Rich guilt?
Okay, I'm not rich, but watching this video (thanks to Matt at Animal Mind), I guess by global standards I am. Watching it gave me the same feeling that this photograph did. I guess it's guilt. Which is odd because for all I know this guy has a sprained ankle from a drunken fall. But when I saw the picture I felt guilty, I felt like Jason as a photographer exploited the subject. Meanwhile, the truth of the emotion has nothing to do with this man, or the photograph even, but only with something subconscious in me. I think that's what good art brings out.
posted by photo blog girl at 11:32 AM
4 Comments:
I notice Jason likes to (1) shoot craggly old men with interesting stories and (2) put the camera at a 45-degree angle or just flip the image another 90 degrees afterward.
Yeah, basically, it's what you get out of it that matters. That's more interesting than someone telling you what the picture actually meant or what it meant to them.
I'm also reminded of a guy who lived in a basement apartment where I used to live in Baltimore.
Every morning some white lady (he was black) would bring a case of Diet Pepsi and go into his apartment. I could only imagine that like one in eight Baltamoreans, he was addicted to heroin. Maybe the Diet Pepsi was part of recovery....
This photo reminded me of him a bit. The van seems awfully case-worker-esque.
Do you think it is a conscious decision to shoot at 45 deg. angle? Maybe Jason was simply discreetly shooting from the hip. then again, maybe it's an unconscious desire to twist things!
I think he's too calculating to shoot from the hip.
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