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The Photo Review

Let me get this straight: for (a) suggesting that the subjects of photographs have rights, moral and legal, that sometimes supersede the impulses and desires of photographers, for (b) proposing that the photographer is the primary determinant of what constitutes his/her body of work, and for (c) arguing that imagery never officially approved for public presentation by a photographer should therefore be identified and treated as study material and not conflated with work so approved, I deserve to be called a "censor," a confrere of Clarence Thomas, an "ideologue," "doctrinaire," and someone who chronically "smear[s] . . . the medium's greatest artists." Those schooled in debate have a name for that tactic: argumentum ad hominem.

I'd no idea Mark Power held me in such low esteem. That's his privilege. Mine is to exercise the right to correct his various misstatements of fact. Such as:

• I am hardly the only person in the world who doesn't consider Diane Arbus a genius, or fails to rank her among the greatest artists of this century. Nor am I the only one who has had better things to do than hold his breath since 1972 in anticipation of the release of more of this group of images. Even were I absolutely alone in my evaluation of her, however, that wouldn't make me wrong.
• Power asks whether, in the face of widespread endorsement of Arbus's work, my "vitriol" might have some covert agenda: "are we seeing some old grudges being settled here?" Apparently it's inconceivable to him that I might simply disagree with the "literally thousands, if not millions," who think her work is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and then could have the unmitigated gall to voice that disagreement. To quote Confucius, "When everyone dislikes something, it should be examined. When everyone likes something, it should be examined." (Analects 15:28.) I assume that my refusal to agree with everyone else and run with the herd on this proves how "doctrinaire" I am, while Power's obvious inability to question this pandemic groupthink or his own subscription to the conventional wisdom somehow makes him a freethinker. In any case, the answer to Power's deliberately insulting question is: No. This cowardly insinuation that I would breach professional ethics by using a review as a way of settling some obscure score from the past requires from him either proof or retraction and apology.
• I chose to use the term "developmental disability" instead of "mental retardation" not out of "political correctness" (to which attitude, as my readers know well, I'm hardly a subscriber), but because twenty-five years of activism, by those suffering from these conditions and the families, friends and professionals who serve them, has educated me to the impact of nomenclature. That we have moved, in the past three decades, from the carnival sideshow to the Special Olympics, and from teenage epidemics of moron jokes to "Life Goes On," indicates something about the differences that our names for types of human beings can make. Every professional in the field to whom I spoke believed that this change in terminology for which they'd fought long and hard was instrumental in shifting public consciousness. Power is free, of course, to revert to that older term if he prefers it. (Janet Malcolm, who threw a similar but mercifully shorter hissy fit at me in The New York Review of Books, actually waxes nostalgic for the good old days when we "more accurately called" such people "simple-minded"!) But why stop there? If "mentally retarded" was always fine, and still is, what was wrong with our adolescent version of it -- retard? Or its various synonyms: stooge, moron, dimwit, halfwit, dummy? Or the variant thereof that sounds so lovely in Spanish, "los salivadores," the drooling ones, "droolies"?
• I raised the issue of the profit motive behind this project (at least in part) not to launch some sneak attack on capitalism but simply to forestall the otherwise predictable protestations that the motives of Michael Hoffman and Doon Arbus were purely noble, exemplifying selfless service to the memory and work of Arbus and the spiritual enrichment of humankind. Instead, as I suggested in a few terse sentences, they had to do (at least in part) with making a potload of money off these pictures. I'm glad to learn that Power agrees with me on that. When you see the inevitable announcement of the major traveling exhibition, the limited-edition portfolio of "estate" prints, the art posters and the PBS documentary derived from this project, remember that they were prophesied here first. 'Nuff said.
• No one would expect either rigorous thought or respect for scrupulous scholarship from a man who can't take the trouble to spell correctly Vladimir Nabokov's last name, and who invents a new first name (Henri) for E. J. Bellocq. So it's not surprising that Power apparently does not know, or understand, or care about the difference between developmental disability/mental retardation and mental illness. He persistently conflates the two, an unfortunate display of profound ignorance for a teacher and a columnist in a national newspaper. If he'd read Doon Arbus's afterword attentively, he'd know that she takes pains to identify the people in these photographs as residents in institutions for the "mentally retarded." Had he made that distinction, he could have avoided sounding entirely foolish by referring regularly to the "mentally ill" and "schizophrenics." (Schizophrenia has not been confused with developmental disability/mental retardation since the late eighteenth century.)
• Contrary to Power's rash assertion, aside from a few people photographed in public situations by photojournalists, all of the recognizable living subjects of the photographs gathered in my 1977 critical survey The Grotesque in Photography provided model releases to the photographers (in the case of a few children, such releases were provided by their parents or legal guardians). I know this because while we were making this book in 1976-77 my cautious publishers insisted on seeing releases in all such cases (even including Les Krims's mother!), rejecting any photographs for which such releases could not be shown. So much for Power's concern for elementary fact-checking. None of the people represented therein, incidentally, are developmentally disabled or otherwise mentally incompetent. (I do not know what rights the dead have to depictions of their corpses, aside from local law in the place of their demise and whatever guidelines they've put into their wills; but I think that leads us into a metaphysical discussion that's not fully germane to questions regarding the living.)
• I offered no critical analysis of any of the individual images, nor of the group of them as a whole, nor of the specifics of their presentation in the book (layout, design, sequencing), and did not speculate in any way on Arbus's purposes in making these images. Nonetheless, though my essay contains not a single word on the subject, Power contends that it's "certainly a review of the intent and motivation of the artist . . . as well as . . . a partial scrutiny of the work itself." Naturally, he cannot produce even one phrase or sentence of my essay to support that willful, distortive misreading of my text.
• Power claims that I "disguis[ed] the review as a refusal" in order to effect "a shift of focus from the work of the late photographer to the moralistic piety of the critic." But there's nothing disguised or covert about my essay, whose purposes and premises are stated at its very beginning. I made it clear that I would discuss only the social and legal context of this imagery, and its relationship to Arbus's authenticated body of work, in order to shift the discourse away from the knee-jerk hagiography of Arbus-worshippers like Power and toward a contextual reading of the project and the book. Nothing furtive about it. The result is a version of what the Germans call ausstellungskritik -- "exhibition critique," aimed primarily at addressing the presentational project, in this case a publication rather than a show. Since the question of how certain work comes before us is often of considerable importance, I employ this approach when it seems appropriate to a particular project. I gather that Power is unfamiliar with this concept. His ignorance notwithstanding, it has a long and honorable history, and is part of every serious critic's repertoire of analytical strategies.

