Photographers' License II

You'll hear me talk about your photographer's license. It's what happens when people see a camera around your neck and allow you to talk to them without feeling affronted by a stranger. It's what allows to spend several minutes with complete strangers making a decent portrait where they stand.

It's allowed me to spend one hour filming Turbo, and then have him spend another hour or two helping create some other pictures. It's given me courage to coax smiles from people rumored to be the roughest in the world. Most of all, it makes me another person, one who is expected to be outgoing and personable. I guess since that's what the camera projects, it's simple to project it in fact.

I was reading and found this quote from a noteworthy photographer who specialized in photographing "freaks". I found I liked/related to her statement.

    "My favorite thing is to go where I've never been....The camera is a kind of license [in getting people to      open up].... There are always two things that happen. One is recognition and the other is that it's totally peculiar. But there's some sense in which I always identify with them.... [Yet] it's impossible to get out of our skin into somebody else's...somebody else's tragedy is not the same as your own."


One thing I think I learned is that everyone has some kind of "traumatic experience" as she says elsewhere, and that her "freaks" are merely those who show everyone their trauma, while the rest of us politely hide it. Part of a portraitist's quest is to photograph the real person, but that person is often hiding deep behind a mask. The freaks just don't wear a mask.


What do you think about your license?


Leave a comment and let us know how you feel about Diane Arbus' statement about how she goes about shooting people she feels are strange. You'll know first hand how it feels after you've had me in front of your lens!