[Leica] modern photoreportage?

[kcassidy at asc.upenn.edu (Kyle Cassidy)]

i don't get the impression that they're posed in the sense of "staged"
-- and i don't really have a problem with a type of doccumentary
photography that uses "posed" images either purists will no doubt
complain, but i think there's room for a division where a doccumentary
photographer can say "let me take a portrait of you and bob in your
room" 

the photographer can never erase themselves from the scene, and the
problems that arrise, eithically and otherwise if a photographer says
"call me next time you're going shoot up" is something that i think each
photographer must deal with individually (whether or not they'd make a
request like that) -- are you causing someone to do something they
wouldn't do? yes, and no. 

but this is nothing new -- bias begins even before you pick up a camera,
it begins with what you decided to photograph, and there's bias and
influence in every step after that -- from how to light it to what
photos eventually get printed.

for what it's worth, i think these images are a real bang-up job.
they're amazing. though nan goldin probably wants some royalties.

and all the more kudos to her for using a leica.




p.s. who's that guy who "invented" -- what did he call it? "new
journalism"? where you live with the people you're writing about -- he
did that book called "the bike riders"...