Luminous Landscape Forum

The Art of Photography => But is it Art? => Topic started by: -Tom- on November 13, 2012, 01:30:27 pm

Title: Anyone else desensitized ?
Post by: -Tom- on November 13, 2012, 01:30:27 pm
I was just browsing through my favorite photojournalism site (In focus) because they always have the most beautiful, high quality shots from all the latest important events over the world.

Their latest gallery feature are images from Syria. I've seen some war photography in my life (although I didn't look into it that much, don't like it, find it a bit vulture-istic) but the shots they have there now are crazy. There's a sequence shot of a guy running from the sniper fire over the street, running in one photo and taken down in another. There's a photo from sniper's point of view, looking through the scope.

I glanced over the images and continued surfing around. Although I'm aware I have some ADHD going on, I can't say I was impressed with the shots.

Am I wrong for thinking that we didn't have this influx of "gross" photography until the digital era? And are these photos doing anything good, or are they just desensitizing people, getting them used to the horrors?
Title: Re: Anyone else desensitized ?
Post by: Jim Pascoe on November 14, 2012, 01:58:45 pm
Tom, you may have led a sheltered life, but these sorts of images have been around for decades, especially since the 1970's.  I don't think it will desensitise anyone because it is showing the pointless horror that most wars are.  Not sure what you mean by not being "impressed by the shots".  Do you mean they are not interesting, or that you could do better?  They are far removed from the photography most of us do and are valuable in telling the story to those of us lucky enough not to be there.  The sights sicken me, but I am glad to have seen them.

Jim
Title: Re: Anyone else desensitized ?
Post by: -Tom- on November 14, 2012, 02:06:43 pm
I wasnt alive in the 70s, so I dont know about the photojournalism back then :) I'm fairly new to the photography, I don't know the famous photographers by name, I need to get into that stuff, I haven't moved from the Flickr much...

As for the war photos I saw on InFocus website, I meant to say that the photos didn't shock me, but growing up in the 90s, in the midst of civil war, I remember I was stressed by the footage.

The shots from Syria (or any other war zone for that matter) seem so sharp, colorful, borderline staged, I can't feel emotion towards it, it doesn't shock me...that's what I've meant by "not interesting"...quality of those shots are way out of my league, but nothing connects in me when I see those shots...
Title: Re: Anyone else desensitized ?
Post by: petermfiore on November 14, 2012, 03:38:07 pm
I wasnt alive in the 70s, so I dont know about the photojournalism back then :)


Many of us were not Alive in the 18th century but could tell you much about the American Revolution.
Curiosity educates many.


Peter
Title: Re: Anyone else desensitized ?
Post by: Michael West on December 01, 2012, 03:10:00 pm
I was just browsing through my favorite photojournalism site (In focus) because they always have the most beautiful, high quality shots from all the latest important events over the world.

Their latest gallery feature are images from Syria. I've seen some war photography in my life (although I didn't look into it that much, don't like it, find it a bit vulture-istic) but the shots they have there now are crazy. There's a sequence shot of a guy running from the sniper fire over the street, running in one photo and taken down in another. There's a photo from sniper's point of view, looking through the scope.

I glanced over the images and continued surfing around. Although I'm aware I have some ADHD going on, I can't say I was impressed with the shots.

Am I wrong for thinking that we didn't have this influx of "gross" photography until the digital era? And are these photos doing anything good, or are they just desensitizing people, getting them used to the horrors?

Not stuff Id care to do.

The shock should be unavoidable. Those not shocked at some level by such images would have to viewed as desensitized. I was saddened.

Higher levels of detail and better color set these images apart from the stuff we saw from World War II.
 
 
Title: Re: Anyone else desensitized ?
Post by: RSL on December 02, 2012, 11:46:21 am
Tom, War photography goes all the way back to the civil war. Check the stuff by Bob Capa from WW II, or by David Douglas Duncan from Korea. I can tell you from personal experience that war is a bitch. Maybe looking at pictures of it will help to keep the world out of it, but unfortunately there are wars that simply have to be fought. WW II was one such. And although I know those ignorant of history will disagree: so were Korea and Vietnam.

But as I've said in at least one other thread, war photography has become pretty much a series of clichés. The genre was fresh in Capa's days and pretty much still fresh in Duncan's days, but since then everybody's been copying Capa and Duncan. It gets to be pretty old and depressing.

Forgot to add: Gene Smith (W. Eugene Smith). Until he was wounded in WW II, Gene did some of the finest war photography ever done by anybody. But originality resided in every bone in Gene's body. He constantly saw the world through eyes that were new.
Title: Re: Anyone else desensitized ?
Post by: Jim Pascoe on December 03, 2012, 10:16:52 am
..... but unfortunately there are wars that simply have to be fought. WW II was one such. And although I know those ignorant of history will disagree: so were Korea and Vietnam.

