Sensitive Content Control

I love the graphic nature of this image. I dislike categories, and so I’m not sure if this is street photography or documentary or reportage. I don’t think it matters. I just take pictures according to how I feel in the instant. I saw this guy and I was immediately fascinated, as were many other people walking towards Boulevard Barbés early one afternoon. The biggest risk involved with making this portrait was from observers on the street around me—the man in the picture was fortunately oblivious to my presence. I needed to be close, even with a 90mm lens, and so I waited until I felt that the people in the immediate area didn’t pose a significant threat. It took me three attempts before I was able to achieve the exact image I had in mind. I was so pleased to have succeeded…. It was a rush of adrenaline that was dizzying.

This image is one I made for myself, it’s not one for social media….I know that if I post it on Instagram, I will not do myself any favors with the platform. Censorship on social media is a serious problem, one that affects me directly as an artist and photographer. It creates psychological obstacles to overcome in the pursuit of true artistic expression, it encourages copycat behavior from other artists, and rewards sameness. The benefits of sharing images with great people are sometimes not enough to offset the negative impacts of censorship and the tremendous difficulty involved with getting work exposed in a fair manner. Artistic content is being categorized and the platform sanitized and that’s a shame.

The image above was not satisfactory in the immediate moments after making the photograph. I had been chasing this woman down the street for twenty minutes, on a hot late afternoon in the Marais. It was a stunning day, a happy to be alive Saturday in Paris….this picture is a beauty and most would understand why I worked so hard to get it right. But is it more worthwhile and satisfying than the rough, bloody image above? I don’t know….maybe one could argue that I should not have photographed someone cutting on the street. But….that’s Boulevard Magenta near the Gare du Nord….hard, raw and dangerous sometimes. So I think it’s important to shoot pictures of everything, and stop caring about repercussions. Both images represent different parts of me as a person and photographer, and both have equal weight in my mind as an artist.

One picture that I did not make stays in my mind. I was walking along a quiet street in the 10th arrondissement in the early evening. I came to an out of the way bus stop, where three women were seated on a bench. The two women on the left were almost elderly, and characteristically French, conservatively dressed working class white women. Seated on the right was a black African woman, dressed in beautifully bright patterned, waxed traditional fabric from far away, with a matching turban, carefully wrapped around her head. She held a baby, aged approximately six months, an equally beautifully dressed baby girl. She was breast feeding, and the contrast between subjects was so extreme that I could hardly contain my desire to take a picture. The simple pale yellow background of an old French building behind the women was a perfect counterpoint, and the silence of the situation was serene and unforgettable. I knew, however, that this picture had to remain in my mind. Had I photographed the scene, I would have possibly traumatized the breast feeding woman, and she would have forever remembered the moment as a horrible exploitation. And I never want my endeavors as a photographer to be reduced to that kind of memory for someone else.

I’m learning to move past these moments, trying to forgive myself for not working out a way to take these photographs that may have unexpected consequences for the people in them. I’m still struggling at times with the moral questions involved with some of the images I make. Most days I don’t give it any thought at all, and shoot exactly what I please no matter the consequences to myself or those in the pictures. When I do need to devote some thought to the issue, it becomes very difficult to find my best path forward.