i certainly hope everyone has been having fun… either partying last night or relaxing all day today….while you have been playing , i have been working!! or should i say, suffering over decisions…..about your work!!
ok, here is how it shakes down (so far)…there are some essays still under question or without any identifiable caption information….i have sent emails to some photographers who just have not replied…i will give them a bit more time….
there are approximately 30 essays or partial essays that i will put up for review on the new website due this week kindly supported by LiveBooks….and perhaps 40 strong singles which includes some very nice work from many of you…..i will also , as promised, give reviews by private email to those who so seek…some of you just need just the right little kick to take you to your "next step"….many of you are so so close…..
as i hope all of you remember, the purpose of this excercise was to see if our audience here on the forum could "produce" within a given time frame: july 15 – novermber 15 2007 …. i sadly had to eliminate several terrific essays which did not fall within that time zone…the reason for this short time period was simple….to secure funding for future "assignments" for some of you for the future, we needed to see how well this audience could respond in this fashion…this is, of course, not the only way nor perhaps even the best way to judge a photographer…but, it is not a bad place to start and a point that resonates loud and clear with most magazine editors and other funders …
i left the subject matter and style of work up to this audience….and we certainly will see the variety this freedom provided….
the essayist who will receive the first grant i have ever given (but not the last) and the first under the new Magnum Cultural Foundation was chosen from the following best essayists:
KEVIN GERMAN, ERICA MCDONALD, BRENDAN HOFFMAN, ANDREW SULLIVAN, KATIA ROBERTS, BOB BLACK, KYUNGHEE LEE, ERIC ESPINOSA, CRISTINA FARAMO, KELLY LYNN JAMES, CHRIS BICKFORD, LANCE ROSENFIELD, NATAN MOSS, MARCIN LUCZKOWSKI, JONI KARANKA , ALEKSANDER NOWAK AND ALEX RESHUAN…
all of these essayists will be shown soonest on the new website (i am waiting just as you!!)…hopefully a traveling exhibit of this work and perhaps hard copy publication will also result from our efforts…to this end i am working…
the recipient of the first funding ($5,000.) under the David Alan Harvey Fund for Emerging Photographers is:
SEAN GALLAGHER
below are a few photographs from Sean’s strong essay on the desertification of China’s Western Gansu Province….the fast moving desert is literally swallowing up farmland and communities and is ever growing due to bad land management and global warming…i saw this essay as stylistically powerful and journalistically relevant….and worthy of more financial support to keep Sean continuing on this significant body of work…
A young girl stands before a man-made lake in front of encroaching sand dunes.
A lone corn plant in a field next to large sand dunes.
Huge sand dunes slowly creep onto arable farmland.
A camel walks past a pile of recently forested logs. Deforestation is the main cause of desertification.
A farmer sells watermelons to passing tourists. Watermelons consume massive amounts of water during growth. Overcultivation of this fruit leads to the draining of water from land, contributing to desertification.
has been present for over 2000 years. Recently however, as water is
mis-used by the public and local industry, the water level is slowly
dropping to dangerously low levels.
Two women climb a sand dune that is slowly creeping into arable farmland.
As tourists fly above in motorized hang gliders, below them the desert continues to move, swallowing everything in its path, including the graves of past local residents.
You see, GIANCARLO…Ryan and many more said before that they feel way more motivated to update their blogs and generally do more photography after David’s …blah,blah…
I also kinda feel the same..but its raining outside in Cali…and i found an excuse to be here all day…LIKE AN OLD LADY…checking websites…I’ve seen some amazing stuff….& keep looking…This is what i was trying to say to someone earlier…smile…a way to achieve this is to distance yourself from your own ego…Best way for me to achieve this is by visiting people’s-friends websites…
Peace
Mr. Harvey
The title of my photo essay is the “Island” just like the poem that I sent with the photos.
The island signifies one of us.
I wanted to express the beauty of ultimate balance.
How we all reflect on each other.
How much one’s thought, words and actions can have an impact on the other.
Relationships between each individual wether it being love or hate, regardless of the time, the past, present and future.
Thank you.
“…a way to achieve this is to distance yourself from your own ego…”
Well said, Panos. Although I don’t think I’d be off base saying that some here read a few of your comments just in the opposite sense. :-)
Anyway… raining in California, indeed! Hopefully all of us on the West Coast are dry and warm and unharmed.
