Exactly. That’s a, “Daddy, is that lady OK?”, stare if I ever saw one.
“That’s no lady! That’s an attention whore!”
Sometimes the mediocre try to make the mundane appear outrageous. Sometimes it works. She should try to find out how.
If you were paying attention to this thread I pointed it out at least two locations that are in Memphis not Barcelona. I live here and I’ve been there and I know where these places are. One was taken in the donut shop I frequented when I was I was pregnant with my twins.
You really are skirting the line of blind arrogance
The very first photo, before the article even begins, is in Times Square.
If you won’t even look at the damn pictures, what point is there having a discussion about them?
if Art is to get people talking/thinking/disagreeing then she is doing an excellent job.
clearly, not everyone is seeing the same thing. I consider this a good, or at least OK.
I definitely agree with your last point, and I’m starting to think you guys are right about these photos being hammed up and staged. Damnit, I hate being taken in.
(And to the posters I was arguing with about the cop photo: I agree, I was reading too much into it and assuming a negative motive on their part when there likely wasn’t one. Thanks for shifting my perspective.)
That I disagree with, though, unless this is a matter of you defining confidence differently than I do. To me, having confidence means self-esteem and self-like, and that most definitely makes it an attractive quality in itself*.
*IMHO: Dealing with people who dislike themselves or have a huge amount of self-doubt can really suck. A little bit periodically is fine (and actually makes me feel closer to and like the person more for exposing their vulnerabilities), but when you’re frequently having to hear someone bash themselves and reassure them, interacting with them can be really draining and unpleasant.
I find this interesting.
Spoiler Alert: She’d already eaten the ham.
And when you drift away, that then proves to them that they’re unlikable and terrible, which only deepens the cycle. (Not that that’s your fault; just noting the cruel irony of the self-fulfilling prophecy.)
Why would there be? We are not mind readers. We should try not to judge people based on a 1/1000th of a second snapshot.
Though this made me try to think of a single moment so blatant that no reasonable person could avoid taking it as mockery of another person. I’m having a difficult time coming up with reasonable ones (though I admit they may exist).
Yep. (Probably a large part of why I had no friends until fairly recently.)
Yeah, largely this.
-
She’s taking like 100 frames a second or some such. You will ALWAYS get weird expressions, gestures, moments.
-
In at least one of the pictures, she’s provoking reaction, not just sitting there, pigeon-toed. this one. She’s standing there, slack-jawed and drooling, looking like she needs only a swamp, an axe and banjo music to go on a rampage. If I was that girl who’s looking at her, I’d have a similar expression.
-
Given that she’s set up the reaction in one photo (above), I can easily see her kidding around with the cops and saying “How do you think I’d look with a cop-hat?” and then putting on a sad face
So–I’m getting a fundamental “dishonest” vibe here from this woman and the pics. Again–photograph ANYONE in motion or just talking for a few minutes with a high speed camera and you’ll always get weird expressions and gestures.
Do I think that fat people suffer real discrimination? Yes.
Do I think that fat people get occasional weird looks and obnoxious comments? Yes
Do I think this woman is constantly ridiculed and abused beyond the bounds of all reason constantly for no other reason that being overweight and that people literally recoil in horror like that little kid on the swing or the girl in the pic where the artist makes herself look like Ned Beatty in Deliverance? No.
Do I think she’s dishonest or psycho and is either an attention whore or a paranoid (or both)? Yes.
Yep, just ask Beyonce.
The photos would have to be at a much higher resolution, for one, so we could actually see a reasonable amount of detail. They’d need to be less busy so background and non-subject persons/bystanders are not distracting from the focus/subject of the photo. We’d need to be able to see the subjects’ eyes well enough to be able to clearly, or at least reasonably so, determine where they are looking, and see that there is little to nothing else within their line of sight that they might be looking at instead. So, sunglasses, blinks, looking downward, none of those work.
Hell, you could even manufacture that they have nothing else in their line of sight, by carefully chosen cropping, and it would still work as a piece of art to tell the intended story (although of course at that point the honesty of the work would be in dispute).
It would be really hard to get all of these circumstances to come together out in the world, yeah. The photographer would need to get a lot closer to her, for one, which of course would then influence how people react. People do naturally turn to look at what the camera is pointed at, because it’s a fairly big clue that someone thinks there’s something interesting to look at. The cop photo, at least, fills the frame well enough that there’s no confusion about who the subject is, and that they are looking at/interacting with her, but then fails on the grounds of “what does a hat have to do with her weight?”
She’s clearly reacting to that fattie in the front row! How can you not see that!! 
Seriously. That looks like an ad for Zoloft or something. If I were with my kids in the park and saw her like that, I would certainly take a glance or two (and possibly ask her if she needed help).
This is what I was trying to say when I asked if she was still considered a photographer. Instead of making a name for herself through photographic skill, it looks like she’s opting for controversy instead.
Why do you hate fat people so much!? 
Also, what I don’t get is what reaction she’s expecting when she has someone essentially set up a photo shoot of her in these busy places. When I see that, I definitely look.
“Hmmm, a photo shoot. Is that someone famous or a tourist? Nope, no one I would know - must be a tourist. Jeez, I wish they’d get the hell out of the middle of the buy sidewalk. They’re really in the freaking way. Annoying jackass. And what a weird, blank look. Standing weird, too. I wonder if something is wrong with her. Oh, well - gotta get to the grocery.”
And yes, I may throw a glare their way if they’re clearly preventing pedestrian traffic from moving along. But, she looks like shit and she’s in the damn way and someone is taking photos of her for some weird reason despite the blank looks and awful posture.
With respect to all the theories and cites colander has thrown out, I would actually agree that fat women are seen as inferior even to fat men. BUT, this “art” doesn’t demonstrate that. It demonstrates a person in the damn way and looking really weird. With respect to the cops - yeah, they’re being annoying. Maybe they’re doing it to make fun of the tourist or the clearly clueless idiot standing in the middle of the sidewalk. Or perhaps they’re commenting on her weight. But they are the ONLY ones that remotely demonstrate her ridiculous point, and even that is ambiguous. So she failed.
It’s a matter of perspective. Compared to colander’s attempts to whip up some outrage, she succeeded.
Yeah, if these are actually a representative sample of her photographic/compositional skills, it makes me wonder how she managed to get a position teaching it. (Those who can’t do, teach?)
The other series shown on her website didn’t impress me either. This guy does. So does this woman (who also shoots street photography).