Zemni Photography Blog

Category: Theory and Concepts

  • Documentary Integrity and Truth

    Being there

    How will you operate as a photographer?

    Will you ask permission or will you be a fly on the wall,
    a ghost who never affects the image? This is a major question relevant to your production ethics.
    If you tell people what you’re doing, then they’ll react differently to you; they may be guarded or
    wary of how you’ll portray them.

    Photographers who lived with the communities they were photographing:

    • Chris Killip with the sea coal gatherers in the North East
      of England
    • Martin Parr with the people of Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire.
    • Bruce Davidson has done a similar thing in New York.

    This is very different to the approach of Garry Winogrand or Cartier-Bresson, neither of whom interfered or announced their presence. Winogrand operated like a ghost but got quite close to the action to produce his wide-angle views, whereas Cartier-Bresson
    remained peripheral, on the edge, trying not to be important to the subject.

    Truth
    This is a big one for the social documentary practitioner. The image has to have integrity – it has to be honest and factual in order to validate it for the viewer as an accurate portrayal. This is arguably where the boundary lies between social documentary and photojournalism where the image has more of an editorial purpose. In photojournalism the choice of photographer and the style of image-making will always have to suit the editorial nature of the publication and this is perhaps a bridge too far for the documentary photographer. Most documentary photographers would have no objection to any magazine or media publishing their documentary images provided that they were published as the photographer intended the viewer to see them, not cropped or enhanced.

    Kendall Walton ‘Transparent Pictures’

    ‘Ambiguities and discontinuities’  Berger & Mohr 1995 p91.

    Bazin

    For the first time, between the originating object and its reproduction there intervenes only the instrumentality of a non-living agent. For the first time an image of the world is formed automatically, without the creative intervention of man…in spite of any objections our critical spirit may offer, we are forced to accept as real the existence of the object reproduced, actually, re-presented…’

    The Ontology of the Photographic Image 1945

    Sekula

    If we accept the fundamental premise that information is the outcome of a culturally determined relationship, then we can no longer ascribe an intrinsic or universal meaning to the photographic image.

