Comments on: Victor Cobo – Behind the Smoke Colored Curtain https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2011/08/victor-cobo-behind-the-smoke-colored-curtain/ burn is an online feature for emerging photographers worldwide. burn is curated by magnum photographer david alan harvey. Sat, 18 Jun 2016 11:13:03 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.2.4 By: Justinlorimer.com https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2011/08/victor-cobo-behind-the-smoke-colored-curtain/#comment-98657 Tue, 20 Sep 2011 23:36:14 +0000 http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=9702#comment-98657 I learn a great deal from the work posted on Burn. I look at essays and think “How do these Photographers develop the narrative?” Keeps me reaching higher. Thank you.

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By: john gladdy https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2011/08/victor-cobo-behind-the-smoke-colored-curtain/#comment-96463 Thu, 18 Aug 2011 22:25:45 +0000 http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=9702#comment-96463 Behind the smoke colored Curtain, the girl Disappeared

A tree born crooked……….Will never grow straight

Promises are never meant To keep.

How it going to end?

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By: panos skoulidas https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2011/08/victor-cobo-behind-the-smoke-colored-curtain/#comment-96404 Tue, 16 Aug 2011 19:16:08 +0000 http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=9702#comment-96404 So far, I have neither YES! nor NO!, but also neither GOOD! or BAD!
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Thus spoken Zarathustra ;)

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By: Carlo https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2011/08/victor-cobo-behind-the-smoke-colored-curtain/#comment-96397 Tue, 16 Aug 2011 14:00:56 +0000 http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=9702#comment-96397 I neither feel a YES or NO about the photos….I have been looking at them for several days and reading the comments. Trying to understand the writing, the message.
The story might not be linear but you can still group these together and find common themes in them.
It has a dream like feeling to it. Dreams often do not make much sense but you relate to them because you have had these experiences before. They are part of your memories….memories been played out of sequence.
That’s how I feel about these photos.

I have hung around and still hang out in similar groups…except transsexuals and drugs…not passing judgement here!…so they feel almost normal to me.
I thought I was going to see images of a night a friend does called “wierd” in brooklyn….or see images of friends I have in San Francisco. I seriously thought I would!
I think Victor has been to these places.
Number 1 I love and number 20….the “killer” dog is great too.
I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. Is not so black and white, no pun intended. I mean
the whole thing about “getting it” that David has mentioned….but I am learning and thats always a good thing.

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By: Paul https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2011/08/victor-cobo-behind-the-smoke-colored-curtain/#comment-96392 Tue, 16 Aug 2011 07:11:24 +0000 http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=9702#comment-96392 Just watched that Nine Inch nails video and I really, really find the music sooooo lame for such good images. I loved someone’s comment saying “Trent Reznor looks like a bondage-prone version of Professor Snape”, but I see what you mean Brian.
After reading Bob’s latest comments I really feel bad about myself… But deep, deep down I know I truly don’t feel the wrong because if I did I would change my ways. I’m no saint at all. I’ve always had a hard time not going over the top artistically and invested too much time in myself and never enough in those close to me. I know it’s bad, especially considering what I’ve achieved and that’s something my wife sometimes reminds me about, but, but, but…
I can’t help it.

And I like this essay and I’m enjoying all the reactions and comments. Perhaps I don’t go into it deeply enough, I like eyeball kicks and feel no other way about things. Sometimes essays grow on me, but I usually go by instinct. I like being swept away.
Bloody hell!! All I need now this morning is to kick the bucket in the operating theatre after this comment :))

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By: Sidney Atkins https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2011/08/victor-cobo-behind-the-smoke-colored-curtain/#comment-96389 Tue, 16 Aug 2011 02:47:19 +0000 http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=9702#comment-96389 I think Number 6 is an arresting and beautiful image, and I find Number 15 interesting and well done. But I think those two images are quite out of character with all the rest, and as for the rest… I gotta side with Herve on this one, they simply do not interest me, not even as mildly titillating soft porn. Classify me however you want, if that is what you want.

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By: Brian Frank https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2011/08/victor-cobo-behind-the-smoke-colored-curtain/#comment-96388 Tue, 16 Aug 2011 00:02:53 +0000 http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=9702#comment-96388 “Brian, if you like that NIN/Mark Romanek video, it sounds like either David doesn’t know you very well or he thinks very little of this essay.”
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DAH knows that I prefer straight shooting, telling stories PJ-style.