Switching subject for a moment… reading a lot of the posts above, I find a lot of references to “art” photographers, and was wondering what everyone’s definition of “art photography” or “art photographer” might be. It’s not rare that agreement/disagreements, or different points of view, come from assumptions about basic definitions…
Anyone?
- Giancarlo
Mr Bob Black…thanks for the video link…its a nice tune to play on a sunday afternoon here!!
damn speakers (not loud enough)
ozzy al
btw…video link (shot in Brooklyn-Nantes)…looks alot like David’s apartment.
Here is an apropos tune
Thanks for the music links Bob Black. That was really nice.
PEOPLE please go and visit my blog below to see my latest NATGEO wannabe exploration…
Look what i found ??? All that and way more happened the last four days…
http://blog.panosfotografia.com/
Lara,
Perfect! :)))))
I enjoyed Bob’s music but Lara’s says it all.
Maybe we should try communicating thru music for a while…instead of writing just post a song link.
Does anyone have a song?
Somebody’s smiling already…yeah…
we did something today…. I knew it
…cathy by the way my last comment about smiling wasn’t referring to you…i hit “enter” before… blah blah…Anyways, unfinished comment.
Peace
Say Valley Maker – Smog
Feel the lurve….
“art” photographers
…..
IMO:
my own definition of Art photography is one where either or both 1)the creativitty, originality of the photographer is produced as much, if not more, at print/processing level as shooting the subject 2) the subject is treated inversely to the usual cognitive manner where what is there (or not there, a subject can be implied by its absence from the frame) is what we look at, but on the contrary what you look at is not the subject at all (think Weston’s bell pepper shot) by virtue of formal treatment (abstraction or processing).
I therefore disagree a bit with some opinions here that have seen art photography in some photos or essays shown on the blog lately. The subject is simply too readable, and the technique/angles employed are not to divert from exactly what it is as we see and feel it, but to see it and feel it even deeper (as in Laura’s essay on her grandfather).
To apologize for my latest verbose indulgence above, here is my own contribution to the “song” exchange.
and i hope you all dig it, a blink to Sean as well, Rory Gallagher at his best:
(PLAY FUCKING LOUD TOO!)
That’s an interesting way to look at it, Herve.
Anyone else wants to give it a go? I wouldn’t be surprised if we’ll find a lot of variations on the theme… and that perhaps we’ve been talking about different things………
Love her or hate her:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=sV1a6UBdrPk&feature=related
Christopher Anderson, DAH, and Pep Bonet all really articulated this topic well at David’s 2nd NY workshop this year. I apologize for not recollecting who said what exactly, but the consensus was this: Really it shouldn’t be the photographer’s concern as to whether he/she is labeled “an artist”. That job is for the critics. A very interesting approach to classifying work was offered: “fiction” and “nonfiction”. Now perhaps those might be too vague for some, or for some circumstances, but for many it also really fits, yes? I think both of these thoughts are very practical and unassuming.
Also Herve, in your statement you mention “processing” only as an after the fact (shot) action. But I would contend that (on a good day) we are processing as much, if not more before we actually press the shutter. I also think there are plenty of universally accepted “works of art” that defy your definition, unless of course your definition really was specifically for photographic art. In which case I would then ask why is photography any different? No matter the medium it is the level of thought applied, yes? (paint can be applied to canvas just about as recklessly as light to emulsion/sensor.)
Yeah, ok i know, i should go to bed. I do apologize if i went off the mark here. This is why i read more than write. Night/morning everybody.
(For David ;-))
Hey Panos… checked your site. Question… how to say “lame” in Greek?
Mike,
hey man, dont you know, Panos is a risk taker..he’s up there with Nachtwey! I mean seriously, those piranhas, he risked his life….Robbie Krieger, dont you know he’s a dangerous man? Who do you think the Killer on the Road was in Riders on the Storm? And all those dogs, those fences arent as strong as it seems, Panos risked his life there again!
