Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/06/26
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B.D. is a tough customer. I would say here that ethics/morality has been
sacrificed in the name of art. And art it is. These are truely powerful
pictures, as fine as any. Yes, they make us uncomfortable. Art has a way of
doing that, even as Norman Rockwell tells us all is right with the world. And
I think they are no worse than the pictures by Jock Sturgis of his family
friends, which seem to have a more obvious erotic content. At the same time,
what about those "Inferno" pictures by Mr. Nachtwey? I see something truely
obscene in those-- his obvious satisfactions from the suffering of others. He
seems to deny all complicity in the events he documents, even as he exploits
them for his own purposes, as If he is somehow above it. I don't think he
qualifies for sainthood. And I don't buy the rap that he is "an anti-war"
photographer at all.
Rather, it seems that Mann and Nachtwey have both sold their souls to the
devil, just as bluesman Robert Johnson supposedly did to become the best
blues player .
I don't have a problem with that I believe sin is a personal choice we
can make, like abortion. It's the hypocracy that I find troubling.
As Philip-Lorca Dicorcia put it in the intro to his "Streetwork" book,
"those that describe themselves as artists seem to me to make a presumptive
assessment of their worth, and they claim the same moral higher ground that
photojournalists do. I have problems accepting either claim to moral
authority."
Arthur