Photo #14 (Plus Self Reflection)

#1. Webb is in effect telling us he came across this scene in the street in Mexico.

If you have an interest in art, fraudulent art, the state of photography, HTWRW, anything along these lines, there have been interesting developments in my (attempted) exposé of the altered photographs of the well-known ‘street photographer’ Alex Webb.  

A quick recap: I’m working on a book, a photo-driven memoir, which wandered a bit into the subject of fraud.

You all may remember my analyses of the fraudulent aspects of ‘The Pale Blue Dot’ and ‘The Falling Man’ (from 9/11), so do you know I don’t assume anything is genuine. In researching my book I came across Alex Webb’s body of work and at first was mightily impressed, especially by his full-on street photography.

#2. Caribbean culture kids don’t do this unless motivated by someone. This is what I’ve found in my travels down there.

Now, there are some rules with ‘street shooting’: You do not ‘arrange’ photos, you catch them on the fly. There is a spectrum here, a fine line, call it what you will, but the photog’s mere presence is going to alter the finished rectangle of visual information that results (‘the photograph’), and that’s to be expected and is okay. Depending on your approach, it may even be okay to ‘nudge’ a photo a liiiittle bit, to improve it. ‘Could you do that again and not look at the camera’ kind of thing. (Some, like the ‘godfather’ of street shooting, Henri Cartier-Bresson, would not agree here. HCB would say you can’t direct anyone, ever.)

#3. A miraculous matching of color and spatial arrangement.

There’s more, way more, to discuss on this issue but for now I’ll leave it at that. Suffice to say that, say, adding elements in post production that were not in the camera original is a no-no on the scale of first degree murder. Arranging people is more like assault and battery, if you get my drift. You know, The Spectrum.

So I’m looking at Alex Webb’s photos and I come across # 1, above, which was shot in Mexico many years ago, in the 1990s I think. Interesting, no? And pretty famous too. Millions of views by probably hundreds of thousands of viewers.

Some kid shots I did in the Islands. I never found a group that naturally produced a decent image. Just sayin’.

This suddenly popped into my head: What the fuck is that person (a woman or girl?) doing in that box in the street (and wearing make-up to boot)? See, I cannot prove (even to myself) 100% that this is either staged or created later (the shadow on her face is not right so the latter is likely). But then I come across the following two images, also done in third world countries. #3 is on the spectrum, for sure. Most innocent case is Webb comes across these kids playing in the courtyard or whatever and asks the one kid to spin the ball. No one else involved in any arranging. Me, I’d give Webb a pass on this. But looking at how well the blue colors match and how the kids are all so symmetrically arranged, I get this feeling that there is nothing genuine about this ‘street’ shot. (The kid up there on the plinth, what’s he doing there?)

Same with the kids on the jungle gym, #2 (whatever you call it). There are eight kids playing on that thing. I know Caribbean culture kids and cannot picture 8 – 10 year olds amassing to play on one of those things. Unless they are asked to, even paid to.

I’ll show you some of my Caribbean photos, many of kids. I cannot imagine getting a shot with more than two or three kids together and having it work compositionally, without arranging them, and probably paying them for their time. Again, for a street shooter, this is a felony.

These Caribbean kids are posed, not represented as ‘street’ shots. This was difficult enough…

But again, this is not proof of fraud. Hey, maybe Alex Webb is a magical guy with kids, with people. So I looked for real evidence. What resulted is the following comment I made on the Youtube Channel of a photographer/analyst I really like and respect, Graeme Williams. Here is the video url.

The exchange started on the photo he takes apart (but noticed no issues), which I also found problems with; then I asked (via a comment) to send him the chapter in my book I am working on that points out other problems in Webb’s imagery, but Graeme did not want to see it; a disappointment. 

Although the following comment is on Graeme Williams’s video, I also managed to send it to the guy who ‘analyzes’  ten Alex Webb photos, meanwhile not noticing that at least five of them are in some way frauds. This fellow, James, of the ‘James Cowman Channel’ refuses to respond to me, which in itself says something. He did forward what follows to Alex Webb, he says. As of this writing I have not heard from Webb.

