truth in photography essay

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A New Digital Platform Asks What Truth Means in Photography

With issues of truth more pressing than ever, alan govenar started an online space for critical discussion about the role of images in contemporary life. here, he speaks about projects from istanbul to the bronx..

Sabiha Çimen, Quran School students having fun with a pink smoke bomb at a picnic event, Istanbul, Turkey, 2017 © Sabiha Çimen/Magnum Photos

Chris Boot: Earlier this year, you started a website for photography debates and as a meeting place for ideas, Truth in Photography , which has just launched its second edition. Can you start by telling me why the focus on truth?

Alan Govenar: Issues of truth are more pressing than ever. We’re all looking for truth, particularly as it relates to current events, news, photography. The possibilities for manipulation of the truth have never been greater, given the technological advances over the last decades. Truth in photography is a question, not an answer. Truth in photography is a perception. It’s a feeling. In many ways, it’s intangible.

Boot: It’s clear from the second edition that the arguments and issues are evolving. It ranges from Nigel Poor’s work within the prison system, The San Quentin Project , that began as a feature in the “ Prison Nation ” issue of Aperture magazine and is now a book, published by Aperture.

There’s a piece about the Bronx Documentary Center, another about the girls of Quran schools by the Magnum photographer Sabiha Ҫimen.

Govenar: She is one of the most fascinating new contributors. What’s particularly interesting is that she is a young photographer, and this work related to the Quran schools is her most personal. She told me that in these photographs, she sees herself. She attended Quran schools. Her sisters attended Quran schools. And what she has been striving to depict in her photographs is a sense of what the girls are experiencing, how they manifest their inner lives. Growing up, she was told by her mother that the headscarf was liberating, that if she wore a headscarf, then she could mix in the world. But her mother was also committed to her getting a secular education. So, for her to go into the Quran schools—not only is she in some sense realizing a truth about herself, but she’s also looking at how these girls dress essentially the same, how they engage in group activities, what their fantasies are.

Boot: Her text is incredibly powerful. It’s probably relevant to mention that she’s Turkish and grew up in Istanbul, so she’s right at that crossroads of the secular West and the Muslim East. What she has to say about her adoption of the scarf and how that changed her and made different kinds of photographs possible is a moving piece of writing in addition to the photographs.

Her work, in a way, is both core to a kind of changing set of values in photography, which, judging by the content of Truth in Photography, you’re thinking about and monitoring. And clearly, the Me Too and Black Lives Matter movements have had an enormous impact on the field. Do you see a new ethics for photography emerging, and if so, how would you describe the contours of that?

Govenar: I think the awareness, the consciousness, of ethics in photography have become more apparent, more visible. Photographers are having to discuss ethics, perhaps in a way that they have not before. But historically, for me, the ethics of photography are never neutral. Photographers and photography take a position, a point of view that’s inherent to the framing in which the images are made. This has always been an issue. Issues of truth are time-honored and time-debated, maybe time-disregarded. But we now face this floodgate of images daily. We have to somehow try to make sense of them.

Boot: It does feel like the words “cultural revolution,” as they apply to what’s happened in the last few years and particularly last year, have real meaning here. Would you agree with that?

Govenar: I would. But I think in a larger sense, it’s not only those issues. It’s the systemic issues, because so much of the production of photography, particularly as it relates to photojournalism, is driven by magazine editors, newspaper editors, online news editors.

And then the other spectrum is fine art photography—or what we like to think of as fine art photography, when in fact, for me, it’s a kind of artificial hierarchy that emerges in photography beginning with Stieglitz. While photography is perhaps, intrinsically, the most democratic of all art forms—anyone can make a photograph if you have a camera, and it’s become easier—but photographs are not considered equal. The technical and aesthetic criteria by which we judge them is also part of the issue: How do we see the image? How do we feel the image?

Those are the issues that are not often discussed. But then how are the subjects that photographers focus on prioritized? One of the areas in the spring edition that we introduced is this idea of the struggle for gun control. I was very surprised to find, in searching the Magnum photo archive, that there were no photographs ever made of gun buybacks, which have been happening for decades in the United States and in other places around the world. We’re featuring a portfolio of work by Alessandra Sanguinetti of the March for Our Lives protests. She photographed one of these demonstrations. They were held all over the country.

Boot: You’re identifying a gap in the perspective. I mean, it does seem like Magnum, and not Magnum alone, but a generation of photographers who perhaps have taken advantage of, let’s call it photographer’s privilege—they could go anywhere and had the privilege of viewing others the way that they were not viewed. That was, in a sense, the essence of photography for many years. These quixotic individuals who could adapt and fit in and record without necessarily having a responsibility to their subjects—although I do very vividly recall a conversation with Philip Jones Griffiths several years ago, where he discounted any photographs that were made without the implicit consent of the subjects, i.e. that his idea of photography was rooted in the sense of serving the subject rather than just catching the subject.

But that generation of photographers is deeply challenged by this new environment. Magazines and the media generally have to think differently about who they commission and what viewpoints they adopt, with much more attention paid to the subjects, paid to whom the subjects would wish to be recorded by, obviously with a drive towards more inclusivity and balance in their commissioning practices. Is that something you encounter in your work, this sense of the older generation being profoundly challenged by new thinking?

Govenar: Consent and context are critical in the making of photography, in the publishing of photography, in the exhibition of photography and its presentation in various media. It’s always been a concern of mine. I founded Documentary Arts in 1985 to have a holistic approach, a way of seeing the still photograph as important, but also to focus on not only, how an individual image can become iconic, but on issues of context and the ways we can contextualize the image in different media. To really understand what is happening around us or what we are experiencing, we need to also listen to audio, or see film, or video. If there is truth in photography, it’s in the multitude of perspectives. And that isn’t limited to the factual media. Sometimes it’s in the interpretation. Sometimes there’s more truth in fiction, than in what appears to be factual. Ultimately, truth in photography is intangible, it’s about what we sense, what we identify with, or perhaps know through the realm of experience.

Boot: One of the things that occurs to me about the future of photography is, well, take New York City, for example. You’re out and about with your camera in New York. Subjects are not passive. There are rules of respect and consent that go with the territory of a highly empowered society, let’s call it that. Whereas the history of photography is marked by colonialism and photography served colonial purposes., While much of that has changed, there has been a different attitude to subjects and consent from photographers working in places where people don’t have a voice in the same way.

It occurs to me now that you have to treat every subject the way you would your mother, your brother, another New Yorker. You just can’t have a hierarchy depending on where you are photographing.

Govenar: Part of what we’re trying to do is present the work of professional photographers side by side with the work of community-based photographers and vernacular photography. In the 1980s, I started writing about this concept of community photography. Until that point, discussions of community photography were largely focused on content, what was in the picture. What I was interested in was the process through which these photographs were made. I had received a commission from the Dallas Museum of Art to create a project called Living Texas Blues , and, and at that time, there was a two-volume history of Texas photography being published by Texas Monthly Press. And there was not a single African American photographer represented. When I talked to the curators who were both at major institutions in the state, they said, “Well, we only had time to work with existing collections, and we couldn’t identify any known African American photographers in an existing collection.”

