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Against politically correct policing


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<p>I try never to forget that there is a human being behind most works of art. I may swing back and forth between looking at the art divorced from the personality who made it and looking at the art as something made by the personality, but I can't see, for myself, choosing one over the other and not simply embracing or at least considering the fact that people who are nannies make art and the nanny part is interesting, or that a Jewish photographer who lived in European ghettos in the 30s made photographs and being Jewish in the ghetto was part of the story, both of the photographer and of the subjects. Art is not just an artifact. It IS a human interest story, even when it's more . . . or less. Yes, the artist is a factor in art and in its understanding and appreciation, therefore, in its experience. I've heard pretty much as much discussion about Maier's photos themselves as I have about the other stuff. One doesn't drown the other out. Maybe I'm just good at multi-tasking.</p>
We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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<p>That's an interesting observation, Clive. I'll admit I was initially intrigued by the epithetical characterization of Vivian Maier as the walking nanny-cam. Even the alternative backstory of her as an oddball or quirky personality - fueled in part by her own self-characterization as a "sort of spy" - seems inadequate and incomplete. According to anecdotes from some of the kids she cared for, and some folks who remembered her, she wasn't merely a disengaged, remote or distant photographer, isolated and even alienated from society. Apparently she did at least occasionally engage her subjects and chat with people, and was quite intelligent, articulate and opinionated about many issues. In any other context she would have been the ideal subject for a documentary photographer.</p>

<p>But the more I looked at her photos, the less inclined I was to think of her in terms of what she did for a living. She was simply a remarkable street photographer by any standard, regardless of the unusual and somewhat haphazard curation of her work. She blurred the lines between street and documentary photography, as she had a unique vision and through-line that comes across despite the fact that she had no say in how her work is presented.</p>

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<p>Julie H: <em>I don't need somebody else telling me how my [gender/race/nationality, etc; whatever category that the PC police self-appont themselves to supervise] "ought" to be portrayed in photographs. I'd like to see all kinds of portrayals, by all kinds of people, from all kinds of viewpoints/perspectives and make up my own mind about what those pictures tell me both about what's in them and the person who made them. </em></p>

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<p>This is the crux of the matter for me. I can only say that I agree with this opening statement. I believe it was Fred who mentioned that reactions against PC can be a mask or justification for racism and prejudice. True, but my take on the current atmosphere in some quarters (college campuses in particular) is that it has become a way of smothering opposing points of view. Not long ago, the UC Berkeley student government banned the use of the term "illegal immigrant". As liberal as I am, I found it chilling and I believe it bleeds over into photography and critiques of photography. "Repugnant" is the word that comes to mind.</p>

 

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<p>consider how hard it is for African-Americans to build a cultural portrayal that gets beyond stereotyping</p>

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<p>Based on what you go on to write, Julie, I understand you. But I wonder why African-Americans, or any other sub-grouping of human beings, requires the building of a cultural portrayal. A cultural portrayal of African-Americans would encompass so much (and so much of it would be universal to mankind in general) that I don't know how, or why, one could do such a thing. Certainly there are aspects of life and culture that are unique to African-Americans, but to select only those aspects would be limiting and not a true cultural portrayal if they excluded the universal aspects that all human beings share.</p>

<p>On the DeCarava photograph of the two men dancing -- I have seen that image before and, prior to reading the comments you quoted, always thought it was a wonderfully captured moment of expression through dance...regardless of the skin color of the dancers. Although the commentaries do change interpretation, they do not ruin or spoil my initial take on such photographs.</p>

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<p>I wonder why African-Americans, or any other sub-grouping of human beings, requires the building of a cultural portrayal</p>

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<p>It's empowering. Many subgroups have had their power diminished by such things as institutional racism and sexism, legal discrimination, lynchings, hate crimes, etc. The assertion of specific cultural signs, symbols, rituals, music, art, dress, dance helps foster just the sense of pride that the outside majority often has sought to destroy.</p>

 

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<p>I don't know how, or why, one could do such a thing</p>

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<p>I've tried to address the "why" above. As to the "how," I just look around me here in San Francisco and marvel at the rich tapestry of cultures which often do have overlaps and shared universal humanizing elements as you suggest, Steve. And they also seem to have significant particular and unique elements, each of them celebrating a more local history and sensibility. I'm thankful there's a Jewish culture, a gay culture, an African-American culture. (Interestingly, "African-American" has been used readily here and I'm sure some would say it's one of the politically correct replacements to other terms that they would deem already sufficient.). And I'm even happier for some of the more colorful subcultures (Hassidic culture, drag culture) that spring up as well.</p>

<p>I think for every example like UC Berkeley and "illegal immigrant" there's probably an example we've all come to accept more hospitably over time because of the knowledge that language can be very powerful. When I grew up, it was very common to hear the term "idiot savant." I'm thankful that's changing. "Idiot" puts a distinct spin on something that really doesn't need it.</p>

<p>As for portrayals in photographs or media in general, I take it on a case by case basis and wouldn't generalize. And there's a difference between a critic critiquing a photo and an official student body issuing a binding decree. I'm pretty OK with the fact that black people are no longer portrayed like Amos and Andy. I think we've moved in that direction as a society but it's taken some awareness-raising and that happens on all fronts. Freedom to portray black people or gay people any way you want is freedom of speech, even if you want to make certain minorities look like fools as long as you're not inciting violence (and that's not always easy to assess). Freedom to react negatively to some portrayals is also just fine. Calling those reactions PC can also be a way of stifling opposing points of view.</p>

We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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<p>I think of PC as standing for the language to use in polite company. It's polite in polite conversation to not use racial epithets. It's polite to use gender neutral language. In polite conversation, there are a lot of words we don't use.</p>

 

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<p>"The UC Berkeley student government has banned the term “illegal immigrant” from its discourse, deeming the phrase racist, offensive, unfair and derogatory." <a href="http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/15260/">http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/15260/</a></p>

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<p>The UC Berkeley student government spoke to the issue of what they consider polite language in UC Berkeley student government discourse. That's how they voted and that representative body explained their reason for doing so.</p>

<p>From the same source: "In an unanimous vote, student senators passed a resolution that stated the word “illegal” is “racially charged,” “dehumanizes” people, and contributes to “punitive and discriminatory actions aimed primarily at immigrants and communities of color.”</p>

<p>Steve - "But I wonder why African-Americans, or any other sub-grouping of human beings, requires the building of a cultural portrayal."</p>

<p>There is a cultural portrayal already of those sub-groups, for example in movies and on TV. For the most part, those portrayals are produced by the dominant group. For the most part we haven't yet heard those stories as told by those groups themselves.</p>

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<p>Closing the thread seems premature. It would be better if the participating members voluntarily kept in mind the core purpose of the website and forums and redirected their comments toward relevance to photography. There's plenty of room for that within the context of this discussion. Closing the thread prematurely would deprive members of that opportunity, and so far there has been nothing abusive or too far afield in digression that the thread is beyond redirection. It's up to each participant to take up the challenge to phrase their comments in the context of photography. </p>
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<p>Steve, I probably shouldn't have used the word 'build' a cultural portrayal. How about 'do' or 'make' or just 'photograph'? I don't care a whit if what is given is 'unique' or necessarily distinct from other cultures. What I'm wishing for is a freedom (or forgetting of non-freedom) to show the 'inside' of a culture instead of always needing to do what I think you're talking about -- a 'public' or group culture that is 'opposed to' or, again, 'unique' or distinct from.</p>

<p>Let me see if I can illustrate with a story. This is from 'A Sunday Portrait' by Edward P. Jones found in <em>Picturing Us: African American Identity in Photography</em> edited by Deborah Willis. This is a long extract, but I hope you'll find it worth reading:</p>

<p>"I have [ ... ] a photograph of a grandly beautiful dark woman sitting in a long-sleeved white dress with a black bow just below the neck. She is wearing pearl-like earrings. There might well be a ring on the third finger of her left hand, but then, too, it might be the way the light is playing with the fingers of that hand. She holds white gloves and a black purse in her lap and wears a knitted hat that I believe my sister and I played with when we were children. My then-unmarried mother, who would have been Jeanette Satana Majors in that photograph, smiles complacently, as if only good and wonderful things will come her way. And to see her sitting there, that precious face on the verge of a smile, I am reminded all over again how that, in so many ways, did not happen.</p>

