Politics

So I've been seeing a lot of politics showing up in my photography blog reading and I don't like it. If I see a great photographer making a political statement I don"t really agree with, I feel like I cant like his/her work. If I wanted to talk politics, I'd tune into CSPAN. It started very subtle with a mention of this or that, but Photo District News ran a piece where famous photographer Jill Greenberg was commissioned to shoot the cover of the Atlantic magazine. I'm not going to rehash it here, but it's been all over the photography blogosphere. This guy who writes a right wing blog has been writing a lot about it and has included some screen shots of the extra stuff she did to the pictures. One of my new favorite photographers, Mark Tucker, an Obama supporter, condemns her on his blog.

If you must use photography in politics, another of my new favorite photographers, Richard Avedon (or shall I say recently discovered. He died in 2004.), did it well in 1976 to chronicle the bicentennial presidential election in Rolling Stone. In order to NOT express his personal opinions, he allowed his subjects to choose their own pose and clothing so his biases would not skew the picture. Please check out his work. He's got a great timeless style.

Check out some of the people outlined in 1976 and their job titles.



I was only born in the late 70's, so I didn't realize that George H. W. Bush was the Director of the CIA.



I think I knew that Donald Rumsfeld was the first Pres. Bush's Sec. Def., but I didn't know he was even before the Regan Administration. There are some other neat pictures in there like JFK's mother:



Part of why I love photography is that it freezes time. Look at the styles: