November 17, 2006

The same place, in different places.

Two photos.
Posted by Ann Althouse at 2:42 PM

2 comments:

MadisonMan said...

I wonder what the residents of NYC think of the picture, vs. the residents of WV. The internet runs on coal.

11/17/06, 3:07 PM
Rick Lee said...

Madison Man... I can only assume that the viewer of the photo in the city is supposed to feel pity for the poor hillbillies who live in those crappy little houses in the shadow of those towers. I don't know Mitch Epstein so perhaps I'm jumping to conclusions. That's a neighborhood pretty similar to the one I grew up in. I can guarantee that the residents of those houses don't consider themselves to be poor. I saw some pretty nice pickup trucks around there.

Coincidentally, I was in a seminar in NY that had a panel discussion of photographers who were working on long-term portrait projects, most of which involved seeking out victims of something or other and making them look as victimized as possible. One of the panelists was a talented woman who wanted to do some sort of project to protest the war in Iraq. When the first wounded soldiers started coming home from the war, she travelled around the country to befriend them and take pictures of them. I don't doubt her sincerity in her mission, but she pretty much owned up to the notion that she set out from the beginning to portray these heroes as pitiful victims of the war. Here's an example... she said that she chose a square format camera because the square frame would better illustrate the cage-like quality of their homes and apartments. Now this was before she had even started. I was revulsed.

BTW... I swear on a stack of Bibles that Dick is not my sock puppet! :-) Thanks for the compliment, but I'll settle for being a regional treasure... Ha!

11/17/06, 7:13 PM

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