Amber,
I loved your “Life from off the Grind” suggestions – the hallway episode of The Mis-Adventures of Awkward Black Girl cracks me up every time. I still have to finish watching Black Panther (and I blame you for my sudden interest in superhero/anime type series).
I have also been living out this summer “off the grind,” but, for half of it, was forced to live off the grid as well. No internet, iffy cell phone service. Almost gone crazy? Even now I suffer from a broken laptop and rely on the mercy of others.
I read. A lot. It’s actually been wonderful and I’ve found some treasures. So, if you’re looking for some reading material, here are three I recommend:
Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
On the cover there’s a quote from USA Today, “Readers entranced by The Help will be equally riveted by Wench.” I have yet to read The Help (getting it today since we plan to blog about it), but I feel pretty confident that readers of The Help will be more greatly challenged, in addition to entranced, by Wench.
The book follows four enslaved women, one in particular, who are “mistresses” to their white masters. The primary voices (really the only) are these four black women. The book offers a nuanced and varied approach to their relationships and perspectives. It exposes not only the physical, but psychological and emotional tragedy of a system that views humans as property. Heartbreaking and compelling.
Room by Emma Donaghue
What can I say about this book? It was like watching a thriller. I couldn’t put it down. Told from the perspective of a five year old (yeah you heard me), the book is about a mother and her son held prisoner in an 11X11 foot room. The only world he has known. Hats off to the writer for her exceptional skill. I will give nothing more away.
Letters from a Skeptic: A Son Wrestles with His Father’s Questions about Christianity by Dr. Gregory A. Boyd and Edward K. Boyd
This is the only non-fiction I’ve read this summer (I’m a big novel fan). My sister recommended it to me and I am presently in the middle of it. It is a series of letters between a father and son over the course of three years in which the father (not a Christian) asks every imaginable question about Christianity. Why is the world so full of suffering? Does God know the future? Why would an all-powerful God need prayer? Aren’t the Gospels full of contradictions?
I mean, seriously, good questions. Questions that made me go, “yeah, answer that!” So whether Christian, curious or questioning (or all three), I highly recommend this book. It doesn’t shy away from issues (the father does not hold back – “why did God not spare your mother?”); there’s no “just don’t worry about it” type of answer. It is an open and thoughtful conversation between father and son, and therefore us as readers.
Amber,
After watching the trailer to “The Bang Bang Club,” a movie that I may one day be tempted to watch on DVD but was not tempted to see in theater (another movie about white people in Africa? come on), I was compelled to write about photography. And art. And perspective. Ya know, deep stuff.
“The Bang Bang Club” includes the famous story of a journalist, Kevin Carter, who waited to take the “perfect” picture of a dying child and a vulture nearby. He waited for twenty minutes hoping the vulture would spread its wings and won the Pulitzer Prize for this photo. No one knows the fate of the child.
Such a photo and story makes me wonder about the ethics of photojournalism and photography. One, is there a point to which you are not only responsible for your photography, but also for the suffering around you? Second, what perspective is given? Who is photographing and who is being photographed? Who decides what images to capture?
Let’s start with the second set of questions. I think this is one of the most important critiques of photojournalism and photography in general. Take for instance these images:
In each instance, the photographer is making a decision. How to photograph and what to photograph. The image of the Afghan woman came under fire when it was first published on the cover of Time magazine – for the effect on children, what it may imply about the war, the possible exploitation of this woman’s experience and the Western perspective of women in the Middle East. I look at the picture and am aware that she was carefully chosen: young, beautiful and mutilated. Are we shining light on a subject – the violence towards and oppression of women – or feeding into a peculiar fascination for the disturbing, the contrast of beauty and disfigurement or the assumption that we have a right into someone else’s experience?
The second photo reminds me that so many powerful, award-winning photos are those of pain and suffering. So many photos capture moments when grief overwhelms and allows us to witness this grief. But what is our own response to it? And with this picture, I wonder if any such photo would be taken in the United States and printed by newspapers or awarded by foundations. Would we stand to look upon the brutal up-close images of our own dead children? If not, why are we able to look upon the dead children of Haiti?
But it’s not as if these issues don’t arise over the photographs of Americans. The last picture shows individuals in Appalachia. It is clearly showing a particular perspective – unsmiling faces staring directly at the camera. Who decides what to capture among Americans – among the poor, the hurt or the disenfranchised? And who views these photos and believes they are witnessing “real” people and therefore know their experience? (Sociological Images has a great article about this set of Appalachian photos and the debate about them.)
With none of these photos do I want to suggest that I emphatically disagree with their portrayals or the photographer’s decisions, but these are the questions that make me study them and our responses. I believe photojournalism is important – it is important to capture events, to record oppression and violence, to bear witness – but even so, there are other elements at work – power, class, race, gender – that determine what and who is captured. Our own government has previously refused to allow photographs of the caskets of U.S. Soldiers. Obviously, photographs hold power and governments wish to exert control over these images. But it is not only governments who exert control. Photographers have a responsibility to the power of these images – to what they represent and what perspective they give.
As to the first question, of photography and suffering, the lines are so blurred, I don’t know that I have an answer. What, for any of us, is our responsibility to the suffering around us? How do you decide when photographing is not enough?
Photography is an art form, I know, and like every artistic endeavor it will hold a particular perspective. But what is most concerning is that photography captures real people in life in a particular time. It is not a rendition; it is a moment. And yet, we can manipulate that moment. We can determine how that moment is remembered or understood.
What do you think?