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Fast Food Heroes New York
They may not be paid very well, and the hours might be long. But behind the counters of McDonalds, Rays Pizza and other more anonymous fast food joints I found the workers to have a certain pride in their job.
Photographs: Sigurd Fandango
Website: http://www.fandangophoto.com
editors note: Norwegian photographer Sigurd, jet-lagged from Oslo, shot two portrait essays during my weekend loft workshop recently…this is one of them….he and five others joined me for my first weekend shooting workshop…it is often very interesting for me to see what some can do in such a short time….each student worked on their own “mini project”…i see value in both the long term essay and the short intense immersion into a subject…i push my students very hard to try to do something that is at least a “beginning”…..a concept they can work on more when they return home…we will see if Sigurd chooses to continue or if this was simply an exercise in his stylistic portraiture….
-david alan harvey
BOB B,
Not sure I understand the meaning of the word “cattle” when used as a verb (?), i.e. “…cattle the biting dogs…” ???
David
No need to apologize, but thank you for doing so.
I will not be in Toronto until May 15-18th this year, so the Toronto workshop looks doubtful.
It is extremely kind of you to offer me a workshop in 2009, it is an offer that would be hard to pass on. In fact it would be unthinkable to pass on such a generous offer.
I will have to get a selection of some recent work to you. Would a pdf slideshow suffice. I will need an email address to send it to. Unfortunately I cannot post this work publicly.
In regards to your one question, “why did you not work on a project??” I did break ranks and started shooting my own project. But only for two days. To me, or what I was hoping for, was to get close to a subject/story and develop a relationship, not just being physically close but getting close on an emotional, human level and having that reflected in the images. That approach embodies the Magnum philosophy to me. It is where I needed to push myself. Shooting randomly on the street fell short of that.
The photographer that I choose for the workshop is someone that I have the highest level of respect and admiration for. I still do. I took away what I could from the experience. This being a public forum, I don’t want to mention specifics or air grievances, but I would be willing to communicate to you privately.
I am disappointed David, but I wouldn’t say that I failed. I flew out of Toronto with some work that I am happy with and in the end that is what it is all about. The Magnum photographer that led the course is still tops in my book, perhaps the workshop breakdown was systematic. All the best.
Cheers
Ted
Sidney: :)))
Often, I will change a word class depending on the intent or what meaning I’m after, in order to suggest something more emphatic or metaphoric. I particularly enjoy using nouns as verbs, for Verbs are the engine of sentences and the electricity of thought (as opposed to adjectives or nouns or adverbs)…so, i often (especially in essays or poems, or when im riffing on an idea) use non-verbs as verbs, if both the music and the meaning of the phrase i’ve written holds….something i learned to love from joyce, cummings and salinger and antunes…most of my prose contains that kind of reworking…
anyway:
To Cattle: meaning both to heard/to corral with the suggestion that the group becomes a herd, but with the viciousness of a pack of dogs…..
hope that makes sense….then again, maybe I should be doing all this acrobatic shit here and save it for the written, hand-held page :))))…
all the best
cheers
bob
to cattle: to collectivize toward the ‘non-thought’ of a group of cows (who also, eventually, will stampede if provoked)…..though, gotta confess, i LOVE LOVE cows….the non-human kind…
an example, a COW POEM
http://deadwhitemales.net/pictures/blogs/cow_poetry.jpg
The distant hills call to me
Their rolling waves seduce my heart
Oh, how i want to craze in their lush valley
Oh, how i want to rush down their green slopes.
Alas, I cannot.
Damn the electric fence!
Damn the electric fence!
