raydm6
Yay! Cameras! 🙈🙉🙊┌( ಠ_ಠ)┘ [◉"]
Very well written and informative read. Lots to reflect think upon. Thank you.
Horatio
Masked photographer
Agreed. Thanks, from a former newspaper reporter.
bojanfurst
Well-known
Thanks for reading folks and engaging with it.
John, I think there are still spaces for documentary photography. The trend that worries me is the one you described with writing and painting. I am in Canada, so keep in mind that the situation here is different and more dire in some ways when it comes to documentary work - there is simply almost nowhere left to publish. The trend for documentary photographers has been increasingly to move into the art space and try to make a living that way. That space is very much directed by MFAs who bring to it a very different approach. Like Horace, I come from a newspaper side of things. Tiny photo credit that nobody except other photographers paid attention to and a paycheque was enough. It was always about the photos and the story of the people you were photographing. Art photography turns that on its head with the photographer taking central stage and everything else is subsumed to the idea he or she is trying to convey. So yeah, I think we need different kinds of ethics here.
It will be interesting to see how things unfold with agencies like Magnum, VII, Vu, Panos and the rest of them who are all forced to play at least partially in that art world. I worry, I must admit, that they will not be able to resist the constraints that will put on the documentary work they have ben known for so far.
Bojan
John, I think there are still spaces for documentary photography. The trend that worries me is the one you described with writing and painting. I am in Canada, so keep in mind that the situation here is different and more dire in some ways when it comes to documentary work - there is simply almost nowhere left to publish. The trend for documentary photographers has been increasingly to move into the art space and try to make a living that way. That space is very much directed by MFAs who bring to it a very different approach. Like Horace, I come from a newspaper side of things. Tiny photo credit that nobody except other photographers paid attention to and a paycheque was enough. It was always about the photos and the story of the people you were photographing. Art photography turns that on its head with the photographer taking central stage and everything else is subsumed to the idea he or she is trying to convey. So yeah, I think we need different kinds of ethics here.
It will be interesting to see how things unfold with agencies like Magnum, VII, Vu, Panos and the rest of them who are all forced to play at least partially in that art world. I worry, I must admit, that they will not be able to resist the constraints that will put on the documentary work they have ben known for so far.
Bojan
Ko.Fe.
Lenses 35/21 Gears 46/20
In Russia due to totalitarian state all non prostitutive journalist moved on YouTube.
They are making documentaries which are highly professional and about all things and people. From interviews with known people to going into nowhere and making interesting documentaries about unknown people.
Magnum and like are dead because digestion has changed. Magnum like and news papers are from era without Internet and mobile phone's camera. Now anyone with good narrative skills, communicability and mobile phone could make documentary and publish it on YouTube. It is most effective than Magnum like dead end. Writing is dead. Then my wife asked Canadian unionized, well paid, all benefits and huge pension teacher about spelling skills the academic's answer was - spellcheck on phone will do it. Beacause of writing been dead as the skill, reading is getting to attavism as well. Nobody wants to read instructions on anything, instead Google is googled for how to Videos. Next to nobody is interested in still pictures and narrative text today. Want your audience, move to YouTube, FB, Instagram and Tik-Tok. Something like Vimeo or whatever you are using is dusty corner with crickets and bypassed Google search engine.
They are making documentaries which are highly professional and about all things and people. From interviews with known people to going into nowhere and making interesting documentaries about unknown people.
Magnum and like are dead because digestion has changed. Magnum like and news papers are from era without Internet and mobile phone's camera. Now anyone with good narrative skills, communicability and mobile phone could make documentary and publish it on YouTube. It is most effective than Magnum like dead end. Writing is dead. Then my wife asked Canadian unionized, well paid, all benefits and huge pension teacher about spelling skills the academic's answer was - spellcheck on phone will do it. Beacause of writing been dead as the skill, reading is getting to attavism as well. Nobody wants to read instructions on anything, instead Google is googled for how to Videos. Next to nobody is interested in still pictures and narrative text today. Want your audience, move to YouTube, FB, Instagram and Tik-Tok. Something like Vimeo or whatever you are using is dusty corner with crickets and bypassed Google search engine.
mapgraphs
Established
I probably have a somewhat jaded view of the state of the visual arts, partly emanating from five years chasing a BFA in printmaking, living with the turn pop culture, the arts, journalism and ethics or the then current mores took in the early and mid 60s: money changes everything...
I work now with two hundred and fifty - three hundred year old records, documenting what they have led to or turned into, and the story in 1820, 1710 or 1630 was essentially the same: money changes everything...
rhl-oregon
Cameras Guitars Wonders
Thanks again, Bojan. Cogent, eloquent, tough minded, informed by decades of experience and well founded in its history. I deeply enjoy your voice on the page, and I’m sorry you live so far away. I’d prefer to be collegial neighbors.
I’m saving it not only for its own sake as a beacon, but because I just got state funding to do a documentary project on Juneteenth; the ethics of doing an African-American-centric project as a Southerner descended from slave-holders as well as abolitionists is, well, not as simple or singable as following a yellow brick road. It’s going to take an ethics of humility and stubborn belief in doing what I think best over the coming months and years.
