Salgado
Sebastiao Salgado doesn’t seem revolutionary, or all that interesting to me. His aestheticized portrayal of third-world workers, monumental in scale, was one thing—you could almost smell the “proletariat” sweat. But this return to nature thing really gets my goat:
I conceive this project as a potential path towards humanity's rediscovery of itself in nature. I have named it Genesis because, as far as possible, I want to return to the beginnings of our planet: to the air, water and fire that gave birth to life; to the animal species that have resisted domestication and are still "wild"; to the remote tribes whose "primitive" way of life is largely untouched; and to surviving examples of the earliest forms of human settlement and organisation.
I was reading Leo Lowenthal while everywhere I surfed (a week or so ago) people were “oohing and ahhing” over Salgado. For some reason, I just can’t get it up over environmental rhetoric. I try; there are some interesting things being done with it theoretically. But the actuality of it seems to prey on the worst part of human nature—the “grass is always greener” anywhere man is not just doesn’t jibe with my experience of the world. I’m more of a Blakean sort: “Where Man is Not, Nature is Barren.” I also suspect that Ansel Adam’s calendars killed many more trees than they ever saved.
Not so free
André Kertész— Jenö Kertész, 1923
Normally I’d have some sense of freedom right about now. However, I have to start teaching again in less than a week. At least it’s teaching photography. Things could be worse.
