:::DISCLAIMER - Written in haste at work so this is a gut reaction and not a carefully considered post :::
Ailsa, thanks for the piece re the DB Prize. I'll be popping along there to admire the collected works ASAP; very much looking forward to it.
You knew - obviously - that I wouldn't be able to resist the bait you left hanging regarding the journalist's reaction to
Fazal Shaikh's work and honestly I'm suprised by it. You know when you watch a football match with three other people and one of you comes away seemingly having seen a different match? Your team scraped a lucky win after being under the cosh for 85 minutes and while you and your friend agree on the score, you stand there open mouthed when you hear them confidently proclaim,
"We were all over them. If it hadn't been for the ref we'd have been 3 up at half time".
Well this is kind of how I feel about this article.
What's funny is that I agree with most of the facts and the detail that he uses, but disagree completely with where he takes it from there. I'd actually re-use most of his material about Shaikh to support my own point of view - that Shaikh is producing profound, worthy, humanising, powerful and beautiful work that can't help but bring attention to the plight of his various subjects and that if the beauty of the work unsettles some viewers then that's probably a good thing because it means they'll continue to think about the subject.
Anything that forces the viewer to think for the first time about Shaikh's sitters as real people with families and stories to tell instead of just as statistics or background visuals on a 90 second slot in the evening news is a good thing.
Also, I don't quite see what the journalist has a problem with. Should Shaikh take worse photos than he has the ability to just because the subject matter is tragic? Should not Shaikh, as an artist trying to get a message across, not present his work in the strongest possible way?
Within the context of a competition like this (funded by a huge corporate entity) the fact that this collection of work is more worthy than that becomes irrelevant so I'm not saying that Shaikh should 'win' or anything; I just don't understand Mr Journalist's reaction to seeing work like this and being put off by it.
Might be worth sending Simon Norfolk round to talk him into the ground for a week or two.
(There.....I'm done)
