Jostein wrote: Hi Jostein,
Comments interspaced: > > Considering we are bombarded every day by images from television, > computer > > screens, papers and magazines and advertising hoardings, it's > amazing we > > have the capacity to be stopped in our tracks from time to > time by a > > particular image. > > Nah... what's more amazing is our capacity to forget all the others. I've thought about this and I'm not sure. Most images now to grab our attention have a shock value; either something outrageous or something very much out of place to grab our attention. Is this why such images grab our attention, in that it is something out of place in our ordered society? > Shel's images may mean something special in an american > cultural context, but I find most of his attempts to do > drop-out documentary uninteresting. Probably as it would fail > to touch most Californians to see a drop-out from the winter > streets of Oslo, should I be so inclined as to photograph > them. Humans apply distance to observed tragedy to tone it > down. The ones that we don't forget immediately are the ones > that trigger something that has a reference to the observer's > own social context. > Shel was lucky this time to trigger someone's social > references badly enough to start a discussion over the theme > depicted. If some of the Europeans (like Bob W, Valentin, > Alin or myself) had been first to respond, the whole > dicussion would have taken a totally different direction. For > good or for bad, I don't know. I agree, but there is something of a global nature to this particular issue isn't there, which isn't right to replicate anywhere. To be honest, I would be more interested to see a few different scenes around it at how passers by react to such a scene. It is interesting to see who treats such people as humans and who treats them as no more street furniture. > > Most of the people I chat to about photography, expect it > to be about > > the capture of happy family events or something pretty. > So do > > people not want a reflection of reality, should we not record war > images, > > poverty or other things that remind us of a part of the real world? > > Absolutely. And please also include pictures of endangered > species and environmental issues that makes our planet a > progressively worse place to stay. Ken Wallers beautiful > glacier shots may soon be documents of a different past. Yes, I quite agree. > The real question is: which part of the real world triggers > your own references to reality, and which images linger long > enough in *your* memory to make a difference to you? (a > generalised "you", > Malcolm...:-)) True. Whichever image you take will connect with someone. > > Or do we live with the images as a reminder of the past and present > and hope > > they make a contribution to changing the future? > > If I got it right, Shel renounced the social agenda he was > accused of having. His photos apparently has social resonance > to US americans, though, otherwise he wouldn't have been > accused in the first > place...:-) > > Photography has the power to deal with such things, and I > think *most* photographers should have a concious > relationship to this. If a photographer choose to emphasise > on a reflection of reality, as Malcolm put it, it cannot be > dismissed afterwards as "just a snapshot, really". And yet we touch on just one aspect of life here. But I really think we ought to be recording these and many other aspects of life as a rolling record of not only social history, but the evolution of photography too. Malcolm
