ANY CLEAR MINDS OUT THERE?
The key issues here, as I see it, are:
1) Is it OK to take a picture in a different cultural setting then your own, without talking to the one you make a portrait of, then move on and, finally, publish it without context, with a title that may happen to coincide with reality, or is a subjectiv interpretation, or a sole product of the imagination of the photographer?
2) Is it the privilege of the photographer to say: "this is art, and not a document", when you point the lens in the direction of an existing girl (or boy, or old man or woman - any person) with a life that you don`t know anything about?
3) If it`s "art" (and the quality of the actual picture here is beyond the point), does that exclude the "documentary" aspect?
4) If a photographer take pictures of "real people", does this documentary aspect exclude the "art" aspect?
There`s a lot to say about this, and in this context I find it quite interesting that Michael Reichmann several times has published articles about "art" (from Alain Briot and others) which states (if I remember correctly) that art is basically a product of the artists "imagination" or "vision" or "feeling" – statements that i find a bit simplistic (but perhaps it is in accordance with Michael Reichmanns view?)
Personally I find the "vision-thing" rather vague and fluffy, if you isolate it from anything else then the "artist"`s imagination; it`s an ideology with some unintended implications, which becomes more evident when your medium is photography.
There are no simple answers to the questions above; you can`t solve them just by discussing them for a while in a café or on the web. However, I think this thread could be useful, and perhaps clarifying, if people discussed the issues at stake.
Instead a lot of people get very personal, accusing MR for labeling an innocent girl, and in the next sentences labeling MR with caracteristics worse then any of the possible connotations implicit in the word "Lolita" – falling into the same trap as they´ve just accused him of falling into.
Their moral indignation and outrage should be directed toward something bigger.
I guess MR could have thought a little harder, before he made that title. "Provocative" – yes, perhaps. But who did it provoke?
The context (and contextlessness) in this case make it too easy for people to say that here we have a classical example of a middleaged, wealthy, upper middle class Western`er projecting his sex-obsessed, colonising mind on an innocent girl. The case is too perfect to be true. Whole departments of universities live on such simplistic analysis, which, first being half true, applied to reality, only serve to confirm what they allready knew.
And then the moral outrage, occasionally followed by violent threats.
Obviously, the issue has ethical, as well as political and cultural implications. But I´m not impressed by people blaming the photographer for verbal violence in one sentence, threatening the photographer with physical violence in the next.
Again: the questions are not easy to answer. If you for example answer "no" to the first question, then street photography would be impossible – except, perhaps, if you only take pictures of your neighbours.
Since the "Lolita-affair" has become a big deal, we need more clear thinking, and less passion.
(And, by the way: the word "Lolita" has a lot of connotations. It refers to the novel, as well as a handful of other things, since this name has got its own life outside the novel. Nobody can claim that "Lolita" means only one thing, be it what Nabokov said, the pornographic connotation, prostitution, or whatever.)
Paul