"...I doubted the necessity of seeing the victims in order fully to confront the crime. The aesthetic assault of the macabre creates excitement and emotion, but does the spectacle really serve our understanding of the wrong?... Even as we look at atrocity, we find ways to regard it as unreal. and the more we look, the more we become inured to--not informed by--what we are seeing."
-- Philip Gourevitch in "We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families"
photos by Vergara
Contrast that with New York based photographer and sociologist Camilo Jose Vergara's take on "Invincible Cities" and his work for Slate.com. His most recent photos are of 125th and Lexington in Spanish Harlem - exactly where I used to get off on the 4 & 5 express trains Monday through Friday to teach at an after-school program. What does it mean that Slate.com can commission an outsider to take photos to track "progress" or to "document" regular people in their everyday lives? How do we choose to represent urban, under-served populations to the masses? Sometimes the intention of the artist, or photographer, differs from how his audience receives his work. Is this worrisome? I like how Slate has decided to call this intersection the most "complicated, disturbing, and lively intersection" of NYC. Staff writers need to leave the East Village once in a while.
Why does art and documentation feel so exploitative at times? Gah.
tiffany
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