That park is in Memphis, and I am racking my brain to remember where. I am thinking off of Poplar Ave near Midtown.
You know, I have been wondering the same thing about hir (is this a word yet?) since he/she has joined but never bothered to ask.
In my experience, confidence is important for three reasons:
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The obvious one: being confident generally makes you feel better about yourself and your experience of the world.
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To a surprising extent, other people pick up on how you feel about yourself/your actions and mirror it back. When you carry yourself as though you’re ashamed of yourself or your appearance, people will often treat you as though you’re something shameful. Ditto disgusting or inferior, etc.
I personally knew a girl who obviously believed that she was hideous and carried herself/behaved as though she was, so I didn’t think she was much to look at either, until one day when I was startled to realize that her facial features were really quite beautiful.
Another example: if you trip and treat it as though it’s cringe-worthy, other people generally will too. If, on the other hand, you laugh it off as no big deal, often they will as well.
Obviously, it’s not a magical Emperor’s-new-clothes kind of thing, but I find it’s a large factor.
- It’s easier to interact well with people when you’re confident about yourself, which they respond to, which often makes your interactions with them better. (As long as you aren’t arrogant or completely oblivious about yourself.)
Edited to add: Sorry, didn’t include quotes of the posts I was responding to. And I’m too tired to bother now.
No hyperbole at all. Banquet Bear tried to explain this way back on page one, but I’ll give it another go.
I’m going to use a famous art photographer’s work as an example. Take a look at the second photograph on this page. The one of the woman’s face. It’s a photograph of a destitute sharecropper in her thirties taken by the journalist James Agee and published in his now famous 1941 book of essays and figures Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Although her face is creased with wrinkles you’d normally expect to see on someone twice her age, the woman photographed shows no self-consciousness. She stares unflinchingly at the viewer, her hair immaculately styled. Yet something about the way her lips are drawn makes the portrait feel unsettling. It may take the viewer a moment to realize it, but the reason her mouth looks off is because this woman is completely toothless.
In my estimation, the photo is meant to evoke feelings not only about the dignity and pride of the contemporary American rural poor, but also the weight of the hardships that those who live in poverty suffer. I think it succeeds at that and I haven’t found many people who will argue that it’s not Art. Yet, everything about the photograph is staged. The stony, challenging gaze of the woman, her solemnly parted hair and the fact that she wears no dentures for the pose were all deliberately ordered and planned aspects of the photograph that don’t necessarily accurately represent the day-to-day appearance and affect of the woman in the picture. Certainly, Agee could have selected any number of other subjects from among the ranks of the poor, many of whom had fewer wrinkles and more choppers, and he could have directed the subject to assume a more natural expression. But he didn’t. He selected a particular person and posed them in a particular way that they wouldn’t have normally chosen to pose for a portrait, and he did it all in the service of his artistic point.
Does all of that invalidate the artistic value of the photo?
Thanks supergoose for taking your time to explain the importance of confidence.
I agree with you supergoose, but I don’t think this lady suffers from low confidence. If I am to judge her by her art, and that’s what I’m doing, I’m guessing she thinks quite highly of herself, to the point of thinking others may be stupid enough to fall for her little show.
But I don’t agree with folks who say, “Oh, it’s ok to be fat, just stand straight and dress nicely and…” blah blah blah. I don’t have to stand straight if I don’t want to, and if I slouch, that is no excuse for others to mock me in the street. So, I think the point is, this artist is a big phony. She pretended her art was one thing, but it’s really just a trick to make folks think that this hammed up farce is a regular day in the life for her.
ETA: I just realized my post was all over the place here, but I am saying that on the one hand, I agree that confidence is great, on the other hand, I don’t think this artist has an issue with confidence and on the third hand, I don’t think people should be using low confidence as an excuse to judge fat people anyway.
I don’t know if you guys are missing this or what, but the photos were taken in Barcelona. That’s not in America. It’s in the first sentence of the article. If you won’t even read the damn article, what point is there in even having a discussion about this?
