Page 8 of 12 FirstFirst ... 678910 ... LastLast
Results 71 to 80 of 117

Thread: Opinions about exploitation

  1. #71
    Abuser of God's Sunlight
    Join Date
    Aug 2004
    Location
    brooklyn, nyc
    Posts
    5,796

    Opinions about exploitation

    I'd be bored too if I knew everything.

    You're asking me "which is it," but I'm telling you it's a false choice. I'm not saying that taking into account the way a work was made is immaterial ... often knowledge of the process contribute a great deal to what we get out of an image. But there are ways of looking at how an image was made that investigate it's meaning and it's power, and there are ways of looking at it that investigate its maker's ethics. They are different ways of looking, with different goals.

    When I spoke of authenticity, I used the term "sense of authenticity." As we all know intellectually, there's no such thing as simple authenticity in any photographs, journalism or otherwise. but the SENSE of authenticity we get, from both the image and what we're told about it, has an effect on us. What is unique to photography, even staged photography, is its ability to conjure a sense of concrete reality. And again, I don't know how different the impact of W's work would be if he used fake parts. I do know there's a chance it would influene him as he's working with them, but that's not a question I can answer.

    Jorge, if I'm the horse you're trying to make drink, then please do. I'm thirsty. You said I misunderstood your points, so explain what I got wrong. All these angry sounding attacks do not contribute to any kind of clarity.

  2. #72
    Abuser of God's Sunlight
    Join Date
    Aug 2004
    Location
    brooklyn, nyc
    Posts
    5,796

    Opinions about exploitation

    The picture I want to talk about is one of his simpler, less elaborate ones, and one that makes a particularly strong impression on me. "The Kiss."

    There's an ok image of it at http://www.studium.iar.unicamp.br/14/witkin/images/foto22.jpg

    First, some of the obvious. It's disturbing. It wasn't immediately obvious how Witkin did this, but when I figured out that it's two halves of the same face locked in a kiss, both its horror and its symetrical beauty were multiplied. It's based on Brancusi's sculpture of the same name, http://www.talariaenterprises.com/images/3358_lg.jpg

    which uses the same perfect symmetry of identical lovers locked in an embrace as a commentary on intimacy. Witkin takes this device of the symmetrical embrace in a couple of different directions: first, toward the macabre, opening up questions about intimacy and death--is such a perfect match even possible among the living? This also echoes for me Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn, which ponders two lovers frozen for eternity in the perfect moment before a kiss. The poem forlornly points out that no kiss between live lovers could ever be so perfect or so immortal. Another questoin: is such perfect intimacy only possible with yourself? Such perfect symmetry most likely is. This opens up the second direction that the photograph points, which is toward the long tradition in literature and art of contemplating the "other." Edgar Allan Poe was the master of this theme, with a number of stories depicting the personal hell of facing an embodiment of one's self. In it's own horrible way, Witkin paints a more optimistic picture of such an encounter.

    Esthetically, there's the symetry, of course. The two heads form a heart shape. the flesh and arteries and sinews errupting from the necks resemble roots, which puts this image esthetically in the family of traditional still life, which is one that Witkin has explored a great deal.

    The image raises the question: is it possible for something to be both horrible and beautiful? I believe so. And I believe it is more horrible because it is beautiful, and that it feels more "true" because of this.

    I'll allow Milan Kundera to expound on this, because he says it so well (the work he is descibing is the danse sacrale, in Stravinki's Right of Spring):

    I have always, deeply, violently, detested those who look for a POSITION (political, philosophical, religious, whatever) in a work of art rather than searching it for an EFFORT TO KNOW, to understand, to grasp this or that aspect of reality. Until Stravinsky, music was never able to give barbaric rites a grand form. We could not imagine them musically. Which means: we could not imagine the BEAUTY of the barbaric. Without its beauty, the barbaric would remain incomprehensible. (I stress this: to know any phenomenon deeply requires understanding its beauty, actual or potential.) Saying that a bloody rite does possess some beauty--there's the scandal, unbearable, unacceptable. And yet, unless we understand this scandal, unless we get to the very bottom of it, we cannot understand much about man. Stravinski gives the barbaric rite a musical form that is powerful and convincing but does not lie: listen to the last section of the "Sacre," the "Danse Sacrale" ("Sacrificial Dance"): it does not dodge the horror. It is there. Merely shown? Not denounced? But if it were denounced--stripped of its beauty, shown in its hideousness--it would be a cheat, a simplification, a piece of "propaganda." It is BECAUSE it is beautiful that the girl's murder is horrible."

