One of the (many) reasons I became fascinated by the backroom processes of photography, the darkroom with its quiet concentration and trickling water, the gadgets and the gizmos: Blow Up was a strange film starring the newly trendy David Hemmings and the mighty Vanessa Redgrave. Antonioni wrote and directed what appeared to be a murder mystery, the victim in the bushes revealed by the Hemming’s character’s zeal in the darkroom, with an enlarger.
Blow Up’s other theme is the rather sordid celebrity photographer’s routine cruelty and abuse of his female models. The character was allegedly based on the real life David Bailey, a reputed misogynist, misanthrope and all round bad lad. This same testosterone-laden behaviour is pretty much the day to day norm in at least one northern higher education college. Apparently “the trade is like that”. Is it really? If there are instances of sexual harassment in the industry, isn’t it incumbent upon the training establishments to make sure that they don’t foster an environment where this level of sexism is encouraged within their own walls?
Some of our institutions really do reside firmly within the Blow Up sensibility. Surely our photography students deserve better mores and attitudes than were being pastiched way back in 1967?
See it if you can: let me know what you think.
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2 Comments
I think you are right, just because bad attitudes are still around, doesn’t mean it’s ok to perpetuate them. Can you imagine if the police were told that racism and victimisation had been around for decades, so it’s fine to carry on with it today?
‘It’s a tradition’ is the cry of someone who
A. Has a vested interest in things not changing,
and
B. Has those beliefs and would have to admit to being wrong before attempting change.
I teach in a Northern UK University and although we don’t have that particular attitude, there are some very bad teachers.
Regards, Andrew.
For heavens sake guys, David Bailey helped create the swinging sixties so you can’t expect anything but “testosterone-laden behavior” oozing unrestrained from his pores. Times have changed though. The fact is that in the 2010’s to cross the line from bad attitude to something seriously more is out of question in most working environments: not unless a man is prepared to end up in court or unemployed. Cannot think Northern Universities and photographers are an exception to this climate.