Russ, I don't want to start a whole new debate here, but while I agree with you about WW2, I think the case for Vietnam and Korea are open to debate.  It all depends on whether you think such foreign adventures can be justified considering the huge destruction and loss of life.  WW2 was much more about an immediate threat to the free civilised world.  And I do not consider myself to be ignorant of history, although like almost anyone there is always more to learn.

Jim
Title: Re: Anyone else desensitized ?
Post by: SunnyUK on December 03, 2012, 12:18:20 pm
Going back to Tom's original post. I went to see the World Press Photographe 2012 exhibition a week ago. One of the things I realised as I walked around looking at all the amazing pictures was indeed how desensitized I had become.

There was a series of photos from an Ukranian interrogation room, where a suspect (one assumes) has a gun held to his head. There was pictures from fighting in Syria. There were pictures of people being hung in Egypt. And yet the image that made the most impact on me was showing a 4 year old girl looking worried at her dad who suffered from AIDS. She was showing emotions that a girl that age should not have to know about. But all the horror from the wars - yes, very horrible, but at the same time there was a big dose of "we've seen all this before" which indeed did desensitize me.
Title: Re: Anyone else desensitized ?
Post by: Jim Pascoe on December 03, 2012, 12:47:33 pm
It's a strange thing then, because although I have probably seen thousands of war type images over many years, I still find myself touched by them.  Seeing pictures of a row of corpses laid out on the Eastern front in WW2 still leaves me with a feeling of sadness for the loss of life and for how it must have affected their families and friends.  I can imagine being desensitised if you are actually there at the time and continually subjected to death and destruction.  The human mind has a self protection mechanism to prevent the person being overwhelmed by events.

Jim
Title: Re: Anyone else desensitized ?
Post by: kencameron on December 03, 2012, 11:03:26 pm
But as I've said in at least one other thread, war photography has become pretty much a series of clichés.
Is this any more true of war photography than of any other genre? I think there are a few clichés doing the rounds in landscape and street photography and any other genre you care to name.
Title: Re: Anyone else desensitized ?
Post by: RSL on December 04, 2012, 04:26:33 pm
Russ, I don't want to start a whole new debate here, but while I agree with you about WW2, I think the case for Vietnam and Korea are open to debate.  It all depends on whether you think such foreign adventures can be justified considering the huge destruction and loss of life.  WW2 was much more about an immediate threat to the free civilised world.  And I do not consider myself to be ignorant of history, although like almost anyone there is always more to learn.

Jim

Jim, I don't want to start an extended debate either. I note that you're nine years younger than my oldest son, who was a seal, but who just missed Vietnam, so I have some idea of where you're coming from. I was in both wars; twice in the case of Vietnam, and my point of view is a bit different.

Korea never should have happened. Our state department under Truman basically told North Vietnam and China that we didn't much care what happened to South Korea. When North Korea acted on that information things suddenly looked different. We still were very much into the Philippines with Clark AFB and a huge naval installation at Subic Bay. We had plenty of other interests in the Western Pacific, and it was clear that if we didn't fight, we'd end up with an even bigger war on our hands. I can't knock our decision to join the war, but I certainly can knock the kind of mindless "diplomacy" that led to it. Fortunately our military was led by people with plenty of WW II experience, so they knew what they were doing. Not so our politicians and diplomats who managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Vietnam was a bit different, but again the problem started with some really dumb diplomacy. To make a long story shorter, as WW II wound down, instead of backing France's desire to hang on to its empire we should have been backing Ho Chi Minh. In the end we all screwed it up so badly that the French got whipped at Dien Bien Phu, which certainly is at or near the top  of the annals of all-time stupid military fiascoes. If you don't know about that one, read "Hell in a Very Small Place."

In the end I think that to preserve our interests in the Western Pacific we needed to fight in Vietnam, but by then both our diplomacy and military leadership was some of the worst in history. That Kennedy allowed Diem to be assassinated was an incredibly dumb move. Then, our military leadership decided that body counts could measure our success; another incredible stupidity. I could go on and on about the dumb things I saw happen during my two Southeast Asian tours, but there's no point in that.

I think both wars were necessary to avoid something even worse, but both were very badly handled by our leaders.
Title: Re: Anyone else desensitized ?
Post by: Jim Pascoe on December 09, 2012, 10:01:40 am
Russ, I do bow to your greater knowledge on this subject - and obvious experience.  I can see sense in all that you say.  It may seem simplistic, naive and idealistic, but it seems to me that all war is a waste and ultimately pointless.  It is always politicians and power-mongers who seem to start them - and the young who go to fight them.  I'm only 51 and would be far too sensible to go off to war unless somebody was directly threatening my home. I did a short spell in the Navy 1980 -83, though not involved in any action as I was training during the Falklands War.  However my grandfather was a big influence on me.  He spent four years 1914-18 fighting the Turks in what is now Palestine, Egypt, Iraq etc.  He always said the whole thing was a waste of time, all the dead friends etc, and afterwards we just gave it all back.  He would turn in his grave if he could see all the young soldiers back out there fighting in the same area again.

