tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6146962885201070339.post673297621574992083..comments2023-10-02T10:57:07.769+02:00Comments on Birdseed's Tunedown: Posed or Distant? Does music resemble photography?Birdseedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01161105277182690887noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6146962885201070339.post-67997756937729947392008-12-20T23:06:00.000+01:002008-12-20T23:06:00.000+01:00Cheers! Interesting stuff, too; I'm going to have ...Cheers! Interesting stuff, too; I'm going to have to mull. <BR/><BR/>Not wanting to be the typical tourist is a guilt thing as well, for exactly the reasons you lay out. But I also think that guilt can be taken a step too far, and the example of Keïta and Sidibé is right on point: the goal shouldn't be to not take pictures of strangers, but to recognize the ethics of doing so and try to adapt. <BR/><BR/>In that vein, when you say that "Subjects can't, short of violence, prevent the photographers from depicting them any way they chose, and there's an incredible array of semiotic signifiers at the photographer's disposal to control precisely what message the subject conveys," I feel the force of what you're saying, but I also think you've painted too extreme a picture. Violent power hierarchies might exist, but the subjects of photographies sometimes do have a certain kind of power that no photographer can quite erase. The thing about photography is that it pretends to be a completely passive and objective, and even though the intervention of people like Sontag was to think about all the ways it isn't (and is completely on point to do so), there is still, nevertheless, something to the fact that the photographer can only photograph what's there. You can manipulate an image to a certain extent, but there's a point beyond which you can't go. And many photographic subjects have more power over the final image than the photographer would like them to have. All of which is only to say, I’d like to keep it an open, nagging question as much as possible; better to ask if I’m guilty constantly than simply to feel guilty; the first might prevent me from making the same mistake twice, while the second I’m less sure about. Gotta think on it, as I said.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com