cry baby cry

I'm pretty sure a lot of people reading this would have already seen one or more of Jill Greenberg's 'End Times' photographs. If not, you can see more of them and what they're about here.

This exhibition has hit the news big time recently. Jill Greenberg used photographs of crying and distraught children to illustrate her point of view on the current political and social climate in the US - 'As a parent I have to reckon with the knowledge that our children will suffer for the mistakes our government is making. Their pain is a precursor of what is to come.'

When I first saw the photographs and read this I came to an instant conclusion: cool idea and excellent photographs. Children cry all the time and the fact that lollypops were taken away from them in order to make them cry meant nothing to me because obviously it's not going to harm them at all. Crying is just a tool that babies and young toddlers use to get what they want or need...it's pretty instinctual and almost meaningless a lot of the time, and anyone that's witnessed little kids having toys taken away from them in a shop can see that.

After doing a fair amount of reading on the subject and thinking deep down I've come to the conclusion that it's just not that simple. Jill Greenberg sat these children down and photographed them in a very intimate, and a little bit distressing situation. My problem isn't children crying, or the nakedness. It's just the fact that the photographer and parent stuck them in front of the camera and made them stay there, even if they didn't want to. There's just something a little bit wrong in that...like creating child beauty queens and all that sort of stuff. It makes me feel queasy like Anne Geddes does. Anyway, I've found this debate fascinating.

However despite my opinion or any others on the topic of children crying, I find it disappointing that the desired meaning of the photographs is being lost. If you look at these photos individually without thinking about how they were made, they are very effective in their message. Unfortunately the meaning of the photographs is completely overwhelmed by the controversy of this 'child abuse' debate. The Paul Kopeikin Gallery says that 'She utilizes this uncomfortable image as a way to break through to the pop mainstream and begin a national dialogue.' But surely Jill Greenberg must have been aware of what controversy this would cause, surely she would have been aware that her methods would overtake the meaning her project? She certainly has begun a national and international dialogue; however the dialogue is about a completely different issue. Maybe she could have achieved this without such controversial methods...but then would they have been so successful?

Wow...very very eerie - I just noticed that I'm listening to 'Cry Baby Cry' by The Beatles. Apt.

Now, to end my Jill Greenberg rant, I do think something very positive has come out of all of this in the end - relatively apathetic people are now discussing photography, art and politics more passionately than I've ever seen.

And now, in other news....I finally got a bloody job!

The last two weeks for me have consisted of signing up with temp agency after temp agency and waiting by the telephone. After quite a lot of screwing around and a tiny bit of self pity I was finally offered a reasonable position this afternoon. I'm set to start next week in an Events/Marketing role for the University of South Australia, helping to organise an Expo coming up in a few months. Should be fun hopefully... but basically I'm just so happy to be working in a role in town with decent pay!

Went out for (one of my oldest friends from school) Adelle's birthday last week. A whole bunch of us had Chinese food then went to The Gov to see a local funk band called New White Sneakers. After much funky dancing we also checked out a little bar on Waymouth Street called the Lizard Lounge. I'm still very much realising that there's a little bit more to Adelaide than I thought... there are still a lot of places I have never visited and people that I haven't met!

What else have I been up to?

I attended my first Balboa class last week. It's a partnered dance from around the same era as Lindyhop, but it's much more closed in and formal than the type of dancing you'd know as swing. It's almost like dancing to swing music with mamba(?) steps. (Please correct me if that is a terrible description). At first I didn't want to learn Balboa but I realised that it's pretty important as it quite often gets incorporated into normal swing dancing...and once I tried it I found out it's also a lot of fun! Plus, I can wear heels! Woo hoo! If anyone's reading this and is not getting sick of my excessive enthusiasm for links in this post, you can check out the site for my swing dance classes here.

I visited my buddy Jaan who has cystic fibrosis yesterday. He's in hospital after a nasty operation on his nasal system. He looked fantastic; as healthy as I've seen him in the last year and that's 4 days after a huge operation. I'm hoping to go the the annual 65 Roses cystic fibrosis Ball at the end of this month but finances may stop me unfortunately :(

I think I'm out of things to discuss for now. I hope to have some photos of my trip through North America developed soon... it will have to wait for my first paycheque however, so we'll see how that goes.

Thank you for reading : )

Becky

What I'm listening to at the moment: Beck, Seachange
Really cool documentary I saw last night that you should 'czech' out: Czech Dream