American Dreams
This series is a complex, anthropological tour through the landscape of the indigenous Central American — by means of memory, spirituality, longing and isolation. Lives are concentrated with a vibrancy, an intensity of being that many of us have never experienced. The under-represented reality between fiction and objective thought. An existence akin to a world fueled and charged by love and loss, by commitment to family and the need for survival at all costs. One that cannot be bound by laws from political systems on either side of the border. Often this human drama is intensified with its reflection of deprivation. Yes, there is struggle. There is also joy, and the life of a dream, of opening a pathway heretofore unacknowledged in American society. It is here that the viewer is urged to ponder the relationship between the real and the surreal or imagined, and to question their own existence in comparison to that of the subjects’.
Perhaps a brief journey through this stream of consciousness will remind the American public and their politicians of the fundamental humanity shared between themselves and the immigrants, whose lives have become such political playthings.
Photographs: Victor Cobo
Website: www.victorcobo.com
FWIW- here is my stream of conscious written while the essay played.
…………….
Jesus money good pic. Nice start mammon or spirituality. Almost to ovbious, but the scene is set for a good show.
lady on bed. Knowing the theme here – a prostitute? ok its about the lifes
Another lady whats up with the grain. Is that real grain – or is it just a filter- I hate when technical details disturbes…
Ok – railway tracks – into the land of plenty? Nice. Is it snowing? Love the shake..
Family party – birthday! Funny hats – funny that Grandma also wears a funny hat… what are they eating?
Family wall. Is that the same guy on all photos? Well, it’s the same blue shirt on four of the pics… Why am I looking at this
Hey Polaroid!! Wal-mart and a guy. Who is he?
Looks like the sky is reflected in the backpack. He is carrying dreams?… nah… where is he going?
What – a transvestite at a mens room? No he’s not peeing. What is she doing?
Color! Green. Absinthe! Going insane! Envy? Windows? What?
Bus stop. Notes for immigrants and others. The sulfur preacher has been here…
Nice sky – calm. Where is this? What has this got to do with it?
Muddy water. Probably cyano-bacteria – due to phosphorus enrichment. Too evenly dispersed to really be a blue-green-bloom… he’s looking into the camera.
A shade on a junkyard. Where are the people who live here? A stroller! Is there a todler somewhere?
Why is he standing in the smoke? Funny way to prepare a bonfire – is this a ritual? Is that why the child is covering up?
Drunk? Ill? No bottles – overdose? Damn…
4,5,8,10,13 and maybe 17
Just seems like a group of isolated images. Snapshots for the most part. We know the plight of the people depicted. This adds nothing to a story we’ve seen many times before.
There’s some nice work here, but I think a project thats this thematically open, could use a more disciplined and unified style (i.e. one format, all color, etc.) Looks like a good start though. Good luck.
I prefer some of the other pieces on Victor’s site. This one doesn’t work for me. Can’t tell whether it wants to be Soth, Parr, or D’Agata. Not sure what it’s trying to say or convey, and visually too inconsistent.
That being said, I love the birthday party shot. Priceless.
“Way Down in The Hole” and “Remember When You Loved Me” are much stronger pieces. Strange and striking, with a much more powerful sense of voyeurism. Take the time to look at them.
Thanks, Chris, for saying much of what I wanted to say. I just spent time on Victor’s web site and found it intriguing. Be sure to read his artist’s statement as well as checking out his portfolios. Victor is obviously a complex fellow who, as he says, lives “on the fringes of society between dreams and memories.” To my eye, this shows up much more effectively in “Way Down in the Hole” and “Remember When You Loved Me’ than in “American Dreams,” especially the edit we see here.
Patricia
… Ok..
Still in the car..
Only 600 miles to go!
I can’t open the essay because
there is no Flash player In the
iPhone .. BUT..
I checked Victor’s website and
THANK GOD I was able to see the
thumpnails..
Amazing…
Unbelievable…
He is my “brother” in a way..
I got hooked immediately..
Fresh…
Superb..
Awesome..
What a pleasant surprise..
How far away from the common eye..
Far away from the common sense…
Edgy..
Unexpected…
From the next century
Advanced…
I can praise it forever..
On the other side of boring..
A photographer that shouldn’t ..
Be ignored..
There should have been one
hundred comments so far..
I don’t understand why not..???!
What a pleasant surprise..
