Comments on: michelle frankfurter – destino

By: Michelle Frankfurter: Destino | MongTo Blog

Michelle Frankfurter: Destino | MongTo Blog — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 17:13:44 +0000

[...] Michelle Frankfurter started to photograph along the US-Mexico border, and focuses her photo essay Destino featured on Burn magazine on undocumented Central American migrants who travel across Mexico in an [...]

By: Perpignan Mini Journal « Blog

Perpignan Mini Journal « Blog — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 15:42:23 +0000

[...] projection de burn magazine avec notamment la série Destino de Michelle [...]

By: BURN 02 | Fotojournalisten

BURN 02 | Fotojournalisten — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 15:15:19 +0000

[...] publiserte essay fra Burnmagazine.org som er kommet med er blant andre Michelle Frankfurters «Destino» og Danny Wilcox Fraziers «A Detroit [...]

By: Michelle Frankfurter: Destino | Travelgoing - travel

Michelle Frankfurter: Destino | Travelgoing - travel — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 07:00:58 +0000

By: Destino: Central American migration to the U.S. » Available Light

Destino: Central American migration to the U.S. » Available Light — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 00:01:11 +0000

[...] slightly different edit of this work-in-progress was recently published on Burn Magazine. I plan on making another trip to Mexico in January to continue work on the project. Tags: [...]

By: Bernhard Kristinn – Photography Blog - Burn Magazine – Some great photo essays

Sat, 20 Nov 2010 18:43:08 +0000

[...] I specially liked “Destino” by Michelle Frankfurter covering Central American migrants traveling through Mexico o… [...]

By: Charles Peterson

Charles Peterson — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 00:24:23 +0000

What freakin’ amazing work. Michelle you’ve really raised the bar here. This is the kind of work that really resonates with the soul of the viewer (mine at least) by portraying the soul of the subject. Thank you. Charles

By: gg

gg — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 16:39:28 +0000

Thank you Michelle for your additional writing and insight to your excellent story.
From own experience – photographed the grape strike, Cesar Chavez and the Mexican-American farm labor movement in the late sixties – I share your view of involvement with your subject besides the
Tourist / Gringo status.

Thank you David and Bob for the comments on place and being,
making BURN worth reading . . .
My comment may be one day late – the blog is moving fast . . .

Gerhard

By: Herve

Herve — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 09:09:18 +0000

the camera is an obstacle to some and a enebler to others..
———————————————————-

Definitely belongs to the second category ….(Hi, fellas, this one sent from Bangkok)

By: bob black

bob black — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 02:04:42 +0000

DAVID :))

no doubt, no doubt :)))…and damn, i don’t want to re-read all that mess under Brian’s essay, i gave it all i could on that one to open eyes… ;))…..but it took a lot out too…;)

i’ve never, ever, understood the ‘this book/story should be/could be only told by _____’ mentality….then again, i’ve lived a totally screwed up life too…white kid spends early childhood in asia…thinks he asian only to awaken to being a white kid in a city, later taken to the country….always been out of the element but for where the feet are….

the act of imagination is an act of solidarity with humanity, and that has no bearing on the outer shell….

to be open to what is around, to respect and tender what is around, to be aware and to connect…

who knows….4 noble truths, that’s pretty much the dime for me, and how to maintain that awareness and to be open, knowing full well we fail most of it….

what matters is not only where your head is…..but where your heart is as well…

MW: no offense taking….they’re only comments…it’s the work that matters

Windup: HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN YOU, promise…been a mad 7 weeks…but, ur pics are on my on-deck circle, :)..

running
b

By: Windup

Windup — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 23:01:55 +0000

Michelle,

“I’ll jump in with my own solipsist musings. I’ve spent most of my life as a U.S. citizen …”

________________________________________________________________________________________________

And it’s all right there in your images. You don’t need any words. None at all.

By: Ross Nolly

Ross Nolly — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 22:48:07 +0000

“everybody who does something significant gets roundly criticized by either those who don’t or can’t…”

Human nature I suppose.

By: monkeypoint

monkeypoint — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 22:19:32 +0000

I’ll jump in with my own solipsist musings. I’ve spent most of my life as a U.S. citizen but I still feel like an outsider. When I’m down in Mexico or Nicaragua, there’s an innate familiarity to being there. It reminds me of home. I’m not a world traveler. I’ve circled back to only a few places over the past 23 years, learned the language, absorbed the cultural nuances, gestures, body language. I personally wouldn’t have done this project unless I felt that culturally, I was in a comfort zone. There are many who empathize with their subjects and use their empathy or insider status as a disclaimer for work that isn’t very interesting. My projects are personal to me because in some ways they are about me. I identify with the people I photograph. My family moved to a predominantly Jewish suburban neighborhood of Syracuse. Instead of being accepted, I was bullied and ostracized. I spent most of my childhood in the company of books and neighborhood dogs, which is why I gravitate thematically to the underdog and why dogs always appear in my work – that symbiosis between people and dogs. I’m drawn to the anti-heroes, the tragic figures. My father survived the Holocaust. I was exposed to the grainy newsreels of emaciated bodies stacked like cordwood. This was not a lesson meant to expose the Evil Mastermind theory, but rather that human beings behave predictably and are easily manipulated – the complicity of the average citizen. This was a lesson learned early of human betrayal and culpability on a colossal level. I’m looking for something good, something redeemable about our species, something inherently human – something I needed to see and experience as an antidote to remedy the feelings I have lately that the only thing we merit as a species is extinction. Loose coalitions formed in the migrant shelters based on cooperation. People who had nothing shared food and water, looked out for one another, cared about each other. In the days spent waiting for the train we slept in adjacent bunkbeds, told each other jokes and stories of past loves and losses. Yes, I got to know them, but they got to know me, as well as any close friend. I spent a night on top of a boxcar in the pouring rain wrapped in a plastic bag another migrant had given me with my arms around a 19-year-old Honduran kid named Elmer, other migrants shouting, “Apapachala! Apapachala! (basically, Hug her!) and we all laughed. And we smoked and the night seemed to go on forever. I felt like one of them, even though I knew they were better than me, that I was little more than a tourist.

By: david alan harvey

david alan harvey — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 22:17:06 +0000

ROSS…

everybody who does something significant gets roundly criticized by either those who don’t or can’t…

MW…

isn’t that Road Trips piece a paraphrase of what i just wrote? or are you making some other point that i am not getting?

By: Ross Nolly

Ross Nolly — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 21:30:03 +0000

David; Re; “well a black woman should have done it”…

Didn’t Eugene Richards come up against something similar with the story about his wife’s battle with breast cancer (him not being a woman)? Also; wasn’t he roundly criticised for shooting Dorchester Days? (or was it Cocaine Blue, Cocaine True?), because he wasn’t black? I remember reading him saying that it was only other black photographers that stood up for him. Nobody else wanted to know him. Interesting…

By: Imants

Imants — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 20:42:47 +0000

I’ll leave you to fight it out with your ego……… enjoy.

By: mw

mw — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 20:17:57 +0000

And although I’ll never get it, nor would I want to, I do get you. So cheer up! Pués.

By: mw

mw — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 20:11:00 +0000

So true, so true, but if I did, then I’d be you.

By: Imants

Imants — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 20:06:27 +0000

mw you just don’t get it

By: mw

mw — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 19:47:03 +0000

What goes around, comes around.