That was in 1985. And that’s when I founded Documentary Arts. Our first major project was focused on African American photography. It’s when I went to New York to meet with Cornell Capa to discuss some of these issues with him. He introduced me to Deborah Willis , who’s been a colleague for decades and who’s been very enthusiastic about the work of Documentary Arts.

In 1995, my wife Kaleta Doolin and I founded the Texas African American Photography Archive. In the first edition of Truth in Photography, we featured a selection from the sixty thousand images that we collected and form the core corpus of this archive. But the bigger point here is that we have worked to present community photographers, who were actively involved in their communities. On the Truth in Photography website, you can hear the voices of the photographers and watch video of people in their communities talking about their work. So, in a sense, what’s being advocated today, which is consent, context, and transparency about the nature of the interaction between the photographer and his or her subjects, the collaborative portrait—all very important ideas—this is the way community photographers have historically worked.

I organized and curated an exhibition on Alonzo Jordan for the International Center of Photography that opened in 2011. He was a barber in the town of Jasper, Texas. His barber shop, when he wasn’t cutting hair, was his studio. His living room was his studio. And he worked in a seventy-mile radius around Jasper in little towns, making photographs. The photograph had greater significance than just what was in it, what the subject was. It was the way in which the subject was depicted and portrayed.

Boot: And the way that image played a role in family lives, individual lives, community lives.

Govenar: And the self-esteem of the subjects. So, when we’re talking today about a new ethics that needs to address these same issues, I think what we’re also talking about is the need to broaden our knowledge of the history of photography.

When the book on Alonzo Jordan was published by Steidl in 2011, it inserted someone who was a total no-name in the history of photography into the canon of photography When we talk about the new ethics, we have to include a reassessment of history going back even into the nineteenth century.

Photobooks have become so important in our world today as a mechanism for transmitting and communicating the work of exciting new photographers but also reassessing historical images. Aperture magazine has also gone in that direction. What we’re doing on the Truth in Photography platform, is, in part, reprinting older articles. For example, in the spring edition, in citizen journalism, we’re reprinting an Aperture magazine article on polling places, for which people were asked to photograph the places where they vote. It’s a wonderful article. And it’s a way to take photographs that were made in the past and present them in the new context. Because we see them differently today. Context defines our perception.

Boot: It’s very interesting you should talk about community photography. As it happens, my first job in photography was in London in the 1980s within a community arts and photography movement that was all about empowerment, empowering the subject, empowering people to tell their own stories and photographs as an alternative to the objectification of a professional media. Have you looked at the community photography movement in Britain in the 1980s?

Govenar: Very much so. When I started writing about community photography, one of the photographers whose work I admired was Val Wilmer, whom I’m sure you knew.

Govenar: Val introduced me to exactly what you were talking about. She was immediately interested in what I was starting to write and think about. And one of the first publications—and probably the first outside the United States—of one of these images that I was working with was in that magazine Ten.8 , which was such an important photographic journal. Through Val, I was introduced to the Photographers’ Gallery.  I didn’t know that much about it, but I was definitely in tune with that. Going to London in the 1980s—you and I didn’t know each other, but we were focused on some of the same issues. It was also around the same time that I met Simon Njami, who was publishing his journal Revue Noire and publishing little photobooks about then-unknown African photographers who were essentially community photographers in different parts of Africa. 

There were other parallels. Certainly, the work that was being done by African American community photographers paralleled work that was being done in Latino and Jewish communities. In a sense, by understanding community photography, we had a lens to better understand, for example, the work of Roman Vishniac and others.

Part of it is that we’re searching for the factual in photography because the way photography has evolved is that we’ve tended to attribute higher value to images that aren’t factual, not only as commodities in the art world and artworks. So, the image that is the faux reality may be worth more from a monetary standpoint than the image of something that is factual and accurate.

But it’s interesting to see how things are turning now. In my interview with Clément Chéroux, he talked about how the need for us to know what is factual and accurate is increasingly more important to us, because there’s so much that is false. Sadly, some photographs of fictional realities have created the groundwork for what we now call misinformation. Ten years ago, it was called art. Maybe it’s still called art, and maybe, it should be called something else.

Boot: Alan, I congratulate you on the work you’ve done over your lifetime of expanding the understanding of photography and what you’re doing today with Documentary Arts and with Truth in Photography. Thank you for sharing your thoughts with Aperture.

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Truth in photography: Perception, myth and reality in the postmodern world

Photography uses the archetype of beauty as a connection to truth., leslie mullen.

Photography was originally considered a way to objectively represent reality, completely untouched by the photographer’s perspective. However, photographers manipulate their pictures in various ways, from choosing what to shoot to altering the resulting image through computer digitalization. The manipulation inherent to photography brings to light questions about the nature of truth. All art forms manipulate reality in order to reveal truths not apparent to the uncritical eye.

Scientific, news, artistic and documentary photography all use the archetype of beauty as a connection to truth. Beauty, however, is based on the beliefs of a culture and does not necessarily define truth. Understanding of photographic truth, like all other truths, depends on an understanding of culture, belief, history, and the universal aspects of human nature.

[This is an abstract of the original thesis presented to the graduate school of the University of Florida in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of master of arts in mass communication, University of Florida 1998]

Many people see the phrase “Truth in Journalism” as an oxymoron these days. From such incidents as an NBC news crew blowing up a car to illustrate the dangers of a particular brand of automobile, to a reporter for the Boston Globe who admitted that she created sources in order to better tell a story, the public is left wondering what in journalism is really true and what is fabricated. This mistrust extends to the photographs used in news stories. With digital manipulation, for instance, photographs can be seamlessly altered to reflect whatever the photographers or editors wish to show. When the O.J. Simpson murder case was the biggest news story of the day, the picture of Simpson on Time’s cover had noticeably darker skin than the same mug shot picture featured on Newsweek or another prominent news magazines. When the public became aware of the altered photograph, Time justified the manipulation by calling the picture “cover art,” and therefore not subject to the same standards as straight news photographs. Adam Clayton Powell III wrote, “The editors argued that it was not unethical, because Time covers are art, not news, a possible surprise to unsuspecting readers who thought they were looking at photographic reality.” A news photograph is often not just an interesting picture used to highlight a story; sometimes, it is a mode of storytelling that incorporates ideas of truth, reality, cultural value systems, and perception.

A History of Manipulation ‍ When photography was first introduced 150 years ago, it was seen as the perfect documentary medium because the mechanical nature of the medium ensured unadulterated, exact replicas of the subject matter. The technological advances of cameras and the subsequent development of photojournalism led to clearer, more realistic photos. Although many news photographers claim their photographs represent the undistorted truth, in actuality a great deal of manipulation goes into the production and publication of a photograph. The photographer chooses what aspect of reality he wishes to represent both when he takes the picture, and when he readies it for publication. Even when a photographer tries to capture the scene precisely, he may miss representing the essence of the scene before him.

‍ Digital Imaging ‍ Computer technology has been applied to photography, creating digital imaging and a new realm of ethical qualms. Because digital images can be seamlessly altered, there has been a great deal of hand wringing about the “evils” of practicing this type of photography. The advent of digital imaging causes us to question and redefine the nature of the photographic visual medium, just as the invention of photography caused artists to re-evaluate the nature of painting.

