man & nature # 96 ~ picture ideas
Wednesday, February 11, 2009 at 10:12AM 
The sunny side of the street (Separator Road) with an approaching storm front • click to embiggenIn response to yesterday's entry regarding our national crisis and picture making thereof, Mary Dennis opined/asked:
How do you photograph broken trust, deep cynicism, stewing, on the verge of explosive anger, bewilderment, disbelief that there is competence at any level of our government, or a feeling of general impotence to create real change? How do you photograph a crisis that seems to have it's roots in a basic human behavior shift?
A damn good question, Mary. One that I have been asking/pondering myself as well.
Especially so because in my little corner of the economic universe there are so few visible signs of the ravages of the crisis that are to be found in more "civilized" areas. A situation which is due in large part to the fact that we here in the north country are not yet suffering from much of the economic malaise that is spreading like the plaque over many (but not all) parts of the US of A. The key phrase in that statement is "not yet". There is no doubt that the contagion is headed our way although how it manifests itself is open to question.
Virtually all of our banks are community/regional ones that did not get involved in any of the financial funny stuff - you can still get auto loans, mortgages, business lines of credit, et al. None of them are taking (or even need) TARP money. It is the same as it ever was. With the exception of a relative handful of homes, mostly for the 2nd home crowd, there was no housing bubble to burst so there is no firestorm of foreclosures - thanks in part to the aforementioned lending institutions that continued to lend money based on the ability to pay.
Employment is holding steady. There was quite a hullabaloo when all of 6 employees were recently laid off from the Plattsburgh Municipal Lighting Department. But that is most likely just a small harbinger of things to come in the public/education sector which is highly dependent upon the outcome of the stimulus package (so-called) "debate".
Where the impact is most likely to be significant is in the tourism sector. Last year was a banner year right up to the end of the year (2008). But so far this year things are not looking good. The wife and I went into Lake Placid last Friday to have dinner. We ended up at a moderately upscale restaurant and, with the exception of the Russian and German National Luge teams in the back dining room, we were the only diners in the joint. The main dining room was so depressingly empty that we ate in the bar/lounge.
But, I digress. IMO, what you might picture to illustrate the crisis is probably most dependent upon what kind of crisis you think we are experiencing. IMO, I believe that the economic crisis is merely a symptom of the the real crisis which, in fact, is actually a crisis of moral, ethical, so-called "lifestyle" choices gone bad.
In fact, that very idea is the basis upon which my decay series was started over a year and a half ago. For those who haven't figured out that part of the meaning of those pictures, let me state that the pictured decay in those pictures is a visual metaphor for the moral and ethical decay that is the inevitable result of "lifestyle" choices predicated upon wretched excess and conspicuous consumption. Have no doubt that that series will continue as part of my picture making response to the crisis.
In addition to that series, I am considering another series that is based upon "formal" portraits of those hardworking and basically honest American workers whose lives and incomes have been negatively impacted - through little or no fault of their own - by the greed and avarice of their fellow Americans. IMO, what this crisis needs is a human face - pictures of empty stores, dead malls, foreclosure signs, and shuttered businesses are all well and good (and I mean it), but as far as I am concerned it is the actual lives of real people that I would like to see as the face(s) of this crisis.
However, my hope for that series is that it not be a cataloging of "victims" but rather a glimpse into the lives of those who are survivors. Those who have managed to maintain a sense of dignity and even personal honor in the face of the hardships, indignities, and cruelties inflicted upon them by the forces and acts of evil perpetrated by so-called captains of commerce and finance with, of course, more than a little help from their accomplices on The Hill.
My only wish is that I could somehow manage to capture images of the individuals who are the perpetrators of this mass destruction and who are responsible for the crisis. I would dearly love to display those pictures along side of the pictures of those whom they have so royally and casually f**ked.
Anyone else have any picturing ideas?
Reader Comments (2)
I've got some more thinking to do about this. In my mind I don't think it's as easy as sorting it into groups of perpetrators and victims and feeling angry at one and sorry for the other. For that matter, when it comes right down to it, I am both a perpetrator and a victim. I can't separate myself from the problem when I have bought into the consumerist system just as much as the next girl. I'm not rich but I do like my stuff. How 'bout this for an idea--a photo inventory of all the ways I have personally contributed to the care and feeding of the monster.
I can recommend a look at the work online at the Side Gallery, Newcastle (UK). They have a long standing commitment to documentary photography, with social issues and the reactions of communities to imposed social change as a particular focus.
www.amber-online.com
One of my particular favourites (apart from the fact that they got Graciela Iturbide to photograph a local group's bus trip when she visited) is the work of Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen in Byker and the in the working class resorts of the Northumbrian coast. Her looking for traces of the once dominant mining industry will, I'm sure, strike a chord:
http://www.amber-online.com/exhibitions/coal-coast/exhibits/hartlepool-evening-21-june-2000
One of the problems with finding ways of depicting modern recessions is that they tend to happen to individuals, and behind closed doors. Being unemployed is a much more lonely situation than it was in the Great Depression, whether you were white collar or blue collar before the axe struck. The isolating effect of unemployment, and the way it fragments communities, is a rich theme for investigation, if not obviously for visual ones.