Herve, Max,
My own very simplistic definition of art photography would be photography that is staged (by the photographer). Now, this definition has probably severe limitations, for one could argue that, for example, one can produce “art” photography by putting together “candid” pictures taken in totally different contexts and rearranging them so that they produce a new “artificial” meaning… In this sense the fiction/non fiction boundary is probably better. But, at least, with this definition David LaChapelle is art and Alex Webb is not. Although I think Alex Webb is as much of an artist as David LaChapelle and that “non art photography” is as artistic as “art photography”! In fact everything is art :)
Just for the record…that “mike” above is NOT me. I do not do the trash peoples work thing. That’s for others.
@david ukaleq: what about Garry Winogrand teaching art photography in Austin, Texas? I think that in his case it’s art and not journalism due to the lack of informative purpose of his images, although nowadays they do add up as a document of an era.
Michael,
neither do I but Panos seems to think he is some sort of new Capa. And since trashing everyone is his hobby, well….quotong Capa and then putting up a pic of a guy beating his girlfriend from 200 yards away is lame, lame, lame. Panos, Im betting you hid behind something, the shot is quite shaky so Im guessing you were filled with fright. Im glad that Panos the new Capa/Nachtway survived his close encounter with Beyonce though…She can be quite dangerous. Atleast those shots arent shaky so we can assume panos wasnt trembling at the sight of Ms. Knowles.
Oh geez, I have to do it again, another apropos song and a blast from the past:
DAVID – Please check your email for a message from me.
Ciao,
Michael
Congrats to the winner,very curious to see the other works too, and not at all surprised by the choice, I think it’s a normal thing that given the opportunity to pick a work we instinctively go to something that is near to our own way of looking, working.
I’ve not read the 200+ comments, only the posting and skimmed through some of the posts. Can be that I’m repeating someone’s thoughts.
LARA
Thanks, that was a good one. I honestly haven’t explored youtube for music relics much. Last night was the first. Somethings I didn’t even know existed are out there( i will refrain from examples on the grounds that they my be used against me).
MIKE KIRCHER
Yeah sure try to make us believe there is more than one Mike out there. Good one.
So are we at the higher most branches of this post, or scraping the bottom of the barrel? Or is this some sort of never ending blog limbo? (or perhaps David is secretly funded by The Scroll Wheel Manufacturers Association)
or to quote my daughter, “Are we there yet?”
Yes Aleksander!!! Good one…
I’m loving ALL the music.
(Rory Gallagher…wow!)
Keep it coming!
Remember we had a poetry day once…everyone was rhyming their posts…
Let’s continue with “music day” today.
Guess that means I’ve got to find a song…
Yes, Max, absolutely, “processing” how you are going to do your shot, even if relying on complete intuition (even some kind of hapahazard of “automatic shooting”, doing nothing, making no choices) can be art, and why not…. performance photography (1)!
This was what I meant by “by virtue of
formal treatment”.
(1) Winogrand, art photography. If he said so himself, why not, but I doubt he did. There was maybe some kind of performance art going on as he shot viscerally and as libitum, though…:-)))
Here’s my contribution…an oldie but a goodie.
Very appropriate.
and I forgot the other part of that discussion i referenced yesterday, where the collective sum of the photos was the creation to be judged [as to being art or not], not necessaily the individual images so much. i this was discussed up above somewhere, and i think it was even DAH. It brings up the connection to cinema. (not to mention the almighty filmstrip)
In the discussion about “art” photography are we neglecting the photographers intention and vision, perhaps? It seems to me that there’s a great difference between the “intention” to inform versus evoke… between “artistry” and personal vision, pursued with the sole intention to achieve an aesthetic goal, vs. the needs of a photography meant to communicate and depict an “objective” reality. And, in that respect, is not fashion photography closer to “art” than photojournalism in its most common incarnation? At least in its highest form?
Are we confusing, maybe, “authorship” with “art”?
BTW, I don’t believe there’s an insuperabile wall between the various forms of our medium, but if you look at the extremes on this continuum, the difference is pretty clear. No judgement of value, in any of this, BTW, but the language and the means and the goals of each of one are quite different…
- Giancarlo
Off to work, but Max, Photography and cinema, another big can of worms to open on the blog some day it is raining and cold outside! :-)))
(raining in SF): There seems then a pretention on the part of so-so “street” photographers to claim unicity and happenstance, when I can shoot 30 of them at the same spot in a second with my cheapy compact. albeit, co-opting Bob’s take on quality being a vain word… :-)))
Yep, a can of worms….