Jim

PS - I didn't realise you were quite so old!  :)
Title: Re: Anyone else desensitized ?
Post by: RSL on December 10, 2012, 10:41:14 am
War always is waste, Jim, but it's never  pointless if you're being attacked. The problem is to identify an attack. It's easy to do that if your own country is being invaded, but consider the situation in which the United States found itself prior to WW II:

Most of our people wanted to stay out of that "European" war. But if we'd gotten into it early and the Western democracies had brought Hitler to heel while he was relatively vulnerable, the fight would have been much smaller. As it happened, we had to wait until we were attacked in Hawaii to join the fight, and by then, instead of the forces of a single dictator on a single front we had to face the forces of three on multiple fronts. By being unwilling to face the waste of a relatively small war we had to face a worldwide catastrophe.

And of course Britain wasn't any smarter. Churchill pled with the British and the French to smack down Hitler before he could build his forces to a dangerous level, but nobody wanted to listen. As he put it in those days, "The Hun is always either at your throat or at your feet," and history clearly bore him out.

Then we watched the Soviet Union begin to swallow as much of Europe as it could, and communists in the East begin to encroach upon their neighbors. If the West hadn't shown its willingness to fight in places like Korea and Vietnam -- especially Korea -- do you really think those cancers wouldn't have expanded and metastasized?

Now we're right back where we were in the late 1930's, this time watching the rise of Islamists who want to take over the world and who now, because nuclear weapons exist, can create catastrophe without raising a large military force. And yet the general reaction among the Western democracies seems to be: "Ho hum. No big deal." We even have politicians trying their best to downplay what's an existential threat.

Your granddad was right, in a sense, but you also always have to look beyond the point "where ignorant armies clash by night," and understand what evil forces have brought on the clash. Sometimes, as in the late 1930's, the future's not awfully hard to predict, and what needs to be done isn't hard to see. Sometimes that's war.
Title: Re: Anyone else desensitized ?
Post by: RFPhotography on December 23, 2012, 08:00:00 pm
As others have rightly pointed out, these types of images have been made for decades.  The image of a VC getting shot in the head by a South Korean soldier is particularly memorable.  Or the shot of the little Vietnamese girl running down the street naked.  She now lives about 10 minutes away from me.  Watch and/or read 'The Bang Bang Club'.  Watch 'War Photographer'.  Watch the HBO series 'Witness'.  Read 'Slightly Out of Focus'.
Title: Re: Anyone else desensitized ?
Post by: Vladimirovich on December 23, 2012, 08:21:09 pm

Korea never should have happened. Our state department under Truman basically told North Vietnam and China that we didn't much care what happened to South Korea.


you mean North Korea, which was run by a lowly Soviet  (Red) Army captain later known as Kim Il-sung, was listening to some state department  ;D when uncle Joe was still alive and kicking ? you gotta be kidding...
Title: Re: Anyone else desensitized ?
Post by: RSL on December 24, 2012, 02:03:26 pm
I'm not kidding at all, Vlad, though it looks as if I misspoke. After WW II The Truman administration was busy helping France hang on to its Indochinese empire but made it clear they had little interest in South Korea. And yes, Uncle Joe was alive and kicking. When I was flying fighters in Korea in 1953, some of the guys I was with had gone on R&R to places like Hong Kong and had drinks with Russians who were flying Migs out of North Korea.
Title: Re: Anyone else desensitized ?
Post by: Rob C on December 28, 2012, 05:19:11 pm
In the end, we all get desensitised spiritually. To everything but love. If you're lucky, that grows stronger.

Rob C
Title: Re: Anyone else desensitized ?
Post by: amolitor on February 19, 2013, 04:30:18 pm
Sontag makes the point that sensitization is sort of irrelevant anyways. Well, I don't know if that was the point she was going for, but it's where she got to.

Sure, we're shocked by these images at first, and later, not shocked. So what? When we're shocked by them, we're damn happy that it's not us in that picture. When we're less shocked by it, we're still happy to not be the poor guy in the photo, but we're not as worried about it.

If it doesn't cause us to do anything, and usually it doesn't, what the hell does it matter? There is this notion that is we are shocked by a photograph, we will be motivated to DO SOMETHING and make the world a better place, but when we are desensitized than our motivation flags and we don't, and that THIS is why the world is not being made a better place. And that's a load of bollocks. Whether we're shocked or not seems to have nothing to do with it.

Photographs don't even, really, shape our opinions in any meaningful way - we read photographs of shocking things as supporting whatever ideas we have. If it's the Bad Guys doing something awful, well, it's proof that we should go shoot all those Bad Guys. If it's the Good Guys doing something awful, well either it's a staged photograph designed to smear the Good Guys or its proof that the Good Guys are such a dire situation that they're forced to do terrible things, and in either case we should go shoot all those Bad Guys.
Title: Re: Anyone else desensitized ?
Post by: Rob C on February 19, 2013, 04:47:32 pm
Sontag makes the point that sensitization is sort of irrelevant anyways. Well, I don't know if that was the point she was going for, but it's where she got to.