Well, I’m pretty sure this photois about 20 yards from where I live.
ETA: for the record, I don’t live in Barcelona.
The second quote was in reference to Agee’s work
So, are you changing your original position that you have no reason to believe Morris-Cafiero staged the photographs since she many times was also in a “pose … deliberately ordered and planned aspects of the photograph that don’t necessarily accurately represent the day-to-day appearance and affect of the woman in the picture.”
Some of the photos were taken in Barcelona, some of them are in New York which is in America.
Ladies and gentlemen, we now pause for an intermission break as colander goes back to read the article she didn’t read and finds a cutting, witty spin for how she can condemn others to do what she failed to do herself.
I’m sure she does get shit talked to her for the way she looks. She says so and I can see where it would happen. I once had the misfortune of hearing some guys in a jeep yell horrible things at an obese woman who was pumping gas next to them for (I guess) daring to be fat in their line of vision. I believe what she’s saying for the most part, I just don’t think she translated it well in this series.
I also get that she thinks she’s making a kind of social commentary. To me it’s obvious that she’s setting up this situation to succeed. The clothes, the posing, the pigeon-toed/knock kneed stances and blank stares while standing in the middle of heavy-traffic, public areas. To me, she’s trying to invite people to look at her scornfully to prove her theory.
She says hundreds of photographs are taken for every one you see (she specifically worded it this way in the interview I listened to and insinuates it in her “about” section on her website) so there are thousands or tens of thousands she’s scoured to find these. I’m just saying that in most of these I can’t be sure these people are looking at her with scorn. Hell in a LOT of them I can’t even tell she is the one being even being looked at. So to me, if you have to look that hard to find so little I’m saying it’s a fail for me. Others see it differently, that’s fine. If this is art then that’s the way it works.
Try reading for comprehension. I see Daley Plaza in Chicago in there, too. She plainly states the bleacher shot is in Times Square.
I don’t see it either.
I was thinking of this thread last night. I was walking down the street and a woman had a camera in her hands, posed to take a picture of something or someone. It wasn’t in front of a major tourist location, and not obvious as to what she was taking the picture of.
Full confession here. I have to admit that I turned my head in the direction of her camera. The man who was being photographed looked at me looking at him. We both made that awkward quarter smile of acknowledging each other’s presence in the universe, and went on.
I can’t remember what was on my mind at the time. Chances are my facial expression would have reflected my thoughts rather than impression on him, which was nada.
He was a guy who was being photographed and I glanced at him.
There’s nothing in her photos which give me an impression of anything else.
I think women who say “Women like confidence guys, so be confident” are mistaken. It’s classic implicit association bias. People who are confident usually have something to be confident about. It could be humour, it could be good looks, it could be an ability to engage with people easily. That underlying aspect is what women actually like, and they mistake it for liking confidence.
Súil Dubh, time travel may not be possible now, but someone from the future could have picked her up to allow her to expunge gas in the Hindenburg and make it crash. One must not be so quick to rule these things out.
How’d we go from discussing art photography to sociological studies? I wasn’t talking about sociological studies.
Exactly. It’s not about what this study or that study said, it’s about the success or failure of the artistic thesis of this particular photo series. Most of the photos don’t even show anyone obviously looking at her, nevermind with disgust.
Maybe looking at a rattling map. More likely blinking.
Blinking and smiling for his girlfriend’s camera.
Who’s looking at her? (This was shot in Chicago, btw.)
Seriously, who’s looking at her?
Can’t even see his eyes to know where he’s looking!
Etc. I’m not seeing what she wants me to see. She had to tell me that it was there and I still don’t see it. She has failed in telling her intended story with her images.
James Agee on the other hand, succeeded in telling a novel with his. I didn’t even need written words to explain it to me.
As an artist… well, no shit. Art is, by and large, VERY purposeful. I don’t see anyone disputing that art is done on purpose, usually with a great deal of thought and consideration and decision-making behind it.
