paltry photography: "Fazal Sheikh"

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24 February 2008

Rekha by Fazal Sheikh

(copyright - Fazal Sheikh)

“Fazal Sheikh (b. 1965, USA) has been nominated for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2008 for his publication Ladli, published by Steidl, Germany (2007). Sheikh is an artist-activist who uses photography to create sustained portraits of different communities around the world.”

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There are a lot of photographers that don’t care whether what they take is good or not - they photograph for fun.

But there are a lot of acclaimed photographers who take their photos very seriously, despite some of their photos being seriously awful.

These may be technically perfect but the content - washed out photos of waves; staged shots of somnolent streets; posed pix of facially paralysed people; red and green and nothing else or just grey - means these shots should have been deleted, not distributed.

You look at this photography and you think - that’s paltry photography.

And the dictatorship of themes. 'The development of the Civil War in the Congo' - yes. But 'the role of the paperclip as a metaphor for relationships - no.

Just what section is it in the 'Law of Photography' that bans selections of just good, although unrelated, images or even a single excellent shot for display in venues that take photography 'seriously'?

I post photos here that have been exhibited or published as well as some of the text that was distributed with the shots.

Unless otherwise indicated, these images and quoted text are sourced from the relevant gallery publicity and photography-now.com

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