Sure, we're shocked by these images at first, and later, not shocked. So what? When we're shocked by them, we're damn happy that it's not us in that picture. When we're less shocked by it, we're still happy to not be the poor guy in the photo, but we're not as worried about it.

If it doesn't cause us to do anything, and usually it doesn't, what the hell does it matter? There is this notion that is we are shocked by a photograph, we will be motivated to DO SOMETHING and make the world a better place, but when we are desensitized than our motivation flags and we don't, and that THIS is why the world is not being made a better place. And that's a load of bollocks. Whether we're shocked or not seems to have nothing to do with it.

Photographs don't even, really, shape our opinions in any meaningful way - we read photographs of shocking things as supporting whatever ideas we have. If it's the Bad Guys doing something awful, well, it's proof that we should go shoot all those Bad Guys. If it's the Good Guys doing something awful, well either it's a staged photograph designed to smear the Good Guys or its proof that the Good Guys are such a dire situation that they're forced to do terrible things, and in either case we should go shoot all those Bad Guys.



But how do you tell who the Bad Guys really are?

Rob C
Title: Re: Anyone else desensitized ?
Post by: SunnyUK on March 01, 2013, 10:38:44 am

But how do you tell who the Bad Guys really are?

Rob C

That's easy. The losers of any war are always the bad guys, and the winners are always the good guys. The winners write the history books.
Title: Re: Anyone else desensitized ?
Post by: petermfiore on March 01, 2013, 06:44:13 pm
That's easy. The losers of any war are always the bad guys, and the winners are always the good guys. The winners write the history books.


Until the rewrite. Sometime it only takes a decade or two. Often a little more.

Peter
Title: Re: Anyone else desensitized ?
Post by: Iluvmycam on March 04, 2013, 02:15:40 pm
Many old time war photogs were not allowed to shoot horrors.

It is good to record it all, generally no censorship.

Your lucky I'm not a war photog.

Less art - More truth...Robert Frank
Title: Re: Anyone else desensitized ?
Post by: Rob C on March 05, 2013, 04:36:49 am
Many old time war photogs were not allowed to shoot horrors.

It is good to record it all, generally no censorship.

Your lucky I'm not a war photog.

Less art - More truth...Robert Frank




Depends what you're peddling.

Everyone's peddling something.

Rob C
Title: Re: Anyone else desensitized ?
Post by: hjulenissen on March 05, 2013, 07:30:09 am
That's easy. The losers of any war are always the bad guys, and the winners are always the good guys. The winners write the history books.
So who won Iraq and Afghanistan? Who were the good guys? In what ways have journalism and photojournalism changed since ww2?

I remember discussing this with an American about 10 years ago. She could not get past the point of "well, at least we get something done". I tried to hint that history is full of unpleasant dictators who certainly got something done, but that the US would not like being compared to. I sort of believe that travelling to Europe was the first time she had heard criticism of her countries actions in this matter.

-h
Title: Re: Anyone else desensitized ?
Post by: RSL on March 05, 2013, 09:08:27 am
That's easy. The losers of any war are always the bad guys, and the winners are always the good guys. The winners write the history books.

So if Hitler now owned the European continent and the British Isles he'd be the good guy? I'm sure his propaganda would have it so, but would people believe it? Even Europeans and Englishmen? I was around during the period after Hitler "won" France and I don't recall a whole bunch of French people deciding Hitler was a good guy.
Title: Re: Anyone else desensitized ?
Post by: Rob C on March 05, 2013, 11:03:44 am
So if Hitler now owned the European continent and the British Isles he'd be the good guy? I'm sure his propaganda would have it so, but would people believe it? Even Europeans and Englishmen? I was around during the period after Hitler "won" France and I don't recall a whole bunch of French people deciding Hitler was a good guy.



Nope, and a lot of 'friendly' ladies got a pretty severe, free haircut for their pains, faux groans and friendliness.

I think HC-B got some shots of that too...

Mainly, my war memories are of black gliders being towed overhead in the summer evening light en route to God knows what fate; probably to hang from a tree or a telephone line until they got shot...  I also remember the train trip into London from Middlesex: the ruins on the sides of the tracks... yeah, a whole load of mustachioed laughs.

But, and but, wouldn't Iraq have been better off left to itself? I don't see Libya being any better off either. Perhaps we should accept that people have to find their own salvation in this world. Seems to me that if you consider Italy, supposedly a leading economy in Europe, you have to wonder why it has had so many changes of government. Then you realise the great mental divide between north and south, mirrored in Spain and France, along with all the tight history of regionalism, gangsterism and it doesn’t take a giant step into the unknown to figure that people, so different even within a single state with more or less a single religion, still can’t really accept one another as equal or even similar.

