Comments on: PDN’s All White Photo Contest Jury

By: From a Bean

From a Bean — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 04:34:42 +0000

@From a Bean, yeah, I should have read the comments to the end and saw that PDN confirmed my take, to a degree. I wouldn’t have posted. So I guess I won’t be getting my sack of pesos.

By: From a Bean

From a Bean — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 04:28:55 +0000

I went to sleep last night and the black guy I voted for to be president had won, was in office, was (mostly successfully) executing the most complex agenda since 1933. I was in a great mood. I woke up, logged on to this site, and its 1996 again. All of the AgitProp that gave rise to the great backlash in US politics, which produced and enabled W and Cheney.

Someone pointed out the answer, and its simply who they know. I doubt a great deal of thought goes into who judges. The issue is really how many suckers they can get to send in their entry fee. Beyond that its just AgitProp.

I’ll take my $1000 in pesos as I’m a beaner.

By: Stan B.

Stan B. — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 03:06:22 +0000

Dan, Dan, Dan- This is anything but a done deal. This was merely a start, a start as real and necessary as you or I, and bigger than us both. A start to address something that seldom gets mentioned, and rarely goes beyond lip service. This was never the winner take all, adversarial issue you made it out to be. This was, and still is, something in which we all lose if we don’t make the conscious, active attempt to be more inclusive, and ultimately more understanding…

http://reciprocity-failure.blogspot.com/2009/06/response.html

By: Dan Quan

Dan Quan — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 01:58:20 +0000

@A Photo Editor,

As far as I’m concerned this a done deal, you guys can spin it any way you need to.

I love your blog, I hit it almost everyday.I think it’s very informative and helpful, and greatly contributes to community. Thanks for taking the time to keep it up. It’s a great resource and I’m trying to learn from it.

By: A Photo Editor

A Photo Editor — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 01:42:34 +0000

@Dan Quan,
You claimed that passive needs evidence. In this case unintentional is the same as passive.

By: Dan Quan

Dan Quan — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 01:33:45 +0000

@A Photo Editor,

Wow, I must have read a completely different set of comments. I remember being slammed when I said it was not intentional. But, hey, whatever man.

By: A Photo Editor

A Photo Editor — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 01:25:37 +0000

@Dan Quan,
Nobody said it was intentional. That was the point.

By: Dan Quan

Dan Quan — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 01:08:51 +0000

@duckrabbit,
You are right, humility does go a long way, and, since you were wrongfully getting folks all riled-up, you out to show some.

By: duckrabbit

duckrabbit — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 01:02:45 +0000

@Dan Quan, You know what Dan a little humility goes a long way. It doesn’t really matter who’s right, it matters that some people end up on the outside, when by talent they should be on the inside, or having to get into places through the back door.

By: Dan Quan

Dan Quan — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 00:32:00 +0000

http://www.pdnpulse.com/2009/06/on-lack-of-diversity-in-photography-and-in-pdn.html

“While the lack of any judges of color wasn’t intentional, it is regrettable.”

See, most of us told ya so.

Not racially motivated.

By: Broken Record

Broken Record — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 23:56:33 +0000

PDN stepped up to the plate, it appears. Good for them. Maybe a half-hearted response, but good nonetheless. Better than silence and avoidance.

In other news, the Jury for the 2010 PDN Awards has just been assembled and approved by all the higher-ups at Nielsen and their PR firm. They did a press junket today, and at the end of the day, they got together in unison.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmxT21uFRwM

By: duckrabbit

duckrabbit — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 23:40:35 +0000

http://www.pdnpulse.com/2009/06/on-lack-of-diversity-in-photography-and-in-pdn.html

Hard to argue with that.

Duckrabbit applauds PDN. Now who still wants to defend the panel?

By: duckrabbit

duckrabbit — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 22:44:44 +0000

@i, please do get in contact

By: duckrabbit

duckrabbit — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 20:08:04 +0000

@dude, no worries. Your completely right it IS inane. But here’s a thought …maybe its inane on purpose, as a reflection that the PDN comp is inane, or just to get people like you and me talking?

By: dude

dude — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 19:40:14 +0000

@duckrabbit, my bad.

I guess it’s only the “competition” that’s inane.

Who’s on YOUR contest jury? George Pitts? Jimo Salako? Nobuyoshi Araki? Dawoud Bey?

By: duckrabbit

duckrabbit — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 17:24:07 +0000

@Myles, Thanks Myles … you don’t think they should be part of the conversation?

By: duckrabbit

duckrabbit — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 17:22:51 +0000

@dude, I think you’ll find that if you read duckrabbit’s post he doesn’t actually make an accusation, rather reports what others have said and poses questions.

By: dude

dude — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 15:55:08 +0000

Ignoring duckrabbit’s inane accusation isn’t passive racism any more than ignoring any other sort of idiocy.

