In a recent entry, Michael Shaw discusses the absence of people in the media's coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina: "I suppose the absence of even one soul in either cover is supposed to convey profound loss and disappearance. Still, I find this tendency disconcerting. Just like the lead image from Saturday's front page story in the LA Times (or the previous TIME cover on the catastrophe, for that matter), we hardly see a sign of life. So, are these images effective for the absence of people, or do they reflect a disaster without a human face?" I wouldn't know what the editors and writers at the various magazines and newspapers were thinking, but there is another possible explanation, which Simon Norfolk talks about in this excellent interview. Once you include people in a photograph, they "become what the photograph is." (emphasis in the original interview) Thus, photographing the people who still suffer from the ongoing neglect and mismanagement would exclude those people from the picture - figuratively and literally speaking - who are responsible for that mismanagement (and vice versa).
Comments (1)
Once you include people in a photograph, they "become what the photograph is."
This makes me think of Harry Callahan.
Obviously, Callahan was not photographing a horrible human tragedy but rather his family, however, his pictures of Eleanor (and sometimes Barbara) seem to occasionally deviate from the above assertion. Often they are shown as tiny figures in the overall composition whether it be in the city or the woods. The photographs he does this in are neither portraits or architectural studies, yet they manage to somehow be both.
just a thought.
-c
Posted by cary
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August 28, 2007 9:04 PM
Posted on August 28, 2007 21:04