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So much for errors of fact.

Regarding Power's sneering description of me as "photography's professional scold": Damn straight, pal. I can live with all three of those terms, separately and in tandem. Carve 'em on my tombstone.

Power's incapacity for close reasoning prevents him from recognizing that the passage he quotes from Doon Arbus -- "for [Diane Arbus] the beauty of the photograph originated in the thing itself . . . as she once said, 'A photograph has to be of something and what it's of is always more remarkable than the photograph'" -- and his analogizing of this work to Lewis Hine's muckraking use of photography as evidence directly contradicts his own earlier (and ludicrous) assertion that photographs merely refer to their subjects in "the same way that Picasso's "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" refers to several women from Avignon . . . " Certainly the photographer filters the world before the lens through both the physical apparatus of the medium and his or her own sensibility. But photographic description and painterly description are hardly identical. This is why photographs such as Hine's could function as legal evidence, and still do, while paintings never have -- and why pictures like Arbus's could be used for identification purposes, while "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" could not.

Power asserts that "A proof [print]'s very survival comprises a de facto approval. If a preliminary print of any kind survives, that is a 'stamp of approval' unless the artist specifically indicates otherwise either by destroying the image (and negative) or by indicating in writing that the image in question is not representative." This means that any image of which any photographer has made a work print of any quality for any purpose that has not been destroyed (along with its negative!) or disavowed in writing is as fully authenticated by that photographer -- and, therefore, as qualified for posthumous inclusion in his or her body of work -- as those images he or she approved for exhibition or publication. I know of no responsible curator, critic, or historian of photography (nor, for that matter, of any other medium), past or present, who would find that notion anything less than ridiculous and unsupportable. I know hundreds of photographers who would object vehemently to that bizarre proposition. I wouldn't be surprised if Power hears from some of them; a few may actually make their opinions known in print.

Power repeatedly snipes and jeers at me by calling me a "moralist," and accuses me of "moralizing." My Webster's defines the verb moralize thus:

v.t. 1. To explain in a moral sense; to draw a moral from. 2. Archaic. To furnish with moral lessons. 3. To render morally better; as, efforts to moralize business. -- v.i. To make moral reflections.

Of moralist, it says, 1. One who moralizes; a teacher or student of morals. 2. One who leads a moral life.

If this describes me accurately, I'm profoundly gratified, and deeply complimented. In any case, it certainly specifies my aspirations. Power's use of this term as a pejorative speaks volumes about his own character. In any case, whether or not artists are "moralists," they remain citizens like the rest of us, members of society with legal, ethical and moral responsibilities that their choice of profession does not obviate. I defer here to the late Clement Greenberg, writing almost half a century ago: "I am sick of the art-adoration that prevails among cultured people, more in our time than in any other: that art silliness which condones almost any moral or intellectual failing on the artist's part as long as he or she seems a successful artist. It is still justifiable to demand that he be a successful human being before anything else, even if at the cost of his art." ("The Question of the Pound Award," 1949.)

