Toronto Photography Meetup Group

I don't know about this... One of the CONTACT exhibits is a series of photos of homeless people sleeping on the street (on park benches, or the sidewalk, etc.) They're for sale: For $1,400, you can buy one of these large-size, black and white framed photos. So, (1) Is this exploitative of the homeless?

(I have no idea where the money goes; maybe the artist gives a percentage to some sort of charity? But there was no indication of anything like that in the gallery.)

Second question: Who would actually want a picture of a sleeping homeless person on their wall? I checked to see how many of the photos had the little red "sold" dot; of the 6 or 7 photos, all had no dots, except for one of the images, which had two dots (presumably meaning it

To quote a site found from a quick google search:

If it needs a long sermon to proclaim it's art it's probably bullshit.

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/metrix_feet/3459659166/" title="Disgust With Prop by Metrix X, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3256/3459659166_461134353c.jpg" width="500" height="468" alt="Disgust With Prop"></a>

http://www.flickr.com/groups/ethics/discuss/38460/

How is selling a photo of a homeless any more or less exploitive then say first taking a photograph of street children in some poor third world country and later selling it? It's the nature of some types of photography to exploit the environment. But as a form of exploitation of the poor photography is pretty low down on the list.

this is a topic which seems to get discussed often on photography forums
here are two more threads:

http://www.largeformatphotography.info/ ... t=homeless

http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/ ... t=homeless

my own view is that if it is done respectfully it is not exploitive

however most of the time it can be regarded as "lazy photography", really how hard is it to take a photo of a homeless person and why do you really want to.

Unless your photo is being used as part of a well watched documentary, gallery show or well read article it is not going to in any way improved their situation. We all know there are homeless people and it is sad that there are the "haves" and "have nots" in this world....

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(further edit)

sometimes it can be an interesting "character shot"
but if you can you should try and "donate"
here are two shots which I took, in both cases I donated..

http://www.flickr.com/photos/feberdt/33 ... 394899964/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/feberdt/35 ... 394899964/

it is abit ironic the last one was taken during last year's Contact festival..

Now now Ryan, re-posting that photo goes way below the belt!

You might even say exploitative.

As someone already mentioned it's lazy photography. And I consider it exploitative because your using a vulnerable population. Its like people who go around photographing children in the ghetto. They stand to gain nothing from your 'art'. Everyone knows what homeless and the poor look like, and I think it can be done tastefully, but this example is not one of them.

If you want to appear less 'douschy' in this type of approach, maybe give a portion of the $$ of prints sold to a shelter or something along those lines. This type of exhibit shows a true lack of compassion and smacks of a lazy photographer who wants either an easy controversial topic to generate visitors/sales or someone who really didn't think the whole idea out.

Someone who worked well with this idea was Dan Bergeron/ fauxreel last year. I didn't consider this exploitative at all because it raised some questions and was done as a collaborative project.

http://www.unurth.com/69793/Fauxreel-Th ... ed-Toronto

hey who cares? homeless in Canada choose their own destiny, it's not the same reason they are homeless as in Eastern Europe or India, where You think is ok to shoot them

Art has no boundaries, photographers are the ones who set them for themselves.

"Art is anything you can get away with." - Marshall McLuhan

I think that was Picasso actually.

Time to get your own mind

Homelessness is a choice?

Ya.. I noted that too.

I'm not an advocate for the homeless; I leave that to that John Clarke guy (who's not even a Canadian I might add..) but I do think that some folks do not, can not and therefore have not chosen the "homeless lifestyle".

Yes, there are those who "panhandle" on our streets who do are milking it. That shaky lady from a couple years ago was a good example. BUT I don't think that EVERY person on the streets is there because they choose to be there.

Other than the usual socio-economic issues (working poor, addiction etc.) there's the mental health issue that is a tough one to deal with. It's not easy if you have, say, a form of schizophrenia and you can't maintain a stable home/living environment. The government agencies only go so far and if you've run out of family/friends who can actually offer help/assistance, then you may end up out on the street.

It's not so easy to paint all homeless people with a broad brush.

Now.. back to topic (sort of) - So, "is it art"? - nah.. but to me, not a lot of photography is art. I am intent on venturing out as often as I can this year to see just what people consider worthy to hang on a gallery wall. Some stuff will probably be pretty decent to me while others, like, say, the stuff Dan's talking about, I'd consider trash. It's easy to take photos of the homeless - I'd like to see someone engage them, find out their stories, treat them with dignity at the very least and then maybe we can have a better of idea of why those people are where they are rather than casting a blind eye and a off-the-cuff remark.

