Homeless, dignity, photography

[Ranchu]

So how about exploiting working people?

Right, back to conflating homless people with people who have homes and can escape, or call a cop, or shove you into the wall with the reasonable expectation of avoiding incarceration. Which is what you're taking advantage of when you take a picture of a homeless person, the fact that they're relatively helpless and constrained from resisting. It's easy pathos, and cheap for you.

Dorothea Lang! Dorothea Lange!

🙄

 

[CameraQuest]

Right, back to conflating homless people with people who have homes and can escape, or call a cop, or shove you into the wall with the reasonable expectation of avoiding incarceration. Which is what you're taking advantage of when you take a picture of a homeless person, the fact that they're relatively helpless. It's easy pathos, and cheap for you.

Dorothea Lang! Dorothea Lange!

🙄

Seriously Ranchu,

Its good to see you feel so passionately about helping the homeless. That passion might help you to help the homeless in some way - a good thing indeed.

However, have you considered that publicizing the homeless' plight, like Dorothea Lange, might actually help the homeless just as much, or even more ?

Stephen

 

[OurManInTangier]

Seems to me, people are pushing their (lack of) morality on homeless people, so why not stick up for them here in our nice little bubble, buddy?

Again we have the misunderstanding that morality is shared among humans. If it were there would be no poverty, unless it were itself shared by all.

 

[lukitas]

I find it odd how attached people are to taking photos of homeless people. It's easy, I guess. Its not like they can resist, right?

It's a little adventure, for the artiste.

🙄

It isn't easy. It never is. First contact is always difficult. With anyone, not just beggars. You have to intrude, commit the impoliteness of intruding on someones life and asking for their attention. You have to commit a faux-pas of the ilk of declaring your love to someone. An extreme example, but whenever you start talking to someone you don't know, or point at your camera to ask for a picture, you impose on their life. Not something one does lightly.
And anyone can resist, turn away, put their hand in front of the lens, and they do when they want to.

 

[Ranchu]

However, have you considered that publicizing the homeless' plight, like Dorothea Lange, might actually help the homeless just as much, or even more ?

It's hard for me to get past the initial (personal) exploitation, to go on to weighing whether the benefit outweighs it. I like to keep my moral judgements based on a personal level. This is where we are. I also think it's easy for people to tell themselves they have a higher purpose so anything they feel like doing is inherently awesome.

 

[OurManInTangier]

It's hard for me to get past the initial (personal) exploitation, to go on to weighing whether the benefit outweighs it. I like to keep my moral judgements based on a personal level. I also think it's easy for people to tell themselves they have a higher purpose so anying they feel like doing is inherently right.

I wish you'd expand like this more often rather than go with and leave it at the initial soundbite. Now, regardless of whether I can or will agree or not, I am able to understand your feelings more.

 

[Ranchu]

Right, you want a bubble where nobody diagrees with you, and what you do isn't challenged. It's not surprising.

Dorothea Lange! Dorothea Lange!

 

[Cameron]

Right, you want a bubble where nobody diagrees with you, and what you do isn't challenged. It's not surprising.

It seems like more people here are challenging you, rather than you challenging them.

 

[airfrogusmc]

So I have the right to push my beliefs and I should be able to tell you what you have the right to turn your lens on? PLEASE

Maybe we should have a show with all the work you disapprove of and call it degenerative oh sorry been done already

 

[Ranchu]

It seems like more people here are challenging you, rather than you challenging them.

Damn right. Photographing homeless people is dear to many.

 

[Cameron]

Damn right. Phographing homeless people is much easier.

Easier than what?

 

[Ranchu]

Easier than what?

Here is the distinction again.

"Right, back to conflating homless people with people who have homes and can escape, or call a cop, or shove you into the wall with the reasonable expectation of avoiding incarceration. Which is what you're taking advantage of when you take a picture of a homeless person, the fact that they're relatively helpless and constrained from resisting. It's easy pathos, and cheap for you.

Dorothea Lang! Dorothea Lange!

 

[airfrogusmc]

Still don't get that a lot of pictures of homeless people have helped their plight.

 

[Solinar]

Modern day politically correct sensitivities taken to an extreme would preclude a Dorothea Lange from making images of a migrant farm family.

 

[Ranchu]

I'm fine with that. People know what homeless people look like, they see them, they don't need a bunch of museum curators to show them.

Dorothea Lange! Dorothea Lange!

 

[lukitas]

It's hard for me to get past the initial (personal) exploitation, to go on to weighing whether the benefit outweighs it.

Ok, it is exploitative to shoot ladies underwear from underneath the stairs. However, if you have an understanding with a young lady, and she is willing to be photographed in skimpy wisps of cloth, it's erotic art.
Shooting beggars is the same : it can be done exploitatively, and it can be done with dignity, on both sides of the camera.

I like to keep my moral judgements based on a personal level. This is where we are.

I don't get that.

I also think it's easy for people to tell themselves they have a higher purpose so anything they feel like doing is inherently awesome.

I quite agree. Consciousness is a machine for justifying actions we already committed. So we always embellish the motivations for our actions. It's not too hard to weed them out, if you're a little bit careful about why you're doing the things you are doing. And some of them need to remain embellished, or we'd never submit to wage slavery ;-)

 

[airfrogusmc]

I

Dorothea Lange! Dorothea Lange!

And her wonderful photographs wouldn't exist if she would have followed your beliefs

Lewis Hine's photographs helped get child labor laws passed in the US.

Jacob Riis documented the slums and tenements in New York that helped stir public opinion.

 

[Shafovaloff1]

Homeless

Homeless

I've been "homeless" and was happy not to have been photographed cleaning up in an I-4 restroom or sleeping in my car in the rest area. However, I think if there is any possibility that some understanding could come from examining it more closely, I am for it.

 

[Cameron]

Here is the distinction again.

"Right, back to conflating homless people with people who have homes and can escape, or call a cop, or shove you into the wall with the reasonable expectation of avoiding incarceration. Which is what you're taking advantage of when you take a picture of a homeless person, the fact that they're relatively helpless and constrained from resisting. It's easy pathos, and cheap for you.

Dorothea Lang! Dorothea Lange!

Snapping photos of homeless people is easy. Snapping photos of anyone is easy. You're insulting homeless people more than anyone trying to photograph them. You're saying they're easy subjects because of the situation they're in. That's insulting -- none of us are saying that. Do you think lukitas just snapped those photos? I don't. It seems he took the time to speak to them and ask for a photo, which isn't easy to do at all, whether they're without homes are not. People are people. If a person makes an interesting photograph, that's all it is: an interesting person in a photograph. You're tying way too many labels to something that should be just a person in a photograph, with their own stories.

 

[Bob Michaels]

Some people are male while others are female. Some are black, some are white. Some are straight, some gay. Some have homes, others do not.

People are people.

edit: emraphoto, it appears we are on the same page.