RE: [Leica] Righteous indignation

[Austin Franklin <austin@darkroom.com>]

> Often disputes involving the ethics of photography are redolent
> of baleful,
> fundamentalist injunctions by ayatollahs and rebbes alike against
> representation, and it is unclear when if at all compassion and artistic
> endeavor intersect. Some of the subjects inhabiting the
> photographs of Diane
> Arbus seem neither more nor less real than those in paintings by Francis
> Bacon. Despite the fact that the causal chain leading to the latter's
> subjects may be more circuitous, only a mad few would presume to
> have told
> Bacon what and whom to depict. Counterexamples abound perhaps, but at the
> risk of conflating whether a work is successful with its right to exist.

This is eloquently stated, and marvelously pedantic ;-)  Bravo!