151MC Jim Goldberg

Rich and Poor

The photographs in this book constitute a shocking and gripping portrait of contemporary America. Jim Goldberg’s photographs of rich and poor people, with the subjects’ own handwritten comments about themselves on the prints, give us an inside look at the American dream at both ends of the social scale.His pictures reveal his subjects’ innermost fears and aspirations, their perceptions and illusions about themselves, with a frankness that makes the portraits as engrossing as they are disturbing. (Magnum Photos, 2014)

This series of work relates to my project as it looks at both the rich and poor. I will be looking at a similar group of people and look at middle/upper class views on dream homes, compared to that of homeless views on dream homes. What I like most about this series of images is that we aren’t told who the rich and who the poor are, they merge into one and although sometimes it may be obvious who is poor and who isn’t, the stories that match the photographs may lead us to believe otherwise. It is a lot less obvious who is poor in the pictures where the houses aren’t anything extraordinary as someone can still be rich, but choose to have an ordinary home.

I also like how the text is handwritten by a person within the accompanying image. It adds more personality to it and makes it more personal. Relating back to Sophie Calle’s work where she includes text from the interviewee, I could adapt this and use handwritten words instead if possible. If I did do this, I think I would probably give the interviewee an A4 sheet of paper to write their message on, and then scan this into my computer to resize in order to fit in with the rest of the work as different people have different sized handwriting. Sometimes, it may be too large or long and could mean I would have to reduce the sizes of other images too much.

An advantage to letting the subject handwrite something about the picture/themselves, is that they can choose what they want to be included in the book and how they want themselves to be portrayed. They are allowed to say as much or as little as they want. Pieces of text range from heart felt messages to “I am a private person.” This links in with my project and the ethics around working with homeless people as I don’t want to portray them in a bad way or look down on them, I only want to include what they would be happy with.

Raised By Wolves

This is a book of harrowing stories about teenage runaways who live on the streets of San Francisco and Los Angeles. The work combines photographs, found documents and snatches of handwritten, often poetic passages about their lives and feelings, written by the subjects themselves in response to encouragement from the author. The book is a shared narrative about dysfunctional family life in America, about the way teenagers lose themselves, and how easily they fall into rituals, driven by drugs, violence, daring and lack of affection. It is also about love and friendship, and about whether these teenagers will make it, and what they might survive for. This work challenges the generalizations previously made about homeless teenagers in America, and encourages the reader to question, rather than to judge, their lives.

Whilst looking into this project, I found that there are actually two versions of it. The project was released as a book, but is now also available to view online as a mixed medium piece which includes text, video, voice overs. I think having it online as well as within a book is a great way to reach a wider audience and showcase the work and raise more awareness about the issues within the project. I really like the idea of the video as, even though the book is already quite personal, the added voice overs make it even more personal and it brings us into that moment in time and makes us feel like we are there with him and the subject. I feel as though it grabs the audiences attention more. I may look into making a video and photobook for my project, if I have the time to do both. If not, I plan to make both after I have finished the initial project.

On the back of the book where the blurb should be, is a letter from one of the subjects which I think brings up some really important points, again regarding the ethics of such a project. Key points of the letter include “You showed us as we are, and let us tell the story ourselves.” This is a really important point to consider in regards to my own work as, like I mentioned previously, I don’t want to portray them in a bad light. I want to portray them as they want to be portrayed, therefore any images, quotes, videos or recordings I include in my work, I will make sure they are okay with me including it first. Another point made is “Make sure that your work tells the true stories.” a lot of people may fake the truth in order to make their work more interesting, this isn’t something I want to do with my work.

Jim Goldberg

Whilst looking for information to help me create a reference for this work, I came across the fine print which states “With the exception of the primary characters, the names of those appearing in this book have been changed to protect their identities”. This is another thing to consider regarding ethics as I will need to make sure my subjects can’t be identified unless they want to be. I think the best thing to do would be to change their names within the book, provided they allow me to do so.

References

Category : 151MC - Creative Digital Practice
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