It doesn’t happen very often
in my life to wanna meet another photographer
… and I’m sober..
I’m in the car..
Driving..
Ask Haik….
He is right next to me…
Man that was great!!
Ok, enough!!!!
quite a few ” bizarre” moments…too bad the cat picture from the website is not included.
wow…
of course Panos loves this..
I definitely was more intrigued with his website than this essay posted here..
men..
women..
sex..
and
sex….
man..
or
woman…
does it matter?
masks..
identity…
what about covering your flash a bit?
lots of ‘hot’ images, although perhaps that is what you are trying to convey…
wow….
I like this edit..
I see such a different story with just these images..
**
I agree with chris’ comments above. I think the essay is lacking in consistency, formal ant thematic.
Many pictures speak an entirely different lanquage. For example 4 and 10 even though I like, I cannot related them with the other images. Same goes for 11 and 12.
My personal favourites are 5 and 15.
I didn’t have time to look at Victor’s website yet. I’m sure there will be plenty of pleasant surprices there.
I am fascinated by the idea of knowing these peoples’ stories. Am I missing something with my browser? I do not have sound or “scroll over” info accompanying these photos. I enjoy the exploration the narrative guides. I hoped to know more about the subjects and the causes of the humanity that was exposed onto the film or sensor.
looking pretty closely at it perhaps, but maybe multilingualism is fitting in this essay. We are learning about a group of people in between language, etc. If we are looking at an American portrait is multilingualism part of that description and applicable to the way we look at the photos?
It’s quite a leap to match the opening statement with the photographs. 1 and 4 are the strongest for me; probably because of their composition. Way down the Hole is the most interesting essay on Victor’s website and is the most cohesive. American Dreams drifts, rambles, too much for me. But hey, that’s just for me!
I too can see why Panos would love this work! It’s loose and “out there” like his own. Just as with Panos’ Venice essay; a tight edit which I loved (I “got it” Panos) Victor’s body of work as shown on his entire website could, with a very tight edit, produce a killer essay. Really interesting work Victor, Congratulations!
Mike.
Some of the photos (1,2,5,6,8,11,13) were part of an essay “American Dreams” by Victor as it was presented in the January 2008 issue of LFI, the Leica Magazine. The opening statement there read in short like (original in German) “The Californian photographer looks for contemporary images of the American Dream. He shows immigrant workers on both sides of the Mexican/Californian border. Images of hope, images of failure. The pursuit of happiness”. The editing is different, e.g. with 13 as a double page opener, and together with some additional pictures of is a very consistent set of photos. One could see it all belonged together, a very powerful essay. I liked (and still like) it very much and wished this tight editing would have been kept for the burn essay (which I see was difficult as the scope has widened).
I find it interesting to read in the LFI article that originally Victor called the essay “Mexican Dreams”, but then renamed it considering that the immigrant workers leave traces on both sides of the border. That makes perfect sense to me. But then, yes Mike R, it´s quite a leap to the opening statement here on burn.
It makes me wonder how far we can stretch the scope of a project without risking to lose consistency?
I agree with Chris, especially for what concerns the birthday party image: genius here!
I just add that the images of “American Dreams” as presented on Victor’s site have titles that in some cases help reconstructing a context… and I would like to ask the author why he chose to show on Burn a partially different selection of “American Dreams”‘s images compared to his website…
I understand that DAH’s heart is in educating photographers, in advancing the work of “emerging photographers.” I also understand that he is using for that what is submitted to him (at least, that’s my understanding). But what I was expecting on Burn (perhaps not accurately) was the best of the best, the best emerging photographers and the best of their work. It seems, though, that what shows up is either quirky or some subset or remix of essays that diminish, rather than strengthen, the work. Not that there aren’t outstanding images presented here, but that what is presented is uneven and even contrarian (shake things up kind of stuff). And that’s fine, I guess. But the potential benefit of this site and access to DAH as educator and editor to emerging photographers seems too great to waste on the strange or incomplete or commonplace.
While the eclectic is sometimes interesting, eclectic is easy to find all over the web. Solid, best of the best stuff is what I’m longing to see. Show me the end of the process, or show me the process in a way that makes me understand the reasons for the decisions that are being made in image selection and editing. Otherwise, it seems like just more flickr fodder. More noise.
