A friend of mine, after seeing my pics from Sosua (in the Photo Essays section here), shared with me some links to the work and interviews of Antoine D’Agata. I had seen some of his work but didn’t know anything about him. I like this quote:
"I do think of photography as a perfectly legitimate artistic language, but I believe it is underused or misused most of the time. The world is not made out of what we see but from what we do. Photographers who ignore this state of things—and today, as in the past, most of them do—reduce photography to its capacity for recording reality. They don’t take responsibility for their position while looking at the world and end up assuming voyeuristic, sociological or aesthetic stands. Contrary to writing or painting, you have to confront reality while photographing. The only decent way to do it is to make the best out of your own existence. From a moral point of view, you have to invent your own life, against fear and ignorance, and through action. Intelligence and beauty don’t compensate for passivity. The only way to keep one’s dignity is to confront human condition and social context through direct action. It is a difficult balance one has to keep between the creation of situations to go through and the development of a narrative technique to share one’s perspective. In this process, life overcomes art at some point, and art perverts life. By deliberately living in this constant tension, I expect to go through existence without having to give up lucidity or experience."
Truth be told, I don't really like much of his drug-fueled work with prostitutes but very much like much of his other B&W work. Anyway, I really like this quote, what it says about questioning the assumed detachment between photographer and subject, about questioning the notion of objective reality. I suppose Nan Goldin is the most well-known example of this approach.
But while I strive for intimacy in my photographs, which derives from an emotional connection that gets established whether over years or a brief moment, the Nan Goldin approach has never suited me. But now I'm thinking of taking it a step further, without fear of crossing over this unstated and unquestioned boundary between photographer and subject. I'm not sure exactly how I will do that, or what I will get, but it's an interesting idea, and interesting to read someone giving photographers permission, even urging them, to reject a rather deeply entrenched characteristic of most photography.
