Globally, there is now an enormous population of camera users, only a tiny fraction of which actually practices photography. The two functions, initially integral to each other, have been severed in what I can only suggest is the photographic equivalent of pre-frontal lobotomy. […]
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Photographers on every level, from the rankest amateur to the most experienced professional, are being offered something that’s coming to be known generically as “decision-free photography.” I’m surely not the only one who finds this phrase unnerving. Decision-free information? Decision-free perception? Decision-free self-expression? Decision-free communication? By their nature, these cannot be decision-free — at best, the decisions they involve can be deferred, left in the hands of others. […] Considered in relation to today’s whopping costs of tuition plus living expenses required to buy an MFA (and, if you go that route, a DFA), not to mention the time involved, post-secondary photo ed has become a bad investment, the return on it at best minimal.You’d do well to weigh the value you received for the money you spent on your post-secondary education in photography, and — if you have just become the proud owner of an MFA — give careful thought to doubling down for a doctorate. […] True witnessing — and bearing witness — can’t happen at some secure remove from reality. They require the presence of the observer at the event, Goya’s “Yo lo vi (I saw this)” from “The Disasters of War” to give their testimony force. Tim Hetherington’s passing reminds us of the price all too often paid by others for our ability to engage vicariously with the cruelest events of our times, and of our obligation to honor those who thus serve in our stead. […] |
 SPJ Research Award 2014 |
Ends and Odds Yet Again
Knowing too much about photography infects everything from watching tall, handsome Keith Carradine play E. J. Bellocq in Louis Malle’s 1978 film “Pretty Baby” (while remembering that Bellocq was a hydrocephalic dwarf) to reading John Berger’s typically eloquent paean to Pentti Sammallahti’s mystical relationship to the dogs in his photographs (while knowing that this Finnish photographer uses sardine oil to attract them into his camera’s field of vision and hold them there). […]