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My World: Sahel. The end of the road.

fahim mohammed

Well-known member
Let me show you ( those that are unaware of it ) some photographs by a master.
My kind of photography. By a master par excellence.

Sahel

For me, this ( and his other works ) is what photography is all about.
 

fahim mohammed

Well-known member
and to me they are coffee table porn for the rich... another thread that should be NSFW


I don't do running to mother. Was just passing comment. Nsfw means not suitable for wanking in Scottish btw.

NSFW within OPF is taken to mean ' Not Safe For Work ' unless I am mistaken.

What ' Nsfw ' in Scotland means or might mean is immaterial to me and I do not really care.
I did not assign the 'NSFW' pre-fix. My decision, not anyone else's.

You make your own decision and assign whatever pre-fix you choose for your posts. My thread, my posts,
I decide. Not you, not Asher, no one. Just me.

What you think about my posts, I again don't care. Just ignore my posts. Not bother to me in the least.

Excuse me, but I do have a dinner to attend in the Four Seasons Hotel.
 

Mark Hampton

New member
NSFW within OPF is taken to mean ' Not Safe For Work ' unless I am mistaken.

What ' Nsfw ' in Scotland means or might mean is immaterial to me and I do not really care.
I did not assign the 'NSFW' pre-fix. My decision, not anyone else's.

You make your own decision and assign whatever pre-fix you choose for your posts. My thread, my posts,
I decide. Not you, not Asher, no one. Just me.

What you think about my posts, I again don't care. Just ignore my posts. Not bother to me in the least.

Excuse me, but I do have a dinner to attend in the Four Seasons Hotel.

fahim we have a saying in Scotland.

Practice what you preach.

I think your with your education you can understand how this is relevant to your comments above.

As for posting or commenting on your threads I will continue when I have something to say.

your thread has started a though process off - below are a couple of images I may well work with.

06.JPG


Kalema camp, west of Tigray. Ethiopia . 1985 - Sebastião Salgado


cq5dam.web.720.405.jpeg



hotel dining area



in relation to Salgado - its not just me;

Ingrid Sischy said:
"Salgado is too busy with the compositional aspects of his pictures - and with finding the "grace" and "beauty" in the twisted forms of his anguished subjects. And this beautification of tragedy results in pictures that ultimately reinforce our passivity toward the experience they reveal. To aestheticize tragedy is the fastest way to anaestheize the feelings of those who are witnessing it. Beauty is a call to admiration, not to action." Source or this slightly OOF PDF


cheers Fahim
 
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Jerome Marot

Well-known member
Let me show you ( those that are unaware of it ) some photographs by a master.

Sebastião Salgado is certainly a master, but, in my opinion, his pictures of the drought in Sahel rate very, very low on my scale of ethics. Yet they were instrumental for the world to mobilize against the suffering. So if you wanted to prove that freedom of artistic expression transcends ethics, you succeeded.

I think this is also what Mark Hampton wanted to say, in his scottish ways.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Hi Mark,

[Thanks for the links, I've added them to your post! ADK].

Many folks have not heard of the writer and we want to provide some unambiguous direction that this is a quote of someone else's words, not your own. That always has to be specified or else we blur the line.

If Delgado's work did in fact raise awareness to the people's tragic state, his set of tools worked. Maybe he's limited in the mallet he has to get his message across. Aren't we all, to some degree or another? However, perhaps, it's far better for him to do something than those who just ignore the problem altogether.

Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Let me show you ( those that are unaware of it ) some photographs by a master.
My kind of photography. By a master par excellence.

Sahel

For me, this ( and his other works ) is what photography is all about.


"The book Sahel, l’homme en détresse, published by Prisma Press in 1986, was sold to the profit of MSF in France. In 1988 another book, Sahel-El fin del camino, was published by Comunidad de Madrid, and sold to the benefit of Spanish MSF" MSF means Medecins Sans Frontieres, (Medicine without Borders). So this speaks to the value of Delgado's work, however esthetically stylized it might appear!

Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Asher, are you being fair? Or are your biases showing through?

