Panel Discussion –7:30 PM

Moderator: Tanya Turkovich

                   Donna DeCesare

       Ellen Tolmie

       Torrance York

       Irene Villasenor

       Isaiah Miller

 

Audience:  I have a question.  You commented about that you were surprised to encounter young people who were not pessimistic about the future, or pessimistic in general.  Can you talk a little bit about why young people are pessimistic or why you think they are?

Miller:  I probably could talk a lot about that.  I think just the way – like I know going to school in New York City there was this huge sense of you won’t be able to make any changes.  I can’t speak for all kids nationwide, but I know that even going to an alternative high school where I was given the opportunity to learn about all kinds of social issues and movements, there was still his sense that I would end up just like the last generation, or just right here.  This sense of being always in New York.  That I would just end up in New York in the same class as my parents, and in the same kind of struggles that my parents have.  Just kind of like when you’re taught to look at things on just the surface level, you tend to not understand that there’s actually life behind these things that make them, even if they don’t appear on the surface to have changed, there’s an entire evolution that goes within those kind of larger themes. 

Audience:  Isaiah, I’m thinking about your school is pretty unique compared to what most people probably think of in high school.  What’s interesting to me, with our collaboration with Human Rights Watch and stuff we’re talking about what is the kind of content that a high school teacher is going to feel comfortable showing to their high school class; what are the kinds of issues – you know, you have to provide curriculum materials because the teacher is going to want to be well-enough informed, they’re going to want to know what kind of issues are going to come up, so what I’m thinking is we keep thinking as educators that it’s such a good thing to use in high school to learn more about social issues beyond what they see in their daily life or beyond their country, become more sensitive, and it sounds like for you, you had such a heavy dose of that exposure that it actually wound up making you cynical instead of hopeful.  That’s definitely one of the things that comes up with you bring human right into the classroom, that people end up thinking, Well, I can’t do anything about it, so why should I care? 

Miller:  Yeah, my teachers were activists, but then they ended up here teaching us about how the world is still as bizarre and as scary as it was before.  To me, I didn’t understand that they went through this whole life of changing. I just saw that they’re here and nothing’s better for them because the world still sucks

Panel:  It’s a whole lot better than it was when we started out. And all of your teachers – they all have changed.

Miller:  Also, like when I can only understand these things vaguely, they just seem like huge concepts, you know, I definitely think I blew them out of proportion.  Like I remember this scene in Annie Hall where Woody Allen as a kid is sitting in this psychiatrist chair and he’s asked why, what’s wrong with you?  And he says, “Well, the world is expanding at a phenomenal rate; it could just collapse on us at any moment,” and I can totally relate to that. 

Panel:  But it was just a movie.

Audience:  Irene, I was wondering if you could say a little more about the expectations that BAM had for the piece and when you finished it--I guess I’m speaking specifically about the hip-hop piece that you showed a little bit of--did you feel like their reception--did you feel like you had been a little naïve in assuming that they would honor whatever piece came up with the kind of respect that you would deserve.  In other words, do you feel that your anger has something to do with a surprise that you though they would treat you differently, or just anger, that it’s obviously just the way it is and that there’s not much we can do about it so this really sucks? 

Villasenor:  That’s a very interesting question.  Well, whenever I get treated like shit I’m always going to get angry, because I’m always going to expect better from everyone in general.  The Brooklyn Museum was a very interesting experience for us, and also for the organization itself, because we entered into this contract with them, and you may call it naïve, or you may just call it the way things ought to be, but we expected that if they’re going to ask us, our expectation was that they would honor our work and give it at least the basic amount of respect and attention.  I mean, we can’t all be like Russell Simmons or be like somebody’s throne or Missy Elliott’s garbage suit

Panel:  . . . these were other things in the exhibit . . .

Villasenor:  Yes, but we all can’t be that.  It also is a good reality check on how museums are sometimes very disorganized, and how they set themselves up.  Originally, the hip-hop show was going to be a fashion show, so I remember a lot of us went to a big general meeting where we talked to fashion theorists about the importance of all these different things, which was a trip, but throughout their process it was not very planned.  Usually museum shows take about several years to pay the fees and the rights and get everybody’s stuff in from around the world, but this was a kind of slap-dash show.  The tactic by the executive director to us sounded like, well, he’s going to take on this position – he really wanted to make the Brooklyn Museum open up to the community which makes total sense.  So one way they tried to honor that was organizing this hip-hop exhibit.  It was called Rhyme, Rhyme and Rages or something?

Panel:  Rhymes, Rhythms and Rage, but that was like the fourth name of the show.  By the time the show actually happened, it had gone through several permeations.  What was great was that the tape they made up ended up being much more relevant to what the show finally ended up being.  The fashion show that it was supposed to – it wasn’t going to be like a runway, it was going to be a show about hip-hop fashion.

 

Villasenor:  Which was very disturbing to us young producers because some of us were just like, Hey, this is Brooklyn, you have all these things going on, all these local acts.  Like when we interviewed black stars--we went to a bookstore by Park Slope.  That’s their store; that’s their scene.  We expected and we even suggested that they contact local hip-hop artists to be part of their opening show, but they didn’t.  They went with the Russell Simmons Company Incorporated for that stuff.  And according to many people who saw that show, that film was the unofficial audience favorite because a lot of people felt like this is where the dialog happens.  Like I don’t want to see somebody’s toilet seat or somebody’s throne.  People expected that it was going to be this thing, but it was just so disappointing because we expected that this piece would be heard.  If they wanted to follow the politics of giving youth a voice, they didn’t follow through on their execution.  They put us in the last room next to the hip-hop gift shop, and they put our video on a smaller screen with two mics and headphones coming out, so for a while only two people could watch the whole thing.  So then we kicked up a ruckus and we said no, no, no.  So they took it off so more people could hear it.  So it’s very interesting about that.  Then it was a traveling show, so it went to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Yurbobwana (??) and we heard the same kind of thing, like it wasn’t well presented, it was kind of at the end, tacked-on, so it was very unfortunate to deal with that.  But it just reminds us that even though it will take a lot of effort just to get the work done and get young people to work with each other in a healthy manner, it’s not enough.  You also have to protect yourself.

Panel:  I’d like to add, as the director of Y.O TV at the time, who was sort of the interface between the museum and the youth, a couple of things.  We learned definitely that in the contracts we needed to say things like exactly how the work is to be treated.  We need to put in that we want our piece to be in the press packet and in the PR, because we, as a tiny organization, don’t have time or resources to do enough PR in addition.  So this show was, first of all, it was the Brooklyn Museum of Art and not BAM, I just wanted to clarify that for you, and they did change the show a bunch of times, they had adjunct curators because they didn’t really have enough in-staff people, so they kept firing curators from what I understood.  It was an exception for them too, and then of course people who hired us, who respected our ideas, those weren’t the people who ended up putting the show up.  Like the Director of Education is now at MOMA, but in between she was freelancing.  So, if it had all been written in the contract maybe the piece would have been placed better.  I think as much as Irene talked about feeling dissed, I’m sorry to hear that’s what she’s focused on now, because I think also there were some great parts about it . . .

Villasenor:  . . . Oh, definitely . . .

