One part of the museum that I personally like to visit is the photography wing. They usually have one to three shows there, that are either all related, or all extremely diverse. Currently they have works from "New China" which are really very interesting photographic pieces by contemporary, and somewhat well-known Chinese artists like Zhang Huan and Rong Rong. The other major photography exhibit is the works of Felice Beato, a name I thought I recognized, but wasn't sure until I started surveying his work. Beato was born in Italy, but grew up in Great Britain, and eventually moved to Asia and photographed the worlds and cultures of China, Japan, Korea, India and Burma. As far as documentation of culture goes, he does a relatively good job capturing daily life in these "foreign" lands, but I have ethical issues with his art.
This work for example:
At first it didn't bother me as a piece, I thought to myself, "Wow, what a dramatic and almost morbidly wonderful thing to capture." But then I looked to the side to read about the piece, and it noted especially that he had gone around the site and found bits of skulls and skeletons laying around, and so he placed them as props in his piece to add a "dramatic" element and sort of stir up emotions about the massacre.
Seriously? He needed to stir up emotions with skeletons? There are photographs of empty gas chambers used in the holocaust that are more haunting and dramatic than this photograph. All you need is a damn good title, and a frighteningly accurate historical event. If there were no skeletons in this piece, just the land, the structure, and the group of people in the frame, and the exact title that it currently has, I think it would have had a more realistic dramatic affect on me than it did. And that's the truth.
-Alyssa
No comments:
Post a Comment