“Have you seen the multimedia interludes on the last couple of NIN tour videos?”
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Saw them in concert a couple years ago…incredible. The place was just 2/3 full (It’s Des Moines, after all) and the dude went all out to give a good show, and the multimedia interludes were great. Good to know they are available for viewing again. Thanks for that.

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By: mw https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2011/08/victor-cobo-behind-the-smoke-colored-curtain/#comment-96387 Mon, 15 Aug 2011 23:49:03 +0000 http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=9702#comment-96387 I guarantee that DAH would have predicted, if asked, that I wouldn’t like this. I don’t, but I like the potential that this could become if taken even further into the imagination.

Brian, if you like that NIN/Mark Romanek video, it sounds like either David doesn’t know you very well or he thinks very little of this essay.

Have you seen the multimedia interludes on the last couple of NIN tour videos? On the DVD’s they are available by following the menus down to something like extras/alternate angles and are my favorite multi-media pieces period. Mark Romanek’s video for Hurt is incredible as well, especially as how it’s deeply affected so many who have never heard of Trent Reznor.

Gotta half agree on the artist statement, though sounds more like academicese nightmare than dream-like. Victor, please introduce yourself to Strunk and White.

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By: Brian Frank https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2011/08/victor-cobo-behind-the-smoke-colored-curtain/#comment-96386 Mon, 15 Aug 2011 22:37:25 +0000 http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=9702#comment-96386 Anyone remember the music video for Nine Inch Nail’s “Closer?” It was (still is) a groundbreaking collection of scenes that were gloriously designed, textured and photographed. A collection of images combining Dante’s Inferno and Cosmo, each scene on itself could be a disturbing, yet beautiful photograph all on its own. The result was a brilliant, visceral experience so controversial, that the director demanded his name be removed from the final credits. My jaw dropped to the floor the first time I saw it, and am still impressed on how well it has aged.

This essay strikes me a lesser version of that; a series of images to give an overall sense of exploring the darker side of sexuality, possibly leading to depravity(?) Gordon comments that it looks like their are having fun. To me, the series is supposed to act as a warning against the darker impulses. I could be wrong, but that’s what’s great about interpretational photography.

Does it work? Kinda. It does leave a feeling, like needing to be cleansed, after viewing, even if it is not as effective as the NIN video that was brought to mind. But I can’t help but feel that there should be more—more texture, more haunting, more obscurity, more atmosphere.

I guarantee that DAH would have predicted, if asked, that I wouldn’t like this. I don’t, but I like the potential that this could become if taken even further into the imagination.

BTW, I’m not a big fan of hacking on the artist statement, but I’ve read this three times, and I still don’t understand what the hell is being said. The writing is more dream-like than the images.

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By: bob black https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2011/08/victor-cobo-behind-the-smoke-colored-curtain/#comment-96385 Mon, 15 Aug 2011 22:06:37 +0000 http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=9702#comment-96385 and last bit (u know this is with a smile, so please don’t take long words with anything but <3)…talking of photogrpahic hero: u would be hard pressed to find someone that has done more for young photogrpahers, time and money and heart, than david…though i love his work alot, i respect him and admire him as a person even more because he has tirelessly worked to make the photographic life (whatever that may be) for young and old…he put his butt and time and money and commitment where he said he would…in time, in edits, in introductions in publishing in grant in helping …he could have rested on his laurels (tell it like it is and divided soul is enough to secure his place at any photographic table) but he didn't he beat down the door for photographers and does this continually…not, putting the 2 ideas together (work and life) that is the character of a real photohero…and yes there are others who aren't known who do the same…but that commitment to those who invest themselves and to give back have a place at his table and at his home….at the risk of sounding like a sycophant, he is clearly a personal hero….and a friend….

