Blogging Elsewhere
February 3, 2010 | Filed Under Blog | Leave a Comment
I’m guest blogging all week at www.npac.ca. While you’re there get a membership and support Canadian photoj.
Photographs and Words Collide
August 10, 2009 | Filed Under Blog | Leave a Comment
Jorg Colberg at Conscientious had a post about a mini controversy at the new site Black Snapper. They had posted a set of photos by Thai photographer (living in Paris) Supanet Riansrivilai, street photography from Poland. The fuss seemed to be not so much about images but about her written comments about her project and how the two matched up.
I was struck by some similarities with a recent posting on Burn of a set of images by Canadian photographer Mike Berube. A lot of the comments on the images related to how Berube’s statement matched (or didn’t) match his photographs. Berube’s statement says, in part, “Hometown is a collection of images that centers around the effects that the current recession has had on the place i call home. Oshawa Ontario in rural Canada in particular, has been hit very hard by these changes, with General Motors factory closures and home evictions and rising drug trafficking. So far, close to 250,000 people have lost their jobs, and as the downtown sector closes down, stores and shops become a haven for drug dealers and gangs turning a once peaceful downtown into violent ground.”
One viewer who posted comments, Sacco, is also from Oshawa and some of his/her comments are, “If your intention here was to manufacture a news story then I’d say you did an admirable job. You had a preconceived notion about Oshawa and deliberately went out to support your idea with images that are misrepresented. The crumbled building at the beach in Whitby has been in that state for the 20 years that I’ve lived here, I’m not sure what it originally housed but it sits waiting for permits to turn it into a pub or restaurant. The snow covered field is land that is zoned for new housing development. The large parcel of land with apartment building in background is farmers field which I believe still grows crops (just blocks from my home in downtown Whitby). The boarded up homes appear to be the Whitby psychiatric hospital that was closed many years ago and the land sold for development. As for the 250,000 jobs lost, the population of Oshawa is about 150,000, do the math.”
Berube’s photos have a dark beauty and stand on their own as images but I have to agree that they don’t really match his project statement. I think there’s a lesson there, if you’re going to have a project statement or essay accompanying your images then that statement had better be at least accurate (250,000 jobs lost in a city of 150,000 !!!) and your images should match words (current doesn’t describe a 20 year old derelict building).
The ever loquacious Bob Black, who advised Mike on his project, tries to defend Berube from some of the critical comments. His defence and here’s a brief section here ‘It is more lyrical, more evasive, more transient. the images themselves are broken, detail decay and loss and sadness, that is probably less to too with the economic reality than it has to do with Mike’s own sense of loss, history, disappearance of things. It is a very personal and almost hermetic work” is really not a defence but more a lesson in what Berube should have said himself.
If your photo essay is more ‘art’ than ’straight journalism’ then the statement should reflect that.
The thing about these postings though is that they are (aside from showcasing good photographs) getting people talking about photography and that can only be a good thing.
Don Denton Website & Blog Updated
August 2, 2009 | Filed Under Blog, Website | Leave a Comment
My website www.dondenton.ca and blog have been updated and given a bit of a new look and a couple of new galleries added, thanks to Tristan Shouldice at Introvenus Design. Please check back over the next few weeks as I’ll be adding more photos to existing galleries and posting new projects. Thank you.