sorry, didn´t know what Bay to Breakers referred to..not being a left-coaster as it were..i liked it! Your pranks are a welcome diversion..long as you stay your always sweet, lovable self :)

best
kat-

like peace, man ;)

kat~

dedicated to you, Kat:

http://www.pbase.com/uc/image/112643672

Checked the link, yes, this has to be the same thing i am remembering..i recall the photographer was under orders of the French government and that the country was Algeria. I can stop beating my head against a wall now (and i can also put all my books away), phew, THANK YOU!!

kat

Yes, i think he´s the one i´ve been trying to think of. In the not too distant past i saw photos of Muslim women who were forced to take their veils off for ID purposes during wartime (or immediately after?). I´ve been searching through my books to find it but without success..will check this link to see if it´s the same..thanks sooo much!!

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kathleen

Herve

Yes, of course, it´s possible that in David P´s edit ID photos of smiling women need not apply. I do see your point but my point, and it´s a simple one really, to me: the fact that they were supposedly trafficked had nothing to do with the sadness i saw. I saw it before i read the text. They could all have been shot standing in a line at the bus stop and my reaction would have been the same. They are Muslim women. That was a clear fact. Indisputable. Trafficked? mmm..who can say for sure but David P? Taken in the same place? Well, unless Muslim women all wear the same shade of pink lip gloss as most of these women did, then i would have to say yes, all taken in the same place. In what country? That i couldn´t say. But..but..apart from all the speculation, were they all sad? To me? yes, indisputably. Great discussion, Herve!

bob-black-running
kathie

“every portrait is a self portrait”

In some sense that is true. I believe we are looking for a piece of our common humanity when we view or make portraits.

Photographers often consciously seek out the same piece in every person they portray. Arbus’ people always look pathetic. Lartiques people all look whimsical. Karshs people always look plastic and bigger than life. Avedons portraits often show a person with a slight sideways unfocused glance, and the look of someone searching the melancholy section of the memory banks. I watched a video of him doing a sitting once. He asked the sitter a question something like “what would you be doing if you knew you only had a few days to live”. Then he photographed the reaction.

Part of making a deliberate portrait is having the skill to allow the expression you want happen, and be ready to capture it when it does. Unless you are working with a trained actor, you cannnot ask someone to “look sad and thoughtful” and get a genuine expression anymore than you can get a genuine smile by asking someone for a “big smile now”.

Gordon L.

To be precise: meaning they are not trafficked, but have those expressions.

But that’s my point, Kat. David P. started a narrative that called for our compassion. And he is the one who put them together, ID pix are not really taken in group (it may be that you think they were taken in the refuge, I think they were taken back home, different countries, years even.

Who knows, since he never explained much as to his process?

We react to the photos because we were told they were trafficked women. Take the same expressions, but no veil, and even a different ethnic background, let’s say caucasian, do you think trafficked. Would you think that no caucasian women can ever have that trafficked, exploited look on their faces?

As another thread showed (black shroude women) and Audrey’s candid comment showed, we do project a lot that comes from us in a photo, much that may not be there. You do it, DAH does it , I do it. And the perception will differ, in the absence of sure facts about the context of the images.

“It is perhaps hard for some photographers to accept that an automated portrait vending machine may produce portraits that may sometimes “capture the soul” of a person better than they could.”

Cannot agree more on this: I strongly believe (and apply to my way of shooting) that every portrait is basically a self-portrait of the photographer or, as Oscar Wilde better wrote: “Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself”. This could seems extremely far from a documentaristic approach but, on the other hand, also a photojournalistic shot is just a subjective view of something happening and, in this case, the crowd of safety cameras in the streets could be considered the equivalent of photobooths. Actually, it seems to me that the authorial approach is valued and pushed for on Burn also for strictly photojournalistic essays.

We need to trust, not the mechanical properties of the camera but the personal integrity of the photographer. The reality revealed by the cameras lens should be regarded as being to some extent a product of the personality, sensitivity or creativity of the photographer. The camera cannot provide the objective facts. (Liz Wells)

“Photographs can lie and liars can use photographs” – I can’t remember who said that, but I think it may have been the late great Philip Jones Griffiths.

My comments were more general and were not focused on this specific essay or in portrait photography per say.

About portraits:
Many people exhibit some of the symptoms of OCD in their everyday behavior… from not stepping on the cracks of the sidewalk to clicking their clicky pens an odd number of times… I, let’s say, need things to fall into “their place” in my frame before I can press the release. Combining this with the “need” to spot meter at least a few times and focus and refocus (my cameras are all manual), and you can imagine that I’m not shooting too many portraits, right…? So, I haven’t being able (yet) to break through my own constrains and go to the place where you are (and pretty much any good portrait photographer is) and be able to SEE the flitting expressions of emotions on people’s faces while holding a camera in their faces, instantly and intuitively assess those expressions and actually, finally capture them.

My main argument here was against the idea of “pure” PJ-ism. The idea that a “straight out of the camera” picture is somehow a more real representation of reality than a picture which was manipulated (within reason) in order to “express” reality according to the person who actually experienced reality, the photographer.
There are too many—both technical and aesthetical—factors into the making of any picture to say that a single one of them makes-or breaks-the whole thing.

In my mind it always comes down to the intentions of the photographer. And the difference between a picture/essay that “works” and one that doesn’t comes down to the successful (or not) implementation of all of those factors.

One more thing..i am working like a maniac on a couple of photo projects and so i probably will not be back to respond if you write. Just want you to know it’s not indifference it’s just that i’m working elsewhere.

best
kat~

Gosh, you are right..i should clearly stick to a culture i know and that’s not the Asian one. I was thinking and reacting to your comment about Cambodia and Thailand and recalled a recent conversation with someone else and mentioned it conversationally. Hell, i probably didn’t even quote this person well as it was! But since i know this [.] much about the Asian culture i will leave those observations to the experts.

It wasn’t my intention to say that photos capture a culture’s emotional or psychological patterns. Perhaps they do. I never thought about it. Your gave the example of curtailing one’s emotions in public. Photos taken in Costa Rica and earlier on in the US mainly portray unsmiling people. But that doesn’t mean they were/are sad. Anyway, that wasn’t what i meant about the photos in this essay which was a group of Muslim women who looked infinitely sad to me. And heaven knows i still see their faces in my head. I could practically tick them off right here. David AH was so right in his reaction to them. They make an indelible impression. So, ok, clear on that, yes?

Yes, Herve, i hear what you’re saying about ID photos but when you see a group of them together, gathered under virtually identical circumstances and each to a one looks pained, well, you can conclude that either there was some common physical discomfort affecting the group or else there was something else. And to me, and to the two David’s and to Gordon and to who knows how many others who saw the essay before it was pulled felt it was something else.

GORDON

Well said…you, as a portrait photographer are extremely sensitive to the human face and its infinite range of expressions..nice to know you reacted this strongly as well..

take care, both

kat/

the ambiguity with these photos is that there is no real way of finding out the pensive thoughts of the subjects without hearing from them directly… we can project onto them the imagined horror they could have been through, and use the context of the text to put US in the mind of why they might look so, even if they were not in that head-space themselves..

so long as there is individual consent to use the photographs from the women, it feels comfortable to talk about them as journalistic or artistic illustrations.