Panel: There were great opportunities of access and things like that.  They asked us to take down the volume at a point where someone says “fuck,” I think, and we did that, and then they sort of forgot that and when they put the piece on headphones, we’re like, “Why is it on headphones?” and they said, “Well, there’s profanity,” and we’re like, “No, not unless you can read lips because we took it down, remember?  We censored it in that way.”  So that was one of the reasons why they finally took it off that.  But when we first sat down, these fashion theorists had all these sections to the exhibit like deconstruction and fragmentation and things like that, and then the OTV crew was talking about all this hip-hop slang and maybe we should do a dictionary of hip-hop slang because nobody knows what that is, so it was very interesting to be sitting at this table with the curators and the kids and trying to help them interpret and understand each other.  So I think the Brooklyn Museum actually learned a lot from the OTV youth and I think that EVD learned a lot that whenever we work on these things, we have to try to make sure that we see the work through to the end, and that we have some control over how that’s presented.

Audience:  I’ve personally never heard the term “fashion theorist.”  Could you maybe just school me a little bit on that?

Panel:  Okay, well, there’s a woman named Valerie Steele who does--well at FIT there are a couple of people who teach fashion history, that kind of thing.  She wrote a book on the high heel shoe or something?

Panel:  Yeah, the high heel shoe, dominatrix outfits, lingerie, stuff like that.

Panel:  So it’s basically like the history of fashion and what it means.  It can be really fascinating.  I have a friend who’s really into that.  It’s one of those things where it can get really silly and nonsensical, but if you present it in another way and you take it in depth and political implications, yada, yada, it can be great. 

Panel:  It’s just that it was somewhat absurd in this instance because we were sitting here in this room with all these people and the OTV crew was there to learn from it, but also to document it for them, and they were taping the whole conversation and that was going to be part of their research for planning the show, and it just turned out to be such a different show in the end, so that was just the wrong avenue for them, I guess.

Panel:  Shall we go to the panel then?  Okay.

(Arranging people and mics)

Panel:  . . . guidelines for the ethical reporting on children and young people under 18-years-old.  So UNICEF itself can be a resource for people that are working in the representation of children.  It’s not that these are rules, but they’re guidelines and they’re something to think about.  I like to think of UNICEF for the outside world to come to us, especially artists or people who are involved in representation, as a resource, before you begin photographing or representing children, that you might consider first thinking about what UNICEF is doing and maybe what they think about how those things should be done.  So I’m just going to pass these around.  They’re also on our web site; so you might if you’re interested, check it out there.  So I’m not sure how I’m going to pull all these various things together, although I think they’re very related.  From Ellen starting off the day with the critique of the depiction of children and exploring these unexamined assumptions that we might have, and my first impulse is not to necessarily ask Ellen more questions, but to almost throw back the questions on you guys in having this sort of dialog which is, I’m not sure how many of you are involved in either the representation of “other,” be it children or just other people that you’re using subjects in your work, but I guess my question to you would be, from what you’ve heard here today, have you rethought or reexamined your own assumptions about how you work with your subjects. 

Audience:  I’ve been working on a project for like five years now, and it sort of started as a passion; I came upon an area that just sort of drew me to it, the beauty of it and it’s a place in where their one aspect of the religion is to practice animal sacrifice ceremonies.  I was really drawn there basically because of the activity that was going on, and I think my struggle with it is I don’t really know what I’m doing to tell you the truth.  Like I come back with images that I’m really, really close to, but it’s not like I have an assignment to go there and--like when I was shooting press they’d say “go do this” and then I’d come back with these images and they’d say “fine, you’ve completed your job, blah, blah, blah.”  This is something that is so huge that I really don’t even know how to go forward with it, and I constantly am battling with my imagery, if it’s political or social or it’s about religion or if it’s about death or what it’s about, but it’s so--it’s a really difficult battle for me, more than anything, and I have a hard time talking about it and since September 11 it really means a whole lot more to me because there’s a lot of pressure on these people through other religions to quit doing what they’re doing, Indonesia only recognizes two religions which are Christianity and Muslims, and even though there are a lot Buddhists there, it’s really their agenda.  So I guess that’s all I really wanted to say, and I wanted your guys’ opinions on that as documentary photographers who obviously work on assignment and do these things, if you’ve ever come across that.  Because like I said, I’m just very confused.

DeCesare:  I started taking pictures when I was a child.  My dad was an amateur photographer and I mostly took landscape pictures.  For me, photography was an escape from all the bad stuff and I liked making landscape scenes that were peaceful.  Then I found myself when I went to graduate school going to Northern Island and documenting the conflict in Northern Ireland.  When I first started, my mother’s an immigrant, she’s from Scotland, she’s from an Irish background, so there’s a lot of history, she’s working class, she’s the first person in my family to graduate from college, the first person, in fact, to graduate from high school in my immediate family, my mother and father.  So I felt like, well, I’ve grown up in this family where I sort of always connected with the vulnerable people or the people who had to struggle, so that’s a part of it.  But I found myself drawn to El Salvador and--like you’re describing--not really knowing exactly why, and it wasn’t until after the war in El Salvador when I had to deal with a lot of my own trauma of all the things that I had witnessed there that I went into therapy and I started dealing with some things from my past and one of the things that obviously had been a major impact in my life, and that I knew but kind of pushed aside, was the fact that when I was 5-years-old, my 2-year-old brother opened the door of the car when we were going to the beach and fell out.  He didn’t die, but he was brain injured as a result.  That had a very huge impact--I was the one who was the witness.  I told my parents to stop the car.  I saw it.  So I started to realize in my photographs of children that I was repeating something--the anguished face, the body on the side of the road--that I was repeating something that was something deep from my early childhood.  And that that’s not the only reason why I do what I do, but I think that that experience and dealing with that experience in my life has given me a certain kind of strength to be able to photograph those situations that some other people wouldn’t be able to with sensitivity. So I think we all have--I don’t know what your situation is, but I think we all need to know our own story very much so, because in a way that’s your most powerful, passionate work that you’re going to do creatively, will be connected to that in some way.  Not in a literal sense, necessarily, but in some way.  I teach documentary photography now at the University of Texas and that’s one of the exercises that I do with my class always is for them to do an autobiographical piece to try and discover what is their story so that they can then become empowered to see how to channel it in creative ways.  So that’s . . .

Audience:  I feel very strongly drawn to this.  Some of the work is very violent, and some of the details are of some very violent activity, and I have such mixed responses.  There’s one body of work that I’m doing that is more abstract, then there’s the also support work that I find myself shooting more with 35, most of work is done in 4x5 cameras, and the other support work that’s done with 35 which I’m not even that interested in, but I feel like I need to do this in order to show support of the other side of the work?  But I sometimes feel like I’m this bloodthirsty vampire, but I’m not an evil person, but the work looks evil and I scare myself sometimes.  I don’t know.

Panel:  I haven’t seen your work so I don’t know, but all I can say is you need to figure out what it is that’s drawing you.  You were saying, whether it’s the struggle of those people or . . .

Audience:  Yeah, there’s a story there somewhere and I guess sooner or later I’ll figure it out.

Panel:  There’s actually a filmmaker, Chris Marker, who just a documentary at Film Forum, and one of his big things is that you never know what you’ve filmed until after you’ve filmed it.  That there’s no story until after it’s filmed, and like lately my documentaries have been getting really elusive, but I definitely know that if I film anything, I can eventually contextualize it.  I think that’s the thing about image.

Panel:  Another thing is that I totally support that idea of finding your own personal story for why you’re motivated to record the images that you do, because to look at it from another side, about your subjects, it’s also--I would really recommend to get really involved as much as you can comfortably stand with your subject, because other than that--it really can take a vampiristic element of like . . .

Audience:  Well I lived with these people for three years, so I’m very involved with them.