1: Music: :)))))…love all the music…the Specials: man, that brought back some major nostalgia….and I was going to post some FISHBONE, but then thought…nahhh,,,music and the savage beasts, indeed……
2. art photography:
it (to me) is never really a very interesting question, as i find each time someone (a critic, a photographer, a theorist) comes up with some kind formula or language by which the parse photography, in the end, it collapses under the weight (weightlessness) of it’s own contradictions. Photography begins and ends in many different places for many different photographers. For some, photography begins and ends with the “moment” (whatever that means, and I still don’t understand it, just as i’ve always found HCB’s pronouncement on the “decisive moment” a bit like a writer dreaming of membership into the French Academy stretching for authenticity in a tangle of words, when in truth his photographers were neither decisive nor “of the moment” but something much more ambiguous and beautiful and important, but we invariably (most of us) finding ourselves hopelessly needing to justify or pontificate instead of allowing the light and shadow to speak for itself (yea: that’d be me too y’all ;) ) immediately in front of the camera (the picture in the box).
some photographers begin in the darkroom and only imagine the photograph at that moment, the printing process and the physical (like painting/sculpture) relationship to light and dark and chemistry and paper: Herve’s “Art PHotography.”
some photographers dont imagine their photography until it’s part of a book or exhibition (conceptual), that is when the images are juxtaposed against something else (pages, walls, other’s perceptions).
some photographers “create” films and narratives from the reels of negatives. some photographers use “words” to describe their “photographs” instead of negatives. some photographers construct their own negatives and print those, without ever having used a camera.
ad infinitum….
the division between “documentary” photography and “art” photography is even more opaque and unfortunate to me. Given they people thing of photography as something that involves a “camera” and the “capturing” of light and “time”, then I do not understand, not at all, the difference between either, other than what “others” see as it “use” of the story. both are completely “manufactured” (though lots and lots of PJ’s will deny this) and both deal with the narrative of living, including if a photographer’s work is about the “process” of photography rather than telling a story about someone or a place of a moment. But then the idea of process is still concerned with the living: the mechanics and aesthetics and questions of making, which comes (eternal return) to the same metaphysic.
For me, if there is any “real” distinction between “art” (god i loathe this word) photography and “non-art” (god i loathe this word) photography, it is this: the ambiguity of the narrative. Much of the “art” photography i see (since my life as a photographer, sadly, has been ghettoized to the art/gallery world) is less interesting or “artistic” to me than much of the “non-art” photography that I swallow (PhotoJournalism, family albums, cellphone images, commerical photography etc) and thrive on.
The funny thing, as a photographer, is that I don’t understand why we all persist in tickling all of this. I look a photograph, or book of photographs or an exhibition or installation or film and thing: does that inspire, does that challenge me, does that confuse me, does that make me think about something larger then just the fact im looking at a picture/book/installation/film/word etc….
Last night marina and I were at a dinner of friends, 2 other photographers, one of whom is very talented and comes from montreal though he has a very annoying and painstakingly “purist” (that was his word last night) understanding of what is photography. Any photography/photographer who falls outside his definitions is not “pure” photography (i dont know either what that means, those were his words) and yet as we parced his descriptions, it became clear that it was all bollocks….
Herve: i know photographers who slave over their prints (journalists) and it doesnt change one iota my opinion about their work (not challenging or interesting) and I know photographers who shoot in situ and then have others print and the work is magnificent. I also know photographers who make only books and dont even hang pics on the wall anymore, and dont even look in the viewfinder and i know photographers for whom even these distinctions cant classify….
for me, i say forget and reject the distinction of “art” vs. “non-art” for these are simply descriptive terms not ones of meaning or value, characteristic rather than essential value.
I say this: is the photographer engaged in the act of something that renders, in whichever way she deems, this passing life and the act of that living an interesting and challenging manner….
for me, it’s a simple question, when i’ve been asked about my own work (which always gets categorized as art shit):
I dont know: i shoot, i think, i make things, i tell stories about lots of different things: other people, moments in time, my own life, my own thoughts about making pictures, trinkets…
not either/or but only this:
both and if …..
cheers
running’
bob
p.s. no time for lyricism today, im hung-over from cognanc
Giancarlo, I think the intention of the photographer is very important, indeed. We cannot claim something to be art photography if the photographer wished it not.
