Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/08/29

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Subject: RE: [Leica] Personal portfolios of misery
From: "B. D. Colen" <bdcolen@earthlink.net>
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2000 18:48:38 -0400

> >From: Jim Brick [mailto:jim_brick@agilent.com]
>
> >
> >What I don't like, actually detest, is the merging of a
> >terribly troubled
> >soul with fine art and/or a personal portfolio.
> >
> >Neither a personal portfolio nor fine art should be made,
> >based upon the misery of another human being.

Hmmmmmm....There goes the vast majority of pre-19th century painting, to say
nothing of the sculpture.....

To object to exploitation is one thing, to object to the presentation of
suffering in art is another....What about the work of virtually all the
outstanding documentary photographers of the past 50 years? What about
Eugene Smith's Minimata (forgive my spelling)? And Eugene Richards' Cocaine
and poverty work? What about Nachtwey and Salgado? What, for that matter,
about Tina "Mother LUG" Manley's  Central American work?

Good documentary work often presents the suffering of those whose lives we
so easily ignore, and it often makes it presentable by presenting it as art.

B. D.