Panel:  No, no, I’m not questioning you personally, it’s just that as a viewer, I always wonder who the photographer is.  Is this a person from this community?  If not, what kind of role do they have?  Are they an ally or are they just going to be someone taking tourist pictures, or someone saying, “Hey!  Look at this!  This is all bloody and violent, neat!”  It’s something to really contend with, your integrity as an artist, and you know, I’ve seen so many pictures of native people and I’ve had some instances where people have taken my picture walking around New York City and putting me in their student Nuevo, like, anthropology exhibits?  And it’s very disturbing.  It’s just that having that concern for your subject, and anticipating how other people from that culture--I’m Southeast Asian--would also be critical of this work, because it just happens so much.  There’s a whole legacy of nearly naked photographs of native women that is just awful.

Audience:  They don’t criticize me for my work at all.  It’s the absolute opposite.  I’m very much welcomed in their house; I’m pretty much part of their family.  I have that relationship with them.  It’s something more.  I don’t know what.

Panel:  I grapple with documentary work outside of my own work all of the time, and my work is basically based on my family.  I went to Vietnam to meet my family for the first time in ’98, whom I’ve never met before.  They live in the countryside; they’re farmers.  I had this need that I had to somehow document these people so that they’re real to me and that they actually exist.  But when I came back with these images, I look at them and some of them don’t look any different from what I would see in the National Geographic Magazine.  Then I begin to question these images where they have already been implanted in my head before I went and when I took these pictures--are they just repetition of what I’ve already seen--just recreating these images.  So it’s a real challenge, even within my own family, it’s hard to separate out.  You’re contending with the self and the other all of the time in this kind of work.  I don’t know.  That’s just the process that you would have to go through, I guess, regardless of whom you photograph, the people who are not of your own cultural background or even with your own family.  You can end up objectifying them as well.

Audience:  I guess that may be my main struggle.  That itself. 

Panel:  I think Donna spoke to that a lot today, which is even though that’s a legitimate struggle and it’s in a way a continual struggle, and maybe even it’s in the nature of being with a camera and representing other, yet I think, this is one of my questions to Donna--the quality and the amount of time that you spend with somebody and then the context that you put your work in authorizes you, in a way, and changes the type of work that you have, that loans a different kind of legitimacy than a National Geographic, and maybe you could talk about how much time you spend and how you even do that--to allow you to stop that grappling, or do you ever stop, or do you grapple less at a certain point.

DeCesare:  Especially in the beginning, it’s always really intense.  For me, until I actually start to build relationships with people over time.  I started taking photographs in Los Angeles of kids involved in gangs in 1993.  I had gotten a grant from Duke University, and that was an idea I had from the time I lived in El Salvador, because I’d met a kid with HIV when I was doing a story about AIDS and he was all tattooed, and he told me about gangs in L.A., so I had this in my mind when I went back to the United States.  I wanted to go to L.A. and see how many kids were really involved with gangs.  So when I got to L.A., I worked on this story between 1993 and probably the last photographs--I’m still taking photographs because I still see the kids--but I did the bulk of the work between 1993 and 1998-1999.  I would say that the first year I spent four months in L.A. and three months in El Salvador and it took me, in some sense, no time at all to get pictures, because of course the kids wanted to pose and do all that gang stuff, initially. But to actually break through and get them to trust me and to start being themselves, that took time.  I was out there for four months, every day in the streets with different kids whose stories I thought I wanted to follow.  Just spending 24/7 being there.  Meeting their families.  Visiting people when they’d get arrested.  Taking pictures of babies being baptized.  Documenting everything in their lives.  That’s what created the bond and the fact that I would come back.  I’d go away; they wouldn’t see me for six months, but then I’d come back for another month.  After the initial period where I put in a lot of time, then I didn’t spend as much time on the repeat trips, but I would come back several times during the course of each year so they would see me again, and I’d look for them or I’d call them on the phone sometimes from New York and ask them how they were doing.  Or I’d call one kid, and if I couldn’t reach another, I’d call somebody and say, “What happened to so and so,” and they’d say, “Oh their family moved, but we know where they are.”  I think that--the fact that like following Edgar’s family, I knew his family.  I actually had photographed the brother who was killed, his brother Jose, I actually--he’s one of the first kids I photographed in L.A. I didn’t know Edgar then, but I photographed him boxing on the street, and when I met Edgar in El Salvador I had that picture with me, and I said, “You look like this person,” and he said, “That’s my brother,” and that’s how we bonded.  It was amazing.  Really amazing.  So that’s just how my work has been, but I really feel it’s very important to spend time and even recently, when I was in Columbia, I mentioned that I spent the night--it was only one night in that case.  But for the people there, that was really important that I wanted to share that experience as well with them; that I was willing to be in their lives to that degree.  I often--when I was working on that gang project, I didn’t sleep over and stay in their houses, but I’d be there until like two in the morning and then I’d come early in the morning.  But I was sleeping on a friends couch and in the car the rest of the time, driving around and hanging out in the neighborhood and then hanging out with the kids.  But because they were teenagers, and you know, I felt there were a lot of ethical issues that I as an adult had to be careful about.  Like I never did drugs, I never drank with them.  I would drive them places, but I never allowed weapons in my car.  I felt like I’m the only adult that they’re coming in contact with, so I have a responsibility to be some kind of moral barometer.  Not judgmental, but also letting them know what I think is right and I would still accept them, but they had to follow those rules if they were going to be with me, and I felt that those were healthy boundaries to establish.  Some photographers crossed the boundaries, and I just don’t--especially because they were young people, I felt that I had to absolutely maintain them.  That’s what made them trust me and respect me, of course, because they felt safe. 

Younger:  I’d like to ask a couple of questions because UNICEF has these new guidelines for representation of children, and you had the conference in Japan and in Sweden as well, about children.  If we could talk a little bit about the conference, and I also think that it’s just that sort of juxtaposition of now having these kinds of guidelines and yet we see the 12-year-olds on all the billboards for all the advertising, and it seems much more sexually exploitation, just right totally in our culture that’s so accepted, and yet we’re trying to do these other kinds of things in another realm, and I’m just wondering if you could talk about that a little bit.