    --From "Improvisation in Homage to Stravinski" in "Testaments Betrayed."

  3. #73

    Join Date
    Sep 2003
    Posts
    203

    Opinions about exploitation

    "Would the power of that picture of the viet kong man about to be executed
    (discussed earlier) be altered if you discovered it had been staged with a
    model? This is an open question; some might say no. "

    That all depends on how you choose to interpret it. Any reputable Hollywood film maker could stage such a scene and make just as powerful an image. Its been done many times in the past and awards are typically given. If you choose to believe the popular myth about the picture, the one that its photographer did not subscribe to, then you have chosen to believe a story that is not founded upon fact and circumstance. Use of photography for that purpose is generally termed propaganda. The more people that choose to believe the propaganda, the more the propagandist is enabled. As more people choose to believe the propagandist, the actual factual story tends to disappear, gets lost.

    That leaves us with the question: where does art end and propaganda begin? Just because something is termed to be "art", does that designation justify bad behavior or fraudulent use? Do a bunch of books full of art-babble give artisitic authenticity to unethical behavior or are they propaganda whose interest is making a buck off the "artiste" that is willing to do the grotesque in the name of "art" whose earning potential increases as the propaganda level surrounding him increases?

    Notice, I keep using the terms choose and choice. Everyone should make their own choices about this stuff. Hopefully that is the case here. I shudder to think people are making these choices for the sake of fitting in. That's what the propagandist likes.

    I for one have never seen much power in Adam's photo nor Capa's. Such scenes happen every second in war. Why glorify one above the other? Just because a photographer was there at the moment, does that make that particular dead soldier's death grimace any more valuable than the others that are happening? Above all, why glorify the death of a brutal murdering terrorist as that "poor" VC was? Witkin was born a few years too late. Josef Goebbels would have loved him, and from what he portrays in his work, he would have thought Auschwitz was a Utopia for him to play in. But I guess that would still be OK since it was "art".

    Sorry guys for teh rant. If a person wants to enable brutality and propaganda as art, that's his or her buisness. Why there seems to be a high level of tolerance for it in the art community escapes me, but that's my choice.

  4. #74

    Join Date
    Sep 2003
    Posts
    203

    Opinions about exploitation

    "Until Stravinsky, music was never able to give barbaric rites a grand form. We could not imagine them musically. Which means: we could not imagine the BEAUTY of the barbaric. Without its beauty, the barbaric would remain incomprehensible. "

    WHAT??? Barbarism is incomprehensible?? Is this art-babble or psycho-babble? Barbarism is the easiest form to understand because its nothing but naked self-justified killing. No codes of conduct, no legal codes, no limits, just kill the other bunch before they kill you.

    Someone that writes that the world didn't understand barbarism until Stravinsky came along didn't have enough to do. Its barbaric that they get paid for it.

    I got much better things to do. I'm outta this one. Where's my camera?

  5. #75
    Abuser of God's Sunlight
    Join Date
    Aug 2004
    Location
    brooklyn, nyc
    Posts
    5,796

    Opinions about exploitation

    Alex, I completely agree with you, both on those notions of choice and on your distaste for propaganda in art. I brought up those war pictures as examples because I think their power, whatever it may be, seems tied in one way or another to the sense people have of their authenticity (acknowledging that the word "authenticity" is itself more the title of a discussion than a simple simple word with a simple definition).

    Your warning of the relationship between propaganda and profit in the art world is worth considering, also, although I'd like to point out that there is more than one entity that falls under the term "art world." And they don't always talk to each other. Among them is the commercial gallery world, which is indeed about profit, and also the non-profit institution world, which is not. It's worth noting that who's hot in the gallery world and who's hot in the museum world only sometimes coincide--and when they do, the museum curators tend to influence the gallery curators much more than the other way around. The photo book publishing world is influenced by both camps, but i think it's significant that no one publishes photo books to make money. It's a money losing business, year in and year out.

