"In one of the greatest acts of dissociation I can recall, Koudelka walks into the bantustans of the West Bank – a region teeming with a few million imprisoned and brutalised human beings, and is moved by the destruction of the landscape! That is, he choses one of the greatest physical structures of political, cultural, historical and social segregation and negation concocted in modern history and reproduces it in his images as an apolitical statement about the environment. In fact, he gloats about it when he explains:"
---------------
It
is difficult to fathom the cowardice that underpins Koudelka’s
prioritisation of a mythical holy landscape over a real human one. It
takes a tremendous amount of ignorance, or an equally large amount of
hypocrisy to make such a claim. I find it unbelievable that this
otherwise intelligent man spent at least 3 weeks on multiple trips over 4
years amongst the dispossessed, harassed, humiliated, imprisoned,
brutalised, demean, denigrated, violated, trapped and helpless
Palestinian population, and came back with an ‘apolitical outrage’ about
the landscape. But Koudelka must have seen it all. He just chose not to
say anything about it, to turn his eyes away from it, to erase his
moral conscience about it. He saw it all, but he chose not to include it
in the photos, or in the text. And now not even in his interview. - See
more at:
http://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2013-11-19/a-photographer-who-obscures-the-victims/#sthash.YNCNbCtI.dpuf
It
is difficult to fathom the cowardice that underpins Koudelka’s
prioritisation of a mythical holy landscape over a real human one. It
takes a tremendous amount of ignorance, or an equally large amount of
hypocrisy to make such a claim. I find it unbelievable that this
otherwise intelligent man spent at least 3 weeks on multiple trips over 4
years amongst the dispossessed, harassed, humiliated, imprisoned,
brutalised, demean, denigrated, violated, trapped and helpless
Palestinian population, and came back with an ‘apolitical outrage’ about
the landscape. But Koudelka must have seen it all. He just chose not to
say anything about it, to turn his eyes away from it, to erase his
moral conscience about it. He saw it all, but he chose not to include it
in the photos, or in the text. And now not even in his interview. - See
more at:
http://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2013-11-19/a-photographer-who-obscures-the-victims/#sthash.YNCNbCtI.dpuf-------------------------
On the same issue, Jonathan Cook writes:
The
elderly Koudelka has reached a point in his career and his life where
one might have hoped that he would not have to worry too much about
contradicting dominant narratives (i.e. myths) or about damaging his
reputation. But it seems saying critical things about Israel, rather
than just showing them, is career-death even for someone like Koudelka.
Instead he starts the interview observing that he had always before
avoided visiting the “holy land” and finally came under pressure and
with great reluctance: “I don’t want to get mixed up with Israel because
it’s very, very complicated”. - See more at:
http://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2013-11-19/a-photographer-who-obscures-the-victims/#sthash.YNCNbCtI.dpuf
The
elderly Koudelka has reached a point in his career and his life where
one might have hoped that he would not have to worry too much about
contradicting dominant narratives (i.e. myths) or about damaging his
reputation. But it seems saying critical things about Israel, rather
than just showing them, is career-death even for someone like Koudelka.
Instead he starts the interview observing that he had always before
avoided visiting the “holy land” and finally came under pressure and
with great reluctance: “I don’t want to get mixed up with Israel because
it’s very, very complicated”. - See more at:
http://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2013-11-19/a-photographer-who-obscures-the-victims/#sthash.YNCNbCtI.dpuf
A photographer who obscures the victims
A photographer who obscures the victims
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