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By: bob black https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2011/08/victor-cobo-behind-the-smoke-colored-curtain/#comment-96384 Mon, 15 Aug 2011 21:53:15 +0000 http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=9702#comment-96384 and by the way, my photographic life is far far from being the most important aspect of my life, just as the greater part of my life is not spend with photographers or the photo world but is simply one of the aspects of it, it is part (not the entire) of who i am and how i live…just as is writing and teaching…but so is walking and helping and meditating..more importantly is being a father and husband and a friend and son and brother…so, shall i begin to write about the deeds as well…aren’t we chatting about pictures and photographic life, not about how one lives their life…unlike what appears to be ;your suggestion, i don’t compartmentalize any of this….I love Nachtwey as a photographer and his commitment…i can’t say i enjoy our conversation at all in NYC…does that mean I respect him less??..of course not, photographically speaking…..if we’re talking people/photographs, I prefer James Delano much much more as a person who happens also to be a great photographer….but James’ work and commitment are a profound touchstone for any photographer interested in telling stories through the medium….so I don’t conflate the do thoughts….isn’t that what you want to begin with, not a reduction, absurdum?…

it’s all the same: the way we live this waking life….so, if we’re going to parse each other’s words or rather interpret ‘photogrpahic hero’ as to be compared with who we best admire in life, than what’s the point of even writing about photography or photographers, i wonder….

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By: Imants https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2011/08/victor-cobo-behind-the-smoke-colored-curtain/#comment-96383 Mon, 15 Aug 2011 21:43:00 +0000 http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=9702#comment-96383 (think of Nachtwey and War P. friends ending a war with their pictures)…a sweeping statement care to back it up with real information not your personal hearsay?

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By: bob black https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2011/08/victor-cobo-behind-the-smoke-colored-curtain/#comment-96382 Mon, 15 Aug 2011 21:41:37 +0000 http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=9702#comment-96382 Herve:

what’s stopping you?…..why ask permission, …

i did NOT say they were great men…i said they were PHOTOGRAPHIC heroes….big big difference…the ONLY heroes i have in my life as people are mostly ones who worked beyond themselves to make the life of someone better: starting with my mother and father….photographic hero is a person that pushes boundaries, that attempts to give so much of themselves in their medium of storytelling/expression, that remain an inspiration and a bellwhether by which i map out my own photographic life…but photography is stimpled-simply expression of story telling…in truth, the unknown people who work the landscape amid grief and suffering are FAR MORE heroic to me than War Photographers, since you have chosen to mixed fruit here….hero, photographic, means something simple: whose work and whose photographic life has inspired me, whose life have i drawn from as an example (photographically speaking)….add to that Mann and Meatyard and Richards and my close personal friend Jack Burman…and PLEASE contextualize since you’re quoting me on FB….that was in reference to having discovered Michael Disfarmer, whose work is profound and inspiring and who was unknown and work his craft without the need for being known…..

i’ll let me own pictures and accompany stand as a reply (wait for that) and as for the way one lives…..i’m always amazed at the dichotomy of your banter: loving at FB…bulldogging at burn…

sniff, sniff…

cheers
b

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By: Herve https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2011/08/victor-cobo-behind-the-smoke-colored-curtain/#comment-96381 Mon, 15 Aug 2011 21:27:57 +0000 http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=9702#comment-96381 Bob, may I?
you claim to be careful about “greatness” (on FB), and here you go off, yoopee!, first sentence, on your heroes, the Titans (which are great men), setting the bar (of greatness, I presume). It’s OK, but IMO, you can’t have it both ways. I have absolutely no heroes in photography, the only one close to that for me is Lewis Hine, and that is not because of his photography, but his fight to free children from exploitaion/labour (think of Nachtwey and War P. friends ending a war with their pictures). There are great photographers, but for me, they are a by-product of a very exciting medium available to so many.

There are a few pictures that have touched me deeply over the last few years, very few are by professionals, “greats”, and are hardly susceptible to ever find their ways on gallery walls and magazine pages. Basically, I forgot the name of who took them, they are simply great images to me to which I respond emotionally. To me, that’s what photography is about. No pantheon!

Panos, you say sniff the glue to photograph addiction. I am sure it’s one way of doing it. But talking about Nachtwey again, he did a pretty good job of catching the feeling without having to lose an entire family, or be dying in his own blood… We are never sure what is the best way to shoot the feeling, that’s why it’s so much fun to take oictures. Neither yes nor no! ;-)

Paul, you mention honesty, showing one’s fantasies without puritanism. It’s called pornography (erotism too, but I noticed the word is rarely referenced nowadays), and its ubiquitousness beats puritanism by a mile.