  6. #76
    Abuser of God's Sunlight
    Join Date
    Aug 2004
    Location
    brooklyn, nyc
    Posts
    5,796

    Opinions about exploitation

    "WHAT??? Barbarism is incomprehensible?? Is this art-babble or psycho-babble? Barbarism is the easiest form to understand because its nothing but naked self-justified killing. No codes of conduct, no legal codes, no limits, just kill the other bunch before they kill you."

    Easy, Alex.
    the barbarism in the danse sacrale is one of ritualized human sacrifice, not naked self-justified killing. And while it might be intellectually comprehensible to a lot of people, it's a hard thing to grasp on a gut level for many.
    This is actually much of the topic of Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon, a long treatise on bullfighting ... which is another example of a barbaric ritual that many people outside of its world have a hard time comprehending. Dismissing, yes. Condemning, yes. But comprehending, no.

  7. #77

    Join Date
    Sep 2003
    Location
    Portland, OR
    Posts
    743

    Opinions about exploitation

    "Would the power of that picture of the viet kong man about to be executed (discussed earlier) be altered if you discovered it had been staged with a model? This is an open question; some might say no. I suspect most would say yes, because belief in the authenticity of a picture tends to contribute to people's sense of its power. I do know that for myself, the power of robert capa's photograph of the soldier at the moment of being shot was diminished when I learned it had been staged. "

    First off - you need to do better research. The photo you are referring to of the Viet Cong prisoner being assasinated was taken by Eddie Adams. And secondly, I fail to see how you can compare this to Witkin's photos. The VC execution photo was news, it was something that was recorded while it happened (it was also filmed by a crew working for NBC). Witkin's photos are pure construct's for his own purposes, whatever they may be. These thing's are definitely NOT comparable.

    But if you want to use the Eddie Adams photo as a comparison, then perhaps if could be, if Adams had arranged for the NVA to attack during the Tet holiday, get that VC soldier to take over a pagoda in Saigon and kill several Vietnamese and Americans, civilians and solders, and then get the General to appear to shoot the VC prisoner in cold blood. If Adams had done that, then that would be comparable to Witkin's photos. (And by the way, Adams continues to this day to say that the General in the photo that did the execution of this VC prisoner was a hero.)

    I still think Jorge has an excellent point - it is that Witkin arranged the things (corpses included) in his photos. These photos are completely fake - there is nothing "real" about them. And it would not have made any real difference if the "corpses" were faked as well. Maybe it is only because you (and others) know that the corpses are real that you find the photos are interesting. That's certainly my outlook on the amount of my interest in them at this point.

    If Witkin had "found" these arrangements, that would be a completely different thing. But he did not, and that's part of where the problem lies.

    I'll get back to you on your other posts later.

  8. #78

    Opinions about exploitation

    But there are ways of looking at how an image was made that investigate it's meaning and it's power



    LOL......You say "I know everything" and although that is true, maybe you should read the responses given to you on this thread by others than myself and perhaps allow that your ways of looking might just be blinding you to the fact that the king is naked.....Although by this nonsense you just wrote I doubt it will ever happen.... like Alex said, I am outta here, this is a waste of time for someone like me who knows everything... lol....

  9. #79

    Join Date
    Sep 2003
    Location
    Portland, OR
    Posts
    743

    Opinions about exploitation

    "you can take a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink"

    Jorge, don't forget this!

    "You can lead a horse to water, but a pencil must be lead." Stan Laurel

  10. #80

    Opinions about exploitation

    "You can lead a horse to water, but a pencil must be lead." Stan Laurel



    LOL...could this be the only smart thing written on this so far?!?!?.....

Similar Threads

  1. Opinions on Wehman
    By Bruce Schultz in forum Cameras & Camera Accessories
    Replies: 13
    Last Post: 13-Nov-2005, 13:18
  2. Duluth Pack---any opinions?
    By John Kasaian in forum Gear
    Replies: 10
    Last Post: 7-Jun-2005, 03:15
  3. Opinions of 65mm f8 SA
    By Brian Schall in forum Lenses & Lens Accessories
    Replies: 12
    Last Post: 16-Apr-2005, 13:54
  4. Comments and opinions please, 6x7 or 6x9
    By Robert J Pellegrino in forum Cameras & Camera Accessories
    Replies: 6
    Last Post: 19-Jul-2000, 13:26
  5. Opinions of the Horseman LE?
    By Max Rahder in forum Cameras & Camera Accessories
    Replies: 1
    Last Post: 17-Aug-1998, 03:38

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •