charleswood

<p>The portrayal was in a setting and circumstances that showed him as flawed. "...in January 1921 during a speech at a temple in Vadtal, he spoke of the relevance of noncooperation to Hindu Dharma, "At this holy place, I declare, if you want to protect your 'Hindu Dharma', non-cooperation is first as well as the last lesson you must learn up." <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi</a> So spinning was noncooperation and noncooperation was his prescription just as much as he prescribed natural cures. So on the one hand he could with some justification have been called a 'fakir in a nappy' (Churchill). Because how can one <em>not</em> cooperate? (The 1982 film had Gandhi acknowledging that the financial contributions of others allowed him to live on his ashram in 'poverty'.) On the other hand, the British walked out of India largely because of the efforts of Gandhi, repudiating the cynics. That cure of his had worked, and considering the source, that was amazing. A large part of the photograph is the setting, where the setting highlights the inexplicability of the power of Gandhi's spirituality.</p>

<p>Like Dick Arnold above, I think it is the man that makes those photographs memorable.</p> <p>The photographs are of the type to be expected of someone paid above all to 'be there' along with their ability to compose and expose amid difficulties. The result became in its second life, according to the linked article <a href="http://life.time.com/history/gandhi-and-his-spinning-wheel-story-behind-famous-photo/#1">http://life.time.com/history/gandhi-and-his-spinning-wheel-story-behind-famous-photo/#1</a> a visual eulogy plucked for its appropriateness from others taken about a couple of years before his death.</p> <p>It seemed fitting and still fits our remembrances of the man. However Life had first published it "...as a small image atop an article in June 1946 (left) that focused on Gandhi’s fascination with what the magazine called “nature cures” for the sick." That first publishing was a sympathetic portrayal of him, a great man complicated enough to also be somewhat of a crank.</p> <p>He was quirky and he was a great soul. The advocate for 'nature cures' was the same man who had said to the British "Yes. In the end you will walk out." I think his quirkiness was part of the amused amazement he inspired in the USA.</p> <p>That article quotes from Bourke-White's typed notes "Spinning is raised to the heights almost of a religion with Gandhi and his followers. The spinning wheel is sort of an Ikon to them. Spinning is a cure all, and is spoken of in terms of the highest poetry." And despite that, he was Mahatma Gandhi, like no other.</p> <p> </p>

<p>Julie "...whether for historic, scientific, anthropological, ethnographic, or simply sentimental reasons..."</p> <p>Anything I deliberately place outside in my trash cans is like jetsam and the finder generally becomes the new owner of the items if they want. If I put a cache of money into the trash however, that's like flotsam because no one intentionally throws good money away, no one in their right mind would intend to throw money into the trash, and that intentional act may earn a person a conservator.</p> <p>So if you take a printed photograph and throw it into an outside trash bin for collection: your assumption may be that the printed photograph will be destroyed. However once you intentionally throw anything into the outside trash you may no longer be its rightful owner and may have no say in its ultimate disposition.</p> <p>So when we throw something away, we'll often not want that it ultimately be destroyed. Someone else may be able to use it and we often make an effort to leave something intact as we put it in the trash.</p> <p>At some point in time the only value most photos have is historic, scientific, anthropological, ethnographic, nostalgic, etc.</p> <p>I don't think the question is "Should my Windows recycle bin be a port to the national archives."</p> <p>Do you entirely destroy photographs before throwing them away? Because, photos thrown away just like other trash: if all you're going to do with them is throw them away, can you at least not destroy them before throwing them away? That way, thrown away intact, they can then at least have some vaguely sensed use to <em>someone</em> as historic, scientific, anthropological, ethnographic, nostalgic, etc.? Instead of just destroying them, can you donate some of them while still intact to the national archives?</p> <p> </p>

<p>That's what I meant to say Arthur, rodent dens are natural, we see ourselves as separate from nature somehow. I get stuck on naturalism/idealism all the time and have impulses to clean things up.</p>

<p>"What are the limits to 'enhancing' a landscape?"</p> <p>It sounds like you're speaking to naturalism v. idealism where in the latter your enhancement is idealizing the landscape. Instead, leaving the human-made blemishes in the shot makes the landscape depiction more 'natural', but that makes your approach an idealizing one, if you want it to be. So if natural in your context means cleaned of unsightly human artifacts: the problem I've had is with telephone wires in the background, pathways, roads, houses. The thing is, nature is full of detritus from other species and we think that leaves are natural and our wrappers aren't. Our roads aren't natural, but animal-worn paths are; tangled branches serving as rodent dens aren't natural, but an absolutely orderly arrangement of sticks of wood aren't when humans live inside stick structures albeit more rectangular ones. I know what you mean though and I haven't sorted all that out although yeah, I would clip and clean up rubbish too.</p>

