A Little Fight Against Coldby
PERCOMComment by e301: Clearly the bestt photo in this challenge, and, I would say, clearly the winner, if I know anything at all about dpc. Beautiful work.
I'm never quite convinced about the efficacy of eye contact in what purports to be a documentary photograph in so many ways. I prefer my photographers as observers, rather than as participants - I don't want to know how you affect the world, but how you see the world - the eye contact immediately and irrevocably suggests 'pose for camera' - and whilst there is perhaps some justification for the collusion of a subject, especially in such a situation, it also (and more importantly) feels like it cannot truly be an 'honest' image, given the awareness of the subject of his photographer.
There are two instant effects of that direct gaze, I think: the first is the accusatory mode - 'you! viewer! look at me in my situations! I demand sympathy!' - and a second, which is the simpler process of the viewer's knowledge of the known presence of the photographer. Neither, it seems to me, is conducive to deeper understanding. It has the same peril as does the portrait - fundamentally, a self-absorbed presentation; in that it becomes as much about the photographer as about the subject. This is not always the case - Don McCullin's Vietnam War soldier, the famous girl off the NG cover spring to mind - but I think in those cases the direct gaze works only becuase the subjects are so evidently so far beyond caring about the camera, the photographer, the viewer and perhaps even their immediate world that that gaze never strikes one as an awareness, more as an absence that is in itself fascinating.
That gaze, here, prompts feelings of ambiguity about the image - is he really sitting like this? Or is he sitting like this for the purposes of the photographer? Whatever the answer, one of the primary participants in the moment
is the photographer. And I find more faithfulness in my photographers as pure observers. I think of Tony Ray-Jones, of Kertesz, of Marc Riboud.
All this is simply to explain why i think the photograph doesn't grab me as it might. And I am of course taking the evident technical finesse absolutely for granted - but when was the
ever interesting? (answer: about a year ago, in my case, alas ...)
