It's Wrong and It's Bad

Hans Bellmer: Wrong and Good

My not-very-alter-ego wrote this on the Photobook Bristol Blog yesterday in reference to photobooks and what can go wrong. It's actually quite a short list, but here goes.

You get books where the cover is wrong, where the title is wrong, where the typeface is wrong, where the text is wrong, where the edit is wrong, where the paper is wrong, where the pictures are wrong, where the story is wrong or there is no story. You even get books where everything is right and then you come to the last picture – and they’ve saved it to the last possible moment to make a mess of it all. Goddamn it, the last picture is wrong.

The idea of photobooks being wrong did touch a nerve, with many people expressing the idea that it's not a matter of wrongness, but a matter of subjectivity. It all depends on what you like or you dislike, it's all a matter of taste.

Maybe so, and in certain circumstances (in education, child-rearing, while hostage negotiating) the word wrong might be the, er, wrong word.

When I do book reviews on this blog, I don't use the word wrong or bad. The reviews are gentle and understanding and try to ascertain what the photographer is trying to do.

Perhaps the reviews are too gentle. Because of course there are books that are wrong. Of course there are books that are bad. Everybody who has gone through the process of making a really good book knows that. They have been there. I have been there.

Sometimes you don't know what is wrong about your book because you're learning how to make it, how to communicate it. So the wrongness is based on ignorance. Just because you are not aware that it's wrong doesn't mean it's not wrong. Learning how to make a book is a process and mistakes are something you need to go through along the way. That, as was mentioned yesterday, is why people like Kazuma Obara, go through 16 dummies before getting at the most effective one.

Chairman Mao: Wrong and Bad

This doesn't mean there is such a thing as a perfect book, or an ideal book. There are an infinite number of possibiliteies of possibilities for a book and there is no absolute right one. There are many more wrong ones and generally they come about because people are taking short cuts, being lazy, are unaware of the errors of their ways, or are judging themself by standards lower than those with which they judge others. 

I have done all of those things, everyone I know has done all of those things - including the people who make really great books (or really-good anything else for that matter). Innoculating myself against my essential laziness and self indulgence is part of the process of actually getting round to making something really good. I hope to get there soon.

Dentists: Right and Bad

Anyway, enough of books, what about food. I remember making a Steak and Guinness pie when I was living in Queens Court in Bristol. It was the first time I'd ever made one and I did it without a recipe. I got the idea that the more Guiness you had the better it would be, so I added a couple of cans and then reduced it to a thick sauce.

I still remember that pie. I didn't eat much of it but I remember the taste.

And this year, just a few months ago, my wife made a dessert for us. It was a chocolate and avocado mousse (chocolate and avocado is a thing). She didn't tell us about the avocados though. We thought it was a chocolate mousse.

We still remember that mousse. We didn't eat much of it but we remember the taste.

Freudian Slippers: Right and Good

Like the Steak and Guinness Pie, it was wrong. And it was bad. And we should embrace that wrongness and that badness so that we never make the same mistakes again.

So perhaps in describing the original paragraph should be rephrased. Perhaps it was too gentle. I think this reads better:

You get books where the cover is wrong and bad, where the title is wrong and bad, where the typeface is wrong and bad, where the text is wrong and bad, where the edit is wrong and bad, where the paper is wrong and bad, where the pictures are wrong and bad, where the story is wrong and bad or there is no story. You even get books where everything is right and then you come to the last picture – and they’ve saved it to the last possible moment to make a mess of it all. Goddamn it, the last picture is wrong and bad.

Chairman Mao: 'Chinese democracy must follow the American path'

by Ernest Cole, from House of Bondage. A good class of photographer in every way!

I laughed my socks off when I heard about this on the radio this morning. Then I read it and laughed some more - not because of what was written but because of who was identified as the author.


In national terms and on a personal level, Russia telling America how things are is aggression, hypocrisy and megalomania talking to aggression, hypocrisy and megalomania, the only difference is the Russian side has a bit more of a conscious menace to it and the American side thinks it's some kind of music-hall preacher.

Just because somebody says something doesn't mean it isn't complete caca.