Some of the best images in phot-journalism (Nachtwey’s, Salgado’s) do include aestheticized elements, even actually being criticized for being too arty, ie. an african mother can become a symbolic and imploring virgin Mary or whatnot for example.
Yet, we know the aesthetic, the artistry of the photographer was to sensitize the viewer to the plight of the victims, not to the vision of the photographer.
it collapses under the weight (weightlessness) of it’s own contradictions.
———————–
Bob :-))))))
Allow me:
I must go, i will read your post later, I promise, but seeing the length of your contributions sometimes, as here, I dream of a bob Black (-hole?) post collapsing under its own weight too….
:-))))) and :-)))))
Bob,
The real question is *not* what the difference between “art” and “documentary” photography is, but how these man made (and culturally reinforced) category get used in our normal daily discourse.
Sloppily, if you ask me.
The discussion is not interesting because we can attain an ultimate definition through it, but because it can clarify our mental categories. The discussion is boring because there’s a lot of assumptions we bring to the table and that we use to counter one another’s argument without understanding fully what each of us means, and without fully grasping that this is an important question as it stretches our view of the world (“Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” anyone??)
BTW, “quality” as the reference to the above book suggests is the same ontological can of worms… See any parallels? :)))))
Off to work myself in the Los Angeles rain…
- Giancarlo
Herve,
Let’s hope Bob leaves that collapse fully unscathed! :)))))))))
- Giancarlo
I can’t remember who said it but it might have been Tracey Emin “art is what artists do” which make more sense than anything else I heard.
Wasn’t the original question about what to put down on our tax forms? Isn’t that what this is all about?
Occupation: I dont know: i shoot, i think, i make things, i tell stories about lots of different things: other people, moments in time, my own life, my own thoughts about making pictures, trinkets…
They would love that.
Joni,
For me, everything that falls in the street photography category would be “non art”. But of course it depends on what you put behind the word ‘art’ and perhaps the whole debate about what is art and what is not originates from the fact that this word is simply too vague.
I think the key distinction is whether you use the camera only as a tool to create your “own” picture (much like a painter uses his brush or a movie director uses his camera) or you use the camera to record the world “as it is”, even though the various choices the photographer has to make (including technical parameters like exposure, aperture) makes the final picture something highly subjective.
I see these two uses of the camera as very different processes and I am personally more interested in the latter. Because I feel that this ability to record something that would have existed even if the camera had not been there is what makes photography something specific. If you take again the example of David LaChapelle, however interesting (and fun) his pictures may be, it seems to me that the end result would not be that different if instead of using a camera he painted his pictures in a hyperrealistic style. On the other hand, some street photography pictures may be extremely subjective and may carry very little (if any) “informative content” but, still, the photographer had to take his camera to the street (or any other place) and had to work with what was happening there, instead of organizing the scene to his liking. The street photographer uses “reality” as his basic material. Of course this distinction is quite intellectual because it is based on the way the photographer works and it may not (or maybe cannot) be visible from the photographs themselves. You have to “trust” a street photographer that he didn’t stage his pictures.
Constantine Manos clearly says he does not consider himself as an artist and that, for him, a painter, a poet, etc. are artists but a street photographer is not. He sees photographs as “windows” that are opened by the photographer at some instant. And it is significant that he puts a particular emphasis on people not looking at the photographer, and more generally not interacting with him.
That said, I think that there may actually be more “creativity” in this sort of photography than in some “art photography”. To me it is precisely this combination of objectivity (take the world as it is) and subjectivity (in the choice of the picture) that makes it so exciting. And, at the end of the day, I see all photographers as artists because they all attempt to convey an aesthetic emotion, including photographers who consider themselves primarily as photojournalists. James Nachtwey may photograph the most horrible things on earth but his pictures are still beautiful. A photojournalist who would take pictures with great informative content but no aesthetic value might be a good journalist but certainly not a good photographer. Someone already mentioned the book “On being a photograoher” by David Hurn. I remember that at some point, this topic is discussed in the book, and David Hurn mentions that he once was invited at an exhibition where the photographer said that, on purpose, he had created pictures lacking any aesthetic appeal so as to reflect the ugliness of the subject matter. He basically didn’t want to create beautiful pictures out of ugly situations. David Hurn contends that even if the goal is solely to carry a message, if the pictures are bad, the message will be lost… For no one will be interested in looking at the pictures.
and so while we’re on this trip together…
The problem with street photography as art, as I see it, is that in many of these photographs there are altogether too many people cluttering up the street. When I look at a photograph of a street, I want to see a photograph of a street and not the assorted flotsam and jetsam of humanity that happen to be drifting by at the moment. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had people who know about my interest in the subject tell me about this or that one’s work, about what a great street photographer this person is, and with what great anticipation I went and looked forward to seeing their work, only to discover that the photographer in question was merely using the street as an excuse to take pictures of the people on the street, most of whom are not as interesting as the street itself.
