I appreciate the breadth of this essay quite a bit. It's thoughtful, analytical, incisive. It's a rare kind of read amongst fellow photographers. So I'm hesitating to criticize it, because I would personally like more of this type of marriage between photography and deep social analysis. Patrick Witty offers some in his posts on war photography, and we occasionally see posts about the WPA photographers, protest photographers, poverty and so on, but they tend to be general overviews. Very few with your level of philosophical context and analysis. But in the end, I think the essay is misguided.
What I mean specifically is that while I think the campus protests and your friends' IG feeds may have been a trigger to your thoughts on colonization, ultimately I don't think that subject fits with the Salgado you present here. I mean to say, it possibly could, but you talk about the breadth of his work as being "humanistic", and you bring up several powerful visual examples of his stance for the dispossessed, the primitive and the exploited, but not exclusively about his work within colonial power structures. For the most part, the examples in the essay aren't related directly to colonial subjugation: we see images of ethnic wars in some; outright capitalist exploitation (near slavery) in others; climate change in still others. I suppose one could argue that the exploitation Salgado represents all starts with the colonial mindset, but then again, someone else could argue with equal vigor that it starts with the capitalist mindset, or the racist mindset, or the mindset one gains from not accepting Jesus as one's savior, and so on.
And by leading with the campus protests and the philosophical underpinning of colonialism, you've opened your argument up to a significant sidebar on the question of colonization vis-a-vis Israel -- a debate that hasn't been reconciled in over 75 years and won't be by any single essay any of us here on Substack (or anywhere) can write. But it unfortunately leads to discussions that are removed from Salgado and the power of his work. That, in the end, is what I think is the problem; the essay is textually about a subject which Salgado only partially addresses in his many decades of work. If the examples and discussion on Salgado focused on his work, say, in former Portuguese or British colonies, the essay could succeed. But showing Salgado to be a photographer of the commonality of humanity while isolating colonialism as your single point of argument, I think, suggests you have two separate essays here.
Thank you so much for this considered response. I think you’re right. I had been ruminating over the current situation for a long time and using Salgado came somewhat later. His work has so much breadth it is difficult to imagine pinning him down to any one idea but hopefully my work in progress will stimulate more articles by me and maybe others.
I read the essay as a draft -- not in the sense of "incomplete" writing. It's really well-written; you are a very fine writer. Have you published? I can't say enough. But yeah, I think it's the "thinking" draft that I see here. I hope you continue to dive deep with this idea. I have mixed feelings about Salgado (more reverential than not); I'm always an eager reader of essays on him. But Good Luck if you choose to dive deep with the Israel/Gaza idea! You're on your own! Gird thine loins, as they say...
Thank you, I need to get back into the discipline of working with editors - https://neilscott.substack.com/p/the-year-of-submission - maybe next year! I find the desire not to offend interesting in itself, particularly when we get so many examples of calling out.
I have a serious question for you. You were great in how you responded to my critique. With a few exceptions, i don't see much criticism on Substack. We are usually a lauditory bunch. I'm not saying one way or the other as to my druthers on this, but what is your thoughts on the role criticism should take (or not) on these pages?
So much in this piece, Neil: each “section” the germ of much longer discussions. The politics of language and representation are fraught and complex, especially when the suffering of so many is so great and so obvious. I have gone to Salgado, over the years, for the humanity and compassion of his eye. Everything is political and it’s Salgado’s fundamental relational disposition that moves beyond rhetoric and partisanship. I never get the sense that he begins from an ideological position. Does he exoticize his subjects? Or does he underline the obscenity of our “systems” in the face of human and planetary suffering?
Thank you, Marcello. I think Salgado is definitely one of the good guys. The article is basically a train of thought rather than a complete essay so I hope to revisit some of these themes in the future.
Always a pleasure to read your insights in the twilight hours of sleeplessness Neil! Resonates more! Re more of your friends now sharing support for Palestine or opposition to Israel's genocide, it is depressing that many people who have been reluctant to take a stance now feel they can be absolved now on social media, now that the mainstream media has begun to include more direct questioning of such acts. As unfair as that sounds, feels like part of the process of normalisation.
Thanks Malcolm. I will try and make it more hypnotic so you can get back to sleep!
There has been a hardcore posting since start and it has been impressive to see how focused on practical action they have been (ie closing down BAE or Thales).
In such an impossible situation I understand the need to do something, anything, in the face of such horrors.
Decolonization = de-civilization = the rise and celebration of pure barbarism. October 7 proves it. Decapitations. Raping women to death. Tying up and burning families alive. Babies in ovens. Because they are Jews, Israelis, teens celebrating at a music festival. (Fanon would be proud! Jean Paul Sartre, too.)
And not colonists, actually (what country did the ‘colonization?’) but yes, many settlers, refugees fleeing antisemitic Europe and the Holocaust, and refugees of massacres and ethnic cleansing throughout the Islamic world, returning and joining their existing fellows in their original homeland, created and blessed by the international community to be shared with Arabs living there. In ‘Palestine’ yes but Jews and Arabs BOTH were Palestinians then, it was a political entity, not a nation, not a people or ethnicity. Not ‘indigenous’. Many Arabs chose to live in peace, and their ancestors now make nearly 20% of Israel’s population, while many decided to take their chances with the 4 Arab states who immediately declared war upon the creation of the state of Israel. That was the “Nakba”, the humiliation of losing that war, a war of defence, not aggression, compounded by the betrayal of the Arab states who let down the Palestinian Arabs who joined them, and who have since become pawns in multiple attempts by Islamic states to destroy Israel, today led by Iran. None of them care about the Palestinian people, only the destruction of Israel. The PLO didn’t care. Hamas doesn’t care. Hezbollah, the Houtis don’t care. Where is Jordan and Egypt? Nobody cares about Egypt’s blockade of the Gazans. So the whole narrative of ‘settler colonialism’ is a fiction, a distortion and grotesque imposition of the much truer narrative of real colonialism by Western countries. Israel is not that.
Thank you for articulating this. The current conflict has definitely hardened positions. A lot of social media is about an affective response to the situation, which feels more intense.
I appreciate the breadth of this essay quite a bit. It's thoughtful, analytical, incisive. It's a rare kind of read amongst fellow photographers. So I'm hesitating to criticize it, because I would personally like more of this type of marriage between photography and deep social analysis. Patrick Witty offers some in his posts on war photography, and we occasionally see posts about the WPA photographers, protest photographers, poverty and so on, but they tend to be general overviews. Very few with your level of philosophical context and analysis. But in the end, I think the essay is misguided.
What I mean specifically is that while I think the campus protests and your friends' IG feeds may have been a trigger to your thoughts on colonization, ultimately I don't think that subject fits with the Salgado you present here. I mean to say, it possibly could, but you talk about the breadth of his work as being "humanistic", and you bring up several powerful visual examples of his stance for the dispossessed, the primitive and the exploited, but not exclusively about his work within colonial power structures. For the most part, the examples in the essay aren't related directly to colonial subjugation: we see images of ethnic wars in some; outright capitalist exploitation (near slavery) in others; climate change in still others. I suppose one could argue that the exploitation Salgado represents all starts with the colonial mindset, but then again, someone else could argue with equal vigor that it starts with the capitalist mindset, or the racist mindset, or the mindset one gains from not accepting Jesus as one's savior, and so on.
And by leading with the campus protests and the philosophical underpinning of colonialism, you've opened your argument up to a significant sidebar on the question of colonization vis-a-vis Israel -- a debate that hasn't been reconciled in over 75 years and won't be by any single essay any of us here on Substack (or anywhere) can write. But it unfortunately leads to discussions that are removed from Salgado and the power of his work. That, in the end, is what I think is the problem; the essay is textually about a subject which Salgado only partially addresses in his many decades of work. If the examples and discussion on Salgado focused on his work, say, in former Portuguese or British colonies, the essay could succeed. But showing Salgado to be a photographer of the commonality of humanity while isolating colonialism as your single point of argument, I think, suggests you have two separate essays here.
Thank you so much for this considered response. I think you’re right. I had been ruminating over the current situation for a long time and using Salgado came somewhat later. His work has so much breadth it is difficult to imagine pinning him down to any one idea but hopefully my work in progress will stimulate more articles by me and maybe others.