I'm currently reading Frank Dikotter's latest book, The Tragedy of Liberation. It's the story of the history of the Chinese liberation from 1945-1957 (a prequel to Dikotter's amazing book on the disasters of the Great Leap Forward, Mao's Famine).

It's a barrel of laughs as one might imagine, a story of the wanton misery inflicted on a people by a people. The funniest part is before liberation, when Mao's envoys were negotiating at Peace talks with President Truman's envoy, George Marshall. Mao sent Zhou Enlai as his envoy. Zhou, writes Dikotter, '...was a master of deception, cultivating a close relationship to Marshall to present the communists as agrarian reformers keen to learn from democracy. Zhou even persuaded Mao solemnly to declare that 'Chinese democracy must follow the American path'. Mao would agree to almost anything on paper, as long as nobody was checking what he was doing on the ground.'

Fantastic isn't the word for it. True tragedy is there in bucketloads. When Mao begins land reform, areas have quotas of who is to be killed ( 1 in 1,000 was an average) and cadres went into the countryside to encourage killing. Soon people were being killed for what they owned - kill this 'landlord' and you get a horse's leg, kill that one and you get a jar. 

Villagers made lists of people to be killed, but then added to the list as they realised that if they left any members of a family alive, they would seek revenge. So the lists just kept on getting bigger and bigger.

Even the definition of landlord was suspect (the word Mao used was a sinification of a Japanese word introduced in the 19th century). In many places there were no landlords, so the cadres outrage was taken out on the nearest thing available - Sichuan Province, for example, 'it was enough for a farmer actually to make a profit in order to be classified as 'a landlord'.'

Every individual was given a class registration. There were good classes, middle classes and bad classes. 

Good Classes

Revolutionary cadres, soldiers and martyrs.
Industrial workers
Poor and lower-middle peasants

Middle Classes

The Petty Bourgeoisie
Middle Peasants
Intellectuals and Professionals

Bad Classes

Landlords
Rich Peasants
Capitalists

In this atmosphere, being poor was good and praiseworthy, so productivity dropped dramatically because high productivity meant higher wealth which meant you were more at risk of denunciation, criticism and death. 

Any form of pleasure was also frowned upon. So in Shanghai and other cities there was a gradual closure of brothels, gambling dens, bars and other forms of entertainment. It became a dead city.The way people looked also changed with make-up, jewellery and hairstyles all disappearing. 'The fashion was simplicity almost to the point of rags.'

People resisted, rebelled and found ways to blend in with the atmosphere of violence and hatred that was created but it was a terrible, terrible time that was set to get even worse over the following ten years. 

Mao's China was an extreme example of an ideology gone wrong, but I wonder how much it is the ideology as much as the sense of control that matters - the ideology is by the by. I saw this on Benjamin Chesterton's Facebook yesterday, and wondered if this fatwa against photography wasn't pretty much the same thing. 


India's leading Islamic seminary Darul Uloom has issued a fatwa, saying "photography is unlawful and a sin"...

Mufti Abdul Qasim Nomani, Mohtamim (vice chancellor) of Darul Uloom Deoband, said on phone, "Photography is un-Islamic. Muslims are not allowed to get their photos clicked unless it is for an identity card or for making a passport."

The last bit is kind of inconsistent - if it's haram it's haram, surely. Anyway, he strikes me as a bit of a Maoist in his fanaticism (and the article points out that there are many people who disagree with him - very politely).

It's all part of that fanatical hair-shirt no-fun tendency that ideologues tend to have. There's a tiny possibility you might get it in photography as well, a pursed-lipped, cat's-arse moth of disapproval of all thing non-ideologically sound, the kind of shrill pointing that Donald Sutherland did at the end of the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. So I wonder what photography's good classes, middle classes and bad elements would be. I came up with this (just now so it's might need reworking).

Good Classes

Concerned Photographers
War Photographers
Died in the course of action Photographers
Collaborative Photographers
Car Photographers
Technical Staff

Middle Classes 

Food Photographers
Social Photographers
Photography Writers
University Lecturers
Artistic Directors


Bad Classes

Agency Workers
Magazine Editors
Art Buyers
Picture Editors
Academics
Gallery Owners

Fashion Photographers
Commercial Photographers

  And given the nature of the post, it seems a good time to Puritan Wife Swap again.