By: Myles

Myles — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 15:28:31 +0000

This is retarded. How is that for political correctness? Why? Not because you had a decent thing going but because you asked readers to email judges to essentially comment on them being part of what you deem as a racist competition. Asking people to do so under the passive-aggressive line “Maybe you know one of them? If so perhaps you could drop them an email and let them know that there is a grand up for grabs. I bet they are all good people, but I wonder if they feel a twinge of embarrassment when they look down the list?” WTF man. So when PDN asked them to be a judge they should have replied with something along the lines of “I am a white woman so what portion of the other judges are non-white?”

FYI – I too find it rather odd that the judges are all white and from the same demo. In this day and age it is not hard to find credible people to judge a competition like this from all races, religions and countries.

But Duckrabbit you lost my vote for credibility when you put out the call to action.

By: Sergey Molotov

Sergey Molotov — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 14:23:45 +0000

@Eleanor,

It’s true.
Most of the winners are indeed americans, white, shooting b&w, and usually publishing for Time and Newsweek.

By: Mike Hartley

Mike Hartley — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 14:13:28 +0000

@Mario Rossi, No, just a magazine that represents its readers and doesn’t taunt them when they are disappointed.

By: duckrabbit

duckrabbit — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 08:14:03 +0000

@Peter Dawson, Thanks Peter … I refer you back to Stan Banos’ original blog posts. I think you’ll find a range of reasons given, its just a shame PDN didn’t have the intelligence to respond. As for objective evidence, which bit of 24 out of 24 do you struggle with?

By: duckrabbit

duckrabbit — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 07:53:10 +0000

@Dan Quan, ‘I have read of no evidence of racial bias’ … Dan, sorry to point out the obvious, you may have somehow missed where this debate started. 24 out of 24 of the panel were white. Statistically any which way you look at it, that is evidence of racial bias, given the make-up of America. That’s just a matter of statistical fact. What you or anyone else attributes that to is another matter.

By: duckrabbit

duckrabbit — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 07:21:04 +0000

@Ian Aleksander Adams, Don’t anybody be fooled, the angry people are in minority. As a Photo Editor pointed out, most people working in photography are individually deeply caring. I’m sure this goes for the majority of the people at PDN too.

By: duckrabbit

duckrabbit — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 07:04:23 +0000

@Paul O’Mara, thanks Paul, I appreciate your comments, but I wonder in 2009, in the photography industry, what excuse is there for ignorance?

By: duckrabbit

duckrabbit — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 06:58:11 +0000

@Tim, a great and thoughtful post, offering a fresh perspective and inspiration.

By: duckrabbit

duckrabbit — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 06:53:33 +0000

Do Have a little look at the 12 strong POYi jury …

http://www.poyi.org/66/judges.html

I like POYi because you can watch the judging, which is fascinating. But I do think a more diverse panel would have seen different things in different pictures …

just a thought.

By: Stan B.

Stan B. — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 05:55:43 +0000

My apologies for going on seemingly endlessly here, not that I (so far) regret anything I’ve said. And thanks again Rob, for hosting the majority of this conversation. It’s just that this discussion so rarely, if ever, actually occurs in the light of day.

And so I’ll retire this evening with the thoughts of someone conspicuously more learned than myself:

http://politicstheoryphotography.blogspot.com/2009/06/all-white-jury-at-pdn.html

By: emily

emily — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 05:04:40 +0000

So many angry duckrabbit naysayers and all-white-panel supporters here! People, is it not worth considering that some choices were made that were perhaps passive and yet still damaging? Not worth considering that an error was made that might harm the photographic community at large (and that includes you angry haters)? Clearly it was a provocative contest to spur discussion. Instead, as is the usual on blogs, we get ridiculous angry haters. Please think before you write. It is the world wide web after all.

Or are the haters just out there trying to win the $1000?

By: Dan Quan

Dan Quan — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 04:49:29 +0000

Doesn’t anyone see that we cannot achieve cultural or racial integration through institutionalized segregation and racial discrimination?

The contest should be offensive to everyone but a racist.

What if it were only open to whites and no one else? Would that be right?

Even if one considers the idea of a racially biased contest acceptable, we should at least have some sort of clear cut standard to mitigate any miscegenation.

Seriously, can we get an ANSI or ISO standard of race? Lets assume “white” is 36% reflectance, then with a deep tan a person could down to what, 24%? So anyone that would come it at 24% reflectance and under would be eligible to participate in the PDN contest. But that may include Hispanics and Native-Americans as well as others and we can’t have that.

Then there is the possibility of a light skinned person with a broad nose and kinky hair, born of miscegenation, are they eligible?

I hope this post is only comically offensive, a sort of caricature of racial bias.

I realize we cannot un-ring the bell of human history, but we also cannot achieve integration through institutional segregation. At some point we need to realize we are all just “flesh-color” and demand equality on a base level. Then and only then will we truly be able to celebrate or differences.