avablog

it's the eternal debate over photographic journalism itself, isn't it? i wonder how many have dashed themselves (photographers i mean) against those shoals throughout entire careers? i don't know that there's an answer. i think they just have to live with it, feeling alternately heroic and deeply, deeply villainous as they document a world's glowing moments and complete calamities.

i can see why mark's dream would resonate back at him from within this photo. and i understand how leah feels, too. like i said, no answers...

This is some interesting reading on the subject, Kim. In part (from end of Chapter 4):

"Nora Ephron (1978) in her book, Scribble Scribble Notes on the Media, devoted a chapter to a description and reaction to Stan Forman's fire escape tragedy. Ephron concluded that "I recognize that printing pictures of corpses raises all sorts of problems about taste and titillation and sensationalism; the fact is, however, that people die. Death happens to be one of life's main events. And it is irresponsible and more than that, inaccurate-for newspapers to fail to show it . . ." (p. 61)."

Jess and I discussed this before I came to work today. All the images coming from Haiti. We are big 'beholders.' The images, however intensely private the pain may be, are everyone's in the largest possible sense. Because we all belong to this world, and we all have obligations and connections to it, and to turn from that is to perish in some small way. I don't see them as exploitative, I see them as honorific. Despite the terrible damage to physical selves, the grime and dust, the grimness of it all, I see the photos coming out as absolutely elegiac. It doesn't matter if it's a war zone, a psychiatric facility in the Ukraine, a camp in Darfur, or the aftermath of a stunning natural disaster. To me, the picture takers are doing essential human work, and I owe them some mysterious debt I can't really fathom, frequently in direct proportion to the discomfort they cause me.

I can't even bear to look at this. I think it is exploitive. I don't want it here.