    On the Invention of Photographic Meaning 1997 p454

  • Reality and hyperreality

    This is a practice-based course so we won’t be going into detail about the nature of truth,
    hermeneutics, reality and hyperreality. What follows is a very brief summary. However you may
    want to research some of these areas for yourself. You could start by looking at some of the titles
    in the reading list at the end of this course guide.
    We all feel that we’re aware of reality but what is ‘real’? If you live in a desert region perhaps
    access to a tap with fresh clean water within five minutes walk is fantasy. This is not the world
    of the suburb where everyone has several taps of their own. Therefore one person’s reality and
    normality is not that of another. The freedom to travel is a reality for most of us, but not in
    all countries. As a tourist it’s possible to travel from region to region in Cuba but for a Cuban
    national it isn’t – unless you’ve got the correct paperwork. If we see a travel programme on
    TV we see a reality for the tourist, for the paying visitor, a valued source of national income.
    There may be many issues that are a reality of life in the countries we visit that we’re not aware
    of and wouldn’t like if we were. This is not to say that there is a judgment to be made by us.
    As a tourist with a completely different set of values that underpin your reality, how can you
    make such a judgment? This is where the photographer living within a society must start to
    consider the nature of the imagery that is produced. How will it portray the subject – in reality
    or hyperreality?
    Philosophers and critics talk about hyperreality where the human mind can’t distinguish reality
    from a simulation of reality. Hyperreality is what our consciousness defines as ‘real’ in a situation
    where media shape or filter an original event or experience. In other words, it’s ‘reality by proxy’.
    As photographers we need to understand where we are with the images we produce in terms
    of their reality. Is the image reality, a representation of reality or a simulation of reality? Jean
    Photography 2 Gesture and Meaning 47
    Baudrillard (1929–2007) was a French philosopher who addressed hyperreality and who talked
    about the nature of reality in terms of simulacra and simulation.
    The link below will take you to an interview that discusses simulacra and simulation. It talks
    about the destabilisation of the media and our ability to identify what’s real and what’s not real.
    www.youtube.com/watch?v=80osUvkFIzI
    In a nutshell, simulation is the process whereby representations of things come to replace
    the things being represented and indeed become more important than the real thing. At the
    extreme, you end up with a simulacrum which has no relation to reality. So an image may:
    • truly reflect of reality
    • mask and pervert reality
    • mask the absence of reality
    • bear no relation to any reality – it is its own simulacrum.
    We need to be careful to avoid simulation lest we engage with hyperreality as a reality without
    recognising its values.
    Jorge Louis Borges (1899–1986) in his work An Exactitude of Science (1946) describes
    hyperreality as “a condition in which ‘reality’ has been replaced by simulacra.” Borges felt that
    language had nothing to do with reality. Reality is a combination of perceptions, emotions,
    facts, feeling, whereas language is a series of structured rules that we need to obey to help
    others perceive our reality. The same is true of visual language.
    Baudrillard argues that today we only experience prepared realities – edited war footage,
    meaningless acts of terrorism, the Jerry Springer Show:
    “The very definition of the real has become: that of which it is possible to give
    an equivalent reproduction… The real is not only what can be reproduced,
    but that which is always already reproduced: that is the hyperreal… which
    is entirely in simulation. Illusion is no longer possible, because the real is no
    longer possible.”
    Baudrillard argues that we must attain an understanding of our state of perception and the
    message content that is communicated in terms of the images we construct. Even if we see it as
    a straight record of what we saw on the day, can this be a reality and, if so, for whom?
    48 Photography 2 Gesture and Meaning
    Documentary photographers are entering a new age with a new set of criteria. The issue of
    technical quality is not relevant. Images from mobile phones that capture the ‘moment’ will
    be printed by newspapers if the image tells the story. Where then is the need for a bag full of
    cameras and kit? In a new age of photography the documentarist will need to engage with the
    issue of hyperreality by establishing credibility, motivation and integrity. The reputation or name
    is then the status giver, the endorser of reality and truth to the images produced and offered to
    the media and the public.

  • Landscape and Identity

    The concept of ‘identity’ is central to most landscape photography – the cultural, historical, ecological and industrial factors shaping identities of people and places and the ways in which the two interact. ‘Identity’ is however not fixed. Individuals and groups of people are continually trying to reconcile multiple and changing identities as a means of making sense of their place in the world. Identities are constantly manipulated and contested by others in political processes. In the same way, meanings of ‘landscape’ and symbolic associations of places are also multi-layered, changing and often manipulated in attempts to shape power relationships between people and groups of people and peoples’ control over and use of ‘nature’ and other resources.

    In deciding how to portray particular landscape/s key considerations are:

    • Who created, owns, uses and changes this landscape? How do these people relate to each other?
    • How is this ‘landscape’ distinguished from other similar places (who decides what is and what is not similar? by what criteria? why are those criteria important?)?
    • How do (different) users and inhabitants of a place feel towards (different aspects of) the landscape (pride, indifference, disrespect, fear of loss)?
    • What attitudes do (which) outsiders have towards it?

    Underlying all these considerations must also be a consideration of:

    • How are these feelings, identities and relationships manipulated, why and by whom? (See Part 3 landscape as political text)
    • Self-awareness on the part of the photographer of their own identity/ies and assumptions and power/desire (or lack of it) to manipulate and change things.

    See posts:

    Dana Lixenberg’s:  Last Days of Shishmaref
    Jacob Aue Sobol’s work Sabine (2004)

    ‘British-ness’, collective identities and the countryside

    “The concept of the countryside is a significant element of the British identity. All countries have rural areas, but Britain’s is one of its ‘unique selling points’.” (Alexander p119)

     4.2: The British landscape during World War II

    Attitudes towards social issues like renewable energy or housing policy are often polarised by ‘Not in My Back Yard’ ‘visual impact’ on the land according to rather idealised ‘picturesque’ notions of what the landscape used to/should look like.