Tolmie:  I’m not all that informed about the two congresses--initially there was the First World Congress on commercial sexual exploitation was held in 1992 or 1993 or something, in Stockholm, and it’s not a UNICEF congress, UNICEF is one of the major organizing agencies, but there are two other big organizations that are involved in that, as well as governments.  The Swedish government played a big role in the first one, and the Japanese played a coordinating function from, I think, in the second.  But international congresses, contrary to what you might have heard, are worthwhile forums in many ways because they really are an opportunity for exchange of information in the same kind of way that this gathering is, but on an international level, so you have lots of people sharing experiences and finding out the commonalities, which is always the big surprise.  Everybody thinks they’re in their little corner doing something that’s very unique, but in fact the same sorts of issues come up with regard to whatever subject is being discussed.  Also, UNICEF’s involvement in the issues of commercial sexual exploitation, the impact of different kinds of child labor, all kinds of specific issues very much grew out of the trying to get more into respond to all of the details of the convention of the rights of the child, but it’s not only health and education and basic access and survival and development, but it is the whole plethora of issues in which children are involved, and they’re involved in everything because they live with adults and because they’re affected by war and poverty and all these kinds of different exploitations.  The whole issue of sexuality I think--I can only speak personally rather than as a representative from UNICEF in terms of yes, it’s definitely an issue for me as well as a woman, as a mother of two young women, and just as a member of a society that is fed up with the sexualization of everything.  It’s certainly not young girls.  Everything--you can’t even have a conversation with anybody that’s had one sexy project. (Laughter)  But what is true is a total sexualization of every kind of exchange or interchange in the society.  It points to a lot of depths in many other subject areas, and perhaps, I’m not a psychologist, but perhaps it speaks to a level of avoidance about dealing with real sexual issues in another kind of a way.  It’s an extremely complicated subject.  It’s extremely important to everybody.  None of us would be here without sex.  Sex is very important in all kinds of ways in terms of how we conceptualize ourselves, how we see ourselves in relation to other people, how we see ourselves in relation in terms of men and women, in terms of women and women or men and men and children, etc.  The whole issue of erotica or the recognition of sensuality in children--all of these issues are very, very complex.  You have to have a health environment in order to discuss them, and we don’t live in a particularly healthy environment with this kind of sexual aggressive superficial sexuality being thrust at us from all directions all of the time.  And the expectations--nobody’s good enough or thin enough or round enough or perfect enough or brown enough or white enough or whatever--and it doesn’t matter.  It really, truly doesn’t matter.  People’s sexuality is about something else.  So the whole vocabulary, the priorities and the discussion, are skewed.  I think definitely it’s hilarious, I think, that the fashion industry is pushing thinner and thinner women and men on us, while the population gets fatter and fatter.  Obviously there’s a fundamental contradiction here between the kinds of living standards that we are expected to respond to and achieve, and then this other contradictory thing which nobody can every achieve.  Nobody’s beautiful enough or young enough or young long enough or old enough or whatever!  It’s a very impulsive kind of behavior, which is very unhealthy and I think so much related to all sorts of other issues.  Definitely then, within the context of those contradictions as they are acted out in a rich society, then you deal with the way they are acted out and intimidated and dealt with in poorer countries as well, in poorer cultures, which are also having our culture foisted upon them, whether it’s via the internet or via television programming or whatever.  It’s so much part of a more complicated discussion, but it something that’s very important.  It’s something that every person who’s bringing up a child has to think about.  How do we create an environment where they can enjoy their sexuality, understand it, acknowledge it, and share it with other people, whatever the nature of it is, in a context that is not continually being warped by expectations about what they’re supposed to look like?  It’s very, very difficult, and it doesn’t have to be difficult.  It can be very straight forward and understanding and mutual sharing, and it’s not.  It’s because of the nature of the society that we live in, and the nature of the priorities in the society.  That’s my very un-expert opinion.  Thank you for listening to me.

Panel:  I’d like to push this discussion because I think we’ve come to this point several times since we started, and we always get exactly to this point that it’s too complicated, and I think that doesn’t help.  I work a lot with children.  A lot of my photographs are around children, and I think a lot about this and I hear what you say and I agree, and yet I’d like to go on from here.  I don’t want to stop this at this point.  I would like to ask this further.  Like, so I don’t know, the other day somebody asked, do we need a differentiation between fine art and pornography?  What is sexual, what is sensual?  And the same with children.  What kind of, for example, nudity or images of nude children is okay and which one is not?  It’s a very fine line.  I’d like to talk about that.  Now.

(Laughter)

Panel:  I think it’s very culturally dependent, and we live in a society that markets everything with this.  Using it for commerce, not for--so it means something else when it becomes commerce, and I think that’s one of the fundamental problems.  For example, the first time I ever went to Brazil I was there on the feast of some saint, and they had a party, these scientists, and everybody was dancing, and it was unbelievable!  I just felt like this repressed little catholic girl from Ireland.  How free people were with their bodies, and it didn’t matter if they were big or little.  Children, adults and everyone together and it wasn’t about sex.  It was about sensuality; it was very healthy.  And I just thought, why couldn’t I grow up in this society, it’s much better.

Audience:  Like I came to the States with two children who were very comfortable in their bodies, very comfortable in their nakedness, talking very overtly about their genitals, naming them, having a very open language and discussions with other kids, grandparents, going to the sauna, no problem, nakedness, no problem, and within three months, my children were completely uptight.  Like seriously.  Instead of vagina, saying “down there,” which is really depressing, I find.  So for me, that really completely had an impact on how I wanted to work, and I started to work with children at that exact point because I felt like I needed to do something.  My question is very much, how can I support my daughter and my son, especially my daughter because I’m closer to that body, that sexuality, how can I support that without going the wrong direction?  How can I help her conquer her body back?  Her right to be naked, her right to show that, her right to be proud of it, her right to enjoy that?  You know?  I’m very interested in supporting that, and I’m very angry, frustrated and shocked at how suppressed sensuality, sexuality, not just in children, but in the whole country.  I’m constantly fighting this.  One of my favorite pieces is a piece of my daughter that actually was a collaboration between us, where she wanted to be photographed, first dressed and then naked and she first loved this piece and now has forbidden me to show it, the naked one.  I can’t show it anymore, which of course really pisses me off but I of course respect that.  I’m sure that would not have happened if we wouldn’t have moved to this country.  So what do we do with that?

Younger:  I just want to say, I don’t know if this panel can necessarily answer your child-rearing question, but . . .

Audience:  This is not about child rearing.  This is about my art making.

Panel:  So in your art making your child has forbidden you to use this thing, but I think the larger issue here is that obviously your children learn by your example, and you’ve got a good model for your children, but we also live within this culture which children have to deal with, and they will struggle with that but come through it.  We all do.

Audience:  I don’t want to talk about my child, I just happened to--this is a piece--I photograph children a lot.  I want to talk about the art making, not about my children and how I raise them.  Sorry.

Audience:  I was curious what you think of Sally Mann’s work and whether you feel what side of the line that’s on.  You probably . . .

Panel:  That’s very interesting, because when I lived in Europe I liked it but it didn’t seem all that significant to me.  As soon as I moved here, it seemed extremely significant.  It changed my perception of her work completely.  It’s very significant what she does.  I think I like it, I think it’s good.  It’s very borderline in a good way for me.  It’s not how I work with children; it’s not how I do it.

Younger:  Maybe you could talk about your intention with your work and that would help you, guide you, with your …

Panel:  Well, like I said, like part of it is in a way I want to provoke a discussion, maybe like the pictures of Sally Mann, regarding what’s wrong with the society that pictures like this are perceived as obscene or not okay or exploitive. 

Younger:  Maybe we could ask the youth here, because in a way this is what you guys do at EVC, you unpack the way that you are represented, or your generation.  You don’t consider yourself children . . .

Panel:  Yeah, but the definition is “under 18” so they are.

Panel:  But I wonder how you even perceive your own sense of your generation, how you’re represented sexually, or is that a position that’s constantly put upon you?  Have you been--you don’t have to talk personally if you don’t want to but . . .

Audience:  I definitely don’t think--you know, sex is in everything.  It’s in every TV show, even every commercial, it’s on every billboard, and in some strange way I still don’t think it’s really discussed.  I still think it is a taboo and this kind of perpetuates it, it makes it so simple, like just superficially, you know, we lose the sensuality, and I don’t know.  I know that everyone is sexually impressed, that I know, in some way.  I don’t know, but someone has to have some self-conscious physical--I don’t know.  I didn’t just get it from nowhere.  Like my generation just didn’t get it from nowhere.  It’s being, like subliminally we’re taking it in.  I can’t tell you where.  You’re supposed to tell us where.  I am in essence the product of this society, and I can’t tell you where, when it was shoved down my throat because it was before me.  And I could probably say that it was before you.  If we knew this, we’re not--there’s no answer to this question.

Panel:  You didn’t answer my question.  That’s not what my question was.

