Friday, November 9, 2007

Comment Posted on Other Persons Blog

Blog can be found at:

http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/warphotography-interview-with-simon.html



I'm a student of the University of Southern California and I recently wrote a paper covering War Photography, specifically David Douglas Duncan, and Robert Capa. These men were heroic, as most people who have read this blog know. Mr. Norfolk is just as brave as these men were. When Capa and Duncan worked however, they produced images that no one, or atleast the commmon public, had ever seen. They were intended to shock, sure, but more to educate viewers on what was really going on. I am twenty years old so all I've seen on the front page is war images it seems. Views from Afghanistan and Iraq litter my mind. I have become to accustomed to seeing these images that its almost a second nature of mine to naturally flip past the first page because the image has lost its effect to surprise me. In no way has the level of photography gone down (its greatly improved) but I feel like these war images have lost its ability to shock the public. My question is this. How does one go about being a professional photographer in today's world given such a great challenge to entertain and show something that has already been seen countless numbers of times? We can't ask the soldiers to stage anything or blow more things up of course but is there a way to solve the dilemma of being creative and beautiful in an area of study that is running like a broken record?

Fantastic blog and I learned a lot from it. You can find my blog at http://petefromphiladelphia.blogspot.com/

Thank you again.