"100 Days of Protests" Photobook

CSG123 said:
Yawn, it's over, he's been your president for almost 14 months. And yeah, your book is political, not "photojournalism".
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Why you think that everyone in Washington DC is *your* president's tributary subject, erm I mean US citizen?
Giga could be a foreigner, a foreign country's diplomat, a foreign scientist, a foreign musician, a foreign oil trader, a foreign car dealer, *heck*, a foreign *spy* even! 😀
 
For full discosure:

I came to the US as a foreign scientist 18 years ago, then received the "Einstein greencard" (for exceptional abilities, just like the President's wife Milania, haha!), and became a full US citizen right before the election in 2016. I work in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters as a space program scientist and are employed by the federal government.

Coincidentally, I have an invitation to a work-related event at the White House next week (for the second time), but as it so happens, I will be on travel on that day so I don't have to decide whether I want to meet President Trump or not.

Granted, the "100 Days of Protests" photo book is politically charged (but not politically motivated), but I also work on other documentary photography project that are less political (coal miners in West Virginia and the Underground Railroad project, documenting the paths to freedom for escaped slaves after the Civil War).

The bottom line is that I am in the US because I chose to live here.
 
retinax said:
If what you're complaining about is that this only reflects on side, what would a balanced reportage look like? Should he give equal space in the book to the pro Trump camp? Half the pages? Or by ratio of street presence? By votes?
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In answer to your question, I think yes there should be images showing the other side. As a former small town newspaper photog, I usually shot BOTH sides of a confrontation/protest to try and give a balanced view, to show BOTH sides of the equation. For just about every person that hated Trump, there were those that hated Clinton. So, yes, show both sides, IMHO.

Oh, and since it does show only one side, I do not plan on adding it to my photo library.
 
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seagrove said:
In answer to your question, I think yes there should be images showing the other side. As a former small town newspaper photog, I usually shot BOTH sides of a confrontation/protest to try and give a balanced view, to show BOTH sides of the equation. For just about every person that hated Trump, there were those that hated Clinton. So, yes, show both sides, IMHO.

Oh, and since it does show only one side, I do not plan on adding it to my photo library.
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Rich, maybe this book is for you.

I don't understand why you are coming here to tell me what I should have done. If you ever publish a book about flowers, I'll criticize you for not including pictures of insects. 😀
 
There are a number of problems with the "show both sides" argument. The onset of the Trump administration has sparked an unprecedented level of protest explicitly against it; these protests are of a fundamentally different character than any major conservative marches that have happened since 2016. In fact, there haven't really been pro-Trump rallies on the scale that we have seen with anti-Trump events like the Women's March - juxtaposing them as one and the same would actually be a misrepresentation of these events. The closest I can think of would be the March for Life, which happens every year and doesn't focus on the specific actions of one particular administration (nor is it a direct reaction to the Trump administration). This is the first part of the problem - we simply haven't seen comparable Pro-Trump protests, at least not in DC.

Furthermore, insisting on depicting the two sides as the same only makes sense if you consider that they are both people in the street waving signs. I think the book is getting at some of the deeper political forces undergirding the anti-Trump protests, which is a more nuanced and focused approach than simply photographing every rally that happens to come to town (and in DC, there are many).

In some cases, presenting both sides could make sense (if you were doing a book about the Charlottesville violence, where the two sides actually came together, or about Inauguration Day alone, it could work). However, in this case, demanding an equal depiction of pro- and anti-Trump protests in DC would not only weaken the thesis of the work, it would also pose a false equivalence between the two when no such equivalence exists.

(As an aside, I'm firmly of the opinion that no single work needs to present "all sides" of an issue, or that any single work can. It's more about the plurality of voices - rather than put all the responsibility on one author or artist, better to find and recognize complementary or competing narratives put forth by other artists to better round out the bigger picture. If there's substantive work about conservative protests/rallies under Trump, I'd love to see it.)
 
giganova said:
Rich, maybe this book is for you.

I don't understand why you are coming here to tell me what I should have done. If you ever publish a book about flowers, I'll criticize you for not including pictures of insects. 😀
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Actually, the response was not to you but to retinax who asked a question. As someone with some experience in photojournalism, albeit on a small scale, I do believe I have a right to my opinion. If you do not like my opinion, fine, don't let it bother you. I have done some POD books for myself but not one with any political overtones such as yours. Sorry you took offense but it WAS just an observation. Like any review/critique, there will be naysayers.

I did take a look at your recommendation. Mainly I wanted to see if it was another way of an angry/upset response. I actually might look into that book. It looks interesting.

To the additional responders:

On the one hand, I'm glad it generated some "interest". On the other hand, I don't agree with all of the responses. But that, like everything else, is all in the viewer's eyes and mind. And, to flagellum, I did not "DEMAND" Giganova do anything. I just stated a personal subjective opinion in response to one comment based on my own short-lived (1998-2008) career as a newspaper photographer. I covered a lot of events and just about always tried to show both sides of an issue ranging from anti-war protests to presidential candidates making their way through the Panhandle.
 
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