Magnify that problem in the Middel East, with the  different moslem beliefs in death struggles one with the other, and you have to wonder why outsiders think they know anything much about what makes those societies tick. I think it’s the crazy, proselytizing notion of democracy being good for everyone that’s at the base of our problems regarding that area of the world. We seek to apply a single solution as if it were the only one. That’s quite apart from blatant, blind (apparently) positive western bias towards the single state that most of those people in the region hate. And then, surprised, some wonder why we are not the most popular people in the local top-twenty hit parade. How would anyone here feel if the guys from the next county moved into your field and built an illegal housing estate there? And you had no court of appeal that actually gave a shit?

It’s all a friggin’ great mess. Frankly, I don’t really think it boils down to fear of losing oil: those cats would always want to sell it to us; we should just have learned to keep our noses out of their domestic affairs. Too late.

Rob C
Title: Re: Anyone else desensitized ?
Post by: hjulenissen on March 05, 2013, 03:45:31 pm
So if Hitler now owned the European continent and the British Isles he'd be the good guy? I'm sure his propaganda would have it so, but would people believe it? Even Europeans and Englishmen? I was around during the period after Hitler "won" France and I don't recall a whole bunch of French people deciding Hitler was a good guy.
He would not _be_ the good guy, but if his regime had been able to stay in power up until now in all of Europe, I think that most inhabitants would _believe_ that he was a good guy. Most of mankind seems to be constructed so as to accept or even "love" dominant leaders when the alternative is death.

I believe that history books in the US, in Europe, in Russia, in China etc are quite different. And we tend to believe them. My country put a great emphasis on certain polar expeditions and feeble attempts at resistance during WW2, no doubt because our national pride demands it. We also close shops when there is a skiing world cup.

-h
Title: Re: Anyone else desensitized ?
Post by: RSL on March 05, 2013, 05:56:33 pm
You've GOT to be kidding. You really believe that when the alternative is death people "love" their rulers? Check out Vietnam after the war was over, or Cambodia during the same period, or Cuba now.

But then, since you haven't let us know what "my country" is, I have no way of knowing. You mention "feeble attempts at resistance during WW2" so I'd assume you're probably in a Scandinavian country. Since your age is N/A I'd guess you probably were born after the war was over, perhaps long after. Don't denigrate your own people's resistance. They didn't think Hitler was a good guy, but he was the SOB with the guns.
Title: Re: Anyone else desensitized ?
Post by: hjulenissen on March 06, 2013, 03:34:11 am
You've GOT to be kidding. You really believe that when the alternative is death people "love" their rulers? Check out Vietnam after the war was over, or Cambodia during the same period, or Cuba now.
Why is it that so many women choose to stay with their whife-beating spouse? Even in western countries where divorce is accepted and health-personell and the police are begging them to move out, where there are organizations who help them out with housing and new life?

We like to portray ourselves and mankind as proud, freedom-loving beings capable of making up our opinion on "right" and "wrong" - and following that opinion whatever the cost. That is only a part of our personality, we are also part sheep...
Quote
But then, since you haven't let us know what "my country" is, I have no way of knowing. You mention "feeble attempts at resistance during WW2" so I'd assume you're probably in a Scandinavian country. Since your age is N/A I'd guess you probably were born after the war was over, perhaps long after. Don't denigrate your own people's resistance. They didn't think Hitler was a good guy, but he was the SOB with the guns.
My point was rather that we choose to focus on the (few) brave men who fought our suppressors, rather than the many who aided them in e.g. deporting jews, or the military who was proven utterly incompetent (and, frequently among higher ranking officers, traitors) during the swift German campaign. In 1945, silly 18-year old girls who had fallen in love with German soldiers were subject to severe state and private punishment, while grown-up merchants who had become rich supplying the Germans with stuff they needed to do their thing were often unpunished. The English liked to blow-up, bury or sink infra-structure and supplies used by the Germans - no doubt in order to sell us the same things afterwards: my grandfather dug up dumped aircraft engines from the river-bed to use as spare-parts in his wood shop, my family still have an old radial engine block used as a garden table support.

We cherry-pick those parts of history that makes ourselves, our ancestors, our leaders and our nation look good. We down-play other parts of history. I am sure that the US does the same thing (or so I am told by friends who went to US schools for a year). I will never have the intimate knowledge of the feeling during WW2 as those who experienced it had. But I believe that distance makes it easier to second-guess the "truths" established right after the war. This can be a good or a bad thing. I don't like those who make a career pretending that the German death camps never existed. But I think it is interesting to hear that the US internmented 110.000 Japanese-Americans (not to compare the conditions of American to German interment-camps in any way).

-h
Title: Re: Anyone else desensitized ?
Post by: Rob C on March 06, 2013, 04:40:42 am
Why is it that so many women choose to stay with their whife-beating spouse? Even in western countries where divorce is accepted and health-personell and the police are begging them to move out, where there are organizations who help them out with housing and new life?