<p>[ ... ] "The first time I ever say the photograph I was twenty-four years old and my mother had been dead and buried about a month. ... Until seeing that picture, I had no idea that my mother had ever looked so majestic, and so young and innocent. ... I suppose if forced to as a small child, I might well have said that there was a kind of attractiveness about her, an attractiveness that began to fade after years of slaving for herself and her children as a dishwasher and floor-scrubber, after being forced to place her beloved retarded son, her youngest, in an institution, after years in a relationship with a boyfriend who gave her no sustenance, after three strokes that froze the right side of her body, after lung cancer took final hold of her face and body and twisted her into the same lump of clay God must have seen the moment before he shaped and first breathed life into her.</p>

<p>[ ... ] "Had I the power [to go back in time to the day the photograph of his mother was made] ... I would have walked up that street and met that woman who was to become my mother. Touched her hand the second before she reached for the knob of the door of that photography shop, taken her hand and asked her to believe what I was about to say.</p>

<p>... "Save yourself, I would have told her. Save us all. Do not marry him, I would have said of my father, dooming myself, my brother, my sister to some universe of never-to-be-born beings. ... Save yourself. ... I would have wanted to tell her to go off and see as much of the world as she could, come back, and then go off and see it all over again. See so much of the world that you come to learn the hearts of men-people and what kind of heart will best be a companion for yours, for my father's heart would not be, my heart will not be, and the hearts of the men who come after him will not be either."</p>

<p>[<em>There's more to the story, but I'll jump to the ending</em>:]</p>

<p>[ ... ] "Sometimes, in a fanciful moment, after I have watched her walk out of my sight, I open the door of the shop. I sit on the same stool my mother-to-be has just sat on. Take my picture, I tell the photographer. Take my picture the same way you took that of the woman who came before me."</p>

<p>The only photograph he gives me is of a very lovely woman sitting in her Sunday best. I do not get photography that tells the story that he has put into words, the 'inside' of his life. And out of all the stories in this book, this is the only one that seems to me to be unburdened, freed from larger social issues. All the others circle history, society, and the 'outside' issues that face African Americans in this country. Yes, those are very much to do with <em>Picturing Us</em>, but why is there this blank void where what is often labeled (in photography in general) as 'confessional' photography? Personal stories? (Nan Goldin, Larry Clark, etc.)</p>

<p>I have never seen, and I can't even imagine an African American book comparable to <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/3931141187/sr=8-1/qid=82574010/">Richard Billingham's <em>Ray's a Laugh</em></a>. What I see, instead, is a persistent Lake Wobegon-ing of the African American personal life ("where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average"). Even the beloved DeCarava/Hughes <em>Sweet Flypaper of Life</em> comes off, to my eye, as a reverencing of the Noble Downtrodden. Always, the African American photography seems to feel, to me, to be in the service of some larger message. I would like to see some photography that is not 'in the service of' or frankly protective of some larger, politically correct, social image.</p>

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<p>I do not get photography that tells the story that he has put into words, the 'inside' of his life. And out of all the stories in this book, this is the only one that seems to me to be unburdened, freed from larger social issues. All the others circle history, society, and the 'outside' issues that face African Americans in this country.</p>

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<p>I get to see the inside of his life because, as I see it, the so-called outside issues ARE inside his life. I suppose it would be nicer to get unburdened views, free from larger social issues. But I don't think photographers should flinch from showing their burdens. I'm fine with this kind of honesty, even if it's discomfiting to me.</p>

<p>The outside gets inside in all sorts of ways. Ask many gay people if they experience internalized homophobia. Well, we internalize homophobia in many ways. Sometimes, it comes out as self-loathing (even in very unexpected and sometimes subtle ways that we don't always readily realize ourselves). But it also comes through as internalizing the "outside" world's view of us. Very hard to escape. That becomes part of a deeply personal experience. I think it's misleading to label this stuff "outside." Not when it is experienced so intimately.</p>

<p><em>“I see myself because somebody sees me . . .”</em> —Jean-Paul Sartre</p>

We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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<p>Let's see if I can pull this back to photography.</p>

<p>Is it PC to photograph a homeless person?<br>

Is it PC to publish a photo showing a rich person living high-on-the-hog on his yacht?<br>

Is it PC to publish a photo showing a black man with his white girl friend?<br>

Is it PC to publish a photo showing a white man with his black girl friend?<br>

Is it PC to publish a photo showing an American soldier standing over the corpse of a dead Iraqi?<br>