-The Far Side
Gary Larson
sorry for the hijack Sigurd :))
cheers
b
hello to all
i guess i am ok with this set, but a few things do bother me, for what its worth, i am not particularly fond of close range portraits with wide or semi wide lenses, from a lower angle this tends to create a rather unflattering distortion, the big belly syndrome. also not really into looking up the nostrels to much. i think the light also is a little over expressed. kind of gimicky, and overly dramatic.
the thing i like about these pics are the people. i like normal people that have the wear and tear of life etched into their faces, but to me it seems as though the photog is more concerned with his methodology and technique than doing justice to the subject and their story.
on another note, wodering what the criteria for work to be exhibited here is, is there a panel that gives the thumbs up or down, or is it DAH only, does it help if you are writing thoughtfull comments, or unthoughtfull comments or having had taken a workshop etc etc, i have my own thoughts about this but if i am to blunt or insensitive DAH might flip like he did before.
best.
Bob,
Judging from what you’ve written above, I think you’ve pretty much misinterpreted everything I said in my three “Let’s Be Honest” blog posts.
1) In my opening paragraph which you’ve quoted above, “Haiti doesn’t have much to offer…”
I was attempting to use a literary technique know as “irony”. Perhaps I failed in that regard. What I was trying to say is that more often than not photographers looking to win contests usually travel to Haiti because it’s a lot easier to get to (from the states) then Africa.
It was interesting to see this played out during the POY judging that was streamed online. The judges were literally putting more value on pictures of lesser quality simply because they imagined that the photographer was working under dangerous or more stressful conditions.
Ironically (will see if it works this time), making good pictures of war, famine, floods, earthquakes, pick your hardship, are usually much easier than making good pictures in your own neighborhood.
I’m not quite sure what you were trying to communicate in your third paragraph. Are you suggesting that I think it’s OK for me to photograph human suffering because I have some altruistic or humanitarian ideals to hide behind and thus consider myself better than those that simply want to win a contest?
If so, you may be right.
2) I suppose that now and then I do extol the virtues of my own work over others. Don’t you?
This of course was not the goal of publishing the image of Phelps with one of his gold medals. The astute reader (perhaps you should give my posts another read) will know that the reason I posted that picture was to illustrate the fact that the badgering of forty or fifty photographers, on the behest of their editors who feel the need to publish pictures like this, actually works to destroy the chances of making a decent picture and chases the readers away from the publications that print them.
Maybe we got caught up on the irony thing again.
The rest of your post above is your opinion. Which is completely cool. Of course you’re entitled to say what you like. I will however make a couple more points to help clarify my postion(s).
Now that digital equipment has removed much of the technical (well at least chemical) obstacles to making pictures and everyone has access to an audience via online outlets, journalism is indeed simple. One only has wait for the next unplanned news event, chances are the first report and images will come via Twitter.
Good journalism, not to mention “great” journalism is still fairly rare and elusive.
I’ve never been an advocate for one type of capture method or another. I strive to use the best tool for the job. In fact, I’ve always been a vocal advocate for the, for lack of a better term, “personal journalism” which is practiced in the Magnum tradition.
The last thing I want, and I stated this fairly clearly I believe, is a bunch of people making pictures as if they were going to be used for evidence in a criminal trial.
I think we are a little self-important in our own minds. What other perspective do we have to go on (I’m not looking for spiritual guidance btw)? But let me assure you, I gave Klavs every benefit I could with the information I had.
One of my other concerns, which I never mentioned though perhaps should have, was that Klavs probably was in Haiti for a very short while and was simply trying to make the best out of his limited time there.
If these images were published in a magazine, I wouldn’t have went after him (just the magazine). I learned a long time ago that there’s usually a big difference between the photographer’s vision and goals, and what ends up published. These images were entered into a contest however, which means Klavs should have had plenty of control over his work at that point.
So I don’t think I was doing much witch-hunting.
I’m not sure what SPA stands for, but I’ll try to avoid crashing your party if I can.
All the best,
Ken
Btw, thank you Stupid for the link.