We like to portray ourselves and mankind as proud, freedom-loving beings capable of making up our opinion on "right" and "wrong" - and following that opinion whatever the cost. That is only a part of our personality, we are also part sheep...My point was rather that we choose to focus on the (few) brave men who fought our suppressors, rather than the many who aided them in e.g. deporting jews, or the military who was proven utterly incompetent (and, frequently among higher ranking officers, traitors) during the swift German campaign. In 1945, silly 18-year old girls who had fallen in love with German soldiers were subject to severe state and private punishment, while grown-up merchants who had become rich supplying the Germans with stuff they needed to do their thing were often unpunished. The English liked to blow-up, bury or sink infra-structure and supplies used by the Germans - no doubt in order to sell us the same things afterwards: my grandfather dug up dumped aircraft engines from the river-bed to use as spare-parts in his wood shop, my family still have an old radial engine block used as a garden table support.

We cherry-pick those parts of history that makes ourselves, our ancestors, our leaders and our nation look good. We down-play other parts of history. I am sure that the US does the same thing (or so I am told by friends who went to US schools for a year). I will never have the intimate knowledge of the feeling during WW2 as those who experienced it had. But I believe that distance makes it easier to second-guess the "truths" established right after the war. This can be a good or a bad thing. I don't like those who make a career pretending that the German death camps never existed. But I think it is interesting to hear that the US internmented 110.000 Japanese-Americans (not to compare the conditions of American to German interment-camps in any way).

-h


“1.  Why is it that so many women choose to stay with their whife-beating spouse? Even in western countries where divorce is accepted and health-personell and the police are begging them to move out, where there are organizations who help them out with housing and new life?

2.   We cherry-pick those parts of history that makes ourselves, our ancestors, our leaders and our nation look good. We down-play other parts of history. I am sure that the US does the same thing (or so I am told by friends who went to US schools for a year).

3.   I will never have the intimate knowledge of the feeling during WW2 as those who experienced it had. But I believe that distance makes it easier to second-guess the "truths" established right after the war. This can be a good or a bad thing. I don't like those who make a career pretending that the German death camps never existed.

4.  But I think it is interesting to hear that the US internmented 110.000 Japanese-Americans (not to compare the conditions of American to German interment-camps in any way).

-h”



1.  That’s a question nobody seems capable of answering well. I suspect that it’s because some of them grew up in similar environments and think it normal (for them). Others are incapable of doing anything for themselves – and that’s not only the women. Generations of ignorance and of living in an underclass produce such mindsets, I’m certain. If it occurs in higher social circles, I’d wager that it comes down to the financial advantages to putting up with the ‘arrangement’.

2.  I’m sure you are right; it’s part of every country’s programme to accentuate the positive, though whether positive or negative depends on whose point of view.

3.  That’s a fatal flaw. Second-guessing would now have had me a rich man wirth a mega-yacht, a home in Monaco and a island in the Bahamas. Photographically speaking, it’s also why I have such a downer on critiques: anyone can do critique: how good you are at doing it all depends on how flowery your command of language.

4.  I think that the U.S. version wasn’t equivalent to the Nazi one, as you write, so why make the point? If there was a reason to put Japanese-origined people aside I’d say it was possibly not without cause: if you look at countries such as our own in Europe, you soon realise that immigrant peoples remain such by choice: they simply don’t want to accept the guest culture. Why else do Americans seem to identify themselves as Irish-American, Italian-American and so forth? Why is Spanish now more widely spoken that English in the U.S.A.? This has been raised before and contested, but the conception remains. Britain and France face this dilemma too: what happens here if/when a real, broad Christian v. Islamist war becomes reality in the world? It happened some hundreds of years ago and history does tend to repeat itself, especially with so many pushing for it, but then the ‘enemy’ didn’t live next door…

Rob C
Title: Re: Anyone else desensitized ?
Post by: hjulenissen on March 06, 2013, 05:31:22 am
3.  That’s a fatal flaw. Second-guessing would now have had me a rich man wirth a mega-yacht, a home in Monaco and a island in the Bahamas. Photographically speaking, it’s also why I have such a downer on critiques: anyone can do critique: how good you are at doing it all depends on how flowery your command of language.
"Second-guess" may have been a poor choice of words: English is not my native tongue. My point was that distance in time allows you to take a "cool, calm and collected" view of the facts present. You may find that the truths established by the victors were emotional, one-sided and, possibly, wrong.
Quote
4.  I think that the U.S. version wasn’t equivalent to the Nazi one, as you write, so why make the point? If there was a reason to put Japanese-origined people aside I’d say it was possibly not without cause...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment
"In 1988, Congress passed and President Ronald Reagan signed legislation which apologized for the internment on behalf of the U.S. government. The legislation said that government actions were based on "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership".[13] The U.S. government eventually disbursed more than $1.6 billion in reparations to Japanese Americans who had been interned and their heirs.[14]"
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if you look at countries such as our own in Europe, you soon realise that immigrant peoples remain such by choice: they simply don’t want to accept the guest culture. Why else do Americans seem to identify themselves as Irish-American, Italian-American and so forth? Why is Spanish now more widely spoken that English in the U.S.A.? This has been raised before and contested, but the conception remains. Britain and France face this dilemma too: what happens here if/when a real, broad Christian v. Islamist war becomes reality in the world? It happened some hundreds of years ago and history does tend to repeat itself, especially with so many pushing for it, but then the ‘enemy’ didn’t live next door…
Have you read "Clash of Civilzations"?

