One response to “PODCAST: A Photographic Life, Epsiode 323: ‘Harry Borden, Photofairs, Photo Ethics and Photo Talk’”

1. 

   Rob Campbell

   April 13, 2025 at 7:46 pm

   Grant, how come you are so surprised by, and mildly critical of Parks’s clothes? Even up in Scotland many males bought elaborate outfits at that time; the entire Carnaby Street thing went nationwide, though I suppose Parks probably didn’t take ‘em off the rack, but had them made-to-measure instead. Patrick Lichfield was a great dresser; I once tried to buy a fantastic shirt that he was photographed wearing in Vogue, but the shop had run out of them. The male peacock era didn’t last too long, though; soon, folks returned to their usual drabness of earlier times. One of my clients in Glasgow was a flagship House of Fraser department store on Buchanan Street; it had a basement boutique called Impact, and much of the clobber sold there came directly up from Harrods’ Way In, giving unsold merch a second chance oop north. Remember, these were days of The Beatles and the Stones, The Who et al. It was a fantastic cultural revolution that momentarily lifted the country from its miserable mindset of the war years and even the 50s. We had Bailey, Shrimpton (the wonderful Biba with the equally wonderful Sarah Moon), all those bright young things that had nothing to do with Oxbridge and everything to do with hope and fresh air. However, as I mentioned, all too soon the clouds returned, bringing with them another epoch of ugliness.

   Donovan was correct about the fact that coloured-skin people do prefer to appear less so in photographs. I have experienced this personally, with a musician friend from Cuba. I was asked to shoot a picture of him and his tenor sax along with another friend of mine, with his alto. The latter is Argentinian, and on the Pantone chart, would look like you or I do. Anyway, photos made, I gave them some images to consider, and the Cuban’s first remark was that he appeared too dark – please fix it for me, Rob. Which I did. I don’t see anything wrong with that; we all have our various vanities and that’s what makes us human and adds to our character. As for the attitude to the use of specific words, words depicting colour, that’s just modern reconstructing of reality and the creation of a whole new collection of minefields, playgrounds for the politically correct. To a normal soul, it is usually fairly easy to distinguish insult from simple speech pattern.

   I’m partly Scottish and partly Italian. By birth, I fall into the Brit category, and try as I might, perceive no insult in being called a Brit, and not even when some London friends refer to the Scots as sweaty socks. These are just abbreviations or rhyming slang, no insults intended or taken. Why, then, was it suddenly deemed insulting, for example, to abbreviate the word Pakistani to Paki? No, I am not just trying to be argumentative or flip; I am seriously questioning the ethics behind electing to turn references to dark skin into some kind of special, linguistic holy cow, putting everyone of colour into a bag that requires special attention and love, of itself an act of imagined superiority on the part of the politically inclined white. I tend to believe it is possibly some sort of virtue signalling thing, itself as unattractive an attitude as that being projected, in this case, onto Donovan. Yes, times do change, but as we see over recent years, literally creating fresh crimes to suit the new zealotry of today is quite an unnecessary move.

   Loading…

   Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.