I read the essay as a draft -- not in the sense of "incomplete" writing. It's really well-written; you are a very fine writer. Have you published? I can't say enough. But yeah, I think it's the "thinking" draft that I see here. I hope you continue to dive deep with this idea. I have mixed feelings about Salgado (more reverential than not); I'm always an eager reader of essays on him. But Good Luck if you choose to dive deep with the Israel/Gaza idea! You're on your own! Gird thine loins, as they say...
Thank you, I need to get back into the discipline of working with editors - https://neilscott.substack.com/p/the-year-of-submission - maybe next year! I find the desire not to offend interesting in itself, particularly when we get so many examples of calling out.
I have a serious question for you. You were great in how you responded to my critique. With a few exceptions, i don't see much criticism on Substack. We are usually a lauditory bunch. I'm not saying one way or the other as to my druthers on this, but what is your thoughts on the role criticism should take (or not) on these pages?
The community here feels like a nest of fledgling chicks: it needs to be nurtured not prodded too much. That said, I enjoy it when people let rip. This was fun https://xavibuendia.substack.com/p/df-part-7-photos-on-the-street-pt
So much in this piece, Neil: each “section” the germ of much longer discussions. The politics of language and representation are fraught and complex, especially when the suffering of so many is so great and so obvious. I have gone to Salgado, over the years, for the humanity and compassion of his eye. Everything is political and it’s Salgado’s fundamental relational disposition that moves beyond rhetoric and partisanship. I never get the sense that he begins from an ideological position. Does he exoticize his subjects? Or does he underline the obscenity of our “systems” in the face of human and planetary suffering?
Thank you for this post!
Thank you, Marcello. I think Salgado is definitely one of the good guys. The article is basically a train of thought rather than a complete essay so I hope to revisit some of these themes in the future.
Always a pleasure to read your insights in the twilight hours of sleeplessness Neil! Resonates more! Re more of your friends now sharing support for Palestine or opposition to Israel's genocide, it is depressing that many people who have been reluctant to take a stance now feel they can be absolved now on social media, now that the mainstream media has begun to include more direct questioning of such acts. As unfair as that sounds, feels like part of the process of normalisation.
Thanks Malcolm. I will try and make it more hypnotic so you can get back to sleep!
There has been a hardcore posting since start and it has been impressive to see how focused on practical action they have been (ie closing down BAE or Thales).
In such an impossible situation I understand the need to do something, anything, in the face of such horrors.
Decolonization = de-civilization = the rise and celebration of pure barbarism. October 7 proves it. Decapitations. Raping women to death. Tying up and burning families alive. Babies in ovens. Because they are Jews, Israelis, teens celebrating at a music festival. (Fanon would be proud! Jean Paul Sartre, too.)
And not colonists, actually (what country did the ‘colonization?’) but yes, many settlers, refugees fleeing antisemitic Europe and the Holocaust, and refugees of massacres and ethnic cleansing throughout the Islamic world, returning and joining their existing fellows in their original homeland, created and blessed by the international community to be shared with Arabs living there. In ‘Palestine’ yes but Jews and Arabs BOTH were Palestinians then, it was a political entity, not a nation, not a people or ethnicity. Not ‘indigenous’. Many Arabs chose to live in peace, and their ancestors now make nearly 20% of Israel’s population, while many decided to take their chances with the 4 Arab states who immediately declared war upon the creation of the state of Israel. That was the “Nakba”, the humiliation of losing that war, a war of defence, not aggression, compounded by the betrayal of the Arab states who let down the Palestinian Arabs who joined them, and who have since become pawns in multiple attempts by Islamic states to destroy Israel, today led by Iran. None of them care about the Palestinian people, only the destruction of Israel. The PLO didn’t care. Hamas doesn’t care. Hezbollah, the Houtis don’t care. Where is Jordan and Egypt? Nobody cares about Egypt’s blockade of the Gazans. So the whole narrative of ‘settler colonialism’ is a fiction, a distortion and grotesque imposition of the much truer narrative of real colonialism by Western countries. Israel is not that.
Thank you for articulating this. The current conflict has definitely hardened positions. A lot of social media is about an affective response to the situation, which feels more intense.
Salgado is the best. An amazing photographer and human being.
Yes, his oeuvre is an astonishing achievement.
Great post Neil! I love how Salgado uses his privileged position to show us these stories. And what he's done environmentally as well is remarkable!
Thank you, Xavi. Salgado is such an inspiration.