The Spinning Head

A few friends and fellow photographers have stepped away from Instagram and other social media platforms for their work. In fact, I too have not posted on any social media platform for a while because of a nagging sense that by constantly feeding a structure of information dissemination that relied on the ‘likes’ of random strangers (a large number of whom seem to be prepubescent or barely adolescent boys and girls), i was being dragged away from a more considered, and measured way of working. There was this realization that at some point feeding the beast become more important than patiently producing the work, and that any and all measure of its success and its relevance becomes reduced to ‘# of followers’ or ‘likes’. In fact, I remember distinctly a couple of major editors criticizing my work in Pakistan for not being ‘accessible’ enough, and for being too difficult. They were concerned that I had no ‘social media’ strategy, and wondered what I was going to do to bring tens of thousands of followers to my site. The fact was that I wasn’t really even interested in that. In fact, there is a distinct intent in my works to be difficult, and demanding. I design these projects to be hard to view, and engage with. They are never meant for a vast audience, and I can’t even see the value of the audience of ‘social media’ that I am being told I need to pursue. Details »

But geopolitical reality was much messier than he’d assumed. It ignited a bleak cynicism in his worldview…In addition to learning about the difficult prospects for weak, independent states, he also discovered how such countries are populated: It often included ethnic cleansing and forced deportations…While Mr. Mahon is glad to be getting his work recognized, which was his original motivation, his perspective on these issues has shifted significantly. In a world of increased globalization, and the potential marginalization of the idea of the nation-state, he came to believe that the war, poverty and isolation experienced in these countries was not worth the trouble.

Not worth the trouble. And with those three words Mr. Mahon, a photojournalist wearing the respectability of a Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting grant, dismisses the political, economic, and social histories and struggles of the people that he apparently spent nearly 8 years trying to document and represent. And one is left with the question, which perhaps may never have occurred to Mr. Mahon, if he bothered to ask the people who are in fact fighting for something – rightly or wrongly, if they believed it was worth the trouble, the sacrifices and the severe consequences? One is left to wonder with what arrogance, narcissism and disdain does a man travel to document the societies that clearly live under tremendous political, military and economic threat and fragility, and then proceed to simply erase all these broader realities and judge them lacking? Details »