On contradiction
World Press Photo of the Year 2006 by Spencer Platt
“I went to a housewarming party and I overheard two young Lebanese arguing about [this] photo. Both were in their 20s and very ‘cosmopolitan’. One said: I think this is a great photograph, it shows us as we are, not people associated only with war and destruction. The second one was appalled and said: this is the ‘new orientalism’ - instead of the women depicted in Delacroix’s classic orientalist paintings, today we have these modern, model-type Lebanese women against a background of war and poverty.
[…]
Looking closely, the photo has nothing lurid in it: it is when art has to face human suffering and does not isolate tragedy from the ironies of survival that the absurdity of being hits us in the face.”
From Beirut and contradiction: reading the World Press Photo award by Mai Ghoussoub
March 1st, 2007 at 1:38 pm
see Catering to a Lebanese Cliche (nd “the camera never lies”):
http://photo-muse.blogspot.com/2007/03/camera-never-lies.html