Re: [Leica] Salgado

["Peter A. Klein" <pklein@2alpha.net>]

Peter Klein wrote:
>>Salgado is a darling of the cult of the Third World,
>>Oppression, and the Downtrodden.  This sometimes blinds viewers to the fact
>>that he often magnifies simple tragic scenes of life into Wagnerian
>>proportions that have nothing to do with the lives of the people he is
>>portraying.  He's got a perfect right to do this, both for artistic
>>reasons, and to evoke well-deserved empathy for his subjects.  But
>>something about it sets off my internal critic that says, "careful, you're
>>being manipulated."

Henry Ambrose said:
>EVERY time you view a picture you are seeing the photographers version of
>reality. Every  time you feel and/or react to a picture you are manipulated.

Guy Bennet says:
>Quite true.
>And thank you for saying so.

So I sez:

You are both right, of course.  All that conceded, for some reason
Salgado sometimes seems a little bit "over the top" for me.  It's the
difference between leading someone down a path, vs. shoving them down
the path by the shoulders with an full symphony orchestra blaring the
Immolation scene from Wagner's "Gotterdamerung" in the background.

It's a taste thing, I guess.  HCB's technique and means were not in the
same league as Salgado.  But somehow, HCB tells me as much about the
human condition without beating me over the head with it.  The
preciousness of some of HCB's followers notwithstanding.

With Salgado, there's also the issue of taking awful suffering and
making it maybe too beautiful.  Then again, in a world where we've been
exposed to so many images of suffering that we have become immune to
them, maybe making them too beautiful is a valid way of attracting our
attention.  We have several centuries of religious art as precedent for
that.

- --Peter