Audience:  But how do we help it?

Audience:  I think Donna pointed to what I would feel is like a very basic issue, which I see a lot in different ways.  You mentioned seeing a culture in Brazil, sort of embodying something, which in that moment you wished you had had.  I see a lot of adults look at their children and expect the change to start there.  I’m not saying you did that.  What I’m saying is you’re experiencing this thing where, what can I do to help my children with this?  Well the issue really is, how can you help yourself get there?  How do you help yourself transcend these limitations that you’ve passed on to your children.  It’s not your fault that they have . . .

(Lots of people talking all at one time)

Audience:  I apologize. 

Panel:  Let’s not personalize this.

Audience:  I just have one more question, like the age of your kids.  Like I was in a book when I was little and there’s a picture of me with my shirt off, and whenever I turned the page, even when I was a kid, I would hold the two pages together.  Because I was ten, I was flat chested and nobody else--by the time the book came out I was 12 and everyone else had breasts and I still didn’t and I didn’t want people to see that!  I felt invaded!  Could it be something about the age when your daughter was photographed and I’m just thinking that adolescents, when you grow up, it’s not just this--I’m not saying that this culture isn’t repressing but I’m just wondering if it’s something also about growing up and your body changing.

Panel:  I just want to offer this, because in terms of growing up, I grew up on an island that’s sort of like half-Dutch, half-French, colonized, right.  So I knew a lot of metropolitan French people and it’s a whole different sense of your body.  I sort of understand in the terms of like the European sensibility so you go to the beach, you go topless, and it’s like you want to get some sun.  It’s like you walk around, there’s no sense of shame, people come from France and Holland, they go to the beach topless, and you sit there.  And the local people are like, okay, that’s there thing, but when the American tourists come, there’s this whole sense of like, “Oh, where’s that beach? Have you heard there’s a nude beach?”  And that’s the attitude where it becomes this sensational thing and I think in terms of the society, it’s a culture clash.  In Germany and Europe the way people feel about their body, there’s a difference between body image in terms of what’s sexual and what’s sensual advertising, you know?  You have billboards where people are topless and no one bats an eyelash.  But then if you come here it suddenly becomes this voyeuristic, “oh my, is this pornography?”  I think it has to do with in terms of--it’s not something that just happened now.  I think it’s something that culturally has trickled down from--even in terms of like the first Americans who came here.  They were sort of puritanical, and it’s this whole system that has continued to trickle down where there’s this whole sense of clothed being, the difference between you and the savage, so it had to do with being Christian, being civilized, being proper, so like the whole sense of being unclothed has this negative aspect that you’re naked.  It’s something that carries a sense of shame.  It’s like centuries and it’s engrained, whereas in Europe you go to the baths together, everybody’s like who cares?  You see grandma naked but she’s not a sexual being.  She’s grandma.  She doesn’t have any clothes on but at this point being naked has become so sexualized, exoticized, eroticized, that people can’t differentiate, so you have this sensibility where your daughter is coming from Germany, you have that freedom, and she’s soaking up this cultural shift, and in the work that you want to do, your work is coming from your experience and your experience is not one of this sort of sexual oppression.  But I don’t think you can necessarily change what is going on here.  I think it’s a legitimate question, and I think unless someone’s coming from the outside, says “Hey, this is not the way it is everywhere in the world,” because there’s that tendency.  I watched 60 Minutes, they go to Amsterdam and Amsterdam is this weird place.  Naked women are in the windows!  Oh my God!  Sam Donaldson is over there questioning the morality of the Dutch, you know?  And there’s this tendency to want to perpetuate this ideal that’s Western, it’s Northern American, and then want to go out into the world and spread that gospel, so to speak, and you’re resisting that, but I think your anger is legitimate but it also might not be directed at the right source, and the only thing as an artist that you can do is continue to make your work and YOU set the context for your work and YOU set the frame for your work and don’t let other people dictate.  Don’t let other people impose their cultural hang-ups.  And your daughter is going to see that because you ultimately end up being the one that she sees the most and your artwork continues to be true and as an artist you get to express yourself.  Your daughter sees that and she’ll come through it because in the end that’s the influence.  It has nothing to do with child rearing.

Younger:  I think the question for the panel, if we could go back to that one, is in organization like UNICEF.  How do you deal with a child that’s naked?  It is not necessarily sexualized; it’s not necessarily sensualized but is that allowed?  Is that forbidden?  Is there always that fear under the guise of American culture.  I think that’s what the question is, is how do you . . .

Panel:  It’s very context based, and maybe Ellen can speak to it.  Do you want to take a specific example?

Tolmie:  I think there’s a--I don’t mean to be evasive but UNICEF as an organization working in the world has very little to do with the day-to-day cultural controversies and issues in the United States.  I mean, the mandate and the priority focus for us is in developing countries around the world.  And what we want to obviously draw on the parallels, so unfortunately we don’t have an instance where--we don’t comment on whether it’s sexuality or child labor practices or other kinds of issues, generally speaking.  It usually doesn’t come up.  We’re focusing on people in a different strata.

Audience:  Are there debates about it?  You choose up one photograph over another.

Tolmie:  Oh, definitely but I was speaking in the context of the United States, not . . .

Audience:  I don’t want to take a mic away from anyone, but this sense of--you are a photo editor for a major institution, and I don’t know how it works, I’m not going to try to pretend like I do but I envision this scene of you having your journalists and these images coming in, and do you perchance, I don’t want to say censor, but what are the concerns when you see a child who is nude and naked in terms of sexuality, sensuality?

Tolmie:  Actually I was trying to think as if the question was being posed how many times have I actually encountered this situation, and there are three or four different photographs that I can recall that include naked children.  It was one, for example, a child bathing herself underneath one of those famous pumps I showed you today in Cambodia, at a refugee camp, and it’s a great celebration of water basically and that is part of the archive. It didn’t really occur to me--the issue of her nakedness didn’t come up.  She was bathing.  Obviously young children, we have lots of photographs of young children being bathed in all sorts of contexts.  There was one, actually the two little shiny bodies that were being bathed by the women in the Rwandan refugee camp.  So, no, I would certainly never say a photograph of a naked child in and of itself could not be used.  I think that would be terrible.  It really has to do with two things.  The representation, whether there is something in the image that implies something that might be taken out of context, or I suppose, interpreted in a voyeuristic kind of a way.  If it’s open to that kind of interpretation, then I would possibly think--but most of it also has to do with context.  Anybody, if they want to, can turn anything naked into something voyeuristic if they wanted to do that there’s no stopping them anyway.  We’re obviously not concerned with that extreme, either, there’s nothing I can do about it; nothing anybody could do about it.  But normal circumstances where nakedness--breastfeeding is a very good example.  UNICEF is one of the principle promoters of breastfeeding around the world, or was, until it became much more complicated in the context of HIV/AIDS possible infections but definitely breastfeeding is the most nutritious way to feed an infant in his or her early life, so we’re always promoting it, so we’ve always got photographs of women breastfeeding their babies, and that is one of the most natural, normal functions in the world, and most of the photographs are depicted in such a manner, so there’s no reason why we would not.   But, for example, if a woman’s breast is very bare or very prominent in a photograph, it’s unlikely we would use it on the cover of a brochure about mother care, for example.  That is not because we are censoring it, it’s because--my sense--I’m trying to think of it in an editorial situation and it would be distracting, probably.  But if it’s appropriate and loving as the image of the child being breastfed . . . Everything is context--cultural context as well.