Our minds our relentless
and so too the world that swivels around us, because our stories are but phantom hopes against ineluctable life, a way we hope that some small part of what makes the seeingly bottomless chasm of everything that passes through us, through our bodies and our eyes, and gets mixed like a tempermental recipe fails to yield or coalesce as something that resembles that which we’d hope to tell. This is the terrible and often frustrating cunundrum that both bewitches and crushes us. As a photographer, and a writer, this has been at the focal point flash of all that has levened my own work and my own practice: and it’s frustration and sense of failure has not diminished, no matter how many stories i create or wish to tell. In fact, it is the truth, the pinpoint prick, that each of us continues to hone toward…and it escapes us, continually.
While like many others, i prefered Victor’s 2 other essays “remember when you loved me” (magnificent!) and “way down in the hole” (a dantesque dream and redemtion, After Life), but as a viewer and as a photographer, i am given this essay, and this became the portal through which I’ve been thinking about this story. Like others, I found the essay too short, particularly given what his other two essays contained, as well as the original essay on the website, but I do not hold victor responsible for this, but see it as the limitation of Burn, or the limitation of trying to get a sense of a story that has parameters, for life has only 2: the beginning and the ending of us. I also regret that the photograph of the cat in the ‘abandoned house’ and the dual portrait (espejo de la bruja) were left out, but this points toward what i ‘missed’ here…i wanted more, more of the dream logic of this essay, more from the essay (as in the other 2) that confuses, that takes me away from the dictatorial legacy of linearly told stories. What i do love about both the essay (here and at the website) is that David has given us an essay that requires us to patch together meaning (if this is possible) and go on a journey, an associative journey of the lives of both victor (and his relationship with Mexico) and the people’s lives he has spent time with. the mix of styles did not both me at all, particularly given the nature of his work and, more importantly for this story, the nature of story telling in mexico. As with the magnificent poet-novelist Roberto Bolano, who employs a wide range of literary devices in his stories and novels and poems (from tragedy to documentary to farce to comedia to surrealism to autobiography), so too this story, and much of c.american story telling, this story makes sense to me as a the way our thoughts and stories and lives work: a miasma of disaparity. Mexican art and mexican music and mexican literary tradition is full of this, maybe because of the clash between European sensibilities (spanish) and the intensity of the indigenous stories and the life tied to the land. What i Loathe about most photographic stories is it’s instance on recognizable paradigms to tell a story: this happened then this then that, all managed in a reasonable ‘similar’ stile or framework. But this is NOT the way life works and it is what has always troubled me about the great swatch of documentary photography, particularly when ‘outsiders’ photograph people and places and cultures of which they are not a part. for me, the sucess of this essays is that, in the frame work of most of the stuff David has chosen to publish, and the majority of which hangs in magazines and book and on galleries walls and bookshelves, are stories that don’t often delienate the experience per se, and all the messiness, but the literal story of the experience.
As a photographer who has given David 2 stories, 2 essays that are neither linear nor clean, I am probably prejudiced about this work ;). How does one go about beginning to photograph a people or place or culture with the small and thin tool of photography? Fortunately, we are expanding ourselves and our tools to better tap into or rather to better express the very things that pass, that make us who we are: the colors an dthe sounds, the divergent stories (god and money and joy and death), the difficulties and the ease. How would anyone of us begin to tell the story of our own lives? Imagine for a moment. the moment you began to speak about one thing in your life, how to be able to give that story life or context without including evertyhing that lead to that moment, and all the tissues that seem disconnected, but are in truth, fibres that make up the blanket of the shape of who it is you are?…an impossibility. Does a straightforward essay tell it right? does a diconnected, cacophonous song tell it right?…do either, do both?….
the fact, for me, is that everything we do is unfinished, broken, a failure and by that i can only begin to see if a story as spoken to me, as opened me to some experience. I feel that I havent had nearly enough of the lives of these people, in the context of this particular story, and wanted more, a lot more, but maybe because from the moment the essay started i was drawn in. His delerious use of flash and light, the strange collapse of both autobiography and the stories of the lives. There are some magnificent and iconic photographs here (money&christ, railroadtracks and light, the birthday party (one of the few single photographs that, for me, takes Arbus’ masked masterpieces and updates/transcends it, the cat-devil-angle, the men drinking the milky water at the border, with the mud patches appearing like corpses of the dead emmerging, etc), and these great photographs heightened and collapsed by the other ‘broken’ photographs, all of which leads toward a hunger, my own hunger for more….i wanted more….