If even the President of the United States is not above the law, then neither are artists. That equality before the law is the very premise of democracy. Power doesn't much like democracy, as he makes clear; he wants the whims of an art elite to outweigh the legal rights of the developmentally disabled and any others chosen to serve as convenient lens fodder. He wants artists -- among whom, needless to say, he includes himself -- treated like royalty, exalted and worshipped and permitted to do as they please. Not so long as I have a voice, and a vote.

Indeed, Power (himself a photographer) makes it clear that he believes photographers are not just royalty, but are endowed with god-like powers that entitle them to god-like privileges. He writes, approvingly, "I'm certain that if the only barrier to the revelation of a powerful image was the lack of a signed release [Arbus] would've printed the image anyway, moral contract or no" (a speculation for which he supplies no supporting evidence); opines that Arbus "made a few schizophrenics [sic] immortal" by "[giving them] the gift of transcending the narrow boundaries of fact, time and place"; asserts that "There are occasions when legal issues [concerning the rights of photographers' living human subjects] are transcended by a higher moral imperative [of making Art]"; and announces that "the right of privacy pales beside the necessity of ensuring that great art sees the light of day."

Reread those last two quotes carefully; therein lies a key concept. These represent Power's first and second steps down a most slippery slope. Power doesn't just stop there, because he can't -- the slide is inexorable; indeed, in a middle version of his screed, written before the one he published in The Photo Review, he went even further, revealing the naked face of his fundamental belief system: "Human rights pale beside the necessity of seeing that great art sees the light of day." (Emphasis mine.)

Really? Understand this: It's no coincidence that Power wrote all three of those variant versions. Those ideas are consequent to each other, they form a most logical and inevitable progression. Believe the first, and the second and third come easy. Then it's just a short hop from that demented conviction to Bruno Mussolini getting his esthetic jollies by relishing from the cockpit of his warplane the floral patterns generated by exploding Ethiopians. I believe, to the contrary, that the making and public presentation of art, no matter how great anyone considers that art to be, does not ever take priority over acknowledging, respecting and observing fundamental human rights. I am convinced that to claim otherwise is to step squarely into the camp of something I am old-fashioned enough to call evil.

Normally, I would scruple at citing thus an unpublished and subsequently revised version of an author's text, believing such to be privileged and private unless made public by the author. In this case, it seems only appropriate to make an exception; and, as that's playing by Power's own ground rules, he's surely in no position to object, as to do so would be hypocritical in the extreme. I feel privileged to stand here, on the record, in public opposition to Power's malignant, reprehensible philosophy, and would be delighted to debate him face to face on this specific issue. The Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C., where he has taught since 1971, would make an appropriate forum for such a confrontation. Perhaps its students, faculty and administration will see fit to arrange such an opportunity, for which I volunteer my services free of charge. But I doubt it. Where such irrationality and amorality have nested comfortably and held sway for a quarter-century, reason and ethics are rarely welcome.

If I found myself talking dangerously megalomanic trash like Power's in print, I'd expect to be perceived by my fellow citizens as a blatant little fascist and one sick puppy. I didn't anticipate that my essay would evoke this evidence, especially from such an unexpected source, but I'm certainly glad it's out on the table for all to see and be warned by. That's especially important because I believe Power articulates the unstated attitudes of many if not all of those who endorse this project, and in doing so lays bare their underlying beliefs.

Arrogant ubermensch attitudes like this give photography, and photographers, a bad name. Our democracy, in its infinite wisdom, permits people like Power -- who promulgates the beliefs that the ends of art justify any means regardless of who pays the price, and that artists are above the law -- to blather hysterically in public forums and even to teach our young. And, as a staunch democrat who relishes "breathing the air around Tom Paine," I readily go along with that. However, rebutting such morally and intellectually retarded drivel appeals to me even less than shooting fish in barrels. I've made my position clear. So has Power. There is no common ground. Take your pick. Take very seriously the act of doing so.

Finally, as it's Power's considered opinion that this Arbus essay is "not . . . the first time" that my "contentious argument paints all the right issues with the wrong doctrinaire brush and . . . smears one of the medium's greatest artists," I'd say he has just accepted a professional obligation to name the "ideology" and the "doctrines" to which he insinuates I subscribe, to identify the other unnamed great artists I've "smeared," and to explain why in all these years he's never been able to screw up his courage to call me out on these purported excesses.

-- A. D. Coleman

This letter originally appeared in The Photo Review (1996). © Copyright 1996 by A. D. Coleman. All rights reserved. For reprint permissions contact Image/World Syndication Services, POB 040078, Staten Island, NY 10304-0002 USA;T/F (718) 447-3091, imageworld@nearbycafe.com.