Audience:  While we’re talking about a hypothetical line, then, what would UNICEF think of Sally Mann?

Tolmie:  Well, first of all, UNICEF is an organization made up of 7,000 people representing 190 countries in this world.  Every single country.  I’m sure there are huge varieties of cultural responses to Sally Mann.  So UNICEF doesn’t think anything.  I think it’s very important--UNICEF doesn’t think anything about Sally Mann. (End of tape)  They would have to know, first of all, who Sally Mann is, which most of the people in UNICEF do not.

Audience:  I guess my question is more, how would UNICEF or you as photo editor, treat images, say, if Sally Mann submitted those as part of a project or something?

Tolmie:  It wouldn’t happen!  We’re really talking about apples and oranges in this case.  I’m saying that the kinds of photographs that UNICEF contracts for have all to do with development issues across a wide spectrum.  It’s just not something that we deal with.  We deal with a broad representation of children and women in different kinds of situations around the world but not what Sally Mann does.  It’s just not within the purview, that’s all.  It’s like asking if I take a lot of photographs of--we don’t deal with photographs of the production of airplanes.  It’s just not part of what UNICEF is involved with.

Audience:  I honestly feel like you’re dodging it because we have these documents, right?  How can we not talk about a specific case?  If we can only talk about generalities, we’ll never get anywhere.

Tolmie:  The specific case about what?  I responded very concretely in a number of examples where we do have photographs of naked children, if that was your point.

Audience:  But what I’m asking is, we’ve got the press kit that listed all these ideas of how--like this document about how children should be treated.  I guess my question is, if I go down this checklist, it seems like this organization and this checklist would have a problem with Sally Mann?

Panel:  Can I just interrupt?  The press kit for Yokohana (??) was sent to you by the staff, which is me and Cheryl, and is not a representation of what this conference may be about.  It’s intended as a way to inform you about some of the discussions that go on in the world, not Sally Mann, but about the representation of children and not just here, but in the whole world.  Just one more thing, and what Ellen said earlier that I think is really important is that UNICEF acts as a bridge, so Sally Mann is not the appropriate bridge between, say, this culture and say a Middle Eastern culture where we want to talk about the rights of children and whether or not they should be educated, so she’s not the right bridge.  So I just wanted to phrase it that way.  Now the other thing I understand that all of you are asking is what is a personal opinion of people on the panel about Sally Mann’s work.

Audience:  Not at all.  The question is, if you have these lists, right?  

Panel:  What document are you talking about?  Let’s start there.

Younger:  He’s talking about the guidelines and

Tolmie:  The guidelines that were just handed out?

Audience:  Yeah.

Tolmie:  I see. 

Panel:  I think I prefaced when giving you these is that these are guidelines.  This is a working document that UNICEF has in order to ask people to think about how they’re representing children.  It’s not a set of rules; it’s not a set of like you have to do this.  They’re a set of principles that we try to abide by and . . .

Tolmie:  It’s also a little bit more than that, if I may add to that.  It’s also--these guidelines were originally created to respond to questions basically relating to how journalists and other people interact with children and profile and represent children who are at risk.  At risk of sexual exploitation, at risk of suffering, some kind of stigmatization in their community, there are very many instances around the world where girls have been abducted into rebel armies and forced to be the sexual partner or somebody or other.  Then the child returns to her community.  Quite apart from what happened to her in her particular experience, what happens to her is she may be subject to life-long--because of the particular cultural beliefs in her community--she may be subject to life-long stigmatization because of that.  So we are trying to create a set of guidelines that take into account, due to bitter experience often times when UNICEF has facilitated or observed journalists interviewing children and asking really inappropriate questions that they need to be protected from having to answer about what their experiences were, how they felt about this experience, what happened, what kind of actions they contributed to.  They need to protect children only because they’re not necessarily aware of all of the implications of who they’re talking to and what they’re saying and what the consequences will be for them after.  This is a serious question of the world’s obligation, I believe, all people’s obligation, to protect children against being abused or neglected or exploited.  So what this discussion is about is about the kind of exploitation that can happen in media. 

Younger:  I think a really good example that your kids show in your film was the thing where the girl was being interviewed about their town and how they were saying, “Well, they asked me this question and that question,” and the press is very aggressive like that.  And journalists are very aggressive like that.

Tolmie:  Some of them.  Some of them are very responsible and sensitive as well.  We have to make that distinction, but there are--it’s very, very complicated.

Younger:  But the woman was expressing her--was like they felt like they were going to get this out of her.  And they were going to twist the story the way that they wanted it to go, not what the person wanted.  It’s like this disrespect for the subject that’s being interviewed.  It was like, “Here, let me interview you and get your story, but it’s really, I’m telling the story.  I’m changing the story all around--it’s my story.  I’ll just cut and paste your words together.”

Audience:  I agree, like it is completely contextualized.  I think when you exploit--or the definition of sexual exploitation changes, for instance, when you have a rape victim.  It does go case by case and you can’t just hypothetically start making up cases.

Panel:  That’s why I had a concrete example in the argument of one person.

 

Audience:  Talking about art as just not UNICEF, but art overall, then . . .

Audience:  There’s really just a misunderstanding going on.  My expectation, and maybe that’s true for everyone, but I can’t speak for everybody, was that this was actually a panel where this would be appropriate discussion, which I remember now that you went up there and you said you want us to talk about sexuality, that you didn’t feel competent because this isn’t your field?  I remember this now, but that wasn’t what I was expecting.  So what’s going on is you people sitting up there, this is not your expertise and obviously you want to talk about something else, and right now there is something going on that’s not working out, so maybe we should decide what to talk about because I don’t think this is going anywhere.  Right now we’re discussing what we shouldn’t be discussing.

Tolmie:  UNICEF doesn’t have a position on those kinds of issues because it’s not what its business is to do and I, as a representative of UNICEF, am not of the authority to also voice my personal opinions on this issue either.  It’s inappropriate.  Absolutely, you clarified the issue, I think.

Audience:  Can I ask a new question?  Let’s change--

Panel:  I just want to add, though, that regardless of whether somebody--this panel is composed of expert people, it’s not a context that we can’t have this kind of discussion.  You as budding photographers and us as having our opinions, we can still have a discussion, so I don’t want you to feel like it’s closed as a topic of discussion.

Audience:  I didn’t have the impression that I came here with.  Thank you.

Audience:  Okay, this is open to everyone on the panel.  I’m curious if you would like to talk a little bit about the difference between giving children and young people a voice and re-voicing, if you will, the thoughts of children and young people, and the differences you see in what you may or may not being doing in your own, whatever, wherever you’re at.

Panel:  What is re-voicing?

Audience:  Well, I see a difference, for me.  There’s a difference between giving a voice to someone, and there’s a difference between mediating someone’s voice.

Panel:  Do you want to explain that just a tiny bit?

Audience:  Well, I think that the work that’s being done by EVC is very clearly giving children, young people, a voice.  The majority of the control rests in their own hands, and I’m curious then, to backpedal, where does that line become not giving someone a voice but reinterpreting someone’s voice?  Does that make sense?

Panel:  I think it’s really common to not always be given the choice to have a voice.  So like in high school we were told what was right and what was wrong, depending on what high school you went to, and this in a way, by giving youth a voice, it shows this whole new approach to things that is a voice.  So I think the way we were forced to approach it forced us to think a certain way.  Like if I have to decide, when I was really saying what I believe or what I was saying I believe because now I have a medium to express that idea.

