RE: [Leica] Re: Rob &BD

["B. D. Colen" <bdcolen@earthlink.net>]

What you lay out here sounds pretty standard, in terms of a tweak here
and tweak there in order to be able to get the shot; nothing that alters
the 'reality' of the situation.

I would also not suggest that your not wanting to 'pander' to western
preconceptions makes the work propaganda - hopefully it makes it
balanced. As long as the work includes the poverty, etc., that IS part
of the scene - and it certainly does - then it seems to me is that you
are documenting the reality of these people's lives, rather than
capturing nothing but the poverty and filth - which would be its own
form of propaganda.

Once again, I would simply say that our obligation as
journalists/documentarians, IF that is how we see ourselves, is to be
honest in our reporting, to be what Fox is not - 'fair and balanced,'
balanced in the sense of showing all aspects of the situation - which in
the case of City of Crows means showing the 'positive' along with the
negative that's always shown.

Many years ago I wrote a lengthy feature about a couple of racist nuts
who were home schooling their kids in Prince George's County, MD,
outside D.C. This was in the days shortly after forced integration of
the schools through busing, and these delightful ladies were teaching
their kids - using McGufee's Readers - in one of their basements to
avoid having their kids in the integrated schools.

There is NO question that I thought these women were nuts, and evil nuts
at that. And I spent the day with them well aware of my feelings. I
wrote a long, colorful piece,which was almost entirely direct quotes,
along with some physical description and scene setting. 

When the piece ran the next day, most of my friends in the newsroom
thought I had really 'done a number' on my subjects - made them look
like the racist knownothings they were. But my subjects LOVED the piece.
They literally said it was the the only fair piece they had ever read in
the Post, a paper they basically saw as taking its editorial direction
from the Kremlin.;-) 

Why did they love the piece? They loved it because I quoted them
accurately, and in context, and let them, in effect, tell their own
story. Why did my friends think I'd done a number on my subject? They
thought that because I quoted them accurately, and in context, and let
them tell their own story.:-)

I would suggest that doing photo reporting involves making the same
kinds of moves - accurately recording what you see, making sure that you
have the images necessary to tell the whole story you see before you. If
you do that, you are being fair and honest - whatever your intent in
telling the story. Because you are letting the story tell itself.

Does that make sense?

B. D.

- -----Original Message-----
From: owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
[mailto:owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us] On Behalf Of Rob
Appleby
Sent: Thursday, November 06, 2003 1:59 AM
To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
Subject: Re: [Leica] Re: Rob &BD


> I think the current discussion is great. OK: Rob how much did you 
> maneuver stuff? Still love it, just want to know.

The most I would do would be to ask people to move a bit for light, move
out of the way, extend an activity they are already doing if I didn't
get it and thought it was valuable, or maybe ask them to reschedule an
activity if it wasn't a problem for them, they were going to do it
anyway, and I wouldn't be able to photograph it if they didn't.

For example, there is a picture - I don't know if it is online - in City
of Crows of a woman cooking while two children watch TV. The situation
here was that the room was crowded with furniture, and more and more
children kept coming into the room in order to be in the shot. So I
moved a couple of stools out of the way so as to get as far back for the
24 as possible and stopped more kids coming in and giggling and pointing
at me.

Another example is the picture of the beauty parlour. I was sent there
by a contact, but it was closed that day. I was talking to the girl who
runs it and she said that her sister had to go to a party that evening
and if I wanted she could pluck her eyebrows in the beauty parlour
instead of at home, or I could come the next day. I couldn't make it for
the next day, so she very kindly helped me out in this way. I thought it
was important to show a beauty parlour in the slum, and the activity was
going to take place anyway.

Finally, to address the situation that upset Tina: if a couple is
playing with their baby and they're doing it in the darkest corner of
the room so that I'm stuck at a 1/2 a second exposure, I might ask them
if they could just move over to the doorstep into the light. The other
alternative would be to use flash. Actually this has never happened, but
using flash in such a situation would ruin the ambience much more than
asking them to move if they don't mind doing so.

I contend that this is the sort of thing photographers do all the time,
even though they may not even be aware of doing it as a form of
manipulation of the situation as John Collier pointed out. I certainly
don't see how it turns documentary into propaganda, and it certainly has
no effect on the emotional or aesthetic content of the picture - or on
its "truth".

As another example, is using flash less "true" than making do with dodgy
light? After all, most people don't have flashguns going off in their
rooms all the time. In City of Crows there are maybe three or four
pictures shot with flash - are those therefore propagandistic?

Sure, I did City of Crows with certain ideas in mind, about the
misrepresentation of lower class Indian urban life in the media and the
emerging middle class reality of the slums, and I consciously avoided
emphasising aspects which would pander to western preconceptions about
poverty and disease as the normal condition of such places, although
some pictures do show drug addicts, ragpickers, and quite poor people. I
had an agenda, partly to correct or give an alternative view of this
"reality". I had in mind, for instance, Salgado's clichéd shots of the
same place, and Hernando de Soto's critique of the black economy. So to
that extent this is a form of propaganda. But I would suggest that
Tina's pictures are equally propagandistic in the sense that they
reflect her view of the situation she is photographing.

- -- Rob

http://www.robertappleby.com
Mobile: (+39) 348 336 7990
Home: (+39) 0536 63001

All outgoing email scanned by
Norton AntiVirus (TM) 2003 Professional Edition.

- ----- Original Message -----
From: "Roy Feldman" <royfphoto@aol.com>
To: <leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us>
Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2003 10:24 PM
Subject: [Leica] Re: Rob &BD


> After all the junk that is talked about here, Rob and BD are having 
> private conversations about photography ethics? We get Tilly hats and 
> you two are actually talking about things that matter? I can't believe

> that two of the greatest minds in photography today (well perhaps a 
> bit of a stretch) don't include us on that stuff and save us from the 
> 'If I put a leica lens on a canon digital am I still in the club?" 
> stuff. I think the current discussion is great. OK: Rob how much did 
> you maneuver stuff? Still love it, just want to know.
> Roy Feldman
>
> --
> To unsubscribe, see 
> http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html
>


- --
To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html

- --
To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html