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 New Yorker magazine has a VERY long profile of Pascal Dangin. (h/t Canadian magazines). Who the hell is Pascal Dangin? Well, I did not know who he was either, but we all should know who he is and what is that he does. His job is to create images that are later published as photographs in all of the glossy magazines you can name off the top of your head. There are so many disturbing things about this. First of all, the fact that the New Yorker actually glorifies this guy is disgusting. From purely ethical point of view, what he does is unacceptable. It’s unacceptable because when those photographs appear in magazines, they should not bear the name of the photographer and they should not be called photographs. They are illustrations, or digitally created composites or digital art, you can call that shit whatever you want, but they are not photographs and they are not, under any circumstances, documentary photography or photojournalism. As journalists and documentarians the only thing we have is our credibility and a reasonable expectation that, while we are not objective, we do present the photographs as the records of what we have seen with our own eyes. Once we lose that credibility and trust (and there is precious little left) we have nothing and there is no reason for us to do what we do. My second problem with this is that this man feels that he can impose his esthetic on millions of readers around the world. He has a considerable influence on how we see ourselves and the society we belong to. Visual imagery is powerful stuff and not something we should so nonchalantly mess with. At the end, the most disturbing thing about this is the objectification of female bodies. I will not even try to pretend to understand what being bombarded with images of imaginary bodies representing perfection you should be striving to become does to your mental health. I think we can agree it’s not a terribly healthy thing if the rates of eating disorders, depression and obsession with weight are any indication of what is happening to today’s women. The pressure to attain what are clearly imaginary bodies (NOBODY is good enough to be published unaltered) is enormous and it starts young. Just look at the clothing, toys and magazines marketed to girls. The impact this has on economic and professional aspects of women’s lives as well as their health is alarming. Media Awareness Network some time ago posted a piece on beauty and body image in the media that bears reading again. And the quest to look something other than what we actually look like is profitable, too. Not just for fashion and beauty industry, you can even buy a camera with a ‘slimming effect.’ As photographers, we can only be aware of it and fight it at every opportunity we get. I tell my clients (weddings, sittings, etc...) that I do not alter content of the photographs. Ever. Period. I hardly ever get a client after that conversation. That is a price I am more than willing to pay. [UPDATE] Check out amazing (and very disturbing) photographs of Felicia Webb on her project on anorexia. It's the first link in the menu under her name. It's a flash site so I can't give you a direct link. There is, of course, a lot of good photojournalism around. You just won’t find most of it at your news agent’s. Checkout Jenn Ackerman’s work on mental illness in American prisons. New Blueeyes Magazine is out. Marcus Bleasdale has a feature on the environmental and human cost of Venezuelan oil. And Magnum blog has a fun interview with Elliott Erwitt and Burt Glinn. This is my mom who, like most women, does not like to be photographed unless she feels she looks her best. Croatian word of the day: manipulacija manipulation [mani poo la tzia] | |
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Posted by Bojan Archived under: Croatia, Family and friends |
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