Thanks to a recently discovered heart condition, many worries concerning any number of things ranging from an abusive parent living a million miles away and still making me feel like bird poop thanks to the wonderful invention that is the telephone, to an apartment to sell, to almost weekly bad or at best average news from the other side of the world, and thanks to the fact that even starting to explain everything is actually making me feel exhausted, I found myself in a state of mind that could only be described as the winter blues.
Yep, I'm blue.
Truth is I haven't had much time to relax during the holidays what with having to call my dad at 2 am cause he wouldn't answer the phone earlier, getting bad cough from the pollution and still having to put up with it after 2 weeks that we got back, constantly worrying about checking my email to monitor the situation up north and down south.
It might be a way for my body to tell me to take a break, even though to some people I might look happy-go-lucky, let me tell these people, try and go through all the things I've been through in the last couple of years and then we'll see if your heart doesn't start skipping beats like mine does.
Anyway.
We went to the World Press Photo 2011 at the NSW State Library today and as usual I was appalled at how some photographers take the word "photojournalism" and take it to whole different levels, and I'm not talking good levels.
The first level is what I call "the gore": the worst detail you can get with your camera, and the more in-your-face it is the better.
You've got photos of a pile of naked corpses? Bring it on.
An extremely disturbing photo of an illegal abortion in Kenya (and thank me if I spare you the details of just HOW disturbing this photo was)? We'll take it.
A lonely open-mouthed, open-eyes severed head on a beach? Sure, why not?
And just when you thought you've been over the worst and looking ahead you cannot spot any more gore, do not congratulate your guts yet, you've reached the second level.
The second level is what I call "the hidden horror".
It refers to all those photos that do not show any blood or bits of brains or dissected body parts, au contraire they seem rather innocuous, a boy in a field, a skinny woman and a baby, a flying human torch... Ok, a part from the last one you've got to admit that the rest doesn't seem threatening. And this is where you're wrong!
Got a completely out of focus, blurred and crooked photo of a man sleeping in a field? If you want to sleep at night do NOT read the caption. And since I'm pretty fed up of not sleeping I will not quote the caption either.
I don't know what's worst, honestly, it's become a race to shock you out of your mind.
Why do photographers feel they have to show the unthinkable, erasing with a click what little scraps of dignity these victims have left? Is it because the unstoppable spreading of the media circus has rendered us immune to anything less than "unspeakably horrible"? Have we become so hard to impress that we don't know the meaning of the word respect anymore? Only because a photo of a desperate mother crouching over the massacred corpse of her 5 year old daughter wins an award does it make it acceptable to print that same photo and distribute it around the world in million of copies for our thirst of blood to be sedated?
If the most violent act a human being can conceive does not raise any other concern than "is there enough light?" where are we going from here?
And then you want to take a photo with an ultra wide angle of St Mary's cathedral's interiors to try a nice effect and off course you're kicked out by the guardian, because THAT would be wrong.....
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