What is photography's role in crises like Haiti?
For tonight's Art Photo Tweet chat will will be joined my photographer and writer Michael David Murphy aka @whileseated2. Recently, he wrote this piece in foto8 Does Haiti's Crisis Call for a New Photojournalism? This started off a great deal of discussion.
These is also a huge post over on the blog Prison Photography Staring at Death: Photographing Haiti.
Another starting point will be Susan Sontag's classic essay: Looking at War, Photography's view of devastation and death. I will be re-reading that before our chat.
We will be having an open ended chat on how photography interacts with disasters and crisis, using These articles as a starting point. Here are some potential points of discussion:
- What are the moral/ethical issues of creating photography in disaster/crisis areas, help the people in front of you or photograph them?
- What contribution does photography play in helping those in distress
- "artistic vampirism" - making money/fame based on the misfortune
- Why do we love to look at decay. Why can't photographers get enough of Detroit?
- Are photographers adding anything to public knowledge/information?
- What's the value of pro photo vs vernacular (Here Is NY vs Meyerowitz vs Abu Grhaib)
Join in tonight at 9 pm EST.
NOTE: we will be making these tweets a biweekly event now. So Todd and I can better prepare. Maybe in the future if momentum builds more we can move it back to a weekly event. If you liked the weekly version please email / tweet us.
These Art Photography Twitter Chats anyone can join in or just read it live by using the hashtag #photoartchat on Twitter. One easier way to transform twitter into a chat room is Tweetchat.com and entering the photoartchat room here: http://tweetchat.com/room/photoartchat.
PS., you should follow OcularOctopus on Twitter, here:http://twitter.com/OcularOctopus and me here: http://twitter.com/harlanerskine