Panel:  Yeah, when you say a mediated thing, well first of all there is this medium which is the communicating element, so there’s no pure expression so to speak.  There also is a really delicate balance when you’re working with youth in terms of how you guide them.  I talked about the idea that the facilitator is different from the teacher.  And thankfully, particularly when you’re working with older kids in ETV like 18-21, in that case, they often bring in stuff on their own.  It’s not just what you expose them to, but there’s a lot of power in what you expose them to, and there’s a lot of, like in Jamestown where you saw the media coverage clip, the next section was the teachers that I was teaching with were really adamant that there was some kind of solution offered by the youth?  So the youth just wanted to talk about making smart decisions, being responsible human beings, and the administration was frantic about whether they were going to talk about having sex at all.  Then they ended up deciding, this one kid who decided he really wanted to say that condoms aren’t always 100% safe and really abstinence is it, and they had a course the week before, an abstinence speaker in the school, and she was really charismatic.  So there’s so much manipulation in your environment and what you decide is important to communicate is so influenced by that, so I think what we try to do at EVC is focus on what they are interested in and try to work with them through trying to figure out the best way to approach that, but I can’t say that it’s pure.  We try to intervene the best we can, but that’s one of the problems we have with replicating at EVC.  They always think that since our program is working well here, people say they want to start one over there, in Chicago or whatever, and in Jamestown High School I’m not even sure what’s going on in terms of what the teachers are doing now that we’re all not there anymore, reinforcing our methodology.  It’s very easy for a model to be hollowly transported, and not recreated in a positive fashion.  So I think for any of you that go out and work with youth, I think you should just make your best decisions about how to honor and listen to them and work from there.

Panel:  I can add on to that.  Because everyone has basically said it’s a slippery thing to be working with young children, and to attempt to be fair, and when people talk about giving youth a voice, I really hate that.  I don’t like that language but sometimes that’s the best kind of configuration of it.  EVC is a place that gives young people the tools, but realistically you can’t just give it to them.  There’s also this ageism that goes on in society, and the teachers are there not just to give you the technical skills, but to facilitate getting it out of people.  It’s very difficult because as a child, you’re pretty voiceless.  Nobody makes these efforts until you’re a little bit older, when they think you’re able to talk about them and that you’re ready, even though it’s totally not the case.  For my experience at EVC it’s not enough to just have these technical skills.  Like if you’re going to be working with youth, yeah, you’re going to have to develop your nurturing skills and you’re also going to have to constantly be going through your own baggage because if you don’t it’s just going to be so awful.  I have this awful example from the high school dock workshop.  The teacher who was facilitating it, she’s a lesbian, and it kind of disturbed me to be working with her because in my rather young, naive way, I expected that okay, she’s cool, she’s going to speak up when kids are saying dumb shit, but she didn’t.  She has her own stuff to deal with, that’s fine.  That’s to be expected.  But I just want to emphasize the point that it’s critical that you’re culturally competent when you’re working with young people and that you listen to where they’re coming from, and you don’t impose your own agendas.  Basically she sat me down for this talk, a lecture on what will I do with my young life since I’m a lesbian.  What kind of choices will I make with my career?  It wasn’t really a talk.  It was more like her reassuring herself through the form of a lecture that I should become less radical, I should try to integrate myself into the dominate paradigm, the dominate system, maybe possibly even become a Democrat because if I make these choices to join the system, I will be ultimately protecting myself and my future, and that just put me in a rage.  Because as a person of color, as a Philippino person, Phillippinos are basically indigenous people who have been colonized over and over again, Spanish 500 years, Americans 50.  I have a living legacy of my family dealing with this bullshit of assimilation and colonization.  I don’t need to have a teacher encourage me to give up these parts of myself and put myself in a place of vulnerability and weakness when that has been the struggle since forever in my family.  So things like that, it just re-emphasizes for me that as a student, you really have to--I really have to hold on to my vision of what I wanted to do and what I could accomplish in spite of these challenges.  To go along with that, like I mentioned earlier, as an instructor you want to guide students to make the best work they can but it’s too easy to manipulate that work to your own standards. If you have these standards, like please, let’s just have a conversation and talk about them, because as a young artist as you all know, your initial visions are just so critical to you.  It’s so important.  It’s your first stepping-out, articulating whatever it is that’s inside you, and I’ve heard too many cases of this stuff being squashed.  So that’s all I’ll say.

Panel:  I also think that because we were youth producers who were making things for youth, there was this whole other strange concept that we were supposed to represent the whole entire collective youth.  I always struggled with that, and I always--EVC does have a tradition of including the filmmakers in the actual documentaries and I always struggled with that because, I was fine!  New York City is actually pretty liberal, but I don’t really know that because I don’t know the political policy.  Most of America is the in-between, New York and L.A., I don’t know what they think out there and I don’t know what their idea on sweatshop policies are, or their ideas on death and dying or their ideas on gay rights.  We were definitely--and this happens with any kind of documentary--that you make it and it becomes truth when you make it.  I guess there just has to be some kind of recognition that there’s no ultimatum.  You can’t say--when you watch something it’ll be a perspective.  It’s not truth.

Panel:  Just to back to that whole concept of context.  I don’t feel like--you know, the project on death and dying was asking people all around the nation to do projects about death and dying.  I don’t think you were being asked to speak for all youth.  I think you were being asked to speak for yourself, which is one reason that I feel comfortable that ABC tapes puts the youth in there because I feel like people want to know who is speaking and who they represent.  Like how old are they and where are they from?  Like when we did the piece on the juvenile justice system I felt like they kept talking about New York, the laws in New York State, well that’s where we are, and we were making it for Human Rights Watch, so there was a little bit--but in the end I felt like we could only speak about what we know and we’ll be more powerful if we speak about where we are.

Panel:  We were told to ask what are experiences about grieving because we want to know what the youth thinks about death and dying . . .

Panel:  Because people who don’t know any youth want to have some insight on some youth.

Panel:  Yeah, I think that’s fine but we are making it for school curriculum and it’s going to be shown in schools, and I know how impressionable I still am--I was even more when I was less opinionated when I was younger.  So there are things that I’m sure everyone keeps in mind when they do documentaries.

Panel:  I’m curious, Donna, how you feel about – because you’re depicting youth and you’re collaborating with them.  I photograph a lot of children in my own personal work and I always feel like I’m dancing around these things, but working with youth at ABC I felt rather clear about it.  What is your feeling about speaking to them?

DeCesare:  I listen a lot.  Ultimately, it is my vision.  It’s not necessarily their vision--they’re part of the vision and their voices are in there but the perspective that I come to the story with is the perspective of having covered the civil war.  Often they would ask me why was there a war in my country?  So I felt like I had this unique, in this particular project, interaction where I could bring a little of the experience of age and knowledge that they didn’t have access to, to them, to better understand their own situation.  And that’s what I was trying to do.  But not putting words in their mouth.  Using their own words.  So that’s why it was important to me as I was developing the piece, because initially the kids all thought I was going to do a story about their gang and how brave and heroic it was, and I told them from the beginning, no I’m photographing Salvadoran youth and to me it’s tragic that there was a war and now kids are killing each other still.  After the war ended.  Why are you killing each other?  You’re killing your cousin, your brother because they live in a different neighborhood.  So at first they didn’t get what I was--they thought I was just this crazy white lady, but they liked me, they tolerated me.  But eventually, as I developed the piece and used their voices in the telling of the story and we’d show it to them, then we’d put it together, and that’s how some of the kids who are now doing violence prevention work actually--Alex Sanchez who is pretty well known in L.A. wrote me a very moving email a couple of years ago and said it was seeing my slide show that changed his life.  That really made him take that step over the line to make that commitment to his community because he could see what it all meant, like what had happened to Salvadorans in history and how they were just hurting themselves instead of helping their own community.