<p>Alan: "However, I don't think we need another government agency, let' call it the Historical Photo Administration..."</p> <p>Too late! Already has a name, the national archives:</p> <p><a href="http://www.archives.gov/citizen-archivist/upload-and-share/">http://www.archives.gov/citizen-archivist/upload-and-share/</a></p> <blockquote> <h3>Getting Started</h3> <p>With digital images and some basic information, it’s easy to get started:</p> <ol> <li>Create an account on <a href="http://www.archives.gov/global-pages/exit.html?link=http://www.flickr.com/" rel="gb_page_center[640, 510]">Flickr</a></li> <li>Upload your images and add basic information</li> <li>Request to “join” the <a href="http://www.archives.gov/global-pages/exit.html?link=http://www.flickr.com/groups/citizenarchivist/" rel="gb_page_center[640, 510]">group</a></li> <li>Request to “add photos” to the <a href="http://www.archives.gov/global-pages/exit.html?link=http://www.flickr.com/groups/citizenarchivist/" rel="gb_page_center[640, 510]">group</a></li> </ol></blockquote> <p> </p>

<p>Putin? He rides horses doesn't he? <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/12/worl-photo-caption-contest-shirtless-putin_n_3263512.html">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/12/worl-photo-caption-contest-shirtless-putin_n_3263512.html</a> </p>

<p>Alan those specifics of 'necessity' aren't as important or interesting to me as is the subject of how they fit into the cyclic pattern that we term war. An article quotes Tacitus:<br /> <a href="http://www.thesonsofscotland.co.uk/xilegion.htm">http://www.thesonsofscotland.co.uk/xilegion.htm</a></p> <blockquote> <p>"'They could not wait to cut throats, hang, burn, crucify,' wrote the Roman historian Tacitus. 'In the groves of their terrible dark goddess, Andraste, they tortured their captives to death, sewing the severed breasts of the women to their lips, and impaling others on stakes driven through their bodies. 'No cruelty was too great."</p> </blockquote> <p>Tacitus used words to evoke pictures in the minds of his readers. Now we have pictures and videos to instantaneously message something like abandon all hope those who enter here. Off his readers went and on it goes.</p> <p>The sense that about such horrors, the sense that it is necessary to <em>do</em> something: 'Necessity' is part of war's allure, part of the awe in our response to that tactic of shock and awe. Recoiling from such images and forming a resolve is just a piece from a pattern. We can hardly <em>not</em> go, and that response is part of the entirety we can rightly call war's cycle.<br /> <br />From Sontag's essay "Men make war. Men (most men) like war, since for men there is "some glory, some necessity, some satisfaction in fighting" that women (most women) do not feel or enjoy....Can her recoil from its allure be like his?" And to the Spanish Civil War many went with their feeling of necessity.</p> <p>Sontag quotes Virginia Woolf in a discussion about war's images:</p> <blockquote> <p>"You, Sir, call them "horror and disgust." We also call them horror and disgust…War, you say, is an abomination; a barbarity; war must be stopped at whatever cost. And we echo your words. War is an abomination; a barbarity; war must be stopped."</p> </blockquote> <p>"If we’re big enough to fight a war, we should be big enough to look at it.” -Kenneth Jarecke</p> <p>Are we big enough, then, to recognize war as part of a cyclical pattern of thought, feeling, and behavior?</p> <p><a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=uroboros&rlz=1T4NDKB_enUS521US521&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=p73rU-KMAtL6oASLhIGABQ&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1768&bih=1133">https://www.google.com/search?q=uroboros&rlz=1T4NDKB_enUS521US521&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=p73rU-KMAtL6oASLhIGABQ&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1768&bih=1133</a></p> <p>In those images of a tail devouring serpent: where the eating of its tail births its entire body, which is again fed back into the serpent, consuming itself and birthing itself in an unending cycle. That is a picture of war and a picture of other repetitive, self-birthing and self-consumptive behaviors or syndromes [like co-dependency] that proceed along unchanged until insight, hopefully, breaks the cycle and introduces hope and change into the picture.</p> <p>So all images of war are images of the minutiae of a serpent eating its tail. Just showing the particulars in images doesn't make anyone bigger. It's my belief that we must find the words that, as a frame for such images, quarantine that behavior.</p> <p> </p>