    Personal identities and multiculturalism

    British photographers have questioned established and stereotyped images of the British landscape and its heritage. Photographers like Godwin and Darwell manipulate aesthetics of the image, beauty in texture, pattern and atmosphere to keep the viewer’s attention – then guide it to pose more challenging and shocking questions about the landscape and peoples’ relationship to it. The effort of extracting meaning in this way also makes the images more memorable. See posts:

    • Immigration and race:  Ingrid Pollard and Simon Roberts.
    • Access to the countryside:  Fay Godwin
    • Environmental pollution and degradation: John Darwell Dark Days (2001 Foot and Mouth Outbreak).
    • Relationship with animals: Clive Landen: sharp documentary style and brutal but images of death in Abyss (2001 Foot and Mouth Outbreak) and Familiar British Wildlife (series on roadkills).

    4.3 A subjective voice

  • Photography, memory and place

    “… in Photography, I can never deny that the thing has been there. There is a superimposition here: of reality and of the past. And since this constraint exists only for Photography, we must consider it, by reduction, as the very essence, the noeme of Photography.” (Barthes 1982,p.76)

    Photographic images affect the way we remember moments we experienced ourselves, and our impressions of things we experience via the image alone. Barthes also proposes how the photograph can act as a “counter-memory”, aggressively blocking impressions formed by our other senses as it “fills the sight by force” (ibid, p. 91 quoted Alexander 2013p107).

    Many practitioners have engaged with idead of personal memories (family albums, holidays) in one form or another:

    • Trish Morrissey
    • Gillian Wearing
    • Joachim Schmid.
    • Peter Kane goes back to places depicted in his family’s photo album and re-photographs and superimposes the images.

    Photography has also been used to explore and challenge the construction of collective memories (eg documentation of ‘early’ or ‘late’ photography as well as events unfolding)

    • Shimon Attie uses contemporary media to explore relationships between space,time, place and identity working with communities to find new ways of representing their history.
    • Jeff Wall produces large tableaux of events, or staged events, referencing the way history painting interpreted and often glorified historical events.
    • Luc Delahaye also references history painting, using large format analogue cameras to document meetings, political ceremonies and war zones.

    But as Bates cautions (see also my reaction to Meyerowitz):

    “As sites of memory, photographic images (whether digital or analogue) offer not a view on history but, as mnemonic devices, are perceptual phenomena upon which a historical representation may be constructed. Social memory is interfered with by photography precisely because of its affective and subjective status…in terms of history and memory, photographs demand analysis rather than hypnotic reverie’ (Bate The Memory of Photography pp255-256)

    The matter of ‘reality’ is an important aspect to consider in relation to all areas of photography: who is recording what, why, for whom and why?

    3.5: Local history

    3.6: ‘The Memory of Photography

  • Industrial and post-industrial landscapes

    Some activist photographers have been mainly concerned with industrial and post-industrial landscapes. Here big industry becomes the ‘new sublime’ to be feared and confronted in the hope of change and avoiding disaster.

    Other photographers have avoided any overt messages, rather asking questions to which the viewer may have different answers. These take a gentler, more ‘picturesque’ approach.

    Post-industrial spaces have also inspired a new kind of tourism: urban exploration of derelict factories and warehouses, abandoned hospitals and asylums, any kind of space that is shut up, difficult to get to (eg below ground) or in any other way off-limits or hazardous. “Leave nothing but footprints. Take nothing but photographs.”

    There are dedicated websites and chatrooms, such as

    A film discussing urban exploration: https://vimeo.com/26200018

    This has been echoed by increasing interest in ‘dark tourism’

    Urbex

  • Landscape as a Call to Action

    Photography, and the manipulation of photographs, is often used to highlight and raise political questions. Landscape photography in particular is often used in environmental activism – images of environmental degradation, urban squalor. In NGO advertising (eg GreenPeace) photographs are often manipulated to juxtapose elements that are then countered by a caption.