Digital imaging actually differs from photography as much as photography differs from painting. Photographs are analogous, or continuous, representations of space with infinite spatial or tonal variations. Digital images, on the other hand, are composed of discrete pixels. The images are encoded by dividing the picture into a Cartesian grid of cells. In digital imaging, as in standard photography, writing, or conversation, we must depend on the integrity of the communicator while still maintaining a healthy dose of skepticism, so as not to be erroneously persuaded. Digital imaging is not “an evil,” as described by some in the industry, but merely another tool at the photographer’s disposal.

Photography and Perception ‍ Biologically everyone perceives images the same way. Visual sensory perception is based on the functions of the eye – light enters the eye, hits the cells of the retina, and the brain interprets the impulses of those optical cells into coherent, understandable forms. Differences in the perception of images arise from the cognitive aspect of perception – the interpretation of what those images mean. Signs are not inherently understood, but learned through living in a particular culture. Photographs are referred to as iconic signs – those signs that closely resemble the thing they represent. We read photographs as we read the world around us, a world that is full of uses, values and meanings.

‍ Reality, Perception and Truth ‍ If reality is historically and culturally based there cannot be a “ultimate reality” but instead highly variable and subjective realities. A shift of one’s frame of reference can alter reality, and such shifts often occur, either gradually, such as in the natural development of a culture over time, or instantly, as with the discovery of a new scientific theory. If our notion of reality depends on this world that we “made up,” through our measurements, culture and history, it would follow that our notion of truth is also a product of such factors. By this view, truth is just another contextual measurement by which we judge reality. From this standpoint, how “true” or “false” something is, depends on our perceptions. If we view reality through our frames of reference, and frames of reference shift over time, it would naturally follow that our ideas of truth will change over time as well.

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Modern Philosophy and Truth The relativistic philosophy explained above, that truth is a product of culture, which alters over time, is a central conviction of postmodernism. According to the postmodern viewpoint, culture is constructed, and because our ideas of reality are entirely dependent on culture, reality is also constructed. According to postmodernists, we cannot separate our human perspective from reality, therefore we can never really know what reality is. This is why many believed photography could be the perfect postmodern art form: photography was originally seen as a purely mechanical, objective means of communication, solving the postmodern dilemma of human perceptual interference.

A quality of the photographic negative is that it allows for multiple, identical reproductions of an image. With digital photography, perfect reproductions became possible, without the degradation to which negatives were susceptible. This mechanical reproduction negates the individualism of a work of art. Some would argue that the very nature of photography created the postmodernist viewpoint. In postmodernism, there is no such state as individualism because we are all products of our culture; we are all stamped-out products of the machine age. This denial of the individual denies personal emotion and unique viewpoints. Postmodernism did not just grow out of photography, however; it also stemmed from Marxism, semiotics, poststructuralism, feminism, and psychoanalysis. Modernism has a belief in originality, progress and the power of the individual. Modernism uses the symbolic language of images, and it has a much more optimistic outlook than does postmodernism. According to modernism, we are not imprisoned by our culture, rather, by living in culture we become tutored in a rich symbolic language. The modernist theory that images contain signs which must be decoded in order to be understood comes from Structuralism. The modernist concern for the “essence and purity” of art is a concern with the representation of truth, and the modernist “belief in universality” is a belief in absolute truths. Postmodernism instead supports the relativistic position explained earlier in this paper. In the postmodern world there is no such thing as absolute truth. The postmodernist believes that truth is socially constructed. An acceptance of postmodernism does not necessarily discount modernism, even though the two often are in direct opposition. Because there does not appear to be a consensus about the definition of “truth,” it is still debated, and philosophy often plays out this debate in the art world. According to the scholar Lawrence Beyer, the whole purpose of art is to uncover hidden truths, thus making it the ideal platform from which to conduct the debate.

The Function of Art ‍ Artists aspire to achieve the same type of understanding about truth as do other schools of knowledge. The word “fact” is derived from the Latin factum: a thing done or made. Works of art, or artifacts, are made or created with skill, hence a close relationship between the words “art” and “fact.” Not only can art simplify in order to show what matters, but it can also often show us things previously unseen; art shows us more.

By taking such liberties with reality, by uncovering and revealing underlying meanings, by showing us “what matters,” the artist can help us make sense of the world. This is one reason art has always been with us. Humans have always had a need to understand who we are and why we are here. These are the fundamental questions that science and philosophy grapples with and, more often than not, fails to answer.

At times, artists have been mere tools, used by those in power to convince the masses of a particular ideology.

Art as Persuasion The ability of art to persuade the masses goes back to the beginning of written history. At times, artists have been mere tools, used by those in power to convince the masses of a particular ideology.

According to John Merryman and Albert Elsen, the concept of the artist as a political and cultural rebel is a modern idea. When artists began working independently, fulfilling their own agendas and espousing their own beliefs, they often acted in opposition to the ruling government or dominant religion. Thus, art has often been used as a form of political or social persuasion, either as a tool of the ruling class or church, or as a mode of argument against government and the values of the majority. More recently, especially with the growth of advertising, art has come to be used as a form of consumer and cultural persuasion. For instance, professional artists today practice a form of consumer persuasion when they try to attract purchasers and get them to invest in their products. Art today is more often viewed as a commodity to be bought and sold rather than as a significant political statement.

Persuasive Art: Documentary Photography ‍ One reason art is practiced is due to the human need for understanding. Another function of art is to satisfy the need to keep a record of events that are deemed significant. Before photography, events were chronicled through written accounts or through various forms of pictorial representation. Photography enabled people to document significant events with more visual accuracy than any other medium. Documentarists always knew that some manipulation was necessary in order to make a point, however much they denied it. Most documentarists never admitted to manipulation until after the documentary movement of the thirties and forties was over. But they all understood that documentary truth has to be created, that literal representation in photography can fail to signify the fact or issue at hand. Documentarists need to convey stories with meaning, and their methods in doing so can often bring documentary photography out of the world of straight news photography and closer to the realm of art.

Documentarists often try to achieve a level of drama and sensitivity in their photographs on par with art, to combine straight news photographs with artistic methods to tell a compelling, emotional story. This dramatization of truth allows photographers “to capture particular truths while simultaneously transcending them to reach a level of universal truth,” a function of art as discussed above.

Documentaries need to speak in a language the audience can understand, so documentarists often employ certain structural techniques used in fiction, “both to give coherence to the story they are telling and to ensure that audiences are able to relate to the events being played out before them.” Documentarists achieve this both in the manner of how the photographic subject is represented, in the captions that typically accompany documentary photographs, or in the story that the photographs highlight. The balance between structural and narrative ploys needed to increase interest, and the honest reproduction of events, is one of the most difficult and hotly debated topics among documentarists.

The documentary medium is a form of storytelling that persuades the audience to see the subject matter in a particular light. Documentary photography is especially powerful and compelling because of its close association with immediacy and truth. Documentaries can be seen as tools of persuasion in that audiences tend to fall in line with the documentary’s argument. It is not always the documentary photographer, however, who shapes the story.

We do not consider art to be untruthful, but we do understand it to be a deliberately fictional representation of reality.

Photography, because it mechanically reproduces the scene before it, was at first considered to be a method of representation that excluded the artist’s perspective. However, I have thus far shown how photography is an inherently manipulative medium. To call photography untruthful is not correct; a quality of art is that it does manipulate in order to reveal truth, or to show us aspects of the world we normally would never consider. We do not consider art to be untruthful, but we do understand it to be a deliberately fictional representation of reality.