As to this nonsense about who is or who isn’t really a photographer and how to describe yourself to the warm, wonderful, and extremely nice people at the Internal Revenue Service (yes, I am sucking up), I would say, count your blessings and be happy you’re not doing something else for a living, something horrific like smelling armpits for a deodorant company or being a tour guide in Podunk, Iowa, or selling term life insurance. Then you’d have something to complain about, I think.
James M. Cain, a much underrated writer, in my opinion, wrote in Double Indemnity, his classic story of love, murder, and getting what you prayed for and finding out that it’s not what you wanted, that in a lot of ways the insurance business was a lot like casino gambling. Not in any flashy Vegas way, of course; I wouldn’t mind getting a good front row seat at a revue with beautiful showgirls wearing sequins and phony ostrich feathers and not much else every time I sent in a check for my car insurance, but I’ve resigned myself to the fact that it will never happen; but rather the two resemble each other in that you and your insurance company are placing bets on the great roulette wheel of fate. You take out insurance because you know that bad things happen to people and you want protection from the consequences of those bad things; in short, you’re betting that something awful is going to happen to you. The insurance company, on the other hand, is a giant slot machine willing to take your money because they’ve got rooms full of actuarial tables that analyze down to the minutest detail every possible thing that can go wrong in your life and frankly, no matter what your Aunt Irma tells you about what her best girl friend’s uncle’s best friend’s second cousin on his mother’s side told her down at the beauty shop, the extremely bad thing you’re worried sick about isn’t likely to happen and would you kindly remember to write your policy number on your check, please, thank you very much.
Given the essentially sporting nature of their business one would think that insurance companies would employ a much happier set of people than they do. I can’t prove this scientifically, of course, but just from my personal observation over the years I’d say that insurance companies probably employ a higher percentage of humorless anal retentives than almost any other large American institution I can think of, including banking, the military, and the humanities department of any large university you could name off the top of your head, and if you think I’m overstating the case then try this: file a claim. Your friendly insurance agent is more than happy to take your money when you don’t need their help; your giving them a premium check fills them with a near ecstatic bonhomie and a love of their fellow man most touching to behold. Paying out on a claim, however, upsets their digestion, no small problem in a group so prone to constipation, and causes their skin to break out. You’d almost think that the pot of money they are sitting on belonged to them from the tenacious and usually unpleasant way they defend every penny in the pot. Having real croupiers, pit bosses, and casino managers would, I think, do wonders for the collective image of the insurance industry, since those guys know how to convince people that they are having a good time while handing over their hard earned money to complete strangers, and they know that every so often one of the suckers hits the jackpot. The people working in insurance these days make paying your premiums seem like what it is: another damn bill that’s got to be in the mail by the end of the month. I make the check out, I sign the check, I mail the check; let’s face it—at no point in this process am I having fun. Maybe if they sent me lottery tickets I wouldn’t mind giving them the money so much.
And the hoops they make you jump through to get what is, after all, your money, convinces many people who have legitimate claims to forego the opportunity to file a claim and to settle their problems themselves, an outcome that frankly causes some mixed emotions amongst insurance insiders: they are glad that you aren’t filing a claim since that leaves them with more money to invest in miniature golf courses in Miami Beach, but they also dislike the policyholders depriving them of the opportunity to drive your premiums through the metaphorical roof. I know this because one of my coworkers here in the egregious mold pit wherein I while away the hours until my death sideswiped my car some years ago. When she came into the building to tell of this unfortunate event I immediately dashed out of the front door, if you can call it dashing; I suspect most people would classify my actions that afternoon as more of a slightly animated slow mosey, my heart racing…well, more of a slight uptick, really, in gruesome anticipation of the horror without.
