9/14

It's a little tricky coming to terms with trying to do a documentary type photo project (in this case street portraits in the city of Chelsea, MA where I live) since it seems that this kind of work is discouraged in MFA programs. That somehow, documentary work is no longer valid; especially portraiture. This goes against much of what I believe in, since so much photography now leaves me cold and so much portraiture feels contrived. the overly produced, highly stylized imagery that feels closer to commercial photography than art photography. It also feels cold and distant, and so often there seems to be no connection between the artist and subject. Where the people photographed appear more like specimens.

This contradicts a lot of the art that I have always responded to, especially photography. I recently saw the documentary film, 'Man on Wire' and it was fantastic. A simple film about the French high wire walker who walked between the twin towers in 1974. There was something incredibly powerful and moving in just seeing the still photographs of him up high between the towers or lying down on the wire. It gave me chills and made me realize, once again, how intensely interested I am in photographing the world around me. Other people can take care of the self portraits or the intimate portraits of family members, I want to go out and look at the unknown and the unfamiliar. I'm more interested in the real than in the conceptual. Todd Papageorge (director of Yale's graduate program in photography) addresses this by saying, 'there's a failure to understand how much richer in surprise and creative possibility the world is for photographers in comparison to their imagination'.