Myth and Meaning ‍ Art is often used as a tool by ruling powers to persuade the masses. Often, religious leaders have been the dominant authority figures of a culture, and thus art and religion have a long, entwined history. Art has been used to celebrate various religions throughout the world for centuries. Religious leaders have also used art to strengthen their authority over the populace. Although our post-industrial society prides itself on rationality, our current stories and art make use of many of the same themes as religious mythology. Even our journalism and news photographs rely on this mythic-based dialogue to transmit certain ideas, thoughts, and values. The myths of a modern culture conform to suit the character of the culture, and are often so well disguised that we do not even think of them as “myths.” Every culture has myths, however they merely take on an acceptable shape, changing and adapting to suit a culture’s tastes and standards. Although the superficial details of mythic stories change over the course of time, the underlying meanings remain consistent. These unchanging values of myths are called archetypes: original models after which other things are patterned. Myths are distinctive forms of speech, narratives that are familiar and reassuring to the host culture. Myths are a culture’s way of trying to articulate the core concerns and preoccupations of society. Karl Jung saw mythic archetypes as recurring patterns, or universal blueprints, in the human psyche. Jung stated that our belief in myth is reflected in our dreams, and that by unlocking the mythic code of our dreams we can come to an understanding about our lives. Jung believed that such an understanding could lead to meaning, direction, order and a sense of wholeness. Because myths guide us through human experience common to all, we view them, either consciously or not, as reflecting the deepest truths of life. And perhaps, because myth reflects the unchanging facets of the human experience and human nature, they do represent absolute truths. Postmodernism states that truths change over time because human culture and perceptions change over time, but the existence of myth proves there are some aspects of humanity which remain indifferent to the passage of time.

News & Documentary Photography and Myth ‍ The purveyors of myth hold a great deal of influential power within a culture. Previously, the purveyors of myth were almost solely religious authorities. In our more secular society, journalists often fill this role. Through the dispersion of news, journalists tell stories that address societal concerns. Journalists are storytellers in our culture, only they must remain true to real events in their telling, rather than create or transform events as a novelist or movie maker does. Journalists pride themselves on this objectivity, of stating just the facts. When a story is broadcast on a news show, the audience does not usually wonder if the story is true, or whether the journalist is lying. We trust journalists to give us objective information that is relevant to our lives. We also trust that this information is true, because journalists are seen as “news specialists.”

Myth, like news, rests on its authority as “truth.” By accepting journalists as “news specialists,” we believe that the news they relay to us is true and, for the most part, unbiased. As news specialists, journalists themselves fulfill a mythic archetype: the messenger, or communicator. In Greek mythology, the God Hermes represented the messenger archetype; the Roman equivalent was the God Mercury. Because we see mythic archetypes as representations of “the true,” the association between messenger and journalist reinforces our belief that journalism is “the truth.”

On closer inspection, the notion that journalism equals truth does not hold up. For instance, because journalists look for certain elements to carry or propel their story, they cannot be considered wholly objective. Just as fiction uses the different or particular to illustrate universal values, so do news stories. Journalists tend mainly to report on stories that have certain elements, or “news values.”

In other words, journalists, as members of a particular culture, are bound by the “culture grammar” that defines rules of narrative construction, a realization that changes the notion of an “objective” transposing of reality.  New Journalism, for instance, uses the devices of fiction in order to tell a compelling news story.

Regular news reporting is not fiction, but it is a story about reality, rather than reality itself. These constructed stories, drawing their themes from myth, give people a schema for viewing the world and for living their lives. The documentary form of journalism, “the creative treatment of actuality,” uses fictional narration devices more freely and overtly than do straight news stories. Documentaries are modes of storytelling that use fictional narrative methods. A narrative consists of causally-linked events that occur at a specific place and time. Documentarists rely on several narrative techniques, such as the ‘a day in the life’ format, the ‘problem – solution’ format, and the ‘journey to discovery.’

News and documentary photography effectively record the texture of current experience, and invest that experience with meaning. Photographs, as stated earlier, are symbolic narratives. But in order for these symbolic narratives to remain effective, the photographs must remain current.

Science Photography and Truth Photography is not only used by journalists and artists, however. Scientists also make wide use of photography’s various applications. Science and truth have a long association, and the modern era was in part defined by a belief in science’s ability to objectively discover absolute truths. Currently, science does not claim to discover final truths, yet scientists are often seen as unquestionable authorities in our technology-driven culture, very similar to the earlier unquestionable authorities of religion. Journalists actually contribute to this image, strengthening the connection between science and authority. Journalists tend to hold scientists in high esteem, and they promote scientists as superstars, super geniuses, or as brilliant eccentrics who operate outside the realm of normal human activity. Science has had a long association with religion. Science and religion generally also share a belief that truth is found or revealed, rather than made, as postmodernists believe. Yet a principal difference between science and religion lies in the search for truth. The common quest of both science and religion is the search for truth and understanding, but religion relies on faith whereas science relies on proof obtained through observation and experimentation.

We put our faith in our scientists, not only because of our belief in the truth of mythological archetypes, but also because science represents the search for truth. We often rely on journalists, our messengers or scribes, to interpret this knowledge for us.

Science and the visual arts have much in common. Both science and the visual arts have an interest in color and light, and both attempt to achieve understanding derived from observation.

Science and the arts may tend to flourish together because practitioners from each field draw from one another for inspiration. Not only can photography make traditionally dull science topics seem artistic, but photography can also make such topics seem exciting. Photography can expand the audience for science by making science both more interesting and accessible.

Just as journalists and scientists disagree on the definition of truth, they also disagree on how to communicate truth. Many scientists object to the literary devices journalists employ in telling a story, for instance. Journalists strive to capture the essence of the science, but scientists expect the “nuts and bolts” of their findings to be expressed as well.

In order for a journalist to have his story read by the public, he must make that story appealing and interesting. Photography aides in this process, giving the public clear pictures to accompany and illustrate the text.

Truth and Beauty One quality of art and photography that is associated with truth is the representation of beauty. One reason beauty and truth are linked is because of beauty’s connection to myth through archetypal patterns. Archetypes can be geometric patterns (such as circles, spheres and triangles) that occur naturally in nature. Artists often use these patterns as signifiers or clues of deeper meaning. Religious art often relies on symbols and patterns to convey meaning and truth. Beauty similarly is associated to truth due to its archetypal representation of order and form. This emphasis on order coincides with the Platonic ideal of beauty, which is based on unity, regularity and simplicity. Plato stated that every living person is in the process of becoming, of moving toward the ideal. The more “beautiful” something is, the more it will be seen as closer to the ideal. The idea that beauty is associated with truth and meaning has long been a basic belief of scientific philosophy.

The Sublime and the Beautiful The Kantian idea of the sublime appears at first glance to be the antithesis of Platonic beauty. Beauty is achievable, pleasurable, and evokes feeling of peace and contentment. The sublime, rather than the opposite of beauty, is instead a higher, less restful form of appreciation. Beauty is calm and surety; the feeling of truth found. The sublime is awe and exhilaration, but also a restless feeling of the need to achieve understanding. The sublime is often connected to beauty, however. Beauty acts as a base from which the sublime is reached. Perhaps what motivates “a search after the beautiful,” or the true, is the sense of the sublime that follows from an appreciation of the beautiful. As stated previously, beauty promotes feelings of peace and satisfaction, of truth found, whereas the sublime promotes the need to search for truth.

