image by
Donigan Cumming
“The Stage”
That Mr. Cummings photographs are staged is obvious
and was never meant to be hidden.
His images could be tagged as overdone, unrealistic and shocking.
Additionally, normal middleclass citizens
don’t know anything about what he is showing us in such a surreal manner.
They don’t know anything about depressing living conditions
without air to breath,
without prospects for now and forever,
they don’t know anything about alcoholism and craze,
they don’t know about a life full of disasters and everlasting desperation.
And if they know, they don’t want to know.
Though I have no money, little success and lots of everyday troubles,
I am better off than Mr. Cummings protagonists: I am educated;
I have the freedom of choice and I have a voice.
Though coming from a middle class setting,
as a child I have seen and I have experienced the mood and the desperation
Mr. Cummings photographs are breathing.
Mr.Cummings photographs don’t pretend to be true reflections of reality,
but they do reflect reality.
In my job as an unskilled social worker,
I encountered the craze Mr. Cumming is depicting.
Not just through the things I have seen,
but more so through what I have heard.
Listening to crazy, lonely,
and frustrated people breathing their hatred
against their neighbors into my face,
I felt, as I feel now, looking at Mr. Cummings photographs.
Their fate could be yours.