as an essay, an anti-essay, it works and it speaks for me…only short, too short, to drown me, to show me the heft and circle of these lives, but there is great work here, and more importantly, a great way to thing of what it means to tell a story, a story of which he is or is not a part of….though, i still wait for the the child from these circumstances who will tell the story even more feverishly, than one who is an outsider…
the only part of this essay that i did not like was the ‘statement’ for in many ways it reminds me too much of all that i dislike and find bothersome about both documentary photography and art photography. All of what victor has written is true, for sure. But it is because of his work, the ‘stream-of-conscious’ approach with which he works that best speaks about his life, his experience, not theirs. That must come from within and statements that become more didactic and explanatory become, at least for me, not only irrelevant, but worse, diminshing. the work is strong and poetic and ‘truthful’ in it’s attempt to express his expeience in mexico and the border areas. We are all political playthings for not only politicians but also one another, because it is always easier for us to speak in cliches about others than it is to boldly speak only about oursleves. It’s what is so often baleful about political rhetoric and empty anthropology.
that said, i applaud this work, find it visceral and poetic and truthful, truthful in it’s experiential poetry and joy, it’s difficulty and it’s fever…a characteristic not only of the people’s live in mexico and c.america but in all our lives…
what i love best about d’agata is not just the mercilessness and honesty of how he photographed his peripatetic and fever-fueled life, but later, how he presents his work in books and in galleries: all there, a mess, without necessarily qualifying what should and shouldn’t go together…for the truth is that all things ram up against each other…take a walk, look around and listen, pay attention to to your thoughts and reflections and sensations…it’s the same…
a collision of all things which make up the landscape of our exterior and interior lives….
i am happy this essay is here….
and happy too we are broadened….congratulations to victor for his work and his fever’d hunger…
wearied of writing
b
….Bob,
“…. an anti-essay, it works and it speaks for me…” spot on
Symbols, allusions, stream of consciousness – these are barriers to communicating with much of the world. They are intended for insiders, not to communicate ideas clearly to the masses. Stories like this need to communicate clearly, impact people directly. My particular passion, beside photography, is poetry. But so much poetry is incomprehensible to most readers because it is so internal, so specific that it only communicates to those who understand the language. But that isn’t much of a problem with poetry. Most poets don’t write to change the world.
Documentary photography needs to communicate clearly, unambiguously, or it becomes merely art, and fodder for discussions like this one.
“Documentary photography needs to communicate clearly, unambiguously”
I don’t share your position Jim: I personally find more interesting “documentary” photography that conveys multi-layered representations of reality (since reality is complex, why photography should be unambiguous??). Besides that I would not be so sure that Victor’s work (or, more generally, works shown on Burn) aspires to be “documentary photography” in the strict sense you are considering here.
cheers
What, then, does it aspire to be? Who is its audience? Serious question.
James Powers,
the world is big and wide….. !
Love the work! vibrant, brave! makes me want to photograph more! much prefer the essay on the website, the gaps in continuity disappear. love very much other essays as well! you’re a wonderful photographer, congratulations!
i dont think that ‘Symbols, allusions, stream of consciousness’ are the barriers of communication but our judgement and ignorance. as soon as we make an attempt to understand or for other people to allow ourselves to feel without analysis, we realize, ironically, that we share much of the symbolics of other people. both jung and campbell talk about it a lot.
That’s true. But it’s also superficial with short attention spans. The challenge is to rise above the noise.
…just trying to understand : why do you consider this artificial ? What’s the noise for you ?
sorry…meant “superficial” !
1,5,6,8,11,12,13,14,15,16: A good start for a strong and consistent essay.
IMO.
JIM…
i think you might want to think about how all art and communication change from one generation to the next AND different outlets for photography in the first place…there is mass communication which is one thing and communication with a more sophisticated audience which is another…there is USA Today and there is the New Yorker…Victor certainly could care less about USA Today..
rushing out now, but back soonest to complete my thought..but you see where i am going…
cheers, david
JAMES….
to rise above the noise is exactly what we are trying to do….not everyone is superficial with short attention spans…
I understand where you are going, but do you think the New Yorker is going to run many essays that lead with what essentially is a garbage dump next to that full page Rolex ad?