Is it PC to publish a photo showing an Arab dragging an American soldier's body through the streets?</p>

<p>Do you equate differences between these? Why? What photos would you consider being politically incorrect? Should we limit what pictures are published? Or do we damage free speech as well as an opportunity for making a point? Are you willing to allow the other person his license of satire? Or do you feel only your point is validly reflected in your photo? Do you laugh when you see a picture that shows people who believe differently from you being made fun of? Do you laugh when you see a picture that shows people who believe the same as you being made fun of? </p>

 

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<p>Alan, my answer is that I generally don't look at a photo and wonder if it's PC or not. I feel what I feel and think what I think and get whatever message I get. Same with text that may accompany photos. It's OTHERS who seem to be labeling these things PC or not PC. Some photos I find offensive, some I find funny, some I find ironic. As I said above, I take it on a case by case basis.</p>

<p>IMO, there's no such thing as a photo of a homeless person. There's THIS photo of a homeless person and there's THAT photo of a homeless person and, because more than the mere subject of a photo hits me and affects me, one photo might offend me and another might elicit great empathy on my part. I couldn't possibly characterize "photo of a homeless person" as anything unless I had a specific photo of a specific homeless person in front of me. </p>

We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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<p>I wanted (needed) this photo to address a wider socio-political issue, even while also being personal, so the sign is important and, when I've shown it, it's usually been part of a documentary on the weddings that took place the day gay marriages first became legal in California, when San Francisco's City Hall was filled with gay couples who were exercising a right they'd been denied up until then. I usually accompany it with some background and history as well as some of my impressions of a politically and personally charged day that was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.</p><div>00ckwu-550344484.jpg.45e4c688472f99e9109b435f53fd8f9b.jpg</div>
We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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<p>This photo doesn't necessarily need the wider view overtly stated. It didn't need a sign and needs no context or explanation. It's a more intimate and tells a more personal story and is probably a bit more of a universally human moment. Many, because it's a photo of two women, will still see this as having politics and sociology (both inside and outside) involved, and I have no problem with that. I see it as personal and intimate, but I also see it as political and social. I think to close my eyes to the political underpinnings of many, many photographs that could otherwise be seen as simply aesthetic or simply "inner" or simply beautiful or simply simple would be to deprive myself of an important layer of most photos and most art work. And if another photographer had taken this photo and wanted to share some of the politics that either went into their reason for having taken it or the way they now see it, I'd be happy to listen to it without it undermining the universal humanity of it and without characterizing the photographer as pushing a PC agenda on me.</p><div>00ckwv-550344584.jpg.c2814074c55648e3f28bb7d438dbda2f.jpg</div>
We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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<p>Alan, PC means Polite Conversation. It's about our manners in public discourse, it's about our manners when we speak words. For example, in polite conversation it isn't appropriate to use the words Crouch did if you aren't African American. Because the ethnicity of the person speaking those words matters and can be hurtful just because of who says them. Polite conversation isn't about politics. It's about using words in public discourse that are respectful of other people's feelings.</p>

<p>Polite conversation refers to what comes out of a person's mouth in the form of words in public discourse. Anything that a person wants to say can be said in a way that fits into a polite conversation. Being polite limits our manner of expression. Being polite does not limit the ideas we can express. Polite conversation only limits the words we use to express those ideas.</p>

<p>Photography is not the speaking of words. Photography is pictorial communication, it isn't communication using words. People can take a photo of practically any thing they want for whatever reason.</p>

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<p>Alan - " What photos would you consider being politically incorrect?"</p>

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<p>My answer is that none in your list is being politically incorrect. Here is why. Rephrasing your questions.</p>

<p>Is it polite to photograph a homeless person?<br /> Is it polite to publish a photo showing a rich person living high-on-the-hog on his yacht?<br /> Is it polite to publish a photo showing a black man with his white girl friend?<br /> Is it polite to publish a photo showing a white man with his black girl friend?<br /> Is it polite to publish a photo showing an American soldier standing over the corpse of a dead Iraqi?<br /> Is it polite to publish a photo showing an Arab dragging an American soldier's body through the streets?</p>

<p>We aren't limited by politeness very often when we photograph. When photographs are published, politeness is considered by editors. Editors also consider the political implications of a picture. 'Polite' and 'political' are different words for different things. A photograph isn't written speech, photographs are not words. They are photographs and can be political, or they can be apolitical. If they are obscene or sufficiently rude they probably won't get published in a newspaper of record, for example.</p>

