Pinhole Camera Artist - YUCK!

[mmikaoj]

What i am trying to say:

he didnt kill a kid to use the heart in a camera, so what is so wrong? You dont know anything about how he aquired that heart. Why arent you equaliy offended by the 13 year old girls skull who is the body of another camera?
Joel Peter Witkin bought carcasses of unknown dead in Mexico to use in his "artwork".. all the extremes have been done to death (mind the pun) allready.
Lets talk about his photos instead?

 

[bcostin]

The guy does seem a little bit nuts. His photographic work isn't bad, though. Not my kind of thing, but I can see why people might like it.

 

[bmattock]

it "is" icky or you think it is icky? to me carrying dead animal skin as a handbag is worse since that animal died to become a handbag. Dead human hearts is just matter, I mean sure it is "strong" and quite provocative to have a human heart in an artwork but he isnt the first one to do something like that so the discusion isnt new in any way.

OK, good point. It is icky 'to me'. It may not be 'new' but I find it icky - and the others as well.

So it is just a personal judgment on my part - but that's what opinions are.

 

[bmattock]

What i am trying to say:

he didnt kill a kid to use the heart in a camera, so what is so wrong?

I dunno, is a lampshade made out the tanned skins of jews from wwii german concentration camps wrong?

I think so.

You dont know anything about how he aquired that heart.

No, I don't. I actually don't really care, though. I find it icky no matter if he won it in a Publisher's House Sweepstakes drawing.

Why arent you equaliy offended by the 13 year old girls skull who is the body of another camera?

I am.

Joel Peter Witkin bought carcasses of unknown dead in Mexico to use in his "artwork".. all the extremes have been done to death (mind the pun) allready.
Lets talk about his photos instead?

If it is only his photos that matter, then why does he want to have cameras made in this fashion? It appears that the artist wants his cameras and the manner in which he makes and uses them to be considered part and parcel with the art he makes with them. I understand that.

But since the cameras are part of the 'exhibit' as well, then they are subject to scrutiny and opinion as well as the photos. And I find them icky.

The photos - eh, they're pinhole photos. Nice, but pretty much seen one, seen 'em all. To me. I know pinhole photographers are keen on them, so I mean no disrespect - they just don't do that much for me.

 

[stuken]

I would love to hear what he has to say about the middle aged male who goes out and buys a 10,000 dollar leica set up, stashes it all in his $500 billingham bag, and walks around taking pictures of homeless people and women running across the street.

 

[Matthew Allen]

What i am trying to say:

he didnt kill a kid to use the heart in a camera, so what is so wrong? You dont know anything about how he aquired that heart.

You do if you read the article:

The heart, donated by a gallery owner who found it among a collection of old anatomy equipment, is preserved in a sealed compartment at the rear of the camera.

Just because people are long dead doesn't make it acceptable to parade parts of their body around for 'art' IMO. Would you be happy for your remains to be used this way? I wouldn't.

Matthew

 

[mmikaoj]

But since the cameras are part of the 'exhibit' as well, then they are subject to scrutiny and opinion as well as the photos. And I find them icky.

Of course you are right. The cameras is part of the exhibit. I was just fascinated by the care he takes into manufacturing these cameras. The fact that cameras and photography is so available to any one these days and he goes right back to the birth of photography and creates pinholes, a very basic camera, and then fashions them out so well and even has a special purpose and subject in mind for each camera.

A lot of people have done pinholes before of course, but .. i dont know. the crazyness of his projects and the ideas behind the cameras to me are fascinating enough, even if i dont approve of everything he has to say.

His photos are very pinhole-y.. I dont know. They are for viewing live i suspect, the internet jpg dont quite do it for me. I am in period of being very fascinated of the "physicallity" of photography and maybe thats why I am so impressed by a
largeformat pinhole 1 hour exposure under water by a home made camera.

I just dont get all the hating

 

[mmikaoj]

You do if you read the article:



Just because people are long dead doesn't make it acceptable to parade parts of their body around for 'art' IMO. Would you be happy for your remains to be used this way? I wouldn't.

Matthew

I wouldnt be able to care since I would be dead..
And i wouldnt care either if someone told me today that they would use my body once I am dead.
Frankly, once the person is dead, the body to me is nothing but an empty box. That is not to say I would want to see my dead grand mother be sold as filles at the market (that would be icky)

 

[Matthew Allen]

(that would be icky)

Well exactly, that's how I feel. I don't believe that the body is anything more than flesh and bone and squishy bits once it's dead, but that doesn't mean I want creepy artists playing with mine. It's not rational but then who says I have to be?

I might consider donating my corpse to science (maybe) and I do carry an organ donor card but I draw the line at being turned into a camera. Re the hating, I don't hate the guy but equally I wouldn't especially enjoy being stuck in a lift with him.

Matthew

 

[M. Valdemar]

I didn't critique his work or comment on the morality.

I said I wouldn't like my kid's heart to be used to decorate his camera.

I also said that I thought he was a mental case.

I stand by those two statements. Maybe his pinhole work is good, or maybe he has a lot of suckers who fall for his schtick. More power to him.

There was also Barnum's side show, Professor Wormwood's Monkey Theatre at Luna Park, Hubert's Museum and more.

In Europe for hundreds of years, gypsies purposely maimed and mutilated children so they would look pathetic when they begged for money. This was regarded as simply good business sense.

 

[mmikaoj]

I didn't critique his work or comment on the morality.

I said I wouldn't like my kid's heart to be used to decorate his camera.

I also said that I thought he was a mental case.