Which is why none of her photos are convincing support of her thesis.
You know men like confident women too, right? (And women like confident women, men like confident men, clients like confident vendors, bosses like confident employees…)
And yes, it’s hard to be confident if you haven’t developed yourself as a human being. The thing about confidence is, if you “fake it til you make it,” you generally end up learning those skills just by repeated practice of putting yourself out there.
If my post is the one which kicked off the confidence tangent, I wasn’t clear about what I meant. My friend who is a larger girl is often frankly studied in the same way that heavily tatted people and folks with deliberately funky hair are I think because observers feel they have a right to assess and judge those physical characteristics we appear to have control over.
Most adults don’t stare overlong at a person with a missing limb or other deformity, but many seem to lose manners when contemplating a person who is over or underweight. It’s as though the apparent choice to look a certain way leaves others with the impression they can rate, rank, and compare. It’s rude as hell, but the only way to escape an appraisal is to square your shoulders and return the stare, or else risk a confrontation and verbally call them out. People who study my friend quickly figure out that she’ll just continue to look elsewhere rather than meet their gaze, so onlookers get away with staring at her far longer than I would ever allow them to study me. So sure, confidence to give what you’re getting would go a long way to restore dignity and remind people of their manners, but confidence probably won’t prevent people from taking a look and making that initial assessment. I would love to say to my friend “Hell, girl, *own it * if you want them to back off”, but there’s no guarantee that will work, either.
I’m pretty sure that own it and stare back is what Haley is trying to say with her project, except she doesn’t appear to be any fatter than the bulk of us so I doubt she’s catching any more shade than most. I also notice a lack of overweight observers in her photos, which looks like another attempt to make herself look unique and special. All her pics say to me is “Watch me be an asshole, get in the way, pose, and capture the annoyance of onlookers”, which isn’t the objective she’s claiming. This dialogue has done a better job of discussing the judgement overweight people perceive, and it doesn’t require a contrived set or heavily biased editor in order to illustrate that point.
That works out well, then, because what you’ve quoted was a reply to Troppus, not you.
You are perhaps confused. You’ve quoted my reply to FaerieBeth, who is apparently not so clear on the concept.
You’ve succeeded in convincing me that there is pretty much no photo that you, personally, will interpret as support of her thesis. I find this interesting.
You realize this is a general discussion among many people and not an exclusive conversation between only two people, yeah? And that the conversational topic is centered around art, and not sociology?
I didn’t get that from what she said at all.
I honestly don’t know what you’re trying to get at here. Yes, I think an actor’s headshot or product photography would be just as ineffective in supporting her thesis. And yes, I think her execution of her series also fails to support her thesis. As an artist, she has failed in her stated goal, which I’ve said from the beginning.
It would have been really interesting to see a series of photos that were executed well, artistically sound, and supported her thesis. I’m disappointed she failed. Maybe someone else can go out and try to execute the thesis better. I would like to see that. It just hasn’t happened here. I suspect what HAS happened is a series that reveals to us how deep her insecurities are (and evidently, how deeply in denial she is that she has them). The photos, or more precisely, her artist’s statement/explanation of her photos, says more about her than it does about the people who were her subjects. That wouldn’t be bad if they were intended to be self-portraits. But they weren’t.
Good fine art photography is emotionally evocative, and tells a story. Many many people in this thread do not see the story she says is there. That makes it unsuccessful fine art photography. Contrast that to Ansel Adams, James Agee, any of a score of professional and dedicated amateur fine art photographers I know personally. These are all people who don’t need to explain their photos to me in order for me to see the story in them.
Also, I’ll be blunt, I find her composition leaves much to be desired, despite her claims to consider it carefully. I get that self-portraiture it really difficult – I’ve always hated it because I can’t see and adjust the framing before taking the picture. But these photos don’t look composed. They look like vacation snaps, not fine art. In a lot of them, there is no clear subject, not even her. I think that’s a failure of execution, too.