<p>We are obliged by etiquette to publically discuss photos using words that are suitable for public discourse, words suitable for polite conversation. There are a lot of words we don't use in polite conversation, and most of them don't have to do with race, creed, national origin, gender, abilities, etc.</p>

<p> </p>

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<p>I wanted to watch the movie the Hunchback of Notre Damn (1939) and not have to hear that horrid Quasimodo soliloquy about "<em>All</em> my life, I've been <em>ugly</em>." I just wanted Quasimodo to be free up there with Esmeralda, that wonderful free feeling she inspired in him. That feeling was wonderful! I didn't want to see his inner world either, all polluted by how everyone thought he was ugly. What an insensitive movie! That movie was insensitive to how I just want to look at Quasimodo like I look at any other guy. I didn't want to see how life is different for Quasimodo just because of how he looked. I didn't appreciate Quasimodo's <em>soliloquy</em>. Because his soliloquy was so much about other people and how other people behaved toward Quasimodo. Which wasn't very good behavior I tell you. Life was perfect before I saw that movie, believe me.</p>

<p> </p>

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<p>Everybody's soliloquy has something to do with how other people see us and how we might or might not see ourselves accordingly and to what degree. We are all Quasimodo. Only when we were children did we see face to face, now we know as through a glass darkly, in parts. From those parts we make a mosaic of our lives, we pick one part or another, or put them all in, always in a relation to other parts that comprise what as adults has become a broken whole. We are all broken. We can't have one thing without the other, it's childish to even want that.</p>
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<p>So in some sense people's soliloquys are changing because society has changed, as evidenced by Fred's photos, if I may have permission to characterize them in that way.</p>

<p>So I don't see how our internal dialogs, expressed as soliloquy, can change without it also coming about that there are changes in public discourse. Part of the change in public discourse has come about because we have listened to soliloquy, taken it in, heard it, have just listened.</p>

<p>Alan some advice is helpful in certain circumstances. Good advice in some circumstances isn't good advice in other circumstances. Paraphrasing CG Jung, good advice usually isn't, but the antidote to good advice is that no one takes the medicine of good advice anyway, no need to administer an antidote for a medicine no one took.</p>

<p><a href="http://vimeo.com/78788086">http://vimeo.com/78788086</a> The Ox. Would we have said to Eric 20 years ago "It will get better. See the glass as half full."? Because we care, we want to use the best medicine that we can when treating injuries. Sometimes we just don't have any medicine to offer except listening. Sometimes it is best to not offer advice at all. Our advice can just aggravate an injury.</p>

<p> </p>

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<p>Charles W -- <em>The UC Berkeley student government spoke to the issue of what they consider polite language in UC Berkeley student government discourse.</em><br>

<em>In an unanimous vote, student senators passed a resolution that stated the word “illegal” is “racially charged,” “dehumanizes” people, and contributes to “punitive and discriminatory actions aimed primarily at immigrants and communities of color.”</em></p>

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<p>If someone takes a photograph of a person breaking into a home that is not their own and titles it "Illegal entry", is it impolite? racially charged? Or merely accurate given the fact that forcing entry into a residence not your own, without permission, is an illegal act? Likewise a photograph of a person -- regardless of nationality, race, or skin color -- who has gained entry into the United States (or France, or Bolivia, or Canada) without following the laws that govern entry of a foreign national into the country...would a title to the photo, "Charles, Illegal Alien" be impolite or racially charged?</p>

<p>The acronym "PC" is generally understood to mean "Politically Correct", not polite conversation. However, as it is intended (or so I interpret it) to foster polite references to certain groups of human beings, then it could be stretched to include that a part of its meaning. But unless one has a particular axe to grind, or a photographic work is intended to be political (and many are -- the Renee Cox photo that Julie linked to earler being a good example), I think the term often has no place in what might roughly be called "artistic" photography. Art can enrage, frustrate, and enflame passions.</p>

<p>Hmm.... link insertion does not seem to be working for me. Here is the link to the Renee Cox photo if anyone wants to look at it again: <br>

https://unrealnature.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/cox_renee_hottentot.jpg</p>