“Documentary photography needs to communicate clearly, unambiguously”
i can’t think of a more self-defeating recipe to communicate anything other than the directions to grocery store.
who condemned documentary photography to this sentiment? who were the teachers that graded the work of documentary photographers and failed them when they didn’t follow some geometric-proof structure to serve information to an audience?
there are two parties involved in communication, and if you don’t consider the recipient’s cognitive energy to assemble information in deep thought and persist it to long-term memory then you will have some very bored, under-whelmed recipients that both ‘got’ your point and ‘forgot’ your point before the credits hit.
the best, most life changing documentary communicators on earth are trial litigators. most people’s experience with trial litigators come from the movies, but even in real life, when it comes to a ‘trail amongst your peers’ in a complex murder case, these litigator do not communicate ‘unambiguously’, as matter of fact it’s exactly the opposite of this; everything they ‘suggest’ is delivered through questions. essentially all of their arguments are a bunch of mental dots that you are left in charge of connecting in your own head, coming to a shared conclusion, a conclusion that is distracted by a competing party trying to get you to arrive at their conclusion, and more importantly, not feeling like you were ‘clearly’ told this… if they succeed in this delivery method you actually feel like it was your idea, your conclusion.. a much stronger, longer lasting, unshakable impact of ambiguous communication.
unfortunately i just don’t see how this primitive geometric-proof-style to documentary communication is ever going to break free when so many people prepare it this way, and so many people expect their documentary to be served up this way.
i also don’t think it’s by accident that the best documentary talent has chucked the term ‘photojournalist’ because it was easier to ditch the term than to get the stuck-in–the-mud alumni to rethink primitive nature of that approach.
JOE….
perfectly put….thank you…
cheers, david
NIKLAS…
titles, captions and sequencing are in the hands of the photographer with very few exceptions…i did not touch this essay from the way Victor sent it to Burn…
The reality is, though, that unless we do communicate where most people actually are, we’ll end up talking to ourselves. As much as I wish that the majority of people make the effort to assemble information in deep thought, that is not what happens. I’ve been a PJ and newspaper editor for many years. While I don’t think we need to talk down to people with photography, I do know that symbolism, allusion or multi-layered representations of reality simply don’t get through to most viewers.
Venues for serious documentary photography are few enough and getting fewer. How much do we want to limit ourselves? How exclusive do we want access to our essays to be?
JIM..
you have your opinion and that is why were are here, but i think you are not a patient man, nor do i think you see the picture clearly at all …and i am very confused by your overall frame of reference and sense of visual literacy…
as time goes on i think you will see that Victor is clearly among the “best of the best” and Panos’ book is going to kill you as will Patricia’s , as will Angelo’s (those three with original production for Burn)…i have not published EVERYONE who might be the “best of the best” but we are only 4 weeks old and i cannot possibly publish more than two essays per week!!!
i mean, this is not a library , this is a daily changing foray into SOME contemporary photography coming from some amazing emerging photographers…
IF, you know of a photographer who deserves to be here, but who is not, please recommend they submit their work…yes, at this point , i am only taking submissions…although we may soon commission original work…
my whole school of critique (or complaint) is based on one thing…show me the alternative!!!! either with your own work or by showing us the work of someone you think matches who is being shown…i am totally up for that…
frankly, i am not as worried about an education program for young emerging photographers as i am about the much needed education program for the no longer emerging photographers…cynicism is death….
you said “show me the process in a way that makes me understand the reasons for the decisions”…please, please Jim!!!
i do not know where you live Jim, but i will invite you gratis to my next workshop in New York or wherever….you would be most welcomed….
as always, thanks for your note….we do not have to agree to have a discussion….
cheers, david
I think a re-read (or maybe a first time read?) of the “about” page is in order.
