LF Katrina work at the met

[paulr]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/22/arts/design/22floo.html?hp&ex=1158897600&en=b90ef2a900efe393&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[Brian Ellis]

Too bad the Times had to wreck the slide show presentation by sticking a move ad at the base of each photograph. One might have thought the Times could forego the smidgeon of revenue this produced in the interest of a decent presentation of the photographer's work.

[Ed Richards]

My own prejudice is toward black and white for Katrina, but I am curious what others think - Does color distract from Polidori's images or enhance them? For example, he has a really pretty pretty picture of the barge. In contrast:

http://biotech.law.lsu.edu/katrina/HTML/4x5%20-%20000360%20-%20ptr_std.jpg

Just around the corner from his Law and Eugenia street picture:

http://biotech.law.lsu.edu/katrina/HTML/4x5%20-%20000919%20-%20ptr_std.jpg

More Katrina pictures (http://biotech.law.lsu.edu/katrina/HTML/index.htm)

[Capocheny]

Too bad the Times had to wreck the slide show presentation by sticking a move ad at the base of each photograph. One might have thought the Times could forego the smidgeon of revenue this produced in the interest of a decent presentation of the photographer's work.


Hear, hear!

Cheers

[Ed Richards]

The Times is not a public gallery. They give away great content, and the only way they can do it is with ads. I am glad to see them show Polidori's work - that will not happen if they cannot make money doing it.

[Kirk Gittings]

My own prejudice is toward black and white for Katrina, but I am curious what others think - Does color distract from Polidori's images or enhance them? For example, he has a really pretty pretty picture of the barge.

The contrast between the "prettiness" of Polidori's images and the subject matter, i find intriging. His vision strikes me as that of a dedicated modernist architectural photographer applied to a post apocayptic scene.

Katrina has become a good lesson in the individuality of personal vision. Has any subject been photographed by so many photographers in recent years? The variety of results is fscinating.

[Mike Boden]

I actually like some of these color images. I can't say that for all of them, but the color of the barge really works for me. The yellow bus really stands out. When I first looked at your B&W image, I didn't really notice the bus.

Anyway, other striking images for me were “5526 Chatham Street.” and 5000 Cartier Avenue, New Orleans, Louisiana, September 2005.” I personally feel that color enhances these images. The subtle colors of the mold and mildew immediately tell me that they're alive and that this is real. Then the stark red walls scream at me. I'm sure with a color like that, the room was loud before the storm, but now it's deafening; the image becomes very powerful as a result.

[Ed Richards]

Good points. Having actually seen a lot of these places, I cannot separate out my own memory of the color from what I see in the black and white images. These are also not really the colors of the scenes, they are considerably punched up. Color is not what you remember from these places - mostly everything the mud touched lost its color edge. Once the outsides of the buildings got washed down, some of the paint started to look bright again. So maybe what I am reacting to is the artificiality of the color. Not that I have any moral issues with turning up the color, I shot a lot of Kodachrome in my time.

I agree with Kirk - it has been interesting looking at the different approaches of folks who dropped in to shoot and who applied their standard techniques to the subject. There is a guy at the photography program at LSU, Neff, who did some really nice portraits of the survivors with 5x7.

My work has been informed by my day job, which includes trying to figure out why these disasters happen and how to prevent them in the future. While there was real heroism, the overwhelming message was stupidity and greed that developed land that was vulnerable to storms, the refusal to admit that flooding was going to happen (it has MANY times in the past) so that there was not real preparation for flooding, and now, watching people rebuild in the same places. So I see a more apocalyptic vision than do most folks who drop in to shoot. I am also doing my "before" pictures of the places that did not flood - THIS TIME.

[Brian Ellis]

The Times is not a public gallery. They give away great content, and the only way they can do it is with ads. I am glad to see them show Polidori's work - that will not happen if they cannot make money doing it.

I don't think I said that there was anything wrong with the Times running ads. My problem was with where they were placed in this instance, i.e. at the base of each photograph.