>> |
Anonymous
>>80175 I have to disagree. It's simple and straightforward, but most of the best portraits are. The thing that sets the Majolis apart from us is their ability to use the camera, the medium of photography, to draw out some spiritual and emotional essence from a situation.
The caption helps, too. Especially with the caption, there's this sort of dignified joy on the man's face. The scene is pathetic, the circumstances are pathetic- but the man's face isn't. The contrast between the man's view of it and our view of it, as outsiders who've never been in a dirty mental hospital and shaved with shears, makes the shot.
>>80192 That's the artist's problem, I think: talented people keep making heartrending works with great truths inside, comfortable people see them in some neutralizing setting (a swanky gallery showing, an expensive photobook, TIME or National Geographic), and forget about them. The same goes for movies, books, music, everything. Try getting shook up by a film when a pretty girl has her arm around you, or being immensely moved by some piece of a music when you're stuck in traffic, fifteen minutes late for work. But that's what people try to do.
I don't know the way around it, really, so long as most people look at art as they do now.
With regard to that particular photo, I actually thought it was one of the lesser ones.
I actually think these two are the strongest:
http://www.magnumphotos.com/Archive/C.aspx?VP=Mod_ViewBox.ViewBoxZoom_VPage&VBID=2K1HZOQHC2TWF&a mp;IT=ImageZoom01&PN=9&STM=T&DTTM=Image&SP=Album&IID=2S5RYDZ1X30&SAKL=T& SGBT=T&DT=Image http://www.magnumphotos.com/Archive/C.aspx?VP=Mod_ViewBox.ViewBoxZoom_VPage&VBID=2K1HZOQHC2TWF&a mp;IT=ImageZoom01&PN=12&STM=T&DTTM=Image&SP=Album&IID=29YL53ZI70MD&SAKL=T&am p;SGBT=T&DT=Image
|