http://www.burnmagazine.org/about/
BOB…
no limitation of Burn…i ran exactly what Victor gave me as i will do with you…
Jim:
The question isn’t, or shouldn’t be, what constitutes communicative photojournalism (a tired, and i would argue, a patronizing orientation), but what is the reason why we photograph. For me, the critical question is, above all else, Why? We do, all of us, as Marina pointed out (as have jung, campbell, religion, art, song, stories), speak in symbols and metaphor, and that is EXACTLY what a photograph is: a constructed, symbolic made object which stands in for something else, period. Now, you are absolutely correct that the ‘audience’ for photography here and elsewhere is visually literate, and often ‘sophisticated.” This is true with all work. You name a photographer, any photographer, whose work meets the requirement of ‘communication’ and you’ll see photography which is also quite complex. Most of us get our visual media diet through sophisticated images: look at the superbowl tv commericals, or the stuff on youtube, flickr, nytimes, newyorker, USA Today (what might be the equivalent?) or Metro (the international daily of the world’s subway riders). Listen to the stories told within groups and their incredibly complex. The problem it seems is that we’ve been feed a diet of ‘journalism must be this’ that has argued that people are unable to like or appreciate or understand imagery but that which ‘speaks’ to readers: that being pre-determined by those whove set the standard. Again, its the logic of the empty anthropology…or the academization of the work.
What does ‘serious photography’ mean? Does it mean the photographer was engaged in telling/sharing a story and that they’d committed themselves to the expression and detail of that story? Is ‘serious photography’ that which looks ‘serious’ (ie, like the photography that has made the panthenon)? Is ‘serious photography’ that photography whose style and construction seems clean, polished? I dont know actually at all what is or isnt serious photography, in fact, i loathe that kind of qualification. If by that, serious photography, we mean telling story in an authentic way as a means to communicate the passage of life, the life of ourselves and other cultures, that I would argue that I don’t know how that gets accomplished either by establishing a rule or mechanism by which that can be attained.
We delude ourselves when we begin to attempt to speak for others: it is the one major problem i have with all journalism as an act of ‘truth telling.’ We accept it, because we get information about others, other places and times and people and accept this, because we are not of that other place or culture or person. We accept this with qualification. is bresson’s work on mexican brothels more serious or more truthful than the family scrapbooks that the workers share with one another?…
if there is to be a new arragement for photography, at least for me, it should be a simplification rather than an amplication. That simplification should be this:
i cannot tell another’s story but through my own and if a story of another has any importance it is that it was as an expression of another’s life and story through the mediation of one’s own faulty tools and hopes.
i don’t know that any story i’ve ever seen or read tells me anything more about another person but except that it offered me insight into a life different from my own, and that i cannot make anything grander than that….
what is it that we continuall grope blindly to continue to tell stories…is it about ‘them’ or is it about ‘us’….
in that sense, for me, lay the problem, insolvable….
running
b
JAMES…
a “pj and newspaper editor for many years” is obviously the recipe for your attitude..bad combo…but, we can get you out!!!! i am joking of course, but jokes always hold truth ….you have been trained to think of communication in only one very very narrow narrow way…how do i know?? because i worked at a newspaper (2 of them) fighting the dogma every inch of the way…yes, of course i learned a lot, but i remember as a young man in the newsroom thinking “man oh man i hope i never grow up to be like these guys”…
let’s develop your poetic side…please!!!
cheers, david
What bob said then what david said then what bob said again then what joe said then what bob said just now.
Been looking at the essay and going through the web site. This is some pretty intense photography. veers wildly from shot to shot stylisticly, no[obvious] fixed points of reference, a veritable circus of treatments. Have to say…. I am his newest fan.
For me, the shot has always been everything. each new one seemingly completely divorced from the ones that came before. Pictures made for MYSELF and for the picture. If i were to start making pictures for ‘others’, for ‘consumption’ if you like, I think i would rather sell my cameras and get a proper job.
peace
john
JOHN….
my whole way of going through a “photographic life” has been to always tell myself that i would rather be a bartender or golf caddy than somehow be involved in using what i felt to be a gift for all the wrong reasons…now, to get my children through school , i have spent a few hours taking some pictures that were definitely not “my art”…but, i dare say damned few and not for more than a day here and there…all projects were always “mine”…so, you have the right attitude…and your work i am sure reflects exactly who you “are”…
cheers, david
Well, the up side is that what you have done here is great. You’ve provided these photographers a venue for their work, and inspired them to do that work. And provided an audience with the visual sophistication to appreciate it. And that’s a rare thing. And a valuable thing.