If you have Asian appearance, there is a possibility that a society of primarily non-Asians will force you into an "immigrant" lifestyle. Same thing for arabs in Europe. That is not to say that these people wants to be integrated, and "integration" means different things to different people. It seems that the US have been quite successful at making people of different cultures live quite peacefully together. They have had English language, European culture and the "selfmade man, get rich fast, lonesome cowboy"-concepts that (for a foreigner) seem quite common among US citizens of various origin, though.

Interestingly, scandinavian countries are deeply worried about the poor integration of muslim immigrants, yet we celebrate the scandinavian outposts in Minnesota that keep their cultural legacy alive. I draw the line at working, paying tax, following the laws. If you do that, I am willing to accept strange religion, strange food and strange opinions.

-h
Title: Re: Anyone else desensitized ?
Post by: RSL on March 06, 2013, 09:04:57 am
I draw the line at working, paying tax, following the laws. If you do that, I am willing to accept strange religion, strange food and strange opinions.

Really? Whose laws? Sharia? If you welcome strange religion and strange opinions with open arms, sooner or later the people with the strange religion and strange opinions will be the lawmakers. Will you be willing to follow their laws?
Title: Re: Anyone else desensitized ?
Post by: hjulenissen on March 06, 2013, 09:54:36 am
Really? Whose laws? Sharia? If you welcome strange religion and strange opinions with open arms, sooner or later the people with the strange religion and strange opinions will be the lawmakers. Will you be willing to follow their laws?
Good points.

Laws, like language will change over time. A thousand years ago my ancestors could be expatriated for not brewing their own beer. Now you can be imprisoned for moonshining. The slow changes are not the ones to worry about, as they will mainly affect another people in another time. The fast/large changes are something else. Yes, I would fight against Sharia in my country.

3.3% of my countries inhabitants are muslims. The worst terror action to occur in my country in peacetime was carried out by a disturbed native, self-proclaimed christian, fearing that they were taking over. I think there are other, more pressing things to worry about right now. The most pressing problem is the high unemployment rates among young men from certain nations (notably: Somalia), and the lack of firm action against crime. If you come to my country searching for shelter from war or searching for a job you had better try to find a job and avoid mugging anyone. Misguided compassion and slow, poorly coordinated bureaucracy is a problem right now, not in some dim future.

If you move here now, I expect you to respect our current laws. I assume that you move here because you think that our country have some qualities that appeal to you, something that cannot be had elsewhere. If the most important aspect of society for you is sharia, it does not make much sense to move to countries that are as far from sharia as you can go.

-h
Title: Re: Anyone else desensitized ?
Post by: RSL on March 06, 2013, 10:09:49 am
Good points.

The slow changes are not the ones to worry about, as they will mainly affect another people in another time.

So you consider your descendents to be "another people?" To each his own I guess. I'd much rather think of my descendents as "my people." Yes, times change, but human nature doesn't.

"And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night. "

Nothing has changed since Matthew Arnold wrote those lines. If you're not willing to pay attention and fight when it's time to fight, those ignorant armies will overwhelm your people.
Title: Re: Anyone else desensitized ?
Post by: hjulenissen on March 06, 2013, 01:40:18 pm
So you consider your descendents to be "another people?" To each his own I guess. I'd much rather think of my descendents as "my people." Yes, times change, but human nature doesn't.
I find some opinions on racism and womens rights of the founding fathers of my country, as well as the US despicable. Many of the same people would, no doubt, find some of my views equally offensive. Different times, different views. If anything, I think that many fundamentalist islam views are overlapping with fundamentalist christian views - many of those we thankfully need to consult history to find. One might hope that islam is able to reform from within, but I speculate that some decidedly non-religious external forces are critical for this to happen.

A static society is a dead society, a living society needs to change. I shall promote my ideals for so long as I leave, hoping that the world is a somewhat better place as I depart. 200 years in the future, my descendants will have to carve out their own paths and I dont pretend to know what is right for them. I find the blind idealization of religious scripts or constitution to be a "chain and ball" for progress, although both can include passages of wisdom.

