Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => User Critiques => Topic started by: BobDavid on May 13, 2015, 12:45:11 pm
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... indoor photography rather than street photography. These pictures are unlikeable. They are autobiographical and unpleasant reminders of boredom and worry.
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Today these two shots of yours taugth me how hard it is (at least for me) to judge a photography when it is so effective in conveying such a close, personal and unpleasent feelings without a plain epic and/or heroic context.
We all know that Florence Owens Thompson, Phan Thi Kim Phuc or Sharbat Gula suffered quite an ordeal, yet those people are quite distant from us and the shots they are in are evaluated almost completely by their photographic value.
But how to judge these two shots of yours?
They are surely quite strong, extremely telling and intimate and I think their effectiveness is their main value.
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Thanks, Diego. I had hesitations about posting these pictures. However, life is real. If I had a better way to express experiential reality, I wouldn't be using a camera. Sometimes it feels uncomfortable to knowingly cross the boundary of what is unsettling from what isn't.
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You're right, life is real and often quite hard, too.
Many people don't mind at all to take (and show) photograph depicting suffering and weakness, as long as they are someone else's.
But it takes real courage to show one's own weakness and suffering.
IMHO I think you did the right thing showing these photographs, because they speak loud.
They speak loud of yourself, of photography in general and of us viewer (or, at least, of me): why it is easer to feel closeness when suffering, instead of happyness, is involved?