JAMES..
you have your opinion and that is why were are here, but i think you are not a patient man, nor do i think you see the picture clearly at all …and i am very confused by your overall frame of reference and sense of visual literacy…
as time goes on i think you will see that Victor is clearly among the “best of the best” and Panos’ book is going to kill you as will Patricia’s , as will Angelo’s (those three with original production for Burn)…i have not published EVERYONE who might be the “best of the best” but we are only 4 weeks old and i cannot possibly publish more than two essays per week!!!
i mean, this is not a library , this is a daily changing foray into SOME contemporary photography coming from some amazing emerging photographers…
IF, you know of a photographer who deserves to be here, but who is not, please recommend they submit their work…yes, at this point , i am only taking submissions…although we may soon commission original work…
my whole school of critique (or complaint) is based on one thing…show me the alternative!!!! either with your own work or by showing us the work of someone you think matches who is being shown…i am totally up for that…
frankly, i am not as worried about an education program for young emerging photographers as i am about the much needed education program for the no longer emerging photographers…cynicism is death….
you said “show me the process in a way that makes me understand the reasons for the decisions”…please, please Jim!!!
i do not know where you live Jim, but i will invite you gratis to my next workshop in New York or wherever….you would be most welcomed….
as always, thanks for your note….we do not have to agree to have a healthy discussion….
cheers, david
James, you have brought up some very good points and asked very valid questions.
I see your line of thought as being about, not so much the role of documentary photography but more about the manner of delivering documentary photography to our audience? I would suggest that your line of thought is influenced by the history of photojournalism.
The fundamental principle of photojournalism (pj) is that it must tell the truth of any situation that it documents. The believability of the profession demands this. Now historically pj was delivered in Black and White photographs because that was the only medium suitable for the fast-moving news business. The results that were produced are the stuff of legend: and then along came colour (color) films that were reasonably fast, of excellent quality and able of being published in, initially, magazines and then in newspapers. You can be sure that some said of the upstart that it wasn’t “real” pj – it wasn’t “classic” pj.
No sooner had that argument settled down when along came digital! At last we have the tools that enable us to capture a photograph in colour at incredibly-high ISOs. Even more amazingly, we have digital software that give us previously unheard-of control of image post production. If W Eugene Smith were alive now would he be using Photoshop? You bet your sweet bippy he would!
James, you ask “how much do we want to limit ourselves”? Well, I for one don’t want to be limited to a Leica and Tri-x. Neither do I want to be tied to the colour palette dictated to me by some chemist in Rochester.
For the first time photographers are able to produce and present for publication photographs that are exactly the way that they want them to be shown. They are able to use (or remove) colour to suggest a mood or emotion that they consider important. These are truly revolutionary times. We should embrace the new opportunities now available to us. Be free; use what you want, leave what you want; find your own voice.
But what about truth and believability” the cornerstones of pj? Relax James; work such as Victor’s are not going to become mainstream Time or Newsweek material anytime soon – but the techniques employed by Victor may well be perfect for some pj essays i.e. “Way down the Hole”. Further, it may well be able to show the truth and believability; something of the essence, of his subjects, better than could classic photojournalistic techniques. Maybe.
How much do we want to limit ourselves? Not at all.
Best wishes,
Mike.
David, I WAS that bartending cab driver!
Mike.
Important discussion going on here. I’ve been fascinated by Jim Powers’ perspective since he started posting on BURN. He’s obviously a reality-based photojournalist who has little tolerance for the more artistic/poetic side of photography. And that’s good. We need ALL views represented here.
As for myself, I’m trying more and more to marry the real and the poetic, to open my eyes and mind to a both/and perspective rather than sticking with a dualistic approach that sees things as either/or, either real OR poetic. It’s not easy, especially since my tendency is to tell a story, to be a narrative photographer. But bit by bit I’m “getting it.” One of my greatest lessons has come from looking at essays like Victor Cobo’s, essays that presume the viewer doesn’t need to be led by the hand but can follow, as he calls it, a “stream of consciousness” approach. No, I don’t think the edit posted here is entirely successful. As I said earlier, I prefer the work posted on Victor’s web site. But the fact is, he is trying to tell real stories using symbolic language. And I say, good on him. May we all cut free of whatever ropes bind us to ONE way of thinking, ONE way of making and seeing photos.
Patricia
David,
I´m on burn to learn… I was just a bit confused when I recognized the pictures I marveled at in the LFI article now being presented in a different – or – wider essay. It felt to me as if something had been diluted (may be not the right word…). So I tried to understand where that might come from. It was not to question yourself as an editor nor did I assume you would touch any essay here. Every photographer knows exactly why she or he edited they way they have. It´s just interesting to watch the development a project takes, and to see how I or others react to it. And what we learn from it…
I liked the fish.