Yes, Maggie, he right! Two of my unfair biases again! Anglicization and poetics! Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is an international medical humanitarian organization created by doctors and journalists in France in 1971. You see I'm typing in English and the official website uses an Anglicized version of the words from their website heading. If you click on the link, Medecins Sans Frontieres, ("Medicine" without Borders), you'll appreciate that I had choices and leeway handed on a platter!

So my first bias, being from the U.K., was to follow their own idiomatic license! (Besides, typing the crazy è on a Mac is a bother! On a Mac, one has to hold down Option key and type ` (the grave mark) and only then type the letter e!) Then poetically, I like "medicine" instead of "doctors" as it implies actually delivery of care. :)

Asher
 
Yes, Maggie, he right! Two of my unfair biases again! Anglicization and poetics! Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is an international medical humanitarian organization created by doctors and journalists in France in 1971. You see I'm typing in English and the official website uses an Anglicized version of the words from their website heading. If you click on the link, Medecins Sans Frontieres, ("Medicine" without Borders), you'll appreciate that I had choices and leeway handed on a platter!

So my first bias, being from the U.K., was to follow their own idiomatic license! (Besides, typing the crazy è on a Mac is a bother! On a Mac, one has to hold down Option key and type ` (the grave mark) and only then type the letter e!) Then poetically, I like "medicine" instead of "doctors" as it implies actually delivery of care. :)

Asher

I understand completely about the translation.

I don't have a MAC, but I have a standard keyboard set to International. I have to do some gymnastics too to get the proper accents since I often write in French and also a bit in Swedish, so to do the è, or other vowel, I need to do the ` under the ~ and then the vowel. To do the é, I need to do the ' first and then the e, to do the ê, I need to do the SHIFT and 6, then the vowel. to do a å, in Swedish I need to do CTRL, ALTand the letterW. Can you imagine?
Even writing Noël, takes the Shift and ". I'm used to it though, so it doesn't even occur to me, I actually had to check to see exactly which keys I had to hit for this post.
and sorry to hijack... You can also delete this after as it was just for your info and nothing to do with this thread. Carry on. :)
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
and to me they are coffee table porn for the rich... another thread that should be NSFW

Mark,

This Mark, is very rude and over the top! You ditch Fahim's excellent contribution! Diverse opinions make for great debate. Ridicule does not. Let's look more at the possible value of the Delgado reference.

I actually gained a lot from seeing some Delgado pictures I have previously missed out on. Try to keep discussion of one topic in one thread once you have made your new point somewhere. That, you already have strongly achieved in the excellent but NSFW thread discussing the controversies inherent in photographing young people. (Dressed or not, as others can interpret those in a perverted way.) We do not wish to convert all new threads to the same single master debate subject implying exploitation at every turn. Yes, we are animals, but we use our cultures to rise above this. At least we can make a good try!

Delgado's book is not a table porn book for the rich! I go to many charity functions where the very rich dress up, celebrate and then donate millions of dollars to support charities: new equipment for hospitals in Africa or midwives and gurneys and medical kits for village health workers in Cambodia, funding for poor kids to attend summer camps, scholarships for gifted minorities to get a first class education, Cancer research and so much more. At the same time, the same rich folk are recruited to mold public opinion and shift government polices towards fairness in our societies and our view of other peoples as there's only one humanity.

Throw away the Delgado books and we have what? volunteers with no funding to help others in time of struggle and strife. How do you think donors are giving money to heal those maimed by bombs, if not by the generosity of those with resources to share.

I for one am enriched by looking through Delgado's work and knowing he's indirectly and directly supported those most afflicted while making impressive works of art. Without the esthetics, it would be just too horrific! The quality of light puts "a touch of angels' dust" over the sad scenes of dependency and neglect, starvation and banishment, as if they are in the process of being looked at by heaven. Is it romanticized? For sure, but it moves us and it works! Just one persons opinion!

Asher
 
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Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
f
your thread has started a though process off - below are a couple of images I may well work with.

