ITAP Photography 5

ITAP 5 Photography 5

1) Who said “the camera gave me the license to strip away what you want people to know about you, to reveal what you cant help people knowing about you” and when was it said?

Diane Arbus in the early 1960’s, she also spoke about the cameras ability to steal and exploit other peoples lives, which seems to have even more resonance to society today, when you look at Princess Dianne and the Leveson enquiry. 

2) Do photographers tend to prey on venerable people?

They can do. There seems to be an insatiable public desire to see the perpetrators of the bad, the victims of events, the curiosities of the abnormal, and the banal of celebrity. I suppose this is basic human nature for an individual, but when ascended todays mas media, it becomes repugnant as it ignores the negative affects it has on the individual, the fact those images are sold for profit makes it even more so. 

However, there is a clear need to communicate human suffering to try and affect change. Photography and the media has the power to do so for the common good, so a balance needs to be sort in exposing an individuals suffering with that of effecting change for the benefit of others.

3) Who is Colin Wood?

Colin Wood was the subject in Diane Arbus picture Child with a small hand grenade in Central Park NYC, in 1962. He was a junket junky, fully wired on sugar, and malleable to direction. The picture resonated with the era, where America was in broiled in the madness of the Vietnamese war. 

4) Why did Diane Arbus commit suicide?

God knows and probably nobody else will. It appeared that she had it all, a wonderful job, recognition of her skills from her peers and the public, and, presumably, financial security. As her mother did, Arbus suffered from bouts of severe depression and was prone to violent mood swings. Ironically, her success was probably a driving factor in her death, by intensifying the issues of her works concerned with freaks and her pertinacity to identify with them. It was said that she desperately didn’t want to be herself, so in the end she had her wish and wasn’t.

5) Why did Larry Clark shoot “Tulsa”?

To get stoned and make a diary of his and his friends exploits. He was described as a kid with a camera, but the images that he took startled the public when Tulsa was published in 1971, as they exposed an unseen culture within the suburbs. The book heralded the advent of the impolite genre and confessional photography.  

6) Try to explain the concept of ‘confessional photography”, and what is the “impolite genre”?

To me, confessional photography is about revealing your, or your loved ones, inner or private behavior’s, maybe as a refection of human nature or more implicitly, about your own preferences or circumstances.     

The impolite genre can encompass these traits, but pushes the boundaries of weather on not the viewer wishes to see or know about the behavior, as they are removed from the confines of the normal into that of the very personal.

7) What will Araki not photography, and why?

Araki chooses not to photograph the things he cares not to remember, as he see photographs as a medium for doing so, this way he can focus on the memorable.