Poverty

[infocusf8@earthlink.]

CRAYGC what an incredible photo. Thanks for posting.

 

[usccharles]

nice photos. nice lens.

would change title to 'urban asian neighborhood' or something other, perhaps? i have to agree that that aint really poverty. most people in asia live in concrete apartments and its normal to hang your close out to air dry. clothes dryers are not the norm in asia yet.

 

[literiter]

In some parts of the world poverty means starvation, in other parts of the world poverty is only a matter of opinion.

 

[colyn]

Try the Philippines if you want to see real poverty.

I've seen the card board and scrap tin homes up close and personal that make up much of the Philippines.

These people have nothing...

 

[jonmanjiro]

Great photos, and great lens I'm looking forward to receiving my Nikon S-mount Sonnar 50/1.5 even more now. The lens is due out next month

Though I have to agree with several posters that the images don't really depict poverty. The high-rise apartment buildings pictured could easily be located in Taipei or Seoul, both very rich cities by Asian standards. Heck, they wouldn't even look out of place in some older areas of Tokyo.

 

[detzie]

I don't think cloth dryers mean anything. They are beyond luxury in most sunny states.

 

[italy74]

Hi guys,

please don't be upset about my comment, but you all are right.
The starting series is as interesting as all the others, despite of course some other images can be even more moving. Actually, I think that there's no real difference about poor men in Philippines, Malawi, Hong Kong or wherever else. Despite the facilities they are missing, the most important thing is the hope for a better life or the complete lack of it they have.
We photographers have a very important task to fulfill / complete whenever we can. We MUST put our sensitivity to others' availability to make a certain part of the world really aware of them. None of us will have the certainty to save the whole world but if only ONE people among the ones we photograph would ever receive "money" (generically, a better life) due to our photographs, one day he will surely thank us: remember what Jesus said in the Gospel: "Whenever you did it (=you halped) for one of these poorer brothers, you did it to Me". This only matters. We have to care the ones for the others as we can do and perceive.

If I'm in Italy and even here I see something wrong, it's my duty report it. If John Doe is on holiday in Brazil, also John's duty is documenting what he sees, as Marc in Vietnam, Pablo in any centroamerican country, Kurt in Africa and so on. We really are the EYES of the outer world. If WE are blind who else will be ever able to see?

I'd suggest to continue posting these shots in a specific thread about miseries of the world.

 

[usayit]

Try the Philippines if you want to see real poverty.

Now thats an understatement. I was >< close to growing up in that poverty.... I have my immigrant, hard working, tough parents to thank. Knowing what they had to go through to start over in the US makes me feel that I can never measure up.

They go back to the Philippines occasionally to visit family and remind themselves just how far they have gone... they brought me with them as a teenager to show what could have been.


Great photos!

 

[rsl]

Mostly I think this is true, but it's worth looking at these photograhers indivdually because some of them seem to "connect" with their subjetcs a lot more than others. For instance the Lange, Vachon, Post Wolcott and Delano photographs have a depth of compassion that I personally do not see in Evans. This is just my opinion, but it seems to me the people Evans photographed sometimes come across rather cold and specimen-like.

Pablito,

Generally I'd agree with you. Evans was a very dispassionate artist, mainly interested in the object itself, but the photographs he made when he was working with James Agee on the book, "Now Let Us Praise Famous Men," are different. I think the compassion came through in those pictures. In popular lore Evans is typecast as a depression photographer, but his interests and talents ranged far beyond that.

The danger for Evans and the rest of the FSA photographers was that Roy Striker had every intention of using the photographs for political purposes, and, in fact, he did that often. Mixing politics and art always means the death of art. Evans and Striker argued over that again and again. Evans was out of the FSA program more than once, and, finally, for good because he was an artist who wouldn't let politics destroy his work. He was the finest artist working for the FSA, but not the most passionate about the subjects of his photographs. There's great danger for a photographer if he becomes too involved with his subjects. Evans knew that and avoided it.