LOL.
You are a brave man, JB.

I get both sides of the fight.
It is always good to reflect on our deeper responses to reportage like this and JB's point highlights an angle we should always keep in mind.

I am still wrestling with my responses to this photographer after all these years.
He skates very close to the line, imo. Some of his work is art and highlights aspects of the human condition that would otherwise escape us - even if we have seen the same scenes ourselves. That's art for sure.
But titillation is definitely part of his shtick and sometimes he is very heavy handed with it.

but like Playboy, we all only buy it for the stories, of course.
lol

Poverty porn can serve a purpose. It's like that photo of the starving African kid with the vulture waiting for him to die in the background. It's voyeuristic, intentionally staged and melodramatic. But it packed a punch and encouraged a huge amount of money to be raised. So I guess it served it's purpose.

To be honest I don't know what makes a good photo and it seems like a pretentious game to be in.

But I am not averse to an unstaged and immediate action shot like the hiroshima kid or that VC dude getting clipped by a cop in Saigon or the flag one in iwo jima or where ever it was.

But photos that are staged like portrait paintings suck balls in my humble and uninformed opinion.