>>>It takes guts to point a camera at a man lying in his own vomit in the gutter of a busy street. (What will people think of me doing this...?)>>>
Indeed it does. I could never do it because I spent far too many years photographing things like the woman that decided to toss all of her children off the top of a SLC hotel. The man cut in half while lying on the train tracks. The bloody evidence left when the FBI meets crazy religious people armed to the teeth in some place in Utah most never knew existed and refusing to capitulate. Metal ladders meeting 440 feeder lines. Hands sans fingers courtesy of an angry saw. Perhaps I will one day tell the story about my father who came close to being blown up in the Judge Building courtesy of Mark Hoffman, the infamous Utah forger of Mormon documents.
I avoid all such scenes, thank you very much.
What I want to know (Iffin I really cared, that is) is why the man is in the gutter. Is he there because he is a drug addict or perhaps he one of those street people that are essentially "hopeless" in that if you give him a few dollars he will buy alcohol rather than food. Perhaps he was mugged.
I also want to know the motivation of the photographer and if the photographer followed up or perhaps interviewed the man in the gutter. He might be there and not really care because he is an addict or a drunk and refuses help that would make a real difference in his life.
Is it just another opportunity to garner yet another byline, or does the photographer really want to help the person? Some photographers do not care and they crave as much pain and suffering as they can hold, because some people (apparently) like tragedy. Perhaps we care only because we have bad lives and we feel better because for as bad as we have it, others suffer more, so we feel "better."
Did the photographer call the police or was the photographer more interested in getting the shot before the police arrived to screw up the scene?
Some say the problem is what it (apparently) is and the motives of the photographer are not important and should not be considered. I disagree to a point.
I find myself at a loss to explain why I do not automatically react as many think I should react to an apparently bad situation. That the problems in one man’s life really do not affect me like perhaps it should. The problem is we cannot always trust what we read. We cannot trust what we see, either. There are more than a dozen writers that we now know made stuff up. Like Mr. Glass, for example. In the case of Mr. Glass and given what I know about him, a picture or story about "a man lying in his own vomit in the gutter of a busy street" could have been staged.
So I will ask the group a few simple questions. Do you assume that a story or a photo represents the truth or are there others on the list that question what is presented to them and also want more information before they decide to care about the person in the story or picture? Second question: what does it take to get you motivated to care about something and have you ever photographed some minor calamity only to discover later that things were not as bad as the image made it seem?
Bob … Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com |