Panel:  So, yeah, that’s where I do have my agenda.  I do.  I’m clear about it, and I also want to be open to the young people to include their voices and their perspective, but to also be careful because if I just went in on a very superficial level, very fast, I could get lots of pictures of guns and people posing with the macho mask on, but I wouldn’t get beneath the surface to their real stories and their real vulnerability and the things that to me are the compelling, important things to tell.  Sometimes they hide that even from each other because it’s not safe because out there in the streets--but when they could see it in my work then it opened them up.  I had a show of my work in El Salvador in 1996 and one of the most important things for me was that kids from the two enemy gangs came and there was no violence, no incident in the art gallery.  When I was being interviewed by the media I had them all up around me and made sure the journalists talked to them whenever they asked me to speak about the work, I would say, “Why don’t you ask Carlos or Jose, because they are the experts?”  So I used my work to open up space for them to be included.  These are kids that people were so terrified of that they would never even speak to them before.  So that’s what I try to do. 

Panel:  I think that the thing is, when you’re dealing with different cultures is the issue of sexuality as well.  In Guatemala, for example, there’s so much stigma, even human rights people have said things to me like, “They’re prostitutes!  They deserve it!  They ask for it!”  So in that kind of situation I’m very sensitive, as UNICEF is, to the idea of portraying a very sensual/sexual kind of imagery, because it plays into the cultural fears and hatred and could end up further stigmatizing the girls.  I want people to see them first as children and not as temptresses, you know?  So even though I could photograph them that way very easily, too, and they could play with it and be playful with it, but I just felt in that context, especially it could get them killed!  It’s dangerous.  So that’s why I don’t think there’s a one answer.  I think it depends.  In this country, certainly, it’s very different.

Panel:  I have one thing I’d like to say.  One time when I was talking with Tanya awhile ago, one of the things that I realized was how many times people tell you visual literacy is important, and how many times I was like, “Well, everybody knows everything.  We live in a world of media images, etc., so we don’t need visual literacy.”  Then what I started to do was I’d go to a lot of newsstands and I’d just go buy all the different magazines and I noticed like what you had said--everything is so sexualized.  It didn’t matter which magazine; it could have been a fitness magazine and there was some sexual image on top of that and a cooking magazine even had that in it!  So I thought, “well when I’m a product of degrees and education, I’m a 35 year old woman and I can actually be offended by these.”  I might not want to see children or even adults in some of these poses but the thing is I’m able to leave them and I could make critical judgment and I could have some kind of even smart-ass answer to the photographer or to the marketer or the commercial person, whatever, but what occurred to me is that the rate at which things are happening, a 12 or 13-year-old girl might not be able to read that stuff as fast as I would be able to.  When I was 12 or 13 there were only three magazines on the shelf.  It was Vogue, Elle and Seventeen.  That’s it.  You could never go to a news stand and have an entire wall, and that’s when I realized, at age 35, I was able to say most definitely--and I’ve been teaching kids they must learn how to use a camera, they must understand the language, and they must be able to take these things apart.  It was from that that the idea of sexualization of children and sex projected on children, but the answer was in the panel, which is that without that visual literacy, they won’t have the tools to grow up to be able to make a change in that or to understand their own bodies or how to relate to it.  So that’s something I feel was missed in the discussion.  I thought the panel really clearly stated it in their original tongues.  So that’s my little dialogue at the end.

Younger:  I think there might be just a little more to add on to that, too, because you talk about sexualization of children and I’m even older than her, so I can remember the 1960s.  All of our kids ran around naked.  We took pictures of our kids running around naked and so did a lot of other people.  I also know of a case where he was a judge in a case where Kodak actually took the film that this woman had sent in to process and went to their house to arrest them.  What happened was that this boy was already 33-years-old and it just happened to be an old role of film.  So a lot of things have to do with the time too.  I think that the real problem is that kids that are coming up now, like my daughter sort of escaped a little of that, because she’s 22 but a child that’s coming up now already at five and six and seven and eight, they’re totally sexualized.  They don’t wear little skirts and dresses and ruffles and that kind of crap that we wore or that I could even dress my kid in.  You can’t do that anymore.  You just can’t. 

Panel:  And as an adult it just becomes harder and harder to protect them from certain kinds of imagery because it’s so prevalent.  But they’re not given the tools.  It’s like you have to start teaching them at age three, visual literacy.  In a very real way.  Maybe in a way that I didn’t get when I was growing up, which was you drew clouds and trees, and maybe that wasn’t wrong, maybe today it should be something else but …

Panel:  I feel like dreams are made of what you see and you believe, and for the longest time – I think the reason I’m a photographer is to try to understand this.  Trying to understand why my life wasn’t what I saw, and to try to understand that I could make life what I wanted to make it, and then by taking my own pictures that was a start.

Younger:  Any last remarks from the audience.  No? 

(Applause)

Panel Discussion Analysis

by Christopher D. DiCicco

Much of this panel discussion lies in the gray areas of structuring definitions that surround the topic, the representation of children in images. Although the topic was introduced under the premise that the discussion would center on an adult conception of sexuality projected onto images of children, the panel members seemed to be more interested in the literal portrayal of children who have been sexually exploited, which changes the nature of the conversation. The moderator, Tanya Turkovich set the stage stating the problem, “How to represent children without hurting them, and how image makers work with the subjects.” The dialogue shifted appropriately to thoughts surrounding visual representation of the other in more general terms.

The need to build relationships with the subjects, developing an atmosphere of trust and establishing boundaries before beginning to document every aspect of their lives was led into from the aspect of empathizing with the subject in their “struggle” (a basic acknowledgement of the humanness of the subject). Keeping the lines of communication open, showing the subject(s) contact sheets, and anticipating the subject‚s reaction and gaining their trust were all touched on by Donna DeCesare who documents children in Los Angeles and El Salvador.

The discussion turned when Ellen Tolmie, the Photography Editor at the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), spoke about the First International Congress on Commercial Sexual Exploitation within the realm of advertising. This conference took place in Stockholm, Sweden where the main task was to exchange information regarding the topic. One of the things that she mentioned that came up at the conference was the fact that the common exchange in society has become highly sexualized, enforcing a “superficial sexual expression of projected ideals warping cultural expectations” generating an unhealthy climate in which priorities are confused, and contradicted. Evidence of this came out in the discussion as the audience directed questions to members of the panel. The images of Sally Mann entered into the conversation with much heated debate centering on issues of the representation of her children in her images. Issue #162 of Aperture contains an interview with Jesse Mann addressing her feelings of her representation in her mother’s photographs and may provide another point of departure for the discussion.

Meanwhile UNICEF has little to do with commenting on cultural conflicts regarding sexual representation of children outside of its organization. It is much more concerned with the contextualization of its images, and whether or not they project dignity and respect for the children they portray. However, the question arises where is the line drawn between cultural context and voyeurism? Can an institution or an individual accurately determine what voice to give its subject, and how to mediate that voice?

The dialogue seemed to come from the viewpoint that image-makers can only come from a place of “privilege,” a slippery slope that is not easily navigated, nor was it in the discussion. However the conversation briefly touched on the aspect of visual literacy. What is the importance of visual literacy for image-makers as well as their audiences? What responsibility do privileged image-makers have in passing their privilege to the subjects who can more readily speak for themselves, and how is this done?