-h
Title: Re: Anyone else desensitized ?
Post by: RSL on March 06, 2013, 04:36:33 pm
Very idealistic. I guess that fits with an age of N/A.
Title: Re: Anyone else desensitized ?
Post by: jbayston on March 17, 2013, 04:45:32 pm
I think it is process and transmission times that are just as important. 24hr news demands bitesize news and the newspapers and mags follow the tv rolling news. Consequently a picture that arrives on a news desk that is an amazing shot and happened an hour ago is likely to run on the news pages near the front. An amazing shot that was taken last week would normally be destined or the feature pages. However, news has more money than features, so if it doesn't come from a subscription service, they will be reluctant to pay for it. As the subscription services have photographers all around the world sending live pictures in, they are less likely to bother sending out something that was taken last week. The photographers know that, so they send out lots of stuff as quickly as possible. Being able to shoot 8fps helps, of course.....
Title: Re: Anyone else desensitized ?
Post by: theguywitha645d on March 31, 2013, 01:04:13 pm
Really? Whose laws? Sharia? If you welcome strange religion and strange opinions with open arms, sooner or later the people with the strange religion and strange opinions will be the lawmakers. Will you be willing to follow their laws?

Right on. We have been enslaved by Christianity for too long. It is time to create a society where the alien religions don't dictate to the masses. (I assume you don't live in the near East.)
Title: Re: Anyone else desensitized ?
Post by: theguywitha645d on March 31, 2013, 01:10:29 pm
So you consider your descendents to be "another people?" To each his own I guess. I'd much rather think of my descendents as "my people." Yes, times change, but human nature doesn't.

"And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night. "

Nothing has changed since Matthew Arnold wrote those lines. If you're not willing to pay attention and fight when it's time to fight, those ignorant armies will overwhelm your people.

Actually, times have changed. Even America could bring itself to abolish slavery.
Title: Re: Anyone else desensitized ?
Post by: theguywitha645d on March 31, 2013, 01:29:39 pm
I was just browsing through my favorite photojournalism site (In focus) because they always have the most beautiful, high quality shots from all the latest important events over the world.

Their latest gallery feature are images from Syria. I've seen some war photography in my life (although I didn't look into it that much, don't like it, find it a bit vulture-istic) but the shots they have there now are crazy. There's a sequence shot of a guy running from the sniper fire over the street, running in one photo and taken down in another. There's a photo from sniper's point of view, looking through the scope.

I glanced over the images and continued surfing around. Although I'm aware I have some ADHD going on, I can't say I was impressed with the shots.

Am I wrong for thinking that we didn't have this influx of "gross" photography until the digital era? And are these photos doing anything good, or are they just desensitizing people, getting them used to the horrors?

We were always use to the horrors. This is arguably the most peaceful time in the history of the human race. Less than one hundred years ago, killing millions of people on the battlefield was OK. Public execution was entertainment. Torture was very commonplace and more than just water boarding. Hell, killing and torture is still entertainment. Just look at the movie business and TV.
Title: Re: Anyone else desensitized ?
Post by: hjulenissen on April 08, 2013, 04:00:53 am
Right on. We have been enslaved by Christianity for too long. It is time to create a society where the alien religions don't dictate to the masses. (I assume you don't live in the near East.)
Society (state and/or private) should help the masses to learn how to read and write, ensure their security, work for an economic climate where people can feed themselves but supply those in need with basic food and housing.

I don't think it is society (or my) right to tell them what religion they should subscribe to. I do feel that our rulers should refrain from using religious arguments in their appeals ("God told me to invade Iraq last night"), but I am not sure if or how such a thing should be implemented in law.

-h
Title: Re: Anyone else desensitized ?
Post by: Rob C on April 08, 2013, 09:24:16 am
A possible problem with getting rid of religious influence is that doing so removes a huge chunck of native culture. Chip away at a nation's culture and you end up with anonymity. I don't feel that's a good thing. Frankly, I see little virtue in melting pots.

Insofar as Christianity goes, its Ten Golden Rules are pretty damned good, offend no-one and are very much biased towards an easy interrelationship of folks from different cultural heritages. They are primarily about respect for one another.

Rob C
Title: Re: Anyone else desensitized ?
Post by: hjulenissen on April 08, 2013, 10:30:33 am
A possible problem with getting rid of religious influence is that doing so removes a huge chunck of native culture. Chip away at a nation's culture and you end up with anonymity. I don't feel that's a good thing. Frankly, I see little virtue in melting pots.

Insofar as Christianity goes, its Ten Golden Rules are pretty damned good, offend no-one and are very much biased towards an easy interrelationship of folks from different cultural heritages. They are primarily about respect for one another.

Rob C
I am not saying that it is a bad thing to avoid killing thy neighbor. I am saying that avoiding doing it because God told you so, or because your priest told you that God told you so, or because the laws of the country says that God says so has some consequences that I am sceptical about.

Western thinking is heavily influenced by Christianity (and Christianity was heavily influenced by other religions and philosophers), but I prefer being able to discard parts of the religion at will.

-h