From Jacob Riis using flash powder in the 1880s to illuminate tenement life in New York City to Dorothea Lange's coverage of Depression farm families, photographing people in poverty captures images that have staying power.
Using photographic technology to capture a reality that a contemporary audience wants to ignore is the kind of in-your-face work that I admire -- and it's the polar opposite of the paparazzi garbage that I abhor.
The displaced persons flooding Europe today are a case in point. My dad was a combat soldier there in World War II and saw horrible things in battle, but he always said the image that stuck with him were the endless stream of individual civilians flooding the roads from the bombed-out cities after the war.
Using photographic technology to capture a reality that a contemporary audience wants to ignore is the kind of in-your-face work that I admire -- and it's the polar opposite of the paparazzi garbage that I abhor.
The displaced persons flooding Europe today are a case in point. My dad was a combat soldier there in World War II and saw horrible things in battle, but he always said the image that stuck with him were the endless stream of individual civilians flooding the roads from the bombed-out cities after the war.
