Oh … I meant Slav photographer
A set of portraits of American Olympians has generated negative feelings in the photography community because of an “amateur” and “shoddy” look that some think was intentional.
The photos were taken for Getty and AFP at the USOC media summit by Joe Klamar. While other photographers at the event chose to shoot the portraits straight up, Klamar’s had a different feel. Members of the photography community weren’t going for it.
The pictures are uniformly ugly. This is even worse than the most ill-motivated Guy.With.Camera crap. But since Klamar allegedly works for Agence France Presse and wins awards, then the idea of this being a deliberate effort to turn in the worst captures possible is more than plausible.
Klamar’s almost criminal misuse of a Nikon is even applauded with this paragraph, courtesy Michael Shaw, oozing with contempt.
Whether the picture subverts the background, the composition, the lighting or the athlete’s expression (or some combination), what at least a handful of Klamar’s photos “accomplish” is to slight the plasticized image of the Olympic athlete perpetuated throughout the quadrennial media and advertising orgy. More than that though (and imagine you’re reading the rest of this sentence to rabid chants of USA!! USA!!), I think this subset of photos also take a silent sledgehammer to the jingoistic adulation of the American team, to the extent these athletes serve as a fantasy extension of the dying dream of American worldwide superiority.
Wow, Mike, tell us how you really feel!
Note that the site “BagNews” contains this tagline:
BagNews is a progressive site dedicated to visual politics and the analysis of news images.
Now, don’t be calling Mikey “unPatriotic” or anything! Progressives are just as American as the bitter clinger next door!
**************
Remember Jill Greenberg?
I blame
George W. BushBarak Obama.They demand a world in which ever action, and now every inaction, is political.
– Bag news. As in bag-man corp, another charter member of the sub-nation of asocial “I hate everyone and everything” coalition of the Ultimate Losers Club. The people that have found solice in the idea that all their problems lay in someone or something else, conspiring 24/7 to deney them their rightful recognition of all things true and self-evident. Eventually most end up purched on Coronado Bridge holding up rush hour traffic.
– Chtis Christie gave Roberts an abject leasson on how to deal with the cynical “thar’s gold in them thar iconoclastic hills” today, refusing to tolorate one ‘idiot’, calling him out for off topic questions, and then appologing to all the rest of the press idiots for the specific idiot in their midst as he wrapped up the presser.
– At some point it will stop when enough people with a pair stand up to this shit. Roberts, are you listening?
Some day ugly people and fat people are going to wake up and start slapping smug chops off of the pricks who think it’s cool to needle them.
Ah. Well. France . . . .
Surprised the pictures don’t smell. Or do they?
He’s framing the scenes from his eunique perspective.
If we all got dirtier the French would clean up.
It’s just their nature.
I read “Bag News” as being left on the front porch, set aflame, and then you ring the doorbell and run away.
To his credit, at least Shaw understands and explains what the photographer was up to. Most of the commentary that I’ve seen seems to think that it’s just a case of an inept photographer. So while I pity Shaw his self-loathing, and don’t appreciate his expanding that loathing to his country and his countrymen, I’m happy to give him props for putting into words what the photographer was doing with images.
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Nobody watched the Euro 2012?
They all got to cheer for their country.
The athletes and the crowd all belted out their national anthem…. the French included
Shaw should stfu and watch Judge Judy instead of the Olympics if it’s benign nationalism offends him