<p>I do not know why you would call for the closing of this thread as it seems to have largely remained on photographic ground. When one considers photos, or aspects of photography, that are controversial or political in nature, it is sometimes necessary to reference aspects of that controversy or political concern that reach outside photography as examples of particular viewpoints that can impact photography.</p>

 

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<p>Julie -- <em>What I'm wishing for is a freedom (or forgetting of non-freedom) to show the 'inside' of a culture instead of always needing to do what I think you're talking about -- a 'public' or group culture that is 'opposed to' or, again, 'unique' or distinct from.</em></p>

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<p>Julie, I understand you better and I did not mean to single you out as if I am against anyone, or any group, building a cultural portrayal. </p>

<p>As level headed examples of two different types of marriage celebrations, I appreciate your two photographs, Fred. The photo of the two men with the sign is completely justified (not that one needs to "justify" it, I mean in a general sense -- I don't want to be misunderstood by choosing that word!) and even necessary to the narrative of what the photo is showing us. </p>

<p>In considering the various points that have been raised in this thread (I regret not commenting on everyone's contributions...), a photograph of mine came to mind. If it is political, if it speaks to Black experience in this country, it was unintentional (in this, it ties into our other thread on Critiques of Intention). Back story -- I was in downtown Chicago in 2013, photographing the Blackhawks Stanley Cup Parade. I noticed a man in a porkpie hat headed toward me. He seemed almost from another era (I encounter this on occasion when photographing in the streets of Chicago) and I wanted to photograph him. That was the extent of my intent. Only afterward in developing, er, <em>processing </em>the photographs I had taken that day did I notice the glances that some people, Caucasian people, had given him. I make no judgment about their glances, because there wasn't anything that unusual about him and it is not as if a black man on the streets of Chicago is some sort of remarkable and unusual occurrence! But some people who have viewed the photograph have interpreted it as an example of racism. Maybe it was, I cannot say. An example of what I consider an "illusion of the literal" wherein what the camera appears to have recorded, in conjunction with a salient interpretation, may, or may not, have actually been the case. (Yes, I adapted it from Winogrand's quote).</p>

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<p>"now, Alan, I offered you photography (which is what you asked for), but you chose God instead". Fred.<br /> <br /> Well to some folk God is an invisible man somewhere up above us in the sky. He has 10 rules which if we do not follow he will send us to a hell of his making for eternity....scary stuff. Of course we can use him to justify our actions to murder folk who do not follow our particular understanding of him. Convenient, helps to hide our natural bloody thirsty nature.<br /> <br /> Some folk just believe he is just a fantasy much as the same as believing in faeries (short skirt variety) at the bottom of our garden.<br /> <br /> But we really do not know...it was not so long ago we believed the world was flat. So, better to keep an open mind.<br /> <br /> Good photos, Steve. Thanks.</p>
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<p>Steve, please stop grinding your axe about how a student government voted to close a discussion about the use of words. You don't have to discuss here how that term is just an objective descriptor to your ears. That issue was already decided. Now all you have to do is not use that term when speaking to that body. You want to grind your axe about that, sorry, the Off Topic forum is closed.</p>

<p> </p>

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<p>A while back I had severe pains in my stomach...unbearable agony. Being at a loss as what to do to stop this pain I called on God as a last my hope.. Within 5 minutes the pain eased and stopped. Hocus Pocus, coincident, I do not know... Only that the pain left.</p>

<p>So, can we leave God out of this post and move on.</p>

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<p>It is hard not to include mention of things like the influence of universities on the PC debate but lets look at this example which annoyed me a great deal. Several well known contemporary artists were invited to make a work for a charity fund raising project for the Sydney Children's Hospital an organisation with a very well known policy about the depiction of children, which, of course, is perfectly reasonable.</p>

<p>One of the invited artists, Del Kathryn Barton, submitted this photograph of her semi naked son covered in spots/eyes.</p>

<p><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/__IzEtMuM-Ho/TSVqfqju1TI/AAAAAAAAAEQ/k7YSBc9EpRg/s1600/Del%2BKathryn%2BBarton%2BSMH.jpg" alt="" width="420" height="493" /></p>

<p>and of course the hospital rejected it, as one would expect...........the artist and her agent went straight to the press and the whole thing became a media frenzy - this is a fairly common technique used by artists and their agents to gain publicity and the useful title of "notorious" - so this is a case of a photographer exploiting reasonable PC to her own ends. </p>

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