Magnum Hard Choices

Bob Michaels said:
An excellent piece of documentary photography conveyed in a very effective format. But we have come to expect that of Larry Towell.

It is unfortunate that this thread, on a photo forum, immediately took a political turn. Hopefully it was initially presented for it's effective use of photography to convey a message rather than for political purposes.
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You posted this as post #4 and were the first who wrote "political". So why did you bring up the word when you don't want to talk about political things?

Edit: Bob gave me the information that some posts were deleted so I got his post completely wrong.
 
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Bob Michaels said:
Dave, you are 100% correct. I am out of this thread.
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That was not what I meant, Bob...:angel:

This thread was not in any way political. We would appreciate your hanging in with us because as you note, Magnum does great work and the facts presented will logically include the state that these people are in due to the Great Recession. The video states that. Is that political? No, it is a statement of fact. Any other side discussion can be dismissed without banning oneself.🙂
 
tom.w.bn said:
You posted this as post #4 and were the first who wrote "political". So why did you bring up the word when you don't want to talk about political things?
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This thread went heavily political on about the third post (not by Bob), and he responded to that, as did I. The moderator wisely deleted the incendiary post. My response was moderate, but would have made no sense without the context of the original post, so the moderator deleted it also.
 
I was moved by hearing the voices of people speaking about their condition. The photos did not even register and neither did the video.
 
It didn't seem that political to me, frankly. Someone expressed their opinion about why this kind of thing might happen–misplaced political priorities, in their opinion. Regardless of my opinion, it's a valid thing to bring up, especially in terms of wider questions raised by the essay and about the nature of what this kind of journalism can do. Can it change people's minds and their priorities? Is it effective as such? If you are moved by it, what is your response?

There was no kind of vilification or personal attack in the deleted post. I don't understand why there was an uproar... An essay about hunger will of necessity imply the political, because on a mass scale there need to be decisions made about how to address these things.
 
Nothing wrong with political discussion, but on this forum I would expect the conversation to be about the use of b&w stills (with a digital tonal range?), mixed with color video scenes, text and voice. This is New Media, state of the art, where tradiitonal photojournalists are turning. How does it succeed, or perhaps not, are the questions most relevant , but not exclusively, on this forum, IMO.
 
With the message in the essay, the discussion here is like going into a room and discuss the colour of the walls, and just ignoring the big elephant that occupies most of the room....
 
sig said:
With the message in the essay, the discussion here is like going into a room and discuss the colour of the walls, and just ignoring the big elephant that occupies most of the room....
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I agree. What's the point of posting, or even shooting something like this if one is not allowed to discuss the content?

We are supposed to discuss "tonal range," the use if audio and [gasp] moving pictures and pretend that is reveolutionary stuff, but the content is off limits?

Why not just limit posts to pictures of puppies? And only healthy ones at that?
 
By all means discuss the contents, discuss the issues, discuss the politics. But leave out terms that block debate before it even starts. Calling groups of people by vile, pejorative names is not an argument -- it is only an indication of mental poverty. You may think socialism is the cure for this country's ills, or the world's ills, for that matter. I may think the free market approach has brought about more prosperity for more people than any other system. Or you may be somewhere in between. Whatever, your viewpoint, let's discuss it on the issues, not by ad hominum attacks.
 
So, back to the video.

I passed this by my non-photographical (thank goodness) bride and she was floored and troubled by the presentation. I think the message was loud and clear, emphasized mostly by the individuals' own voices.

Of course, the video immediately elicited questions of why this is happening, who is helping, etc. Conversations followed about responsibility to help these people, government? individuals? corporations? churches?

It appears to me that this photo essay is an inspiration for other photographers to do the same for any issue in which they may be interested.🙂

Produce a blurb or similar book first, and then do a video documentary.😎 Doesn't appear to be a terribly expensive endeavor but maybe I am wrong.
 
Photographs by their intrinsic nature are "political". One makes decisions, and presents them in a particular way to get their message across. Even photographically, one cannot deny the message of this essay.
 
So, I am working on a blurb book, first of a series. If I were to put together a video to go along with the book, it appears that I would need a camera with video and sound along with the current still cameras I have now.

But, then, what software would one use to compile all of this into a nice video complete with video, sound, music and still photos?😕
 
Although I have been on this forum a relatively short time, I am surprised to see news that "incendiary" posts have been deleted. Sorry I missed the action!

Dave, your initial post prompted me to watch the Magnum stills + audio, and I thought it a powerful presentation. Too often the stereotypical equation is

poor = black + city

This work reminds us that the equally relevant equation is

poor = white + country

My political contribution is a simple observation. I am past fifty, and have lived on both coasts and the midwest. Everywhere I have lived you see one or more examples of "the old factory". Philly, which once was the "workshop of the world", is chock full of them.

Since the time I was a child, the odds are the old factory is CLOSED. The guy who closed it made out like a bandit; the one who worked in it saw his life start to slowly go down the drain, and his kids' too. Anyone who thinks that the free market has brought prosperity had best keep that in mind.

Dave, thanks again for starting the thread, and don't be distracted by the talk of "politics". As others pointed out here, some art is inherently political, and especially an art like photography which has been used since its inception to record the human condition.

Randy
 
dave lackey said:
So, I am working on a blurb book, first of a series. If I were to put together a video to go along with the book, it appears that I would need a camera with video and sound along with the current still cameras I have now.

But, then, what software would one use to compile all of this into a nice video complete with video, sound, music and still photos?😕
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So, you could buy a flip–an inexpensive hd video recorder. Then edit in something like final cut express... it should have everything you need. iMovie might as well–I don't know, having never used it. And I don't know what the windows software options are either. But a program like final cut is pretty easy to use, especially if you buy a dummies book or something like that. It's basically a timeline editor–you pick your in and out points on a given clip and drop it into the timeline. You have multiple tracks for video and audio, so you can combine all the stills and images with audio and music. You can do all sorts of basic pans and scaling operations on the stills, and fades and other transitions on the video, and simple titling effects.

You might consider recording the audio separately as well... there are plenty of inexpensive mps3 recorders out there that take AA batteries and SD cards. Or if you went with a newer dslr with video, you could add an external mic.
 
Thanks for posting this beautifully done essay. Totally confused about the political discussion until I read that posts were deleted.

As far as the photography goes, I was struck by the fact that at times, the color video conveyed the squalid conditions much more effectively than the black and white stills. When depicted in black and white, the garbage seems to become more of an architectural element of the scene and is not as striking. I love B+W for documentary work, but see that you need to keep your options open and go with what works best.
 
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