Bullshit by Michael Francis McElroy
From a series of portraits in Tuscarawas County, Ohio
Related links
28 thoughts on “michael francis mcelroy – bullshit”
Comments are closed.
Bullshit by Michael Francis McElroy
From a series of portraits in Tuscarawas County, Ohio
Related links
Comments are closed.
Bob on. I really like this and every thing on the web site as well. Even the Clash sounds good after so many years.
If me must try pairing shots, I would have liked to have seen this photo paired with Panos’ motel room shot, and ‘Summary Execution’, the rhino photograph, paired with the ‘Crying Communist’, but I don’t suppose for a minute that my taste is everyone’s.
If this is another pairing (and I presume it is) I don’t like it. As a photograph I would consider it “Close but no cigar”. Sorry – just for me.
Best,
Mike.
if what you guys are alluding above is for real…
if this magazine becomes a subliminal (hardly) statement regarding a specific issue from one person, whether DAH or bobb, I AM OUT.
it is different to use photographs to stimulate discussion. but i hope BURN will not become an avenue for personal agenda…
( i so hope i am totally wrong.)
i like this picture…
guy looks like the flustered rhino on a cold winter morning.
hahah
As soon as DUH shows up, I’ll bet anything he’ll say there is no pairing going on at BURN. I’m stupid but I know better than to think otherwise. DUH is too smart to pit work by one photographer against unrelated work by another.
SIDNEY…
perhaps your suggestion would have been better, but they did not come in that way…both of these came in to me after the others were published…besides, i am very loosely pairing two portraits, nothing more nothing less…
MIKE R…
please do not read too much into the pairing bit….
GRACIE…
not exactly sure what you are saying…try again…in any case, Bob does not choose what is published, so direct your complaints only to me….interesting how you would jump to a foregone erroneous conclusion on only one day of publication of two pictures…hmmmm..agenda???pleeeeeeeeeeze…. you blast, “I AM OUT!!” ok cool, but no refunds….
STOOP…
of the dozens of pictures that have appeared here, i think i have only run singles together two or three times…i think pacing would be a better term than pairing…
cheers, david
This is the type of image that a bunch of us used to take in our late teens early 20’s.There was always a designated main photographer but input of ideas was by all that wanted to. It was about us about what and who we were. It was about fun ,deadly serious tongue in cheek…………. we were the universe, we never needed to question nor justify our actions nor images.The photos were shared with friends, family, parents just nodded, displayed in homes, exhibited in country B rated art shows along with the Sunday school of landscape, flower and naive portrait paintings of the locals.
I still have some of those images, they are loose in style …….. beats a lot of the stuff I do now………the dark kicking the soul around the backyard stuff
well, what can i say? too much, i guess.
i see a crying communist mourning for her icon of her belief and the next picture says bullshit.
i am glad my ‘foregone erroneous conclusion’ was totally wrong.
i spoke too hastily but that is what i thought.
i apologize. (no refunds requested)
Im not in my early 20’s and this is from a series of portraits! this subject is wearing glasses from the Democratic National Convention! it was his personal statement on the election and what is happening in this country!!
Harry, thanks! i was never a big fan of music on websites! but alot of people have liked the Clash!
GRACIE…
those two totally unrelated pictures taken by two different photographers for two totally different reasons came to me in submissions at the same time today…they were both portraits taken at the same distance and both with their eyes closed/hidden, one sad the other funny, and both with their individual message of lost in their own thoughts, which i saw as their only similarity or connection….it would certainly have taken a lot of time and plotting and a diabolical mind to have come up with that combo to create some kind of twisted political agenda to be foisted on the readers of BURN….by your reasoning ANY picture published BEFORE the “bullshit” picture would have been smeared…what if it had been a picture of a mother with a new baby or an aids victim??? if i had thought about it long enough, i would have published the bs picture first therefore not having you confuse a random sequence with some sort of double meaning…my apology back to you…stick around….i would miss you…
cheers, david
it would take a whole lot more than this misunderstanding to make me leave your site.
i am already on the receiving end of your generosity.
i would be foolish to think the loss would be other than mine.
thank you for the explanation. politics is always best dealt with eye to eye over fizzle.
i didnt want my thoughts to go too far along overcooked with too much garlic.
(though hmmm.. even though i dont know you
for some reason i can imagine you with a diabolical laugh
mwahahahah – laughing too, i am so kidding)
peace
Michael, you’ve caught something here. It would have been enough with the BS eye shades alone but the addition of the smoke just does the deal. Good work!
Patricia
Gracie..:)
with all my respect..
But ( call me stupid if u please )…
but…but ,
I still don’t understand the “connection”
that made you yell out loud “..I’M OUT”…
I really can’t see what made you assume that
David (or bobb..!!???) are trying to propagandize here????
What was it that pushed your buttons???
That “communism is bullshit”…???
or what???
( I admit I’m stupid)…
I mean please enlighten me..
What’s behind David’s DIABOLICAL MIND????
( not joking and not being sarcastic.. I really don’t get
what triggered your threat of leaving this blog…)
GRACIE…
the folks who do know me,my friends, feel strongly that i should be punished for my sins…the problem is they are usually riding shotgun when the bank gets robbed….keep your distance Gracie, i would not want to see you get hurt!
fade in Vincent Price laugh from Thriller …..
cheers, david
And this is my unofficial explanation
about David’s “pairing”:
More photos for us to “think”,
“play with”,”enjoy”…”love or hate”…
More bones to chew .,
More food for thought..
More conversation..
NOTHING MORE AND NOTHING LESS..
no hidden messages… No agendas..