I get a feeling Jamie, Katia, Eva are rather non-plussed by the essay. So far, if I had boobs, I think i’d be too. Not sure, though… Unlike Jim, mentionning post modern conceptual art in the essay, I am more simple and inclined to entertain thoughts about sex tourism (which is just a variant of tourism, look at Parr’s tourists) than sex, as to what helped bring out this essay. But Victor doesn’t tell us enough (which D’ Agata does instantly from, as Panos says, his set-ups).

So far, I have neither YES! nor NO!, but also neither GOOD! or BAD! Well, yes, the essay is pure BURN ESSAY verbose, telling us again what is in the pictures rather than letting us discover it ourselves, but now, by August 2011, that’s quite understood. :-)

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By: Herve https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2011/08/victor-cobo-behind-the-smoke-colored-curtain/#comment-96378 Mon, 15 Aug 2011 20:39:02 +0000 http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=9702#comment-96378 I see a lot of women exposed, they are mainly the bodies in the essay while what seems to be men introduce the life (and its masks)-questionning, ie. the “serious” stuff.

I disagree totally with you David, that there is a YES (Heaven’s Gates open) and a NO (“you just don’t understand!”) to this essay. Personally, I am very interested to read what our women friends on BURN have to say. Besides, the contrary of yes is indifference, not NO.

IMO.

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By: Paul https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2011/08/victor-cobo-behind-the-smoke-colored-curtain/#comment-96377 Mon, 15 Aug 2011 19:49:24 +0000 http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=9702#comment-96377 “A black cat crossing your path signifies that the animal is going somewhere.”
Groucho Marx

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By: tom hyde https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2011/08/victor-cobo-behind-the-smoke-colored-curtain/#comment-96376 Mon, 15 Aug 2011 19:12:11 +0000 http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=9702#comment-96376 Why-a-no-chicken? Best forum post ever.

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By: eva https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2011/08/victor-cobo-behind-the-smoke-colored-curtain/#comment-96375 Mon, 15 Aug 2011 18:38:59 +0000 http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=9702#comment-96375 Thomas..

you did not say ‘ONLY about the photographer’.. :)

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By: Thomas Bregulla https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2011/08/victor-cobo-behind-the-smoke-colored-curtain/#comment-96374 Mon, 15 Aug 2011 18:25:50 +0000 http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=9702#comment-96374 MW, yeah I guess my statement was a bit too strong to say “it is only about the photographer”, however I believe that every photograph is also a reflection of the photographer.

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By: Akaky https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2011/08/victor-cobo-behind-the-smoke-colored-curtain/#comment-96373 Mon, 15 Aug 2011 16:24:29 +0000 http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=9702#comment-96373 Like Frosty, I have no idea what sort of comment I should make about Victor’s work nor am I sure I know what Bob is talking about, either, so I will say the following:

From the Marx Bros., “Cocoanuts”)
Hammer [Groucho Marx]: … Now here is a little peninsula, and here is a viaduct leading over to the mainland.
Chico: Why a duck?
Hammer: I’m all right. How are you? I say here is a little peninsula, and here’s a viaduct leading over to the mainland.
Chico: All right. Why a duck?
Hammer: I’m not playing Ask-Me-Another. I say, that’s a viaduct.
Chico: All right. Why a duck? Why a— why a duck? Why-a-no-chicken?
Hammer: I don’t know why-a-no-chicken. I’m a stranger here myself. All I know is that it’s a viaduct. You try to cross over there a chicken, and you’ll find out why a duck. It’s deep water, that’s viaduct.

Lots of people argue about politics; in fact, arguing about politics is one of the great pleasures, if you can call it that, of American life and has been since the founding of the Republic. Very few people other than academics, though, actually argue about the political philosophies that underlie those arguments; most people prefer to concentrate instead on the day to day maneuvering and staged news events that constitute the foam on the surface of the political sea. I think more people would talk about political philosophy if someone kept the academics out of the discussion altogether, since most of them are fairly liberal, if not actual left wingers of one sort or another; professors are, as a rule, annoying the way your neighbor’s kids are annoying, which is too say all the damn time and never more so than when they let that damn dog of theirs wander around the neighborhood peeing on your mother’s azaleas, but that’s another story; and left wingers, like any other insecure religious believer, like to shout down anyone who disagrees with them. This makes them disagreeable to be with on the whole, especially if they are Marxists, since they may mistake you for an oppressed proletarian and try some brand new lines of agitprop on you to gauge their overall effectiveness, hoping to stir some good old fashioned revolutionary class struggle with a pernicious but otherwise fairly harmless kulak counter-revolutionary capitalist running dog like your local Korean fruit stand owner before they go home to the suburbs and eat some vegan quiche for supper.