06.JPG


Kalema camp, west of Tigray. Ethiopia . 1985 - Sebastião Salgado


cq5dam.web.720.405.jpeg



hotel dining area



This juxtaposition, while on the face of it, not original, still adds a valuable boost to Delgado's representation of the empty stomachs of the poor folk in afflicted areas. It highlights the injustice and breaks through the angelic feeling of the suffering and puts back responsibility to us on earth. We have unequal distribution of resources. We're in charge, therefore we have to be accountable for the misery too!

This was the valid point you made.

Asher
 

fahim mohammed

Well-known member
Sahel is an Arabic word, derived from the original Sami, of which Aramaic is a derivative. In English ' Sahel' would be translated as the coast. However, in the context of this thread , Sahel refers to a region stretching from west to east across the African continent; forming a boundary ( hence the coast/ shore association ) between the Sahara desert and the lower dry Savvanah region. Sahara too, is an Arabic word; from 'Sahra' ...meaning the desert.

Thought it just might be of some interest to mention this.
 

Mark Hampton

New member
Mark,

This Mark, is very rude and over the top! You ditch Fahim's excellent contribution! Diverse opinions make for great debate. Ridicule does not. Let's look more at the possible value of the Delgado reference.

I actually gained a lot from seeing some Delgado pictures I have previously missed out on. Try to keep discussion of one topic in one thread once you have made your new point somewhere. That, you already have strongly achieved in the excellent but NSFW thread discussing the controversies inherent in photographing young people. (Dressed or not, as others can interpret those in a perverted way.) We do not wish to convert all new threads to the same single master debate subject implying exploitation at every turn. Yes, we are animals, but we use our cultures to rise above this. At least we can make a good try!

Delgado's book is not a table porn book for the rich! I go to many charity functions where the very rich dress up, celebrate and then donate millions of dollars to support charities: new equipment for hospitals in Africa or midwives and gurneys and medical kits for village health workers in Cambodia, funding for poor kids to attend summer camps, scholarships for gifted minorities to get a first class education, Cancer research and so much more. At the same time, the same rich folk are recruited to mold public opinion and shift government polices towards fairness in our societies and our view of other peoples as there's only one humanity.

Throw away the Delgado books and we have what? volunteers with no funding to help others in time of struggle and strife. How do you think donors are giving money to heal those maimed by bombs, if not by the generosity of those with resources to share.

I for one am enriched by looking through Delgado's work and knowing he's indirectly and directly supported those most afflicted while making impressive works of art. Without the esthetics, it would be just too horrific! The quality of light puts "a touch of angels' dust" over the sad scenes of dependency and neglect, starvation and banishment, as if they are in the process of being looked at by heaven. Is it romanticized? For sure, but it moves us and it works! Just one persons opinion!

Asher

blunt - but what I feel on the subject - and what I have felt for the last 20 odd years since 1st looking at the work.

as for the rest of what you have written it leaves me cold tbh. but hey that again is what I think.

this thread seems to me to be in the wrong place.

here is a better place for it

oh the slightly out of focus link - did you even read it?

did anyone?
 

Mark Hampton

New member
06.JPG


Kalema camp, west of Tigray. Ethiopia . 1985 - Sebastião Salgado


cq5dam.web.720.405.jpeg



hotel dining area



This juxtaposition, while on the face of it, not original, still adds a valuable boost to Delgado's representation of the empty stomachs of the poor folk in afflicted areas. It highlights the injustice and breaks through the angelic feeling of the suffering and puts back responsibility to us on earth. We have unequal distribution of resources. We're in charge, therefore we have to be accountable for the misery too!

This was the valid point you made.

Asher

Asher its the four seasons hotel in Damascus - I wonder what is happening over their at the moment?
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Back to the topic of Salgado, the photographer...

Salgado

For a slightly more denser look...

So we do not forget

And for sociologists...

Master Photographer of our Times

It seems I am not the only one who likes Salgado's work.


Fahim,

Thanks for these links! Every time a book, exhibition or special link is given, it opens up new paths for us. I myself am learning more about Salgado, and I thought I knew his work well! One of his most important contributions is to the collective memory of people about suffering.

Asher
 
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