No propaganda.. No secret manifestos …
More fun , less boredom..
More gears in our outdated gearboxes…
(again,… This is just panos interpretation of
the DAH infamous “pairing”.. which only happened two or three
times the last 24 months..btw)
Why oh why are taking everything so seriously???
We choose to pay for cable TV but we don’t complain about
the tons of commercials we are forced to watch…
and we give the editor man here a major headache just
Because he is willing to promote NOT ONE but TWO photographers
at the same time ( plus the essay )?????
ALL,
please tell me another name MAGNUM or not ..
That really promotes anyone but themselves???
Name one… Just one person that is helping promoting us…
People think…!!!!
Please..
dear brother,
let’s let sleeping dogs lie.
im quite satisfied with the explanation at hand.
what say you about this picture anyway?
The March Hare joins the May Day celebrations……….
“The March Hare will be much the most interesting, and perhaps as this is May it won’t be raving mad — at least not so mad as it was in March.”
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Lewis Carroll
PANOS…GRACIE…
just trying to keep you awake…more portraits posted just now….tomorrow??? ha ha ha…….
Ok.. Gracie ..
about this photo…
I love it … It applies to a lot of different
situations…
It’s the bright sky that BOTHERS ME though..
To hang this photo on my wall I would first apply
tons of vignaitte and Darken the sky…
I love that smoke coming out like a bull…
I can’t see his eyes but also his eyes are blocked..
Blocked by bullshit..
Nothing “intellectual” about this photo..
Nothing pretentious..
Of course I LOVE IT..:))
see my comment above.
5th on this thread.
so analogies right?
rhino-thickskinned-towel-endangered
man-probablytoovocal-bullshit!-endangered
nice one. mr. m!
nothing intellectual about this photo.
nothing pretentious.
i love it too.
michael.
i like this as well.. you have a way of taking natural photos which seem somehow contrived – with this one it is the framed background and smoke caught just-right..
no doubt it is a genuine moment, as with ´beating´
it´s very different from any othe political rally photos which have been spinning round for a long while now..
nice one
david
PANOS…
i do not like the white corners of either the Crying Communist or Bullshit…i prefer an “edge” tone to keep my eye inside the photograph….
thanks for the “shout out”, but there are quite a few Magnum photographers who do mentoring…some of mine just happens to be online….we cannot sustain ourselves with self congratulation, but must always be looking for new talent which we do with gusto….
cheers, david
Interesting…by itself, I’m not quite sure of the context, but along with the others on his website, I really enjoyed it. Very interesting perspective and moments caught, whether they were staged or not. I really enjoyed the pics of the presidential campaign…they were so different than what you see produced by what’s usually published, like they were made by a real event photographer rather than an associated press photographer (not to say that associated press photogs are not “real,” it’s just to say that the feeling is very different). Cheers!
When I first saw this photograph, after “Beating”, I thought immediately of a cross between ‘Brazil’ and Cheech and Chong’s “Things are Tough All Over”..and therein, for me, lay it’s humor and it’s power. A funny and odd and Richard Kalvar-ish image: that strange mix of the weirdness of the quotidian. All around us are these very strange and interesting human stories and still, for me, the great thing about photography is that photographs still never fail to put a smile on my face, make me smile or laugh or reflect. I do not know, but there is just this great relationship between the glasses and the smoke and the backyard whitely lit….i loved the picture because it seemed very very funny and odd and is a nod to the wonderful oddity that goes on around us…
as for the pairing of photographs. This is NOT about photographers or photographs competing, not at all. Photographs and photographers do not live in isolation by live in connection and collision to one another. The Burn readership and the comments since it’s inception (as is true at other Magazines) attest to that. We compare, we react to photographs not only on the merits of their singularity but we make a comparison, an inventory of other pictures, of other styles of other moments. Rarely do people look at a photograph in isolation but often make a mental (consciously or otherwise) of other photographs, other representations. We read and discuss and experience photographs the same way. It is also interesting, since Burn is a magazine dedicated not only to showcasing photographs but also encouraging and discussing and promoting (sometimes provoking) the range of what it means to live and be a photographer: make photographs, discuss photographs, discuss the ethics, the aesthetics, the practicalities, the community, all that go into the life of being and working with the photographic life. This is not something that is being overly clever or ‘arty’ but actually, simple.
We sit in a room and read a paper, or look at a book, or scan the internet looking at phootgraphs in conversation with one another. We read the NYTimes (or any other paper) and see the variety of coverage. We compare genres against one another. We also get stoked by seemingly similar or dissimilar pictures and the whole joy and electricity begins again….
If anything, Burn is not just a photo magazine, but hopefully, and humbly, just an on-line materialization of this thing we call loving and living with photographs.
Dissent and argument and friction is part of that life too.
Above all, to appreciate and enjoy the experience.
all the best
bob
To “get” this picture implies a knowledge of vernacular English and within that a connotation to the symbolism of those words in the context represented. I am suspect of needing or using text within images, because they act as a crutch to the image itself.
If the glasses in this picture said “merde” or “jara” or “pendejadas” would it mean anything to those who don’t speak those languages? I doubt it, and therefore find it hard to find objective humor or attachment to the picture. Without linguistic relationship I feel this image–although technically excellent–falls closely into the realm of stock or commercial photography because it speaks in a sub-genre of visual language that implies cultural symmetries between the audience and the photographer. This is a legitimate field to delve into and hard to succeed at, and if that is the intention, then congratulations. However, it requires a parallel discourse that does not transcend into universal human reaction, and I find its resonance limited.
I like this picture too… I joined today.