So the following is actually an email to James Cowman (it also appears on Graeme’s video). Since James’s channel does not allow comments, I had to do some work to find his address. He refuses to deal with my observations on Alex Webb’s images. 

Graeme (plus anyone),

Given my respect for your work as a photographer and an analyst, it was a serious disappointment that you didn’t want to see my evidence (via a link to my essay) that this much heralded shooter [Alex Webb] is a… well, a fraud. (That it’s so obvious and no one says anything is a disappointment too, but that’s another, much deeper subject.)

#4 Two light sources, one too many.

I happened upon a Youtube analyst who thinks so much of Webb that he does analyses of ten of his images, five of which have noticeable problems, i.e., they are to some degree fabrications.  I’ll deal with three of the five. Do a YouTube search for ‘A Closer Look at Alex Webb (Magnum Photography)’ at the James Cowman Channel. (By doing it this way I don’t have to leave a url, which is an excuse to delete.)

The first photo (#4) is lit by two suns, or is a fabrication (Webb does not/would not use flash here), one or the other. You can see the shadow of the Woman’s head is being thrown by a sun that is from the upper left. The Headphone Guy is lit by a sun coming from the upper right. Impossible. There is also a major scaling problem. Headphone Guy and Tall Guy are both close to the wall and should be the same size, so why is Headphone Guy so small? (Webb says he uses a 35mm and it looks like a 35 so don’t talk about distortion.) I should not have to argue my case here, IMO.      

The 4th image (at about 8 minutes): The Big Guy with the box over his head: his face is not even human; a sloppy drop-in job. Enough said. If you can’t see that, fine, go on to the next one, since I only need to be right once. [Go to Cowman’s video to see it.) 

#5. This should be very obvious: the light throwing the shadow would be low enough to be visible and it isn’t. See the url to Cowman’s video for more.

The 8th image, #5, (at about 12 minutes in) is another shadow mistake. The man in mid-ground has two shadows: Regarding the one falling towards us, where is the source of light? It has to be low and behind him, right? Well, there is no such light. Webb added the shadow and who knows what else. 

(The next photo at 14 minutes also has a shadow problem: All of the seated people are lit from DIRECTLY head on (hence they throw no shadows at all). The boy has a sun from frame left and throws a shadow far to frame right. How is this possible absent fraud? Second to last image, ditto, i.e., a shadow problem, but not so obvious.)

As I say, I only have to be correct once. (By the way, that a full half the images in this video have problems tells me that Webb’s ‘many layered’ group photos are all arranged, especially the foreign-shot ones.) 

The couple closest to camera: If the sun was AT ALL to frame left, there would be a shadow thrown by her green shirt onto his blue one. Not even a crack. So how is the kid’s shadow thrown so far to the right? The kid was probably added later. 

Since a version of this analysis is going in a book (my fourth) — as will my ‘relationship’ with you (and others) on this subject (and why no one will discuss the issue), please think before you make a response — like deleting this comment, which is aimed at anyone who reads it and cares about honesty in art or in life (and maybe how the world really works). I would think you would be one of these people. If I am wrong about anything/everything, please be specific in your criticism, so I can FOLLOW THE EVIDENCE, which is all I am trying to do.(By the way, the essay you don’t want to see exposes the ‘problems’ with half a dozen more Webb images.) Webb or anyone can contact me via my blog at blog spot banditobooks dot com.

One more thing: I tried this at ’T Hopper’s channel and she deleted everything, including the Webb photo she had displayed and 18 other comments. I must’ve touched a nerve. 

I will call this #14, which I shot last night in a bout of self-reflection. The image was taken with the fisheye lens pictured in the iPad, i.e., the camera IN the picture TOOK the picture. Not so with #14a! (click these to enlarge!)

If I am wrong about everything (since if I am right about even one photo, that’s that) please let me know and be specific. I mean if you are interested.

I really hope you surprise me….

 Call this #14a. It was shot from the iPad showing the Canon fish-eye in #14, shot at the time that camera took that picture. (We are lucky the universe didn’t implode.) How this is self-reflection is another issue…