Raw Art on Paper by G.P. Fieret

Two seemingly conflicting things can be true at the same time. Someone can be a profoundly troubled person (possibly suffering from a whole array of mental problems) and a gifted photographer at the same time. Photoland has adopted two strategies to deal with this situation. It either completely ignores the mental-health issues and pretends they have had no influence on the photography (Diane Arbus might be the best example). Or it stresses the mental-health issues but in a fashion that turns people whose lives would ask for our compassion into brutish caricatures: photographic savants whose life and work can be admired with the kind of thrill that the generally bored denizens of photoland would only get from, say, watching a horror movie. As you might be able to infer from the above, I am not in favour of approaching people that way. In fact, in general I am not in favour of ignoring people’s struggles — mental or otherwise, especially not if it’s done for the celebration of an idea…