seemed to think does. I'm not sure that I took
better pictures on day the last than day the first, tho, having taken so
many more, the total was more good ones, or more I considered "good" --
you might not.
However, trust me -- there is no safe, risk-free art -- or so my own
observation, schooling, mentors, teachers, and "the literature"
consistently declare. There are all kinds of risks involved in sticking
your neck out --- whether of process, subject, conceptual, or -- physical.
Even "fancy borders" if you could believe was subject to defamation !!!
But again, I say, for SURE, whether the subject likes his her picture, is
ABSOLUTELY irrelevant, as my story about my beautiful portrait of Lynn so
amply illustrates. That matters for a portrait studio, not for excellence
in "art."
So folks here mentioned "comfort level" -- which would be a *new
criterion* for art -- not just a bad one but inverse of all our art
values. (Tho our fave critic Jed Perl wrote for many years for a magazine
called "New Criterion" -- coincidence ?) Anyway, conventional pictures
like Ansel Adams have no problem with "comfort level", but in the big
picture of art, somehow The Agony and the Ecstasy and the Comfort Level
seems unlikely.
If you have no taste for it, no one, as I said, is trying to force you. My
point was that the grounds for dismissing the genre were personal feelings
raised to general principle -- assertions or assumptions that considered
objectively, IMO, do not compute.
Thanks for listening.
Judy
On Sun, 22 Sep 2002, Marco Milazzo wrote:
> 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
>
>
>
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