Beauty and Photography Beauty is a common theme in science, art, literature and journalism. All these modes of inquiry seek to uncover "truth," and beauty is a way for them to “prove” they were successful in their search. But just as beauty does not always equal scientific truth, it does not define other truths either. The same applies to photographs – beautiful pictures are not inherently any more true than ugly ones. In fact, many beautiful photographs are manipulated, showing a falsified vision of reality. And just as with scientific theories, belief affects whether we see a photograph as beautiful or not.

A photographer who prefers to represent beauty is often seen as someone who irresponsibly depicts the world through rose- colored glasses. National Geographic , for instance, has been accused of only presenting the sunnier side of life due to its preference for strikingly beautiful images. Despite the belief that beauty is a sign of irresponsibility or decadence, most successful documentary photographs can still be considered beautiful in form, even when the subject matter (the content) is ugly. The horror of war is, unfortunately, an undeniable truth about the history of human existence.

In photography, as in other forms of art, simply a beautiful form is not enough to suggest truth or to reveal meaning.

In photography, as in other forms of art, simply a beautiful form is not enough to suggest truth or to reveal meaning. If photographers take a picture simply because the image looks nice, the end result may often be banal rather than beautiful.

A dramatic or beautiful picture will catch the eye, but it often won’t engage the mind unless it is placed in context. This is why, according to Adams, photographers and other artists need a firm grounding in the history of their art to be successful. To be able to reveal meaning in new ways, one must know how meaning has been revealed in the past.

Beauty does not guarantee either truth or meaning. Beauty, like myth, depends on what we as a community believe. Despite the fact that order and symmetry define beauty, we may not acknowledge the ‘beauty’ of an object unless we are willing or ready to do so. This ties our sense of the beautiful inexorably to culture. Postmodern art highlights this culturally-dependant quality of beauty to prove how truth is product of culture. As stated previously, the idea that truth is defined by culture is the position of postmodernist philosophy.

Beauty in Aesthetic Philosophy Modern philosophical theories reflect on the issues of beauty and belief, as well as the issues of symbolism and meaning. One of the differences between modernism and postmodernism has to do with the artistic representation of the sublime. As stated above, the sublime is characterized by boundlessness and formlessness. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to represent the concept of the sublime in a work of art. We can conceptualize the infinitely great and the infinitely small, but all of our attempts to describe or represent such concepts seem inadequate.

In modernism, art involves both the beautiful and the sublime. In postmodern art, however, beauty is eschewed entirely as an outdated, ineffective model. When you consider that postmodernists believe that chaos ultimately wins out over order, this makes perfect sense.

Postmodernism looks down on beauty as nostalgia, or at least as a man-made construct; beauty is, after all, based on belief. Postmodernism instead seeks new forms of presentation, not for enjoyment, but as a means of expressing the unpresentable, the sublime. Postmodernism may have determined its own dead end by stating that the surface is everything. It is no wonder that postmodernism is often characterized by malaise or nihilism; why bother giving anything more than a cursory glance if there is no sense of deeper meaning? Without the symbols of myth, such as beauty, it is possible that a sense of the sublime may never be achieved, and it is the sublime that often prompts a need to search for deeper understanding.

Postmodernism has touched upon most of the fields in the liberal arts, and photography as been especially affected. Both modern and postmodern art promote the idea that images must be decoded. In modernism, this decoding is achieved by understanding a language of symbols or signs that indicate deeper meanings. Postmodernism says photographs need to be decoded according to their relationships to other factors within the culture. Whereas modernism treats a photograph as an image containing meaning, postmodernism sees a photograph as a cultural object.

Photography, as stated previously, is a manipulated medium, despite the protestations by news photographers of complete objectivity. The photographer chooses his subjects, frames his pictures, and alters the appearance of the photograph in the darkroom. He creates according to his own personal vision and aesthetic taste. This fact alone would seem to negate the postmodernist viewpoint, however, postmodernists claim that which we take as individual taste is a product of culture, any subjective aspects photographers believe they have infused in a photograph are really only borrowed from a pre-existing pool of ideas.

Although the postmodernist viewpoint currently prevails in most of the critical literature on photography, I believe there is still room for some of the tenets of modernism in current photographic thinking. The continued efficacy and resonance of mythic archetypes and themes throughout society would seem to indicate that symbols are effective in conveying meaning. The fact that new photographic images continue to capture our interest and even astonish and amaze us seems to suggest that the malaise postmodernists wallow in is not wholly reflective of the attitude expressed by the general public. Originality, genius, and individuality are still possible within a society of shared beliefs, influences and experiences. After all, as stated previously, art often means different things to different people. Although beauty has always been associated with form, order, and symmetry, individual understandings or representations of beauty vary. While the existence of myths suggests there are inherent, universal aspects of human understanding, there are enough differences among us to ensure we may never reach the dead end that postmodernists claim we have already crashed into.

Part of our trust in photography stems from our unconscious faith in mythic archetypes as universal truths.

Conclusion Photographic truth, like all other truths, depends on culture, belief, history, understanding, and human nature. There are truths that change, while others remain constant. The truths that remain constant will most likely reflect basic, unchanging facets of human life, such as of nature and biology, or of how to best cope with the demands of living in society. These unchanging facets are often related through mythic archetypes, and these archetypes are often featured in art works that endure over time. These works of art endure because they capture aspects of our own experiences, perceptions, attitudes and intentions. If they did not fairly reflect our own lives, they probably would not last. But even these unchanging truths are under constant reconsideration. Reality is not static, it is in constant flux, undergoing revision as new aspects of life continually come to light. Part of our trust in photography stems from our unconscious faith in mythic archetypes as universal truths. Myth is a symbolic language reflecting conditions inherent in human culture, and it affects how we see the world and tells us how we should conduct our lives. Although unacknowledged by the conscious mind, myths influence our ideas of what is “true” and guide us down the path toward understanding. Photography speaks in an extremely powerful symbolic language, a language that derives power from its non-verbal, almost subconscious quality. Although news and documentary photographs are not formally considered “artistic” photographs, they best perform the same function as art: by choosing and selecting which aspects of reality to highlight and address, they do away with the trivia and chaff of the day-to-day, and show us in many ways how life may be led and understood. Through manipulation, they reveal truth, or at least, what the photographer perceives to be truth. Our understanding of reality depends on a knowledge and awareness of both the internal and external world. Photography, as both a reflection and a manipulation of reality, is likewise viewed and judged by that vision. It is only by understanding why photography is so closely aligned with truth that we can come to comprehend our own deep-rooted faith in its authenticity.

you can download the complete thesis here

Additional reading

Cindy Sherman in Photo Elysee

The consolation of radiant lightness

The Riga Photography Biennial 2024 focuses on identity issues

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TRUTH IN PHOTOGRAPHY

A new platform explores the ongoing dialogue around photography, social change, and the shifting role of media

TRUTH IN PHOTOGRAPHY is a new interactive platform looking into the history of image-making through the work of renowned artists, lesser-known practitioners and vernacular photography. Magnum Photos will be collaborating with Alan Govenar, curator and founder of the platform, to provide content drawn from the archives as well as contemporary work that will interrogate the nature and intentions of the medium.

