The Genius of Photography, Part 5: We Are Family

The Genius of Photography, Part 5: We Are Family

Q1. Who said: “The camera gave me the license to strip away what you want people to know about you, to reveal what you can’t help people knowing about you”?

A. The female photographer Diane Arbus said this quote.

A Jewish giant at home with his parents in the Bronx, N.Y. 1970
Diane Arbus 

Q2. Do you think that photographers tend to prey on vulnerable people?

A. No I don’t think that photographers intend to prey on vulnerable people but that the photos they take of  this people and then put them on display in shows does make it seem that way.

Q3. What is Larry Clark’s Tulsa project about?

A. Larry Clark’s photo book Tulsa is about his young life in Tulsa, Oklahoma which conceded of hanging out with friends, taking drugs, trying to get laid and fooling around with guns.

Shooting up amphetamine, 1971, Larry Clark.

Q4. What is the title of Nan Goldin’s most renowned work?

A. The Ballad of Sexual Dependency is the title of Nan Goldin’s most renowned work. It consists of 900 slides featuring her friends and adopted family.

Nan and Brain in bed, 1986, Nan Goldin.

Q5. What does Araki photograph? And what is his “philosophy”?

A. Araki photographs everything but focuses on his daily life and sexual exploitations. His philosophy is he doesn’t shoot what he doesn’t want to remember but he shoots what he does want to remember.

Winter Journey, 1990, Nobuyoshi Araki.

Q6. What was Richard Billingham’s work about?

A. Richard Billingham’s work Ray’s a Laugh was about the portrayal of the deprivation and poverty he grew up in as a child.

Ray's a Laugh, 1996, Richard Billingham.