Comments on: leeor kaufman – sabras – the story of wadi fuqin

By: Dozens injured in West Bank protests, including two boys shot with live ammunition | Mondoweiss

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 14:17:23 +0000

[...] village of Wadi Fuqin Told by Palestinians who live there. Excerpt from essay by Leeor Kaufman from Burn Magazine: Wadi Fuqin, a small Palestinian village, carries the inconceivable complexities of the current [...]

By: michael kircher

michael kircher — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 01:30:16 +0000

Make that “later.” (goddamn iPhone.)

By: michael kircher

michael kircher — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 01:29:18 +0000

Hell yeah, I’ve worked in mid-day Mediterranean light! Will post something layer.

By: mw

mw — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 22:50:21 +0000

Oh, and I forgot to answer your question. No, I’ve never photographed anything in the midday sun. Crepuscular baby… That, or whenever.

By: mw

mw — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 19:53:31 +0000

And perhaps if you quit running so much, you wouldn’t find this friendly discussion of photography so wearying. Ha ha. Just kidding. Are you in NY for any of the festivities?

By: mw

mw — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 19:51:44 +0000

And why shouldn’t we consider these kind of issues in this forum? Nothing in this thread could remotely be construed as a personal attack.

By: mw

mw — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 19:46:41 +0000

Bob, dude… lighten up. It’s just photo talk. Nothing to get angry about.

By: Paul

Paul — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 14:51:01 +0000

Still enjoying this essay, I keep finding myself sucked into it, and that’s what it is all really about isn’t it?. I’ve just noticed the poor donkey in picture N14 also in picture N18… just look below the construction site :)

By: bob black

bob black — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 13:40:14 +0000

i’m with Marcin….

actually, the entire photoshop debate here made me VERy ANGRY at first, but kept silent….i thought to myself, i wonder how much photography people look at in real life, how many real prints (historical/vintage/family albums/glassplates/3-color process/cmyk color/kodachrome/agfacolor/polaroid people really have looked at….i sometimes get the feeling (just talking about this last night with mrs. b about many young grad students doing mfa in photography) that the extent of knowledge/experience that abides is mostly via internet and digital and social sharing and online blogs/magazines etc….no like Gladdy, i could be wrong, but this does look like film (and not because of the 6×6 notches (which are faked all the time now, stupid really)) for a number of reasons…and this work looks over photoshopped?…jesus, give me a ff**#$& break, like hell it does….ever see real color pics from 19th century, or the 40′s, or ‘Nam era or Eggleston up close and personal…….i have…there is NO perfection in prints…actually what one sees is how beautifully IMPERFECT and human wetbprocess prints are….we’ve analized ourselves in bye the 1′s & 0′s of digitalization…and even if this were digital pics manipulated/cropped/cloned/P-shoped who the fuck cares……

NOTHING is lost in this body of work, regardless of how it was produced…

i shoot film, only film…and over the last 3 1/2 years i’ve stopped printing in the darkroom and only do digital prints from good scans, and someday i’ll ditch the damn trix and agfa and do digital…who the hell cares….

it is the story and it’s the form the story takes….

after reading that comment earlier in the week about PS, i’ve looked at this work a ton of times and i have no idea what ya’ll are talking about….

mw: have you ever worked with bright Mediterranean light and color film mid-day?….perfection of light/color working on that film: NEVER HAPPENS….it is splayed all over the place…what might look like dodging to you, to me looks like a guy shooting film in quite intensive sun working with subject shadows and trying, post processing, working on some sort of decency in the beast that is film and light….i’ve struggled with that….photoshop over color dodging?….too clever by 1/2…

wearying…

By: mw

mw — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 12:33:28 +0000

If it appears on the internet, it’s a digital image and color adjustments were made, if only to make them as accurate as possible. Sorry if I’m wrong about the overuse of photoshop or whatever. That kind of thing has been on my mind recently so perhaps I’m seeing things that aren’t there. I went to a gallery opening recently and from all the way across the room noticed one photo where the subject’s face had been over-dodged. I thought I must be mistaken, but in his talk the photographer mentioned it as though it were a good thing. And on the giant prints I could see that there was a lot of other selective adjustment going on, though not anywhere near being obvious. I don’t see anything wrong with that, I think it’s potentially a good thing when done with great skill. Personally, I’m all digital and although I think most often the best photos are gotten right in camera, I have no qualms at all about digital manipulation. And actually, I’ve got nothing against the obviously unnatural if it works, but it often doesn’t, especially with color dodging in photoshop, which it looks to me is what’s going on in a few of these photos, particularly #4.