Here, Magnum’s Cultural Director Pauline Vermare discusses the project with Govenar. The first edition of TRUTH IN PHOTOGRAPHY  features two Magnum bodies of work, Nanna Heitmann’s reportage on Covid-19 in Russia, and a group portfolio on the US/Mexico border – images from both illustrate this interview. You can explore the platform here . 

Pauline Vermare: You have been building this encyclopedic project for a long time now. It is made of layers and layers of content – not only photographs but also video, audio, text… This is an impressive combination of knowledge that amounts to years of research and critical thinking. Can you tell us more about the nature of the platform, and your intentions for it?

Alan Govenar: TRUTH IN PHOTOGRAPHY is an open-ended forum for active dialogue and discussion about photography and social change, exploring the issues vital to truth in image-making that are crucial to our world today. This interactive project questions the singular truth of photography by presenting multiple points of view, featuring diverse curators, photographers, critics, and historians, and integrating vernacular photography, photojournalism, and fine art photography. TRUTH IN PHOTOGRAPHY continues the work of Documentary Arts, a Texas- and New-York-based non-profit organization I founded in 1985 to present essential perspectives on historical issues and contemporary life.

What was your thought-process around the selection of different themes explored on the site? 

The themes we focus on are historical and contemporary, timely and timeless. They are not definitive but are instead points of emphasis and comprehensive in different ways. Clearly, photographers in today’s world are broadly engaged in many, if not all, of these themes. Some of themes we intend to explore include: Looking for Truth in a Digital Age; The Ethics of Truth; Community and Cultural Identity; The Democratization of the Camera; The Transmission of Photographic Truth; The Manipulation of Photographic Truth; The Professionalism of Photography; Advocacy for Social Change; Concerned Photography; Citizen Journalism; and The Power of Abstraction to Reveal Truth. As TRUTH IN PHOTOGRAPHY evolves, new themes will emerge, offering windows into the thinking and creative process of photographers as the scope of their work expands.

One of the great appeals of the platform is the juxtaposition you create between archival and contemporary work, and between professional and vernacular photography, which really exemplifies the breadth and depth of what photography is – what it means for the photographers, what it means for the subjects, what it means for the viewers. For the launch of the platform and this first edition, you have curated two essays by Magnum photographers: one is Nanna Heitmann’s Covid-19 work, which is accompanied by an interview. Can you tell us about that?

Nanna Heitmann’s photo-essay is an intimate portrayal of the intensity of Covid-19 in and around Moscow, from photographs of congregants at a Russian Orthodox Church that echo the compositions and coloration of Bruegel paintings to haunting, yet gentle, portraits of frontline medical workers and the stark reality of hospital patients. In my Zoom interview, Nanna speaks with humility and candor about the difficult truths and ethical challenges of documenting the suffering she witnessed. Her comments are at once compelling and poignant.

The core idea and mission of the platform is to be open and diverse, engaging photographers, curators, editors, academics of all backgrounds to take part in the narrative. Can you tell us more about the intended participatory nature of the project?

At this point, the site encourages submissions in two different ways. The first is our Share Your Truth page, where anyone can submit an image by uploading it, and then filling out a description of the image and answering the question “How does the image express or manipulate truth?” The second way to submit to Truth in Photography is to view our submissions page. There you can fill out a contact form to let us know how you would like to contribute to the site.

In addition, there is an opinion section, where anyone can give their perspective by finishing the sentence “Truth in photography is…”

Our collaborators – Magnum Photos, Aperture Foundation, International Center of Photography, Local Learning, Family Pictures, and others (museums, libraries, schools, colleges, cultural organizations and the general public) — will help shape our curatorial direction in the development, design, and content. With each edition of our open-ended forum, we hope to add partners and collaborators.

Most of the projects you have led until now had a very strong educational dimension to them. What about this one?

The site explores the ways in which the truth in photography has been debated and challenged, delving into current issues, but also those from the past. As the site evolves, it will become a multimedia encyclopedia of photography that strives for gender and cultural balance, reflecting the diversity of image-makers from around the globe. Every edition of TRUTH IN PHOTOGRAPHY will include historical content that delves into the way image-making developed into what it is today, and how the issue of truth has been central to the medium from the very beginning. In addition, TRUTH IN PHOTOGRAPHY will be a multifaceted resource, containing many links to other websites, essays, articles, blogs, and books, which elaborate the context of the featured photo-essays and provide opportunities for continued learning. We are working with teachers and community educators to develop learning resource materials. Documentary Arts has a long-standing commitment to educational outreach. Our websites www.documentaryarts.org , www.mastersoftraditionalarts.org , everydaymusiconline.org and museumofstreetculture.org offer learning resource guides free of charge.

Theory & Practice

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Bruce gilden, explore more.

Completely Half, A Music Video by Bieke Depoorter

Philip Jones Griffith’s Dark Odyssey

Philip jones griffiths.

Exploring Istanbul Through Emin Özmen’s Lens

The Coles of Tomorrow

Behind Bruce Gilden’s Portraits

What to Do If You Are Stuck in a Creative Rut

Back to the Archive, Looking for Peace with Newsha Tavakolian

Famous Faces From the Darkroom

Past Square Print Sale

Conditions of the Heart: on Empathy and Connection in Photography

Magnum photographers.

Photographic truth and documentary photography

Does a photograph represent “truth?” What makes it truthful? When is it untruthful? If it does convey truth, whose truth is it?  These questions have been with photography since its origins.  They have become more pressing with the advent of digital photography and the ease with which a digital image can be manipulated.  They are especially important for those of use who think of ourselves as working in the journalistic and documentary traditions of photography.

I recently re-read Jerry L. Thompson’s book of essays,   Truth and Photography:  Notes on Looking and Photographing .  The following reflections are drawn in part from his opening essay by that title.

Early in its history photography was often seen as an objective representation of reality. It was a “true,” scientific, representation of the world.  So for early photographers, truth meant verisimilitude: that is, truth meant that that the picture looked exactly like what would be seen from the camera’s view (with one eye closed since the ordinary camera doesn’t have stereo vision).

Before long, however, self-reflective viewers and photographers began to realize that even the literal image had a subjective element. In addition to the abstraction generated by seeing the world in black-and-white, what photographers chose to photograph, and what they chose to include in the photograph – how it was framed – was highly subjective. As Thompson says, it was a view from a particular point of view.

So although early documentary photographers claimed to objectively represent the world’s realities, they soon became more self-aware, acknowledging that documentary photography had an interpretive and even artful dimension to it.

By the end of the 19th century and through much of the 20th, artistic expression became for many photographers the motivation for photography, and this affected even the documentary tradition.  The photographer’s goal was to express the her or his response to the world, to “express your creative vision” as so many camera ads have proclaimed.   The photographer’s goal in this view is not to directly copy something but to convey the subjective experience of the subject or the photographer’s mastery of it.  Sometimes, in fact, the subject itself is unimportant but is used  to convey a personal vision that might have nothing directly to do with the actual subject.  What is being documented is the photographer’s experience or impression of the subject.

