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Response to Phil Borges toning technique

from Jeff Spirer (jeff@spirer.com)
John, are you feeling alright? You seem to be responding to things no-one said.

Apparently the only appropriate way to shoot members of other cultures or subcultures (whether in the third world, in the projects, or in suburbia) is either in stark black-and-white (so that we can see how oppressed and miserable they "really" are)

No-one said this.

or in equally stark yet saturated color (so that we can see how childlike and innocent they really are).

No-one said this.

All I see in those kinds of pictures is a condescending neo- colonialism masquerading as concern. (The "white-man's burden" renewed.)

What photographs are you talking about? No-one mentioned anyone else's photographs.

Borges takes serious, artistic portraits of individuals, using some of the best techniques of his (our) culture.

They're boring. They're numbing after you get through the whole exhibition. They invoke sympathy, as I said above, which isn't necessary or enjoyable.

(He, in fact, calls them portraits and doesn't try to pass them off as ethnography.)

Does he exhibit photos of people at home?

(Does anyone ever read the text accompanying his shots?)

Yes. So what?

Heaven forbid you should bring a flash with you to a foreign land - much less manipulate your print after the fact (dodging, burning, and sepia toning of course excepted).

Who said not to bring flash? Or not to manipulate?

Let's only have pictures that mask the photographer's involvement (and bias) through the use of techniques which are (unfortunately) almost transparent to our jaded eyes.

Who said anything about this? Who?

I think Luis Gonzalez Palma is one of the most affecting (and effective) photographers of indigenous people (and there are real issues around this). It's all done in the studio, and with plenty of post-shooting manipulation. In fact, many of them are barely photographic when he is done. But they are much more striking, much more interesting, much more empathetic, much deeper culturally and photographically than Borges simplistic (yes, simplistic) work.

(posted 8681 days ago)

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