Maybe he is a mental case, a lot of great artists are and have been. Im not saying that he is a great artist but you make it sound like the two are uncombinable.

There was also Barnum's side show, Professor Wormwood's Monkey Theatre at Luna Park, Hubert's Museum and more.

In Europe for hundreds of years, gypsies purposely maimed and mutilated children so they would look pathetic when they begged for money. This was regarded as simply good business sense.

And what does that have anything to do with this? and could you please give me a source on that statement on gypsies (I suppose you mean the Roma people?). It sound like old racist propaganda to me and I dont know why you are even bringing it into this discusion.

 

[bmattock]

I would love to hear what he has to say about the middle aged male who goes out and buys a 10,000 dollar leica set up, stashes it all in his $500 billingham bag, and walks around taking pictures of homeless people and women running across the street.

I don't know, and don't really care. But I will note this - your assumptions about me are about 80% incorrect.

Yes, I am a middle-aged male. I don't own a Leica, I don't have a Billingham bag, and I don't take photos of homeless people or women running across the street.

Not sure what the point of that cheap shot was. I said I found his cameras 'icky' - from that you got that I was a rich effete snob? You'd have been closer guessing that I'm a middle-aged wage slave who drinks cheap beer and goes bowling.

 

[bmattock]

I just dont get all the hating

Hate is just strong emotion. It is a perfectly reasonable response in the range of opinions. Hatred is an irrational response to many situations, but not opinion. If I'm allowed to 'love' someone's work or methods, I'm allowed to 'hate' them as an alternative.

I hate his cameras, and that's my opinion. I've tried to explain why. My opinion does not make me right - it just makes it my opinion.

I'm sorry if you don't 'get it' but I'm don't think my opinion is going to change on this.

 

[Blake Werts]

I would love to hear what he has to say about the middle aged male who goes out and buys a 10,000 dollar leica set up, stashes it all in his $500 billingham bag, and walks around taking pictures of homeless people and women running across the street.

This is amusing! [and I don't think that this was directed towards bmattock... I read it as "he" being the artist that is being discussed...?]

 

[JoeV]

I do find fascinating the guy's decision to display both his prints and the cameras as art. I can relate, in at least one way, in that I've fashioned dozens of pinhole cameras over the years, and am as proud of my hacked-together monstrosities as he probably is. Mine certainly aren't as finely crafted, or as contraversial.

Aside from the controvery over human body parts, I think it's one thing unique about pinholers, the hand-crafted camera part is at least as important as the resulting image. Sometimes the camera and image are inseperable, as in some images I remember seeing in the now-defunct Pinhole Journal, of anti-war subjects made with a camera constructed from a rubber Ronald Reagan mask. I don't necessarily agree with the sentament of the artist vis-a-vis the anti-war theme, but I can appreciate how important the camera's style and the theme of the resulting images are interrelated.

Interesting discussion.

~Joe

 

[bmattock]

Interesting discussion.

Indeed. I find it interesting that the artist clearly wants to generate interest and discussion (perhaps safe to say 'controversy'?) due to the nature of his cameras, yet we, the public, seem to be discouraged from saying we don't like it - at least in the presence of those here on RFF who *do* like it.

Could it be that the artist went to all this effort to make a camera with a human baby's hear in it, and expected NO COMMENT, NO CONTROVERSY about it? I'd have to say that he's pretty much DEMANDING attention from the public. And that's cool. I'm hip to the concept. I just don't like what he's done. In fact, I dislike it very much, yea, unto hatred.

If a person asks me if I like something and I say 'no', so what? Am I required to like it (or at least to withhold my opinion) just because it is art? Just because it is controversial? Just because the artist clearly put a huge amount of effort into it?

I'm allowed to say that in my opinion something sucks. And it does (in my opinion). So there you go. Hate, as they say. I guess that's bad. Some like it, I don't. Life goes on.

 

[M. Valdemar]

http://www.middle-east-online.com/English/?id=22647

"Organised African gangs deliberately mutilate these child beggars before sending them into Saudi Arabia," Mecca police spokesman Abdul Mohsen al-Mimaan was quoted as saying September 27 in the Saudi pan-Arab daily Asharq Al-Awsat.

"These Africans practice the trade of children who have an arm or a leg amputated or whose body is burned with incendiary materials," Mimaan said.



As the work continued Swapan contacted Amnesty International, Equality Now, and other human rights organizations for assistance. In 2000 the Muktaneer Children’s Home was opened so that the children who did not have a home to return to, or whose families were too poor to care for them, would have a place to live. Since that time CCD has been integral in bringing 54 child traffickers before the courts for prosecution and has rescued almost 2,000 children from a horrific array of abusive situations, including mutilation by begging rings to make them more effective at soliciting alms.

http://stopchildslavery.com/2007/06/14/children-as-chattel-child-labor-trafficking-in-india/

http://books.google.com/books?id=19...UBuYemk&sig=pozIB5fssjdVM0hDxwsBt8gg1qI&hl=en

.

 

[ishpop]

I find his photos and themes to be booth relevant and interesting. He is looking at AIDS for example, and like most artists do, finding different ways to frame (no pun intended) the existing dialogue that exists.

If it makes one feel icky, that seems like a normal response. But to call the man a nutjob seems dismissive and very presumptive.

 

[ishpop]

Me thinks your net is cast very wide for mental cases then.

So a pregnant women who has an interest in doing "experimental" photography with a pinhole camera artist is insane?

Seems a lot of the art world is insane then, this does not seem that provocative to me.

This guy is a mental case, and so is everyone who allows him to photograph them.