<p>Gerry - "Is this the face of terrorism."</p> <p>And that question, no matter how an individual answers it, puts a frame of words around that picture even if we can't come to a judgment. From Sontag's essay, and I've edited her to remove her reference to a particular photo, the one Gerry offered works as well to illustrate her meaning:</p> <blockquote> <p>Certain photographs—emblems of suffering, such as [...]—can be used like memento mori, as objects of contemplation to deepen one's sense of reality; as secular icons, if you will. But that would seem to demand the equivalent of a sacred or meditative space in which to look at diem. Space reserved for being serious is hard to come by in a modern society, whose chief model of a public space is the mega-store (which may also be an airport or a museum).</p> </blockquote> <p>Modern society, I add, where it seems more and more the public space is a mega-store for propaganda from all sides, where at worst all of us can unfairly be viewed as always having dicey motives.</p>

<p>From Susan Sontag's essay: <a href="http://lensbased.net/files/catastrophe/18541-regarding_the_pain_of.pdf">http://lensbased.net/files/catastrophe/18541-regarding_the_pain_of.pdf</a></p> <blockquote> <p>Whether the photograph is understood as a naïve object or the work of an experienced artificer, its meaning – and the viewer's response - depends on how the picture is identified or misidentified; that is, on words.</p> </blockquote> <p>(Thanks John, interesting essay.)</p> <p>I'm not so sure the extent to which viewer response depends on how a picture is identified or misidentified. I agree with Sontag's opinion that no one today believes war can be abolished. Instead, she writes: "We hope only (so far in vain) to stop genocide and to bring to justice those who commit gross violations of the laws of war (for there are laws of war, to which combatants should be held), and to be able to stop specific wars by imposing negotiated alternatives to armed conflict."</p> <p>The Atlantic article by that standard falls short with the words it uses to frame that picture. It falls short because it doesn't discuss justice and accountability, doesn't discuss realistic hope. War is ugly, it's hideous as Corkran puts it, also saying "So be it." An army in retreat is one story and the utter annihilation of soldiers who are not in combat is another story. The Atlantic article doesn't help us sort those two stories out. Yet beyond the framing of that picture by the Atlantic's words is the sense of justice evoked in the viewer by either version of the story. Even Schwarzkopf addressed that sense of viewer justice, for me in an inadequate way, when he said "...this was not a bunch of innocent people just trying to make their way back across the border to Iraq." Maybe not, but the issue at justice is whether that bunch of people were legitimate, legal targets and Schwarzkopf knew that legality was also the issue when he said in so many words that he didn't specifically order it. So, I'm not so sure the extent to which viewer response depends on how a picture is identified or misidentified.</p>

<p>From the article in the OP, its link repeated: <a title="Link added by VigLink" href="http://api.viglink.com/api/click?format=go&jsonp=vglnk_jsonp_14078174733306&key=be523a743114e35af62258230e49ff36&libId=774d78e1-0753-40c4-b5b9-4b57d84daf81&loc=http%3A%2F%2Fphoto.net%2Fcasual-conversations-forum%2F00cl0z&v=1&type=U&out=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theatlantic.com%2Ffeatures%2Farchive%2F2014%2F08%2Fthe-war-photo-no-one-would-publish%2F375762&ref=http%3A%2F%2Fphoto.net%2Fcasual-conversations-forum%2F&title=%22If%20we%E2%80%99re%20big%20enough%20to%20fight%20a%20war%2C%20we%20should%20be%20big%20enough%20to%20look%20at%20it.%E2%80%9D%20-Kenneth%20Jarecke%20-%20Photo.net%20Casual%20Photo%20Conversations%20Forum&txt=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theatlantic.com%2Ffeatures%2Farchive%2F2014%2F08%2Fthe-war-photo-no-one-would-publish%2F375762" rel="nofollow">http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/08/the-war-photo-no-one-would-publish/375762</a>/</p> <p> </p> <blockquote> <p>Stella Kramer, who worked as a freelance photo editor for Life on four special-edition issues on the Gulf War, tells me that the decision to not publish Jarecke’s photo was less about protecting readers than preserving the dominant narrative of the good, clean war. Flipping through 23-year-old issues, Kramer expresses clear distaste at the editorial quality of what she helped to create. The magazines “were very sanitized,” she says. “So, that’s why these issues are all basically just propaganda.”</p> </blockquote> <p>Kramer viewed the coverage she participated in as propaganda, as a propaganda narrative that Gulf War I was a both a good and a clean war. Had instead the propaganda narrative been 'war is necessarily not clean yet this war is a good war": then in my view, the propaganda message that "this war is good" probably would have been remained credible to any gory photo viewer.</p> <p>Photographs can't very often give us a precise interpretation of a particular war. The precision I want I deem lacking from the Atlantic's interpretation.</p> <p>I still don't know if what was documented on the Highway of Death was a violation of the Third Geneva Convention, Common Article 3 where Article 3 outlaws, according to Wikipedia authors, the killing of soldiers who are out of combat. I still don't know after thoroughly reading the Atlantic's article. On that point Wikipedia quotes Schwarzkopf <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_of_Death">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_of_Death</a> :</p> <blockquote> <p>The first reason why we bombed the highway coming north out of Kuwait is because there was a great deal of military equipment on that highway, and I had given orders to all my commanders that I wanted every piece of Iraqi equipment that we possibly could destroy. Secondly, this was not a bunch of innocent people just trying to make their way back across the border to Iraq. This was a bunch of rapists, murderers and thugs who had raped and pillaged downtown Kuwait City and now were trying to get out of the country before they were caught.</p> </blockquote> <p>In other words: I didn't specifically order it; and keep in mind that we were killing criminals. <br /> <em><br /></em>Looking again to the article for clarification, I see this from Lee Corkran:</p> <blockquote> <p>“If pictures tell stories,” Lee Corkran tells me, “the story should have a point. So if the point is the utter annihilation of people who were in retreat and all the charred bodies ... if that’s your point, then that’s true. And so be it. I mean, war is ugly. It’s hideous.”</p> </blockquote> <p>Corkran seems to miss the point about which I am most interested.</p> <p> </p>

