Konrad Helbig, Ragazzi Sicily, 1950s
There was a time when the poor were simply that, poor and not petty bourgeois. Some poor people had the privilege of being able to live outside the moral restrictions adopted by the lower and middle bourgeoisie imposed to control them by those at the top of society. Perhaps for this reason, the rich tended to have freer artistic connections with the poor than with the bourgeois trapped by the servitude and aspirations that society imposed on them. Today things are different, and almost all the poor, except the most marginalized, who rarely have the good fortune to directly experience the vital experience of knowing art, combine the worst of both worlds: an uncomfortable life due to lack of resources and an aspirational submission to those who impose social morality on others.
Ian David Baker
A vintage photograph of a shirtless young man holding a broom. Voinquel ((1912-1994) was an important French photographer known for his many studies of young men and his portrayals of Jean Marais and others involved in the movies of Jean Cocteau.
