I took two years of photography classes in high school and I still get out and shoot as much as possible, so this is something I’ve actually thought about a lot, especially in the realms of street photography and documentary photography. Growing up in DC and now living in Chicago, I’ve lived very comfortably while being in very close proximity to, as this prompt says, “deplorable circumstances.” One thing I’ve always found intriguing is people’s abilities to try to make the best of bad situations: how people decorate totally run-down houses, people’s panhandling strategies, and the way homeless people interact with people who ignore them (much like Mikey’s writing assignment last week). Additionally, both of these cities have very large non-white populations in segregated areas,and a topic that has interested me is attempting to capture white people’s reactions to non-white people in “white areas” and vice versa.

Shooting in either of these scenarios can create a high degree of tension between the photographer and the subject, something Agee addresses in great detail. I have felt uncomfortable at times, often pointing my camera towards people in situations I will never experience. However, a photographer must juxtapose this dynamic with the dynamic that legendary photographer Edward Steichen explained, that “a portrait is not made in the camera but on either side of it.” In order to successfully create a photograph, a photographer must simultaneously engage with the scene he or she wishes to capture and avoid interfering in the scene. Agee addresses this dynamic on page 31, writing about Evans’ subjects “I had been sick in the knowledge that they were here at our demand… in a perversion of self-torture… I gave their leader fifty cents… and said I was sorry we had held them up and that I hoped they would not be late; and he thanked me for them in a dead voice, not looking me in the eye, and they walked away.” This dynamic is crucial: you can either take snapshots in passing and feel like an invader, or work with the subject, in which case you might severely inconvenience them or make their lives more difficult. Agee does a very good job addressing this.