By: marcin luczkowski

marcin luczkowski — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 09:52:53 +0000

John,

I believe it is scanned film without color improvement. many films have misrepresented colors corrected during printing.

By: john gladdy

john gladdy — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 09:28:01 +0000

marcin. hard to tell for sure on the interweb, but the romantic in me would like to believe that they are on film, with what looks like an ND grad and maybe some kind of tobaco color filter. Certainly you can see haselblad 6×6 notches on some of the shots….but, everything is doable in potatoshop these days so who knows?? these could just as easily have been made on a point and shoot, cropped to square and cloned, and the fake edge markings layered on.

By: marcin luczkowski

marcin luczkowski — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 06:42:44 +0000

overuse of Photoshop?

I thought it is a scanned film effect. This are digital photos?

By: mw

mw — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 19:22:47 +0000

I feel the most empathy for the donkey…

Kind of sums up the plight of the poor and disenfranchised.

By: mtomalty

mtomalty — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 18:59:46 +0000

Call me an ass, but I feel the most empathy for the donkey in #14

By: Jeff Hladun

Jeff Hladun — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 02:56:57 +0000

Martin Heidegger puts the heroic act in context to a technological environment; either the significance of a man is defined through his use of technology, or he fights against it. In this essay, it seems the encroaching development is gaining in the technology war, while the fruits of the agriculturalists’ labours – seemingly manual – are on the wane and losing side. As brutal and harsh as it may be, lack of tractors, harvestors or any labour-saving tools gives this essay an editorial fait accompli, and we are witness to the snuffing-out of the way things were. We are left with a remembrance of things past.

By: Gordon Lafleur

Gordon Lafleur — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 23:50:37 +0000

‘Been busy but need to take a moment to comment on this lovely series.
There is a lot to like here.
I like the fact that you are showing me photographs of Palistinians who are not throwing rocks or grieving for a dead loved one.
These people I can relate to. They look me in the eye. They are going about their lives. I can feel the heat, taste the dust, and smell the gardens. I can feel their resignation to their fates. This is exactly what I’ve been hoping for when I comment about wanting to see more portraits in essays.
Here is a little story of a little corner of the world, another sad story of people being displaced and dis-posessed.

On a tech note, I love the palette, the use of medium format square images and the whole look thats been created here. It is much more sophisticated than might first appear, especially #3 (my favourite) which appears to have had help from either a flash or a reflector, natural of added. Makes me want to run out and buy a Hasselblad and a couple of bricks of colour negative film.

Love it.
Bravo and congratulations

By: eva

eva — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 16:37:55 +0000

Love it that the point of view of the photographer comes through here.. 3, 6 and 23 are the pictures that resonate most with me.. don’t like the pp, but would like to see how the prints look..

Thank you!

By: Frostfrog

Frostfrog — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 16:29:14 +0000

Paul – REALLY GOOD points.

To me, the series works. It may be true that there are some readers and viewers in this world who do not know the larger context and so could use some more education, but, frankly, those people are so out of touch or so dogmatic that this essay would likely never reach their eyes anyway, or, if it did, they either wouldn’t care of they would just swear.

As for that “life” – I cannot be totally certain, as, whether I view it on Safari or Firefox, my large screen view still collapses in burn, but that tree appears to me to have buds on it.

By: Paul

Paul — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 16:15:36 +0000

I enjoyed this essay, but of course I manage to always see the glass half full. Maybe it’s my imagination but I find the detail in these images to be outstanding and as far as I can remember I haven’t seen anything on Burn like it since “Life in concrete”, perhaps it’s film or a medium format digital back. On the subject of complaints with the overuse of photoshop, dodging and burning, it always makes me smile how nobody seemed to ever care or complain about the burnt biblical skies and all the dodging used to keep detail in Salgado’s “Workers”, “Migrations” and “Africa”. It’s was so obvious, excessive, unsubtle, made to make everyone gasp in awe at the pictures and I’ve rarely heard any complaints on the subject. But of course he’s a master photographer and he can do what he likes but those emerging are not allowed the same “eloquence”.