What will you leave behind?

[sovay]

A fascinating effect: I am not actually comfortable looking at these portraits. The photographer frames them as an act of resistance (if he couldn't avoid taking the photos, he could at least make sure they weren't the tidy, compliant headshots the authorities wanted—frankly, I don't think he was the one making that choice) and points out that fifty years later the women were grateful for these records of themselves, but there was nothing willing about them at the time. It comes through. I do not want to see these women unveiled, because I don't have the right to: it is so clearly not how they wish to be seen. But they aren't hiding. They are staring back. They are making it as difficult as possible for the camera, for the viewer to look at them and feel it is a consenting act. That's not something I've seen in a lot of pictures. So I am linking these, but I couldn't look at more than five myself. I don't know if they should ever have been taken. That is a strange thing to say about art.

Comments

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

Wait. These photographs were taken for identity cards. It's an invasion of privacy, because the women didn't want to be unveiled, or didn't want to be photographed at all--I understand that. I wonder how much of the obvious resentment is specific to the unveiling and how much more generally resentment of invasion and conquest. Did Garanger photograph the men of those destroyed villages, or was he just interested in the women?

I've been photographed for a passport and a driving license and other kinds of ID. My government does not treat me as an enemy, and I don't wear the veil, but I don't think those make a different to who keeps the pictures. The picture goes on the ID card, which I can (or must) carry around with me. Maybe the government office issuing the ID keeps a copy, but it would really give me the creeps if the photographer kept a copy of my photograph and used it for an art exhibit.

I see the transgression in republishing the pictures 50 years later, much more than in taking the pictures initially. If he had simply given the pictures to the women he photographed...they could have decided when/how/if to share them.