Thompson analyzes Walker Evans’ photographs from the 1930s.  Although apparently they are straight, “documentary” photographs of buildings and people, they are in fact highly personal.  In fact, Walker saw them as projections of himself.  For Alfred Steiglitz during the same era, truth was his own emotional state and the true artist mastered the medium to shape the image in a way that conveyed his or her own truth.  In these views, then, truth means “fidelity to the subjective experience of the artist.”

So photography, Thompson notes, moves between descriptive  and expressive approaches.  Yet even the descriptive photograph is highly subjective and could depart substantially from “objective” reality.

The lines between these two poles are blurred in the work of Pedro Meyer,   Truth & Fictions:  a journey from documentary to digital photography. In her introduction to the book, Joan Fontcuberta argues that only a myotic view of documentary work would exclude Meyer’s approach.  She gives an example of such a dictionary definition:  “Documentary photographs are thought of as those in which the events in front of the lens (or in the print) have been altered as little as possible from what they would have been, had the photographer not been there….” Sometimes Meyer, a Mexican photographer, does not make any alterations in the photos he presents: “…they ae perfect instances of found paradoxical situations….” But often Meyer invisibly manipulates and adds to photographs, creating a fantasy world in which it is difficult to distinguish what was actually there.  They are presented as a kind of document, but one that calls attention to the blurred lines between fact and fiction.  What is “real” and what is not?  Fontcuberta calls on artists to “seed doubt, destroy certainties, annihilate convictions….”

Thompson points out for many photographers – whether their intent isdescriptive or expressive – truth depends on the vision and mastery of the photographer.  Thompson is encouraged by the alternate possibilities suggested by a famous Walker Evans portrait in which the subject asserts her own “…overwhelming presence, a ravishing mystery that…delivers a gift, a gift of sight.” “The kind of large, open   truth   I am trying to attach to photography reaches back toward this initial, primordial sense of wonder, of awe.”  So photography as mastery is not the only way to conceive photography. As I have argued before, a photograph depends upon a kind of collaboration between photographer and subject.  Sometimes the subject takes, or is given, power in the relationship.

Mastery of the photographic medium has led present-day photography to its “truth,” Thompson acknowledges, but another broader truth endures and asserts itself from time to time in what he calls “genuine encounters.”  In my words, when the subject is genuinely respected and allowed to be co-creator with the photographer.  “If, at the start of the twentieth-first century, photography still has any unspent capital left, it may be that its greatest reserves will be found in this direction….”

What Is Photographic Truth?

Photography struggles with truth as a concept. With other art forms, truth is generally a non-issue. We do not question whether a painting is real. We do not question whether a dance is real. We are generally able to discern fictional texts from nonfiction; furthermore, we’re generally able to sift through multiple nonfiction texts and combine them with our own experiences to arrive at a conclusion of truth. But not with photography.

Given the mechanical nature of photography, a real-world event had to have existed for you to either take (or make) an image of it. As an aside, taking an image means the act of going out, seeing an event, and taking what’s unfolded before you. Making, in contrast, is when you’ve made the event in front of your camera (whether that’s as simple as directing your friends to say “cheese” at the barbecue before making their image or something more elaborate, like sourcing clothing, hair, makeup, etc. for a fashion shoot).

I digress. If you imagine a thing, you can’t just take a photograph of it. You first have to actually have some semblance of that thing in front of you to make (or take) the photograph. If I imagine an image of a boat, I can just paint a boat. If I imagine a song about a girl, I can just write the song. But if I imagine a specific image of a boat or a girl, I need those things to actually exist in front of my camera in a way I imagined them for me to make a photographic image of them. In this way, photography is mechanically grounded in reality (to an extent).

Self Portrait as a Drowned Man

In Self Portrait as a Drowned Man (1840), Hippolyte Bayard used makeup, props, and posing to pass off as a dead man (when he was not actually dead). He wrote an accompanying statement to the photograph, which furthered his false claim. Photography is mechanically entrenched in the real world. You cannot take a picture of something that is not actually there. Bayard had to make himself look dead.

To reiterate, photography differs from other arts. You can paint whatever you can imagine. You can write whatever you can think of. But with photography, you need at least a real-world form of what you are photographing.

Before the invention of Photoshop (and even before the invention of cameras that could feasibly take portraits outdoors), Constance Sackville-West painted fantastic scenes and then collaged studio images of her family photos into them. Given the limitations, this is a very rudimentary Photoshopping of her time. I don’t think anyone today would question that these people are actually outdoors.

Bayard and Sackville-West are just two such examples of creatives who used photography in a manner that challenges truth while photography was still in its infancy. There are innumerable other examples both new and old.

The above image was co-authored with my friends Briarna and Frank  as an exercise in creating sunlight. Except for a few minor tweaks by way of color grading, the image is very much straight out of the camera.

This is a studio image and is lit with multiple flashes, some of which had colored gels on them, as well as various reflectors and gobos. The image is indoors, and there is no natural light. The model is not drunk. However, these things seem true because of how the image is staged and lit. In order to create the image, we had to actually stage and light it in a way we had imagined. Although what you see actually existed for the image to be made, none of it is real in the sense that none of it is authentic.

The Next Camera

"Stephen Mayes' "The Next Revolution in Photography Is Coming argues that current digital cameras create images of what is physically in front of them. In order to create a better image, these cameras photograph only a small portion of what is there, instead of having been coded to use algorithms to fill in the blanks.

Since the time Mayes wrote that article, we also have additional augmented photographic techniques more readily available, such as photogrammetry. In this photogrammetric tiki image, I took a whole bunch of images of this little tiki from all different angles. And then, I ran them through specialized software, which created a simulated 3-D model of the tiki. I can turn this around and look at all the nooks and crannies from any side of the computer. If I wanted to be clever, I could use a 3D printer to make a replica of it.

But is the image real? That is to say, this model isn’t a mechanical 1:1 replication of the tiki. It’s what the computer code put together from a bunch of pictures. Even if I printed it, it would be several iterations from the original model and the 3D-printed object.

Mirrors and Windows

In his 1978 essay, “Mirrors and Windows,” John Szarkowski talks about various dichotomies which exist in photography. Romantic or realist. Straight or synthetic. Szarkowski concludes that we are able to describe where a photograph — or body of work — exists on these continuums and that that placement is a factor of and factored by several factors. Ultimately, this placement is a descriptive one and not a prescriptive one.

Szarkowski concludes his essay with the question of the concept of what a photograph — and I guess photography — aspires to be: “is it a mirror, reflecting a portrait of the artist who made it, or a window, through which one might better know the world?”

I would argue that ultimately, it doesn’t matter. I don’t think you’ll have ever had a photograph which is just one or the other, and one or the other isn’t necessarily better or worse. But I believe that the framework in which a photograph is meant to be viewed is more important.

An image can be factual, but not be true. Inversely, an image can be false but still represent the truth.

To clarify, truth isn't necessarily fact. And a factual image may not be true.

As an example, my image of glasses (above), I'd argue, isn't true. They are indeed glasses. The image was lit and photographed as it was. But unless you looked closely (or I told you), you would not know they are doll glasses. And in that, the image warps reality in a way photography does so well. Photography has the power to upend truth. It is factual — and unaltered an image as can be (save for a few tweaks to color).

The clarification here (and perhaps one I should have made earlier in this article) is that truth and fact are not the same things. The image exists as a fact. I actually did have toy glasses on a pink piece of paper. I actually put lights on them and pressed the button on the camera. This is factually true. But the truth of the image, which I won’t go into detail about, is one of commentary on consumption and materialism.

