The Selfish, Unconcerned Photographer...

"A blog is a means of sharing your pet peeves and off-the-cuff theories of everything with the entire planet."

-Louis Menand in the New Yorker

I have a confession to make. Though I love Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Eliot Erwitt, Robert Frank and any number of others in their tradition, I am not, as Capa's brother Cornell termed it, a "Concerned Photographer." The main thing that concerns me is making a picture ... and making a living at it.

This confession was finally triggered by a number of things, most recently this Tweet:

@magnumphotos: Just launched, the Magnum Emergency Fund site, supporting photographers with a commitment to documenting social issues.http://bit.ly/9yUtSl

My first thought? "Damn, wish I had some 'meaningful' (done with those finger quotes) social issue thing."

Okay, so maybe I'm old and cynical, though I think I've always felt this way. It's just that I'm not in journalism in general and photography in particular to change the world. As a matter of fact, I think it's pretty freaking rare for either journalism or photography to change anything in any significant way.

So, if I'm not here to change the world, just what do I think I'm doing? Mostly, satisfying my own curiosity. I like to know.

And I like to make pictures

I don't know if it comes across here, but I do feel a bit guilty about this. It's like that debate about if there can be a thing as true charity, or if we still do it, in the end, because people thank us and act like we're so good for being so generous. As a matter of fact, this posting is the product of days of work, not because it is such finely crafted language, but because I have struggled over what it is I mean and what it is exactly that I mean to say.

I asked my wife (who is now more than used to my guilts), telling her about what I was writing, and she (as always) explained it for me instantly. "I don't think it's a good thing to be a 'concerned photographer,'" She said. "That implies there is something to be concerned about, that you find some part of the story right and some part wrong, that you're biased. What you are is a curious photographer." I'm not, she explained, going in with a point of view, just a desire to see what is.

Former AP Director of Photography Hal Buell seems to agree. "To take a position of hate or love in order to be a war photographer," he told News Photographer editor Don Winslow in a piece in the November issue about war photography, "is to be an advocate, and advocacy leads to spin and distortion. For the advocate, one side is right, one side is wrong, and the pictures must show that in order to validate the photographer's reason for being there."

Don's piece starts with Robert Capa's premise that "In war, you must hate somebody or love somebody; you must have a position or you cannot stand what goes on." Buell dismisses Capa's thought as "romantic." It was Capa's brother, you'll recall, who coined the term "concerned photographer" -- apparently romance ran in the family. I'll have to ask Don to get Buell's thoughts on the Cornell's ideas. (And, by the way, if you're a member of the NPPA, you're in for a real treat -- Don's article is a work of art as good or better than pieces in the New Yorker.)

So what am I? Curious? Definitely. Concerned? Apparently only about myself. Typical? I dunno'. Maybe all that counts is whether I make a decent picture...


NOTE: This one took a while to crank out. As I discovered with the election pieces, apparently the blog places them as they were started, not finished, so it may appear this was written longer ago than it was. As I post, it's Dec. 5.

Once again, I promise to do more, more often...