I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn’t photograph them
D. Arbus.

Nothing is ever the same as they said it was.
ibíd.

Here I see what it looks like. But I have no connection, cannot make it, since the women have decided not to show themselves, but “only” their shells.

Very different from “Monia”, where the photographer tries to get inside.. a need more for him than for his sister, probably.. no shocking photography, but pointing out in a tranquil way a big problem..

Here, with “Thinspiration”, I see the “what it looks like”, without learning anything about the “why”.. I think I miss the point.. shocking images do not necessarily talk louder, imo..

it is the essay i shall best remember…but because of the women…not because of the photographer…that is disheartening…

of course i love a photographer who works toward abstraction and metaphor, i love a photographer who digs deep into the construct of body and moment as landscape as twig as something beyond the silly cadences we mark off as our selves…it lay at the heart of my own life’s work….however, it totally rings hollow and empty here…how so?…

after reading the statement (which i find clever by 1/2), i wanted to ask this photographer a simple question: why not turn the camera upon yourself….the REAL choice that should have been made…instead the women here become surrogates, become not these girls suffering but signifiers for this photographers own ambition…i see this often,…now, if this ‘style’ or this vein of construction and approach were this photographers usual method, i would celebrate this work wildly…but it seems, to me, a trick…a beautiful and challenging trick, but a trick none the less…

when a photographer embraces their life and reveals it honestly and wholly, in all its mess and loss and glory and detritus-filled caverns (think of jukka and antoine, for example) then yes…push the the viewer into a place that makes them feel uncomfortable as a way to allow them to ask questions…here those images and these women do in fact force us to confront our selves, our notions of self, our notions of empathy (do we really care about these women, or are we simply filled with horror and revulsion why they attempt to embrace their own selves, their owns malady)…this essay asks those questions because of the confrontational nature of the pictures and the choice the photographer as made: photograph the women as THEY wish to show us, as they choose, their agency…i do very much like that choice…and find it important…the conceptual conceit just that….we see these women, they’re being modeled and they photograph us in turn…it is a macabre dance of sadness…and one for me that points to our inability to not only understand others but to genuinely care nothing about them but as freaks….to be photographed or to be dismissed….at the heart of this essay is that ambiguous and ambivalent relationship….and that is its power…

and yet….

the photographer is never brave enough to step in the ossuary herself….instead she remains distant…bemused almost, allowing the final image to offer neither exit nor entrace to way of negioating the story….its just fucking flat….and another blip on the map of a documentary photography ticking off a subject for the awards game….Perpignan anyone?…

the irony is that i’d rather spend time with these women that listening to the photographer because at least they, in their broken, haunted worlds have the courage (deluded or otherwise) to show still what they cannot see properly or recognize…and the photographer here, instead, fails to offer her own relationship to self…mediating that through the bodies of others is not enough…

happpy that this is provocative and provokes thought/discussion..

it will stay with me for a long time…and that is about the women here…

sometimes i loathe photographers and the world of photography in all its mirrored emptiness….i say that as a person whose spend a good bit of his life carving out his own ossuary from pictures…

someone Witkin seems more opening…and isnt that a shame?…

cheers
b

Regarding Burn, curation, etc., I don’t think you have reasonable expectations for a magazine that draws 90% of its materials from over the transom. Very few of the essays here are commissioned or even suggested and few at all have any editorial hand besides that of the photographer. David and crew whittle down the thousands of submissions to the few hundred that are published every year, but how many of those would gain by a ten-minute Skype edit with DAH? (And how many artists’ statements would be improved by five minutes of your or MW’s feedback?)

David has written about the months of labor in the editorial process at National Geographic and the fact that some good stories get killed, leaving the few dozen the magazine publishes every year to be absolutely the tightest and most scrutinized. When editors and photographer collaborate, the best work results. This is true in any form of publishing.

Sure, Burn would be improved by having an editor (someone who works with the photog to choose among individual images to present an essay) instead of selector (someone choosing among essays in the electronic slush pile). And it would certainly gain by commissioning more essays, but given the constraints on everyone’s resources of time and money, I’d say DAH and crew are doing pretty well.

It is a elitist type of essay that merely indicates don’t do this it is bad you will look terrible, sick depraved etc which in turn has a undisclosed “you should look like this” Is that going to be fat, slim,plump model like magazine nice. macrobiotic which way to Woodstock so called “normal”. There is no indicator here and that is why after first glance and then it seems to go nowhere special.
It stops short and I do agree with you Jim if there are images of outcomes then there is a sense of purpose to this documentation. If not make it into a visual experience without the moral high road

When I look at photography like this, I always ask myself at the end, “So now what?” What does the photographer want me to do in response to the essay? These photos are painful to look at. Does that make them powerful? Was the point to make me uncomfortable with the plight of these women? To be sad for them? To pity them? To what end? O.K., you’ve gotten your reaction…so now what?

In my mind, if it is only a reaction you want as a photographer, then you are exploiting the subject. If these women’s situation is hopeless, then why show me these images? That’s only slideshow photos. If the images make any difference in the outcomes, then show me that, as well. Otherwise, I’ll decide you are exploiting me, also.