Conversely, my image of Lucien may not necessarily be fact. But it is a mirror to the truth. You can behold it and feel a certain something. Or perhaps not. It reflects an emotional truth, despite being a constructed image.

Here, "constructed" means that I didn’t actually just catch him in my studio like that. It wasn’t happenstance, but rather, he was invited, and this was a concept we had discussed in advance. But either way, he doesn’t leave trails of light as he moves. That was a decision that was executed on camera to speak to an emotional truth.

The onus of Mayes’ claim rests on an inherent truth in photography, or at least that photography has more of an inherent truth than an image created from computing coding and algorithms.

Since its invention, photography has never been true. Photography is lies. An image of a thing is just that: an image. It is not the thing itself. Bayard clearly proves that with a bit of figurative smoke and mirrors, you can quite literally take a photograph that lies.

This leaves us with the question of the photograph as perhaps a mirror to the truth.

Ali Choudhry is a photographer in Australia. His photographic practice aims to explore the relationship with the self, between the other, and the world. Through use of minimalist compositions and selective use of color and form he aims to invoke what he calls the "breath". He is currently working towards a BA (Honours) in Photography.

This is a great article. Because of the inherent mechanical aspect of photography in general it has often been looked down upon by the "art" world. Using a computer program to manipulate images intensifies the disconnect seen by "traditional" artists.

Thanks Glenn! And I agree completely. I'm also weary of this "digital art" craze; but we'll see.

University of Notre Dame

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

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Photography and Philosophy: Essays on the Pencil of Nature

Scott Walden (ed.), Photography and Philosophy: Essays on the Pencil of Nature , Blackwell Publishing, 2008, 325pp., $79.95 (hbk), ISBN 9781405139243.

Reviewed by John Andrew Fisher, University of Colorado at Boulder

Shows devoted to photography seem to be everywhere in the art world. As Scott Walden, the editor of this collection of essays notes, photography "has become the darling of the avant-garde." It appears that photography has become trendier than painting. One reason for this may be that while the nature and scope of painting has been thoroughly investigated over the last two centuries, photography appears to be relatively unexplored. Moreover, as a medium photography has the advantage over both painting and sculpture of permeating social life and thus of appearing to be easier to understand in an art-world setting than other art forms. In addition, the variety of uses of photography in everyday life -- portraits, snapshots, fashion and advertising photographs -- provide artists with a multitude of genres to explore and often parody.

Perhaps surprisingly then, only a few of the thirteen essays that make up this collection directly address the artistic or conceptual content of current art photography. This is not to say that the collection is in any way disappointing. On the contrary, it is a ground-breaking, cutting-edge anthology of essays by leading analytic philosophers of art all focused in one way or another on the foundations of photography. In his contribution to the collection, Walden elaborates on his focus on truth in images with an explanation that could also serve as a rationale for the entire collection:

the operative assumption here is that the best methodology for understanding our appreciation of pictures involves first developing an understanding of their most literal aspects, and then proceeding to an understanding of the more complex aspects in terms of these relatively simple ones… . The faith is that if we can understand truth in relation to the depiction of the simple, visible properties of people and objects depicted, we can then, in terms of these and some other -- as yet undetermined -- principles governing the viewing of pictures, arrive at a more comprehensive understanding of the use of images in journalism, advertising, illustration, and art. (p. 94)

This faith might seem debatable, but in fact these essays do indirectly illuminate photography as art even when that is not their primary goal. By undermining the complacency with which we approach a mass art medium, they indirectly address the central aesthetic question that arises in looking at art photography: "In what ways can I appreciate a photograph aesthetically?"

Why does photography merit extended philosophical examination? Few other art media have troubled art theorists as much as photography, and this has been true since its inception in the nineteenth-century. Only instrumental classical music has fascinated philosophers as much. In pure instrumental music there is no intrinsic representational content, yet the music feels as if it is saying something and sounds as if it expresses emotions. In the case of photography we have the opposite problem: instead of too little representation, we have nothing but pure representation; we see nothing in a photograph but the objects that are photographed.

There are four fundamental issues that underlie the more specific themes of these essays: (i) What is the nature of photography? (ii) Given this nature, can photographs as photographs be fine art? (iii) How does photographic representation differ from other types of visual representation? and (iv) In what way are photographs more realistic, objective or true than representations produced in more traditional media?

Most of the papers were written especially for this anthology, although three chapters are reprints of papers by prominent figures in analytic aesthetics (Kendall Walton, Roger Scruton, Arthur Danto). Two of these papers, Walton's "Transparent Pictures: On the Nature of Photographic Realism," and Scruton's "Photography and Representation," are classics and serve to anchor the anthology by providing influential albeit controversial accounts of the foundations of photography. Walton argues that photographs are 'transparent,' by which he means that in looking at photographs we "quite literally" see their subjects. Scruton argues that a photograph cannot be what he calls a "representation," and by this he intends to imply that it cannot qua photograph be a work of art. To make their arguments, these two thinkers develop extended analyses of concepts central to photographs: in Walton's case, the concepts of seeing and visual experience, and in Scruton's case, the concept of an artistic representation. In relating photography to more general concepts, these papers join several others in the anthology. For example, Danto argues that individuals have rights over the way they appear, a meditation spawned by what he regards as untruthful photographic portraits.

Although the anthology is not divided into sections, one can collect most of the articles into three main groupings. The first group consists of five articles, all directed at analyses of the realism, objectivity, and truth that we attach to photographs: Walton on the transparency of photography, Cynthia Freeland on icons, Aaron Meskin and Jonathan Cohen on evidence, Walden on truth and Barbara Savedoff on authority. Danto's contribution, "The Naked Truth," also explores the specific sort of truth that might be ascribed to photographic portraits. He proposes a distinction between the optical truth that a high-speed photograph, which he calls a 'still,' might reveal and the natural way we see people or things. He argues that the "still … shows the world as we are not able to perceive it visually. It shows us the world from the perspective of stopped time" (300). Such photos often lie as portraits, Danto thinks, and when they do, they violate the personhood of the subject by failing to respect the image the subject desires to project to the community.

In "Transparent Pictures" Walton aims to understand the sort of realism possessed by photographs. He notes that photographs are not necessarily more accurate than paintings, yet he supports the idea that photography is "a supremely realistic medium" (21)). There is a gap, in his view, between the realism and immediacy of photography and what can be achieved by painting. He rejects the idea that in looking at a photograph we are having an illusion, as if we are mistaking the photograph for the objects photographed. His big claim is rather that photography "gave us a new way of seeing" (21). He means this quite literally: "Nor is my point that what we see -- photographs -- are duplicates or doubles or reproductions of objects … My claim is that we see , quite literally, our dead relatives themselves when we look at photographs of them" (22). He argues for this in several ways. One is a slippery slope argument, moving from seeing objects by means of mirrors, telescopes, etc. to seeing objects via live broadcast television, to seeing objects in documentary film. Although this implies seeing the past, he thinks we accept that we see events that occurred millions of years ago through a telescope. He does allow that we see photographed objects indirectly . Nor does he claim that we fail to see the photographs themselves. We see the objects -- our dead relatives -- by seeing the