Cheers,
Dave

Sure is in Canada, get out and walk around Bathurst and Queen, my friend!

A book by Salgado costs a whole year income of some of his subjects.

Wow, really I'm stunned by your utter lack of being able to see/conceptualize that maybe not everyone has had it as good as you. While I have little sympathy for addicts, you can't say its a choice for EVERYONE. You have grown up sheltered or never had anything life altering happen to you.

On Picasso quote sites there's nothing about it, or even close to it...but Picasso did say the following:

"Art is a lie that makes us realize truth."
"Painting is just another way of keeping a diary."
"The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls."
"Who sees the human face correctly: the photographer, the mirror, or the painter? "

Its Warhol, my bad.

http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/34774.html

$1400?

is it me or are we paying for the photographer's name here.

(i'm sure anyone of the people on this forum can take artistic photos of homeless people, and i'm sure not one person can sell it for that much.)

Former WB economist turned photographer, it doesn't add up to sell books about an impoverished people. It's answering a call to address issues and has nothing to do with exploiting their situation. The artist/activist has donated hundreds of his images to be used a materials to raise funds and and bring awareness to what he has witnessed.

A lot of people think so, but it was in McLuhan's book in "The Medium is the Massage", and lots of sites correct this fact saying it was NOT Warhol who said it first.

I think you mean "message".

Massage, now that's a whole different book.

Nope, it is massage

http://www.amazon.com/Medium-Massage-Ma ... 1584230703

McLuhan often said the phrase " the medium is the message", but the book is The Medium is the Massage. Of course other people trying to make people think they are smart go around saying that McLuhan never said the media is the message, but always said massage instead. The book title is just McLuhan making a play on his own words.

Sorry Dan for going off topic. ended up digging this up.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyvMVfa23CA

To make money off of someones likeness without compensation is wrong. Homeless or not has little to do with it.

Homeless as a choice? In some cases it is or at least the illusion of homeless. I was eating lunch in an all you can eat buffet one day and was sitting within earshot of panhandlers discussing their daily routine. They lived in Scarborough and would take the TTC into the downtown core and panhandle from early morning until mid afternoon. Then the would take the TTC back home. But not without buying a 24 of their favourite beer and drinking it with friends to finish off the day.

Now of course this does not reflect the daily life of all homeless people but it sure was an eye opener for me.

Panhandlers do not have to be homeless and the homeless do not always panhandle.

Nope, I typed it correctly...while McLuhan did say "The Medium is the Message" and that was to be the title of the book, when the book cover came back from the printers the typesetter made a mistake and instead printed "Massage".

Supposedly when McLuhan saw the typo he exclaimed, "Leave it alone! It's great, and right on target!" There's even a Wiki on it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Medium_is_the_Massage

I guess people never notice the typo since they mentally read it as "Message"...now that I think about it, I should have a look at my copy since I've never paid attention to the cover either.

It is certainly a provicative topic (and I'm not surprised it has come up previosuly on various photography forums).



In fact, in this particular exhibit, no faces are visible; indeed, there is the possibility that the photos were "staged" -- although the write-up included the word "document" and implied (to my mind at least) that they were real i.e. that they were what they appeared to be.

Re: taking photos of poor people in 3rd world countires -- I haven't done that myself, but I can imagine that some people would see that as exploitative too. (But I realize one can get carried away with that line of reasoning -- e.g., is it ok to photograph animals in a zoo? I hope so, because I do that a lot.)

In a nutshell, as soon as I walked into that gallery, I thought, "something about this just isn't sitting right." Just kind of made me (metaphorically) queasy.

The problem is that these "professional panhandlers" make things look very bad for the people who actually are homeless. Years back CITY-TV did a piece where they interviewed a guy who had lost his job, was too embarrassed to tell his wife, and started pan-handling downtown to try and survive. He would leave his house in a suit and then change into rough clothes in a subway washroom. He calculated his take-home as being in the $30K range and remember that this story ran 12-15 years ago, so that was a fairly good tax-free wage.

I would think that someone who makes money shooting anonymous homeless people should at least send a portion of their profits to a homeless shelter or the Salvation Army.

That's a good way to describe it. Working at King and Bay I see a lot of homeless due to mental issues (just guessing) that do not panhandle.