We’ve looked at a number of images but we haven’t yet discussed their acceptance or reception.
In her book On Photography, Susan Sontag noted how as a society we
can become desensitised and respond almost passively to such images:
“We become inured to terrible events because we become over-familiar with
them through photographs.”
(Susan Sontag, 1977)
George Rodger and Nazi death camps
There is a similar problem with appeals for famine relief. Charities have increasingly turned to
advertising agencies in a bid to raise funds because ‘straight’ press images fail to produce the
required financial response from the viewing public.
Why is our interaction with horror and death often so muted? Our familiarity with photographs
through reproduction and reprinting, and our social conditioning after repeat viewing of images
of a similar nature, seems to diminish our ability to form an emotive response.
In The Society of the Spectacle, first published in 1967, the French philosopher Guy Debord
looked at the commodification of culture and society as a commodity. Debord argues that
representation or ‘spectacle’ has replaced an authentic social life. In other words, images have
replaced genuine social interaction.
“Images detached from every aspect of life merge into a common stream
and the former unity of life is lost forever.”
(Guy Debord, 1967, section 1.2)
As photographers, we need to be aware of and understand the tendency to voyeurism and
spectatorship. The Roman arena was a gruesome place where men, women and children met
their deaths in ever more sophisticated ways before crowds of many thousands, yet this was
perceived as entertaining. As contemporary civilised humans we consider this barbaric but is it
only time that creates this view? Or changes in society relevant to moral codes and decency? Or
a combination of both?
Project Spectacle and truth
Photography 2 Gesture and Meaning 37
Guy Debord was a Situationist. They believed in the ability of the proletariat to define their own
society should they take action to do so and this is a position which has flavoured and informed
postmodernist thinking for many years. Debord notes in section 1.3:
“The spectacle itself appears at once as society itself. As a part of society
and as a means of unification. As a part of society, it is that sector where
all attention, all consciousness, converges. Being isolated – and precisely for
that reason – this sector is the locus of illusion and false consciousness; the
unity it achieves is merely the official language of generalised separation.”
(Debord, 1967)
To return to the Romans, the ruling class used the arena as a way of controlling the masses.
This spectacle effectively became the society because, without it, balance and control – society
itself – could not be maintained. Spectacle and society are one. In the modern world you could
argue that the mass media is spectacle and therefore is society. We disapprove of the journalists
who hack celebrities’ phones but buy their newspaper to read about our disapproval, thus
completing the circle. To quote Debord again, “What appears is good; what is good appears.”
Debord is not easy reading but the complete text is readily available on the
internet if you want to give it a go. You should definitely read the first part
of Anandi Ramamurthy’s chapter ‘Spectacles and Illusions: Photography and
Commodity Culture’ in the course reader (pp. 207–36) and then, if possible, use
the student forum to discuss what you’ve read. Does your understanding of this issue contradict
or align with the views of your peers?
Ramamurthy uses the following quote on p.213 of your reading:
“The spectacle is the stage at which the commodity has succeeded in totally
colonizing social life. Commodification is not only visible, we no longer see
anything else; the world we see is the world of the commodity.”
Do you agree with this? What are the implications of this statement for photography in general
and photojournalism in particular?
The chapter by Wells links photojournalism – which is where it starts – with advertising, where
we expect images to represent commodity; this is diametrically opposed to our expectations in
photojournalism where the public still sees images as impartial and informative.
38 Photography 2 Gesture and Meaning
‘Voyeurism’ is mainly discussed today in terms of its sexual connotation but its truer meaning
is that of a passive observer. There is, though, a point of view that this passivity reflects either
true lack of concern or some sense of fascination or intrigue that creates either academic or
intellectual stimulation rather than a physical one. Levels of control in our society decide what
we can or cannot see – censorship is alive and well. Images that are considered unacceptable
(possibly voyeuristic) are controlled by various non-governmental bodies, particularly in the
UK where news-based images are strictly controlled compared to Holland or Spain where the
graphic nature of disasters is shown on prime time TV. Therefore there is a parochial element to
the censorship with standards maintained by non-elected local custodial guardians.
In 1977 Sontag wrote that “A photograph is undeniable proof that an event took place.” Find a
student that believes that today!
Nowadays, digital images allow us to create from nothing, combining two or more photographs
to form a landscape or portray an event that did not happen. In his foreword to Thomas H
Wheeler (2008) Phototruth or Photofiction? Ethics and Media Imagery in the Digital Age (p.viii),
James D Kelly writes:
“Today the software that changes a frozen moment of time into a moment
that never was, is available to everyone with a personal computer. Some
people are even ready to give up the truth of photography altogether as if
the truth were resident in some magical place called a darkroom. They claim
photography is dead. But the analogy of photographic truth to scientific
rendering never fit, and is quite obviously even more flawed now. Today
all the world knows that a photograph is nothing more than arranging
dots into a pattern that looks like something. Rearrange the dots on the
computer screen and the pyramids are closer together. Rearrange the dots
and a man is pregnant. Rearrange the dots and your ex spouse never went
on that vacation with you to the mountains.”
Kelly’s point about ‘all the world knows’ is a debatable one since humans need freedom and
resources to find this information out and the majority of the world’s population lacks one or
both of these. However, it is certainly true that in the western world an increasingly media-aware
public relies on the ethics of the photojournalist. To their credit photojournalists have on the
whole responded well in maintaining an extraordinary degree of trust in what can be called
non-fictional photography, in stark contrast to the low public esteem in which some literary
journalism is now held.
Photography 2 Gesture and Meaning 39
A burning issue for photojournalists is maintaining a credibility that their photographs have a
truth and that truth is related directly to reality. Wheeler states that ‘phototruth’ is not based
on a reader’s conviction that a photograph is reality. Rather, a photograph can be true in the
way that a sentence can be true. Viewers will believe in its truth as long as they believe that it
‘corresponds’ in a meaningful way to reality.
With the mass reproduction of images on the internet there is every chance that the image
becomes the remembered reality. This is a difficult issue for photography as photographers
in general do not cover areas in the way that television or film-makers do. They extract potent
fragments to create a whole. It is the issue of what is left out that relates to the photographer’s
individual perspective or even to editorial control.
Think about the issues we’ve been discussing – the truth of an image, its relationship to reality
and its acceptance by the viewer – in relation to some photographers who have created images
of different societies. Make notes in your learning log or blog as you read the commentaries
and view the links
Magnum Photographers