<p>From Julie's OP "As Crouch notes later, "Unless something of imperishable value from the dead world of the past is held onto, the undeclared audience that we all are could get that dead world dead wrong.""</p> <p>Teenie Harris, like Steve years later with "German-American Parade", was just out taking pictures of his neighborhood without the intent of making a political statement.</p> <p>Let's say that of Steve's picture some 50 years later, a commentator like Crouch writes (as quoted by Julie in the OP) "Unless something of imperishable value from the dead world of the past is held onto, the undeclared audience that we all are could get that dead world dead wrong."</p> <p>And if that Crouch of the future in that same piece also wrote "Here's an African American woman walking down the street and no one is acting like they want to hurl insults at her, no one looks like they want to call her [this word] or [that word]. Instead, that picture speaks for itself and that part of that past world looks <em>right </em>to me."</p> <p>Does Julie's present remark seem uncalled for when applied to that future hypothetical Crouch: "Crouch, it seems to me is kicking <em>both</em> the PC police <em>and</em> the Roy DeCaravas of the world in the head, out of pure frustration; he's chaffing against the confines of this limiting, silencing, self-censoring, gag that prevents free expression."</p> <p>Yes, uncalled for in the hypothetical, and uncalled for today. Because Crouch <em>was</em> freely expressing himself. He was chaffing about his own misperception of that past world, being so distant from it, being not fully informed: he was kicking himself.</p> <p>Look at the grief <em>Crouch </em>has to deal with when he freely expresses himself. Then tell me again <em>who</em> is drowning out his words by hurling PCness at him?</p> <p> </p>

<p>Yeah, thanks Julie, I can kind of see how a lot of social noise (e.g., its a picture of sports fans) from others would prevent you from coming up with an experience of a photo that is so uniquely your own, having little to do with the people pictured. Sorry. Instead of Williams, reach for this book: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_Man">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_Man</a> Ralph Ellison</p>

<p>nm</p>

<p>http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/02/ap-drops-term-illegal-immigrant_n_3001432.html<br /> "The <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/ABC_Univision/press-drops-illegal-immigrant-standards-book/story?id=18862824#.UVs336vkvbT" target="_hplink">Associated Press dropped the term “illegal immigrant”</a> from its style guide Tuesday, handing a victory to immigration rights advocates and Latino media organizations who have pressured the news media for years to abandon a phrase<strong> that many view as offensive." </strong>[emphasis added]<br /> <br /> Your mere use of that term to me is offensive. Very offensive. It's like calling people who go to hockey games nuts or something. Just gets me all riled up.</p> <p> </p>

<p>As to your picture, to me, Steve, your picture looks like one sane person walking along with a bunch nuts. You confirm it by saying those other people went to a hockey game.</p>

<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>

<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>

<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>

<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>

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

<p>Anyway, this thread is now becoming more of an Off Topic thread and I would appreciate it if a moderator would close this thread.</p>

<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> <blockquote> <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> </blockquote> <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>