In a way that no other Burn essay ever has. I first looked at it last night but was weighing my thoughts and couldn’t comment.

This morning, as I came near to waking up, the images from this essay appeared in my dreams. This has never happened with a Burn essay before, either.

So, in my mind, the power of these images is beyond dispute. The question then becomes whether or not they are powerful as concerned social statement or as exploitation. I still wrestle with this one a bit, but the fact is this essay has brought home two messages to me in a way that nothing else I have seen, still or video, ever has. One, of course, is just how truly devastating anorexia can be on the human body.

The other is the very point the photographer made – the delusion and glorification of the disease by some who have it. I do not know how that could better have been stated than by the method she chose – having them look through their cameras as she looked at them through hers as they themselves took on the poses of glamour and commercial sexuality. She also made me care about these women and to hope that someone can help them.

So I think it is a socially powerful essay, rather than pure exploitive – and it was done in a highly creative and deeply thought out manner, chosen to make the viewer look at an old problem with new understanding.

That said, I think Jim has made a good point. I believe that much that becomes award winning these days does so more for its “‘descent into hell’ edginess” than its true value as photography. Sometimes, it becomes hard to know the difference.

sorry for the slip up…

cheers, david

Is Rebecca Norris Webb in Magnum??
Is this a scoop?

thank you…my view as well

cheers, david

Laia is actually showing us a community with severe problems that hides in new platforms and that uses photography as a harmful tool of motivation towards self-destruction.

I can agree in the fact that it is not “proper-classical-standart” photography because of the non-presential production method. But I think this debate was arised years ago and it is just a matter of understanding photography in a different way.

Dear Jim, you may not like the subject, the way it is shot, the way the photographer relates to photography, etc, but I don´t think anyone can say it is a “pointless” essay.

Cristina

thank you for this thoughtful reply…and why i want to definitely have you on our Burn panel..i think the problem with the traditional media was that somebody was always playing God at any newspaper or magazine…a curator who did as you suggest would then become a little too authoritarian for my taste…

in my teaching world i always find it best to let people discover rather than to tell them what is “right”…you and i grew up being told what was right…and often the “right” was the “right” from an advertisers point of view…while you think we are “post photographic” i see most photographic….

yet i think some of your frustrations are real…in the case of the EPF being presented now, we received 1,000 entries, the Burn team boiled it down to 35 photographers to be juried, and the jury did the rest…how else could this be done? i cannot control who enters, and i cannot control the jury, nor do i want to…i am part of the audience too….i like to see what young photographers are doing…and i like to see, along with everyone else, what an esteemed jury chooses…i do not “hug the entire photographic world” for any reason other than my tastes are eclectic by nature…that IS my opinion….i like lots of stuff…with movies, with food, with wine, with motorcycles etc…not everything, just the best of the best…open windows…fresh air, has always been my mantra…

my concerns do parallel yours however…i am more worried that photographers are just not really digging enough….not actually exploring…not actually working…not really living it…the notion that there are “too many photographers” is the most misleading and incorrect notion out there that i hear everyday…

there are just more people with cameras, not more photographers…

ask anyone on the Burn staff who is scouring around for good stories for Burn…it is like panning for gold…a nugget here and a nugget there…not lots of great work …only some great work..even among this audience , who have an inside track so to speak and golden opportunities to be showcased, still rarely come through on any significant level…yet every mentor knows that only a few will actually totally grasp what is being presented..if i were only a curator as you suggest that would be my undoing..i must be doing in order to mentor..

by the way, i made my first b&w prints in my new darkroom yesterday…i had not made a print in 35 years or so….this winter i will be in the darkroom doing very traditional work…shooting big film , making small prints….at the same time my color prints are getting very large and will be limited editions at Art Basel in Miami….i am comfortable doing both things…to me they are not separate…there is a symbiotic flow…and so it goes with Burn….

even if Burn had access somehow to everything that was being done out there it would just not be possible to publish two essays per week that rose to some super level…super level only happens once in awhile no matter what the parameters may be…

in any case, thank you for thinking…and for writing…there is no need for us to agree on specific essays….better to question…you obviously care or you would not be here….good on you…

cheers, david

That curatorial function breaks down (in my usual unreserved opinion) when it embraces the current trend toward “pan-everything-ism” in photography. We, as consumers of images, desperately need stronger, more focused voices. The internet has already given us access to everything. What we need now is someone to say, “Look here. This is important.” David Harvey and Burn can do that.

I understand I’m commenting on this in the wrong venue. This essay was chosen by judges, not DAH. That it was chosen, though, clearly (to me) reflects this very problem. Is this really one of the “best” essays entered in the competition? Or was it chosen because of its “decent into hell” edginess? Do the judges really understand that the future of photography really depends on the choices they make when they lift essays out of the noise and proclaim them to be worth looking at?

I know, David, that you like to embrace all photography, and encourage all photography. But what we need is your voice pointing toward the best of the best from emerging photographers, not an effort to hug the entire photographic world. There is plenty of photography. What we need is curators.

Personally I would treat this subject and the participants as landscape something one walks into lives in etc. The anorexia part will tag along for the journey there is no need to treat it as a documentary ………..

…….. or the participants should have all the say take this photographer out of the equation