pete mcgovern

Oh, I dunno. Maier. Vivien. It's all too good to be true. The epic scale of that unacknowledged commitment, the failures of impoverishment, lovelessness and an inconsequential passing. Who doesn't have reservations? As for the two men who did make money maybe they deserved it having recognised, salvaged and successfully hyper-promoted someone whose images were destined for landfill otherwise, someone whose name and memory were dispersing like smoke on a windy day. MoMA, Steidl or collectordaily couldn't have done a fraction as much. A lot of photographers find the whole thing a bit too Sunday-supplement- ish . And she made photographs in the street, ffs. Even the BBC have squeezed her story into their arts programming at least twice despite their interest in photography normally being minus five on the Celsius scale, which is not quite below that of the Tate a decade or two ago but even so. From what is claimed, she was self-centred and covetous of her images, spending her ...

website

photo-eye link " ... spans a twelve-year period in the life of the photographer’s family, since they have boldly decided to leave the rat race in search for a simpler existence."  

Most of Cameron's photographs are blurry. Partly because of the long focus times but she was also partial to the softer effect of slight misfocus (a tactic PH Emerson wrote about appreciatingly and in full agreement). Yet her photographs made in India are pin sharp, which I originally put down to the fact that the light was so good, but now I wonder if it's also because those inhabitants didn't matter to her in the same way. Also England's rain and dismal skies (all year around, of course) meant that those who inhabited her world are forever trapped in Victorian melancholia. Her subjects, friends, family and cultural icons were shivering amateurs too, of course. The only time she photographed a professional artist's model (handsome Italian men were shipped over for painters and she nabbed one) their ability to hold still meant that one of her portraits is actually fairly sharp,but mostly they are living and breathing and waiting and moving and drowning everso slig...