(a photoless post because I would probably be fined for copyright infringement)
Believe me there was a time when photography was focused on something other than catching celebrities with Starbucks in hand. There was a time when photography exposed you to worlds never seen... ring elongated necks of the Masai, fish with no eyes, moments captured in ironic juxtapositions that helped you think about the world just a little differently.
Right now at the Getty is one of the best photography exhibits I have had the pleasure of seeing. Engaged Observers is a 200 piece exhibition of documentary photography that has a artist list that reads like a dream team of thought provoking masters.
It captures what it is like to be a adolescent girl (shout out to the girls getting ready for a dance in Edina, MN) exposes you to the corporate irresponsibility of the Chisso plant that wiped out residents of a fishing village in Japan by taking away their only way of life and to add salt to the wound crippled them physically, shows you the face of homeless children in Seattle, a and a German's view of the deep south and separation of the races pre-integration.
These are not pretty pictures, they make you speechless all the same.
The most controversial piece being James Nachtwey's 60 photo montage "The Sacrifice" a collection from a medi-vac unit in Iraq in 2006. My recommendation is to really visually digest these photos for yourself, all 60, step back and watch people for a while as they start computing images 1-8, they perhaps linger just a little more, before it becomes a little too much for them and they walk away. I think this is part of the experience of this piece. It is one thing to have an idea of something that is far far away in a distant land and it is another all together to see it. The blood, the tubes snaking from frame to frame, a hole in stomach, the concentration tinged with fear.
I guess I don't make it sound like the most uplifting sell of this show, but sometimes things aren't meant to lift you up, it is meant to take you in and chew you up a bit.
It is hard to reconcile the truth.
(now until November 12th)
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