My problem Ken, has been the language in which this entire debate has been and continues to be couched. It is not a personal condemnation of your work. I have been a journalist (a writer) and am also a photographer. I think a reasonable code of ethics is essential to the practice of not only journalism but all professional conduct. What i find most frustrating in much of the coverage that I’ve read (at Lightstalkers, on blogs and professional communities) is that the heart of the issues are often but aside through a wringing of condemnation for a colleagues style or, can i suggest, grammar of depiction. Though I do not entirely subscribe to all of the particulars, i do try to lead an ethical practice, as a writer (when i wrote for newspapers) and as a photographer who works within a documentary tradition. The problem i found with the logic of your post, as well as much of the condemnation that arose amide the professional photographers I interact with, is that it indeed became more like an incendiary witch hunt that a careful and circumspect discussion of the role and use of imagery within the tradition of journalism.
My one concern, as a professional photographer and writer, with regard to the judgment of the ethics of other colleagues is what was their intent and what is the relationship to the pictures/story to the event and people. I find, in truth, much often events are, in fact, managed by a calvary of photographers, whether that’s in the war zones, the developing nations, or the news-center areas. The onus should come not from our categorical judgment of others, but on our relationship to our own code of behavior. Suggesting that Haiti is a fine place for photographers to haunt because of the human grief is to suggest, for me, what is more venomous and deleterious about our profession.
It seems, often in our profession, we’ve confused ethical behavior with aesthetic disagreement. Part of this, for sure, as to do with the photo worlds infantile need (like hollywood) to self-congratulate itself with all these stupid awards. Even the idea that photographers think about that, is an indication, that something has gone amiss. Suggesting that post-production is deceiving or unethcial (as it is, when the factual information is just wrong, i.e., the beginning of Kundera’s tale of visual revision of 1968 political leaders and a missing hat) when it in fact may be no more than just poor judgement, is a slope upon which each of us must be very careful before we assault others with.
I repeat. As a journalist, I was assigned the task of a simple thing: to make a story as clear and as honestly and as open to the readership as possible. Photoshopping photographs (or over processing in a dark room) is clearly an example of when the aestheticization of a moment becomes more important than the subject’s of that moment, to which I too instinctually feel troubled, but i think the problem is not that, but with the nature and our relationship to that, of reporting. I am not convinced that photojournalism, in its entirety, as come to terms with this. If they have, why is it that we see are fed stories of the world through the focus of primarily western reporters, or at least, reporters who are visiting the spot of document?….
The problem is a lot more complicated that the blogsphere has, for the most part, attended. That is what i am suggesting.
All the best
bob
p.s. a code of ethics to which i’ve tried to adhere:
http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp
last think, promise. in the code there is the line
“Image enhancement for technical clarity is always permissible.”
In one of the papers that I wrote and shot for, which at the time was owned by the NY Times, there was that very specific mandate by which guided the reporters and editors worked beneath with regard to ‘technical development’ of pictures. In the work David has published, as well as the work you site on the blog (including some of the work that won WPP awards this year (and last), there are varying degrees of post-production manipulation, enhancement, change, alteration. The question, from the point of view of reporting, have these altered the story? This is a profoundly difficult question because photography, and language, is already a subjective means, a ‘corrective’ expression of the passage of an event. The digital pictures made now do not AT ALL look like reality. We both know that, yet we allow for that, just as Capa’s pics on D-Day or PJG pics did not look like Omaha Beach or Vietnam, but their ‘look’ was not necessarily in the service of the aestheticization of the subject. This is the difficult and very hard-to-answer question.
Since when did German or Japanese glass look register the world as the eye and mind do? Therein lay the problem. All the more reason, we must be careful to discuss, argue, wrestle with these questions.
A overly-saturated photograph of an impoverished back yard seems in poor and immature taste…but is it the same as photo-shopping in an additional missle or burning building?….
