Sketch | Expected Reactions: The Julie Project by Darcy Padilla

The comments on the Guardian article about Darcy Padilla's The Julie Project are predictably polarised – either it's moving or violating, end of debate. It is important to contemplate motivation, but of course that isn't all there is to the work. Looking at the images alone, the pseudo-controversial narrative doesn't arise – narrative needs more than images to lift off.

From 'The Julie Project' by Darcy Padilla

And it's disingenuous to pretend 'I want to start with the work' rather than the controversy, because I wouldn't have known of the work unless I'd come across the Guardian article, containing the usual grounding of the fact that some people are offended.

From 'The Julie Project' by Darcy Padilla

I find the film on Padilla's website irritating, the music explicitly directing me as to how I should be feeling. I resent that at the best of times but especially when the subject so clearly carries its own imprecations as to expected response. And it patronises the viewer, accepts the premise that you won't be concentrating or attentive enough, or that you're stupid. I resent the notion that there is a 'proper' way to feel on seeing such images of people involved in the process of death; saccharine tears and professions of sympathy are not adequate to the complex relationships and existences being robbed of their nuance by the camera. I have no knowledge of how Julie felt or what she was thinking as she lived in each moment photographed from an alien angle, and I don't want to conflate my own reactions with hers, or the photographer's. Reactions need a bit of breathing space I think.

From 'The Julie Project' by Darcy Padilla

I do appreciate the opportunity to see pictures that concentrate on one person, rather than a series that instrumentalises people into a representable category – 'the dying' perhaps, 'the suffering', 'the poor'. This work does seem to refute some of that generalisation, which does an epistemological violence to the people pictured and categorised. At least Julie isn't being asked to do service for innumerable others that the photographer couldn't access. Although, of course, she is, because commentators can't help it – "capturing in miniature the plight of America's 'permanent poor'".

From 'The Julie Project' by Darcy Padilla