    • Peter Kennard produces explicit political photomontage in the dadaist tradition linked to political campaigning organisations – for example his ‘Hay Wain with Cruise Missiles’ (1980)
    • Edward Burtynsky produces large-format photographs of industrial landscapes altered by industry – an ‘industrial sublime’ creating tension between awe-inspiring beauty and the compromised environments he depicts.
    • Mitch Epstein also uses large format, but less ‘beautiful’ images that do not aim to convey a specific message, and are more documentary in juxtaposing complex narratives.
    • Dana Lixenberg in works like the Last Days of Shishmaref uses landscape and portrait photography alongside working with environmentalists and local activists to produce powerful participatory social documentary.
    • Ikka Halso uses digital montage, including 3D, to build dystopian landscapes that raise questions about the ways in which human beings are attempting to control nature.

    Exercise 3.4: A persuasive image

  • ‘Late’ photography’

    In his 2003 essay, David Campany comments that:
    “One might easily surmise that photography has of late inherited a major role as undertaker, summariser or accountant. It turns up late, wanders through the places where things have happened totting up the effects of the world’s activity.” (‘Safety in Numbness: Some remarks on the problem of “Late Photography”’ (in Campany (ed.), 2007)

    This ‘aftermath’ approach dates back to the war photographers of the American Civil War and the Crimean War (1853–56), because of technological limitations of the time. Because of the large plate cameras and slow emulsions, it was not possible to photograph actual combat. Their images focused instead on portraits of soldiers, camp scenes and the aftermath of battles and skirmishes. Their images could not yet be reproduced en masse in the illustrated press, but some of these photographs were used as the basis for woodcut engravings for publications such as The Illustrated London News and Harper’s Weekly.

    Although technology today makes it possible – though still difficult –  to capture the heat of war and atrocities, this is not necessarily the most effective way of portraying the horrors of violence.

    Examples of photographers using the ‘late’ approach in contemporary landscape include:

    • Joel Meyerowitz’s Aftermath images of Ground Zero in New York
    • Richard Misrach ‘s images of the American Desert show the aftermath of human activity but in a beautified distilled large format.
    • Sophie Ristelhueber ‘s aerial images of the Afghan conflict show the scars left on the landscape
    • Paul Seawright Hidden cold ‘objective’ images of battle sites and minefields in Afghanistan
    • Willie Doherty made very evocative images of the left detritus from conflicts during the Troubles and in the present day.

    Other photographers have focused on the precursors – the tension in anticipation of violence.  “not the ‘theatre of war’ but its rehearsal studio” (Campany, 2008, p.46). :

    • An-My Lê’s (to do) series 29 Palms (2004) documents US marine training manoeuvres at a range used to prepare soldiers ahead of deployment in Afghanistan and Iraq.
    • Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin in Chicago (2005) (to do) examine an Israeli military training ground
    • Paul Shambroom’s project Security (2003−07) studied the simulated training sites that are used by the US emergency services and Department of Homeland Security, nicknamed ‘Disaster City’ and ‘Terror Town’.
    • Sarah Pickering in UK has photographed training grounds for the fire and police service. Her images contain no people, aiming to seem like a film set ready for the action.

    3.3: ‘Late Photography’

  • The Tourist Perspective

    Before photography landscapes for mass market were available as etchings. Postcards were invented in the late 19th Century – objectifying places into commodities that could be consumed and collected for a reasonable price. People often collected postcards of places they could never travel to. By the 1870s Americans could buy photographic prints of faraway places in their local shop or mail order (Snyder in Mitchell, 2002 p179 q Alexander 2013 p89). Stereoscopic cards also became available. In order to create the 3D illusion these reinforced traditional views of separation of landscape focal planes into foreground, middle ground and background.

    See posts:

    More recently, with the development of mass tourism since the 1950s, postcards were mass produced as souvenirs of places people visited and to send home ‘Wish You Were Here’. The main emphasis is on enjoyment and selling particular places as destinations that yet more tourists will want to come. They include very cheaply produced and printed cards, sometimes with landscape as the backdrop to humorous pictures of people enjoying – or making fools of – themselves. Some are also ‘boring’ both in subject matter and treatment – and in this way become quite intriguing.

    There are also more expensive quality up-market colour images of sunsets, buildings and landscapes – particularly in more ‘exclusive’ destinations. Some of these follow ‘picturesque’ convention. Others seek to distinguish themselves from other postcards on the rack or nearby shopd by seeking new angles and composition. Some use new ways of digital processing that avoid earlier oversaturation and try to interprete views in a novel way for a more ‘discerning’ customer.