I am happy Stoop brought up your blog essay, because these are important issues that each of us wrestle with (as with the comments pertaining to Anton’s picture), the question however is this:
have we lost sight, on both sides, of why it is we’re using photographs to tell stories and to document?…aren’t both sides of the argument (the guys doing all the crazy PS as making pics look, ummm, more award-winning and the guys condemning the hell out of them), missing the bigger point?…
i dont know, but that’s how it feels to me, as a writer and a photographer….
all the best
bob
one last point to consider, top think about….(sorry, my brain in in space)…
the issues raised also came up with the magnificent work of Chris Anderson’s Presidential Primary coverage….I’ve sat over a beer with chris and chatted about this very issue, and it came up again at the Magnum Blog when Chris was hammered by folk who judged the work as poor ….
for sure, that work, and the strange, disorienting, strong use of flash was odd for most (i loved it, no secret there), and wouldnt be published in newspapers…but, it ran, i believe in Newsweek…one could argue, that by using the argument of many at the moment, that the work itself was a violation of standard reporting protocol….i’ve written enough and way too many words at Magnum about that point of view (i think chris’ work was insightful and powerful and, like a fine essayist writing, added much that was needed using the tools of photographic vocabulary), …anyway, how does one deal with those images?….
anyway, just something to add to the discussion…
all the best bob
chris’ story
Here: http://tinyurl.com/cw522o (michigan primary with the great show of Mitt in the car)
and here: /d5r8qu (add the tiny url information to the beginning to get the link)
all the best
bb
Love it!
Wonder if the look in discussion is not merely the result of Sigurd’s way of using his flash …
Just a thought.
Love it as it is, though.
Hah! First time I check this website, and I find a series from a “local” photographer I have often been impressed by. Cool! I think the low angle fits with the “heros” theme, but also see that it’s not perfect. I agree that the images may be seen as overly dramatic, but I like them a lot. Nice work! Funny to see the Far Side poem again – one of my favorites :-)
I definitely have mixed feelings about this series, but I feel as if my opinion could be swayed with an explanation from the artist on why he shot these photos in this style. My first impression is that the portraits are not flattering; the harsh lighting combined with the sharpness exaggerates the pores/imperfections on the skin, not to mention the angle seems to distort them as well. I do not see these details as a photographer’s error, but more less something very intentional (that I would love to hear about!) I am always curious about the thought process during a shoot or in the development of an idea like this one. I see this as a portraiture series in which the artist took people who are typically overlooked as food service workers and kept them at distance, but deemed them “heroes” at their profession. Why does the artist label them heroes? Why can’t we have more insight into their lives outside of their workplace? Are they heroes because they pride themselves in their jobs? What is the connection between their profession and the manner in which their portraits were taken? Once again, I would love to have some insight into this body of work.
Best Regards,
So, why are we talking about photojournalism and photojournalistic ethics in this thread? Maybe I’m just stupid. And where the f*&% are the oranges?
Sigurd, just went through your website, should have earlier. Very, very impressive work from portrait to reportage to fashion, and clear distinctions between. Am looking forward to seeing new work there in the future.
Bob, as a friend, if I may call myself that, I have to say with all kindness that I re-read your original post regarding Kenneth Jarecke’s blog and I really do think you both misinterpreted a number of his points and overreacted in your rebuttal. To characterize a respected photojournalist’s opinion, or frankly anyone’s opinion who logically and carefully presents their point of view, as “superficial,” “shit,” “empty” and of “no value” seems uncharacteristically harsh for the buddhist in you. He did not present his argument in those terms at all, why are you? I understand you are frustrated but I believe you may owe him an apology. You okay Bob?
Sigurd,
i am not a fan of CPL, no not conspicuous panty line but Conspicuous Photoshop Look. I absolutely hated the Haiti pics in that link. Looked like the memory card was put through a Mr. Coffee machine. It accomplished nothing but to artificially amp up the drama. *yawn*..on the other hand, in this essay, the photoshop was anticipated from the get-go to get your point across. And it works big time. Sure, you had to get it done fast and it looks like you went a little bit overboard on some but this is like a first draft and you’ll no doubt be tweaking this project till you get just the look you’re after. That’s to be expected. So no complaint from me there.
