Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/11/06
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]> > Tim, > > You dismiss any attempt at saying you can't do something, like directing a > documentary picture, as politically correct or puritan fundamentalism. > > Bob > Bob - please read the posts so you understand what we were talking about. we were very specifically discussing the situation where a photojournalist has had an award taken away because they used - in the digital realm - what are very traditional tools that have been used been the darkroom by photojournalists for generations - and accepted as completely ethical. Because there is now a fear that as everything is digital it's all "so easy to do" (actually I don't quite know what the fear is) all of a sudden there is a knee-jerk reaction against any kind of aesthetic adjustment at all to the image. Tina's link explained this very specific issue well. The issue I raised of McCullin and Nachtwey dodging and burning the sky in a photograph and then another photojournalist saying that was unacceptable manipulation was what I was specifically referring to as the politically correct or puritan fundamentalist photojournalistic "ethics" and was an example of this knee-jerk idiocy - or as Pedro Meyer calls it - the fictions of a "Code of Ethics" . read the link Tina posted - it pretty much explains it - that's what we were specifically talking about. http://www.zonezero.com/editorial/octubre03/october.html tim PS - as for "directing" documentary photography - there's no real you can or you can't - the fact is people do - it just depends what form of documentary photography you are talking about... it's such a broad field (probably to broad a field for the term to mean anything?). Mary Ellen Marks documentary portraits? of course they are directed. But that was another thread - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html