Re academia—I spent much of my work life as a poet teaching writing, and my last years in academia giving workshops to liberal arts research faculty on how to translate their passions and quirks into fundable projects in publication or the field or in performance. The latter stage, from 2006-2017, coincided with the emergence of ‘digital humanities,’ the podcast and Twitter-sphere and theater of You-Tube. Its best potential in that academic environment was sidestepping the usual gatekeepers—university presses with limited budgets; peer-reviewed journals read by no one outside sub-discipline X but, thanks to corporate publication monopolies like Elsevier, costing $2000/year for a university subscription viewable only on a computer in the grad library; and symposia or conferences and the like, which are not prohibitive to attend on a research travel allowance but can cost tens of thousands to organize and host. Instead, as Kostya describes for documentary makers, one can cultivate a direct (though remote) connection with the viewer, reader, thinker, student, colleague. The cultivation of audience may be difficult or futile, but the premise is still radically worthwhile.
As for being part of the academy as a poet and teacher for many years—MFA 1983, and in that sense complicit—I witnessed trendy and recurrent disputes superficially about postmodernism, structuralism, critical theory, and more. But essentially they were about disputation itself, over and over again devolving into competing cults of personality, ending with variations on “You’re either with me or against me.” In retirement I miss none of that. Being free to document and compose what I want may risk dilettantism, but I don’t have to make a career of setting straw men on fire to illuminate my little Theater of Me.
It’s a knotty conundrum, though, the situation you elucidate. The platforms (theaters, publication outlets) for creative, documentary or scholarly research and expression have changed—have been blown wide open is more like it. But to secure a reputation that also puts bread on the table: that’s more difficult in a completely different way—especially for those of us who live in the Country of Old Men, where what matters comes in print, and the radio glows in the living room. In this sense, it’s easier to understand why many smart students who visit academia stay there forever, given the security it can afford through tenure and the rewards it dispenses for publication (contentious or otherwise).
I’m saving it not only for its own sake as a beacon, but because I just got state funding to do a documentary project on Juneteenth; the ethics of doing an African-American-centric project as a Southerner descended from slave-holders as well as abolitionists is, well, not as simple or singable as following a yellow brick road. It’s going to take an ethics of humility and stubborn belief in doing what I think best over the coming months and years.
Re academia—I spent much of my work life as a poet teaching writing, and my last years in academia giving workshops to liberal arts research faculty on how to translate their passions and quirks into fundable projects in publication or the field or in performance. The latter stage, from 2006-2017, coincided with the emergence of ‘digital humanities,’ the podcast and Twitter-sphere and theater of You-Tube. Its best potential in that academic environment was sidestepping the usual gatekeepers—university presses with limited budgets; peer-reviewed journals read by no one outside sub-discipline X but, thanks to corporate publication monopolies like Elsevier, costing $2000/year for a university subscription viewable only on a computer in the grad library; and symposia or conferences and the like, which are not prohibitive to attend on a research travel allowance but can cost tens of thousands to organize and host. Instead, as Kostya describes for documentary makers, one can cultivate a direct (though remote) connection with the viewer, reader, thinker, student, colleague. The cultivation of audience may be difficult or futile, but the premise is still radically worthwhile.
As for being part of the academy as a poet and teacher for many years—MFA 1983, and in that sense complicit—I witnessed trendy and recurrent disputes superficially about postmodernism, structuralism, critical theory, and more. But essentially they were about disputation itself, over and over again devolving into competing cults of personality, ending with variations on “You’re either with me or against me.” In retirement I miss none of that. Being free to document and compose what I want may risk dilettantism, but I don’t have to make a career of setting straw men on fire to illuminate my little Theater of Me.
It’s a knotty conundrum, though, the situation you elucidate. The platforms (theaters, publication outlets) for creative, documentary or scholarly research and expression have changed—have been blown wide open is more like it. But to secure a reputation that also puts bread on the table: that’s more difficult in a completely different way—especially for those of us who live in the Country of Old Men, where what matters comes in print, and the radio glows in the living room. In this sense, it’s easier to understand why many smart students who visit academia stay there forever, given the security it can afford through tenure and the rewards it dispenses for publication (contentious or otherwise).
bojanfurst
Well-known
Robert,
Thank you for that long and thoughtful post. I agree, it would be so much better if we were neighbours and could talk about all of this over a glass of our favourite beverages.
I am really interested in hearing how your project progresses. It sounds complicated, but I think it is crucial that we all try our best. There is a huge pressure to always do everything perfectly. That is, of course, impossible. All we can do is thread lightly and be kind.
Best
Bojan
Thank you for that long and thoughtful post. I agree, it would be so much better if we were neighbours and could talk about all of this over a glass of our favourite beverages.
I am really interested in hearing how your project progresses. It sounds complicated, but I think it is crucial that we all try our best. There is a huge pressure to always do everything perfectly. That is, of course, impossible. All we can do is thread lightly and be kind.
Best
Bojan
mconnealy
Well-known
That is a well-written piece on a subject I've long been interested in. It does seem like we are in a time of paranoid thinking about a lot of things including photography and who has the right to do it. Of course, it is not an entirely new development. There has always been some suspicion around who has the authority to use any kind of new technology. I think back in this regard about the movie serials of my childhood days when the hero was often pictured holding a microphone as a symbol of authority. Photographers have often received increased scrutiny in times of national stress. For instance, in the early 1940s Russell Lee was once accused of subversive behavior by the local sheriff for having the audacity to photograph the postoffice in Pie Town, New Mexico. I think Wright Morris actually spent some time in a southern jail under similar circumstances.