    Increasingly, standard photographic postcards produced by local photographers seem to be giving way to artists’ cards and a trend for self-processing where people produce cards from their own images so they can record their own personal impressions.

     3.2: Postcard views

  • Landscape and the City

    !!To be developed with documentary

    Since the very beginning of photography, the city has provided opportunities for the photographer: landscape and other subject matter.

    Detachment

    Daguerre’s. ‘View boulevard du temple’. First example of photograph of a person. Only rendered because he must have remained relatively still to have his shoes shined.

    Talbot’s views of Paris.

    “The images of Paris remain passive and mute, and establish not so much the tourist eye-view, hungry for sights to record, as one that was looking for things to record… his London images, for example Nelson’s Column (1843), keep the city at a distance and follow the eye in its way within the urban world.”
    (Clarke, 1997, p.77)

    Eugene Atget

    Social documentary

    John Thomson Street Life in London

    Jacob Riis How the other half lives.

    Brassai

    Cities within cities

    A recurring line of investigation is that of the city, not just as one complete interconnecting  unit, but layers of different cities within cities. Sometimes these elements are briefly exposed to one another, but often they are designed to restrain their inhabitants from uncomfortable contact with each other. Eg film In Time.

    Paul Seawright.    Invisible Cities.

     

    1.9: Visual research and analysis – social contrasts

  • Roland Barthes

     

    Roland Barthes was a structuralist, with a particular interest in the semiotics of language and images. Semiotics can be described as the ‘science of signs’. A semiotic analysis of an image or a piece of film is the quantification of how meaning is constructed or a message is communicated.
    Before writing ‘Rhetoric of the Image’ Barthes wrote the essay ‘Myth Today’ (1972), in which he described two levels of meaning: sign and myth.
    • The first level of meaning, sign, comprises a signifier and a signified – or a denoted object (the actual thing depicted) and the connoted message (what the thing depicted communicates).
    • The second level of meaning, myth, takes into account the viewer’s existing contextual knowledge that informs a reading of the image.
    This is a simplified description of Barthes’ system, which doesn’t apply exclusively to photographic images. In ‘Rhetoric of the Image’, Barthes uses the first level of meaning to read an advert for a French grocery company, Panzani.

    This table roughly summarises Barthes’ discussion of the signs he identifies in the Panzani advert. In his essay, Barthes doesn’t explicitly refer to the second level of meaning, myth, although he does mention cultural stereotypes or assumptions that inform the consumption of this advertisement: the more Mediterranean lifestyle of “shopping around” for fresh groceries, as opposed to “the hasty stocking up… of a more ‘mechanical’ civilisation”. Barthes also points
    out that:
    • Recognition of the still life tradition in this image is dependent upon particular cultural knowledge.
    • The image is read as an advert. The fact that the context is a magazine, and the pictorial emphasis on the product labels, influence how the overall picture is read.
    • These signs are “not linear”; they are consumed holistically (Barthes, 1977, pp. 32–37).
    Although the landscape doesn’t feature in this advert, it refers to the bounty of the countryside.
    Here we see the brand attempting to align itself to the stereotype of a lifestyle which is – as Barthes saw it – the very essence of the country, as summarised by his made-up word, ‘Italianicity’. It is very much an image of Italian identity, from a French perspective.

    An excellent example of the dissection of an advert is by Roland Barthes in his essay ‘Rhetoric of the Image’ (1977).
    See: http://98.131.80.43/home/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/barthes_rhetoricofimage.pdf

    The course so far has touched upon commercial applications of the landscape image, and how ideas and ideologies have been attached to particular landscapes. Nowhere are these two things conflated more explicitly than within the sphere of advertising, where landscape imagery is aligned with particular brand values and identities. Understanding how advertising imagery is constructed is essential if you intend to practise photography commercially. Even if you’re not interested in the commercial sector, exploring advertising imagery is a very good exercise in understanding how meaning is constructed and mediated by the photographic image.