I bring this up because one of my co-workers, a graduate student who wants to work with children after she gets her masters degree, for reasons that elude me at the moment (you can skip the next bit if you want and start up with and I; you won’t miss anything important); the concept of willingly working with children always reminds me of great souls like Father Damien or Albert Schweitzer or Mother Teresa, living saints who spend their lives working with lepers or condemned prisoners or advertising executives; you’re happy that someone works on behalf of these poor unfortunate wretches, and you’re equally happy, if not even more so, that the someone who works with them isn’t you; and I (welcome back to the main part of the sentence; the weather here is fine, sunny and high in the low 70’s with a chance of showers later tonight) found ourselves talking about Marxism for some reason. We discussed the great dogmas of that great secular faith: dialectical materialism, the surplus value of labor, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the class struggle and the inevitable triumph of the workers, religion as the opiate of the masses, and then she posed a question about the central tenet of the Marxist faith. She was skeptical of many Marxist claims, and one may say that in the light of recent history she has every right to be skeptical, and she wondered aloud if anyone had ever done a systematic and scientific examination of the factors involved in the Marxist conundrum of why a duck?

Indeed, one may well ask why a duck and not some other species of waterfowl? The question of why a duck is an old one, as I am sure you know, predating the existence of Marxism by at least a millennium. In the Middle Ages, schools of philosophy contended bitterly over the question, with angry mobs of students coming constantly to blows in the streets of Paris and Bologna and cheese with mustard, with many a university suspended from competition for years because of irregularities in recruiting star philosophers. The medieval nominalists held that only the individual duck existed, that ducks as a class merely reflected the individual duck down to the webbed feet, the quack, and the insatiable drive to sell supplemental health insurance. The medieval realists believed that ducks derived their inherent duckiness from their being part of the greater class of ducks and from owning a really cool motorcycle, which then, as now, was a babe magnet, and that the individuality of specific ducks was less important than the larger category of duck to which all ducks belonged…yeah, I know, this is all a bit much, but it was the Middle Ages, remember; there were no movies, no television, much less cable TV, no computer games or any computers to play them on. They had to do something to pass the time and arguing about whether ducks came by their identity through their individual characteristics or through their membership in the National Hockey League was a good way to kill a year or two. Remember how dumb you’re going to look to your descendants a thousand years from now and cut these people some slack, okay? Medieval peasants, to round out the argument, thought that both schools of thought had a good deal of merit, intellectually speaking, but most held to the opinion that no matter which school’s argument was the more valid, ducks still tasted pretty damn good when you could catch them, particularly if damp and moldy rye bread is all you’ve had to eat since you were a kid.

Marxists, as a rule, follow the realist approach to the question of why a duck. Such categories as class and duck, after all, are human constructs, after all, templates that are dishwasher safe and won’t break even if hurled at a wall by a happy Greek dancing to the theme music from Zorba the Greek at a wedding he’s not paying for; free food does that to people sometimes. In any case, this reduction of ducks to a mere category, one of many, suits the philosophical bent of most Marxists, who seem to despise most species involved in the insurance business, but this aversion has little or nothing to do with the larger question of why a duck. The most popular answer of the twentieth century was I don’t know, I’m a stranger here myself, but I feel that in our more modern age we can safely say, without fear of contradiction, why the hell not a duck, and to say so with great confidence. Now why Marxists loathe the insurance business so much is another question entirely, and one beyond the scope of this essay, but the dislike appears real enough, based on the historical evidence of the past century. I find it hard to think of a twentieth century Marxist state where I’d feel comfortable selling life and property insurance, given the usual Marxist prejudices about life and property.

The above has nothing to do with Victor’s essay, but there’s a lot of stuff here that doesn’t have anything to do with Victor’s essay and there’s likely to be a lot more stuff here that hasn’t have anything to do with Victor’s essay before whoever is next on the essay parade shows up and the whole process about lots of stuff having nothing to do with the essay at hand repeats itself; I’ve hung around Burn long enough to how this is going to turn out, boys and girls. And I liked your essay in 01, Victor, especially that picture of Jesus covered with money and really looking like he needed an aspirin. I liked that one a lot.

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