Members of the Forum were asked to submit two or three pictures by established photographers that they admire for this week. Thirty seven pictures by 17 photographers were presented and discussed. The photographers included Erin Babnik, Jane Bown, Ian Cameron, Mik Doherty, Fan Ho, Philip Jones Griffiths, Kiripi Katembo, Hiroji Kubota, Sarah Lyndsay, Don McCullin, (landscape work, twice), Lee Miller, Justin Minns, Aaron Northwood, Terry O’Neil, Viviane Sassen, and Charlie Waite.
The selection is not easy to summarise, but three things struck me: the preponderance of landscape work; the inclusion of a lot of contemporary photographers; and the absence of representatives from the photographic canon up to the last quarter of the 20th century (with the possible exception of Lee Miller).
My choice was Viviane Sassen. I included two comments about her work.
She said: ‘You should be able to judge a photograph on different grounds, on political, social, emotional, but also on personal grounds’
And: Her move into photography from modelling was initially driven by a desire to show a kind of sexuality that was different from that created by the male gaze, ‘one that’s more fractured and disjointed’.