Elevating these wonderful subjects by shooting low and capturing them in front of those turbulent skies is really quite touching. If we saw these people on their jobs we’d look past them, through them, around them. And that’s your point. With your photos we are forced to look not just at them but up at them, or up to them (a subtle but very intriguing distinction). This food they shovel out to the masses, that is grabbed, gulped down, forgotten, heh, is that elevated as well? These hugely individual powerful people, well is it possible they could make something as insignificant as an Egg McMuffin? No surely they must be putting the final touches on the Washington Monument or the GW Bridge. At least! These photos make me wonder about where they’re from, what their dreams are made of. And there’s nothing that makes my day more than photographs of people that make me wonder, make me care. So, kudos to you..you did it..i LOVE this project!!! It’s smart, it’s respectful, empathetic, accomplishes a higher good and has the potential of changing perceptions and prejudices.
I did find it curious that there’s all this poo-pooh’ing of photoshop in this essay and nothing but defense of it’s use when it came to Daria’s photo. Now, i don’t want to be cynical guys. Surely it has nothing to do with the fact that Daria is a nubile babe using photoshop to make her even more nubile-y and babe-like while these gritty, greasy guys (and lady) in wrinkled shirts look like they could take you out with one punch? nah…couldn’t be…nah, kat, you’re just being cynical..yeah, i thought so..
:))))))
best to all and gooodnight!
kat~
or frankly anyone’s opinion who logically and carefully presents their point of view, as “superficial,” “shit,” “empty” and of “no value” seems uncharacteristically harsh for the buddhist in you.
——————–
Bob? Merda or not metta…….. That is the question! :-)))))))))))))))
Off to Picardie, guys… great region, still full of the memories or XXth centuries wars, I think Marcin, Anton, you feel that in some places, in your own countries too. Something in the air, the feeling is still powerful, just being there.
yes i do hervé, yes i do.
our grandfathers and great grandfathers bled for the soil i now live on…
good luck in picardie, amigo
anton
Young Tom, Ken, all:
let me say it simply and clearly, colleague to colleague:
1) Ken is an excellent photographer. I know and knew his work before Stoop posted Ken’s blog. I respect him as a photographer and colleague.
2) I have never met Ken in person and felt no personal disdain or disrespect with regard to him.
3) I read the “Let’s Be Honest” Essay (all 3 parts) 2 times, slowly, before i posted my original thought, it was purposely provacative (my comment): my bad
4) I re-read the blog posts (all 3 parts) 2 more times last night.
5) I agree with some of what Ken has written, but there are parts of the essay and the tone of language that i feel are equally as problematic with regard to the character. The language used toward Hait, the language about the ‘hoard of twenty or so Dutch photographers yelling and screaming for the women to give them something like this image instead (who the heck brings a strobe to the Olympics anyways?).” etc….I’m wondering if this orientation was different from my own language of dismissal? ;))) (which was part of my intent)
6) I have made it a practice in my off-line and on-line life to try to not dismiss colleagues or their practice, though as a working photographer have been frank and open to all about my own ideas and experience. I try to promote the photographic life and the work of other photographers much more than my own work/photographic life.
7) In the joust of on-line banter, much has been lost, particularly given how i write.
8) I meant no personal disrespect for either Keith (as a colleague) or Keith’s ideas.
9) choosing the use a digital camera which produces essentially color raw files and then printing as b/w is, for me, no different than post-production intrusion: it’s all the same orientation, the question is this: again, what is the service and reason of the image.
10) I do find dismissal of others’ work frustrating.
11) My apologizes if that was improperly or rudely or disdainfully conveyed. The intent was to challenge the tide of reactionary criticism that has housed in a place of I-am-more-authentic-ethical photographer mentality. I DO NOT feel that Ken has this orientation. I did feel, that the ideas, contained a lick of that.
12) What matters is how we behave not what we think. I am sorry if i offended.
bye and cheers
all the best
bob
WROBERTANGELL…
i flipped?? laughing ….i only “flip” when i think someone is being rude…dissent i welcome…so “dissent” away….yes, i am the only one choosing pictures for publication on BURN….and the pictures come to me through the “submissions” zone at the top of the page…so, basically they are coming from the readers here….very few pictures published here come from my workshop students, but occasionally they do…i do not believe i have ever seen you submit anything for BURN, and i remember clearly suggesting that you do so….
cheers, david