I wrote a letter to a friend a couple of weeks back when I was going through a particularly difficult time in Dhaka. I’ve found some arguments against some of the doubts I raise, but I think I’ll be dealing with them for the rest of my life. The quote below continues on after I’ve listed out the ways that I’ve improved my technique and work over the month before:
I wanted to list these out because I want some context around what I’m actually feeling and what I’m about to tell you. I feel lost. I don’t know what I’m trying to say with my photos. I have two thousand five hundred photos on the streets of Dhaka but no clear story. I suspect that there is a deep flaw in me: I don’t care about other people. I find it hard to emphatise. This is very bad. I’m really afraid. I look at other photographers, journalists, activists, grant givers who are so concerned about the powerless, the oppressed. All I see there is boredom. It’s all so repetitive, so obviously unsophisticated to do what they do. I’ve read about what is happening in the bad places around the world happen a hundred times before in history. And sure, we have to be constantly reminded of it, because humanity is forgetful, but what a boring, gruntful task. Seeing some videos of how most photojournalists work (not Nachtwey, or say Peress) is so disheartening. They are so mindless, such inane droids. They just repeat glib one liners that they have learnt they better say, ‘the world needs to know about this’, ‘we are giving a voice to the powerless’, it’s all so boring!
Of course I feel awful about this. There must be something really wrong with me. Sometimes I can feel authentically. I took some photos of this guy today who was in a screaming match with someone else, the other guy ran off and this guy had to expel his rage, and so he ran over to a younger boy watching innocently from the side and slapped him hard on the face, on the street. The aggressor shouted: “what’re you looking at!” I’ve attached an image of the attacker. I was absolutely in the moment, I thought that I was going to cry. The way the boy took the slap, just accepted his powerlessness and walked away. I wondered what he thought of this indignity, how he coped with his honour being hurt like that. I wanted to take more photos but it happened too quickly.
I know I can feel but seeing how the industry works is fucking depressing. And more than that, it may not be worth anything. There are exceptions, that’s what gives me hope. A lot of the Magnum photographers don’t shoot like everyone else, but recount personal recollections. They don’t tell stories, but are receptive to what is happening, to the people, to the environment rather than fulfilling either their own simple ideology and expectations, or the mass market’s level of basic understanding of these complex, conflicting issues. Killing can be fun, it can be exciting, it can give meaning to someone’s life. I know that’s horrible but it is one of the truths about war and about human beings. No one may care to hear it but that’s something that needs to be shown. Not just starving Africans. I’m not interested in that, it’s been done. The point is obvious. I do not want to be obvious. The problem is I can’t see a path to doing the kind of work that I want to do. It all seems so far off. I can’t see anyone letting me do that work. I hate the world for making it so tough for me. Fuck em! Fuck em! Fuck them. But really, maybe I’m just not confident that I know what I want to do, what to say. I think it’s because I don’t know who I am.
As you can see I have some ego problems. This is what L [a close friend] meant when he said intelligence, or technique would not be my what hindered me, but my challenge would be me. Unless I lose this arrogance, unless I can open my heart to people and situations and be receptive, I won’t do great work. I won’t really understand the situations I’m in. But I don’t know how to go about changing myself. I walked around today trying to be open to the people I was photographing. It was laughable, I didn’t know what I was doing. I can stop and try talking to them, but that would just result in simple portraits. Or would it? Maybe over time they would trust me, and drop their masks and I would see more than I could ever have, more than if I was taking the photo without their knowledge, and certainly more than when they know I’m there but they see me as a stranger. Am I interested enough to put the effort in?
I have more photos now, and a slightly better idea of what’s going on.
Posted 2 years ago