It wasn’t that bad, all in all, although I’ve rather unfairly used the damage as the basis of more than one guilt trip over the years, and I immediately called my insurance company to have them take a look at it. They sent a man out, a very nice fellow, as I remember, but he made it very clear very quickly that he wasn’t going to give me a red cent for the damage and that he regarded my even asking about it as an unconscionable waste of his valuable time, but he was nice about it, so I guess that counts for something these days. My co=worker, on the other hand, was utterly aghast that I’d said anything to an insurance company at all, her opinion of her insurance carrier not being something one can repeat in polite society or in front of children or small animals, and offered to pay to have the minimal damage to my car fixed out of her own pocket. I took her money, and no, I never did have the damage fixed; I spent the money on graduate school and a three-volume edition of Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I read volume one, but not the other two, and now I get this awful twinge of guilt whenever I look at those damned thick square books; she didn’t give me the money so I could indulge a loathsome taste for gladiatorial combat or to learn about the fetid and utterly decadent fever swamp of imperial politics in the declining centuries of Rome’s greatness, with the Praetorians selling the Empire to the highest bidder as the Christians worshipped in the catacombs next to Rome’s recently deceased without so much as an air freshener or a can of Lysol spray nearby. But then I get over it—guilt, like caffeine, only works for so long before you’ve got to take another shot of it.
But almost all insurance people are positive party animals when compared to those sad and somber actuarial wretches who must peddle life insurance for their daily bread. Like card-counting at a blackjack table, life insurance is the one area of the insurance casino where the advantage lies entirely with the policyholder; even with the best efforts of the nation’s doctors and life insurance salesmen to dissuade them, the vast majority of people in the United States and elsewhere insist on dying at some point. This is disheartening, to say the least, for your average life insurance peddler, who must constantly rethink his commitment to capitalism and the free market in the light of the millions of people willing to drop dead on the least pretext in order to get their hands on the insurance company’s money. Your insurance representative may, like the good neighbor, be there for you during the worst periods of your life, lending comfort and support to you, but he certainly doesn’t want to give you a check. Sympathy is one thing and a good thing too, after all, and has the added advantage of being free, but money is something else again, and who can tell what might happen to the life insurance business if the companies started handing out money to people because they’ve run into a prolonged bout of decomposition? The insurance-minded imagination boggles at the possibilities inherent in inanimation and its long-term effects on the company’s bottom line.
The refusal of many in the life insurance business to admit that they will eventually have to pay off on all of those policies causes some odd behavior on occasion. The news that the life insurance companies spent millions of dollars a year on psychic research, especially in the field of spiritualism, did not surprise me as much as it seems to have surprised the broad range of people in this country, if the opinion polls are anything to go by. If the life insurance companies can definitely prove the existence of an afterlife, that Mr. John Q. Public, recently deceased policyholder, is still alive, albeit on another spiritual plane, then there is no need to pay off on Mrs. Public’s claim. Alive in heaven or hell is still alive, after all, and your friendly life insurance company does not have to pay off if the deceased isn’t really deceased. That Mr. Public is, given his current circumstances, unable to pay his premiums every month is a shame, but not one that requires an insurance company to pay off on his wife’s claim.
What did surprise me was the extent to which the insurance companies support Christian Science and its missionary efforts. I suppose if you can convince enough people that death is an illusion then paying off on a claim becomes moot, since there is no death, only, as with the previously mentioned Mr. Public, a sudden and altogether unfortunate inability to pay one’s premiums in a timely manner. And when the existence of heaven and hell is finally proved, of course, this opens a whole new field for insurers: afterlife insurance, in which one pays a reasonable premium in this life in order to avoid the pain of hellfire in the next. This has the further advantage of turning insurance companies into religious organizations of a sort, and hence, tax-exempt entities, a prospect that will maximize profits and bring a smile to the lips and a song to the heart of even the most hard-hearted of insurance bean-counters. So the next time you think of who or what does not constitute “real” photography, remember the fate you’ve avoided by being overly fond of cameras. Let this be a warning to us all and all God’s children said, Amen!
My turn…
Masada… for those who don’t know…
:-o
bravo,bravo,bravo:
Bravo MAX
“…and so while we’re on this trip together…
Posted by: Max Fox | January 06, 2008 at 03:12 PM
Eggleston…
“i am a photographer, i take pictures, thats what we do”