John Brown

[footfootfoot]

I'm saying a few things, none of which is charitable about the photographer.

1. I feel she is capitalizing on the suffering of the soldiers. The feeling I get from looking at the photos is that it is about her rather than them.
2. She uses the technical and aesthetic aspects of photography to push her ideas about her subject. It is extremely far from objective and it is also manipulative. Not that it should be objective, but it is important to point that out since it isn't always obvious to people that the camera does in fact lie the moment it is turned on.

As an example, the lighting is very controlled and managed, in some cases almost surreal. Maybe she wants to underscore how surreal it must be to experience what those people have experienced, so she chooses to make the lighting extra spooky. In any case, that is her adding to what is happening, possibly projecting her ideas onto these people. Compare "Tomoko in her bath". Gene smith photographing the victims of mercury poisoning in Minimata, Japan. He didn't need to do anything fancy with the lighting or pose his subjects. He was there with them keeping his heart and eyes open. Look at Salgado's work. He shows you what life is like for his subjects by telling their story, not his story about them.

It's not that she's trying to make things look worse than they ought to, it's that she's using cheap carnival tricks to make a point and I feel that trivializes her subjects. If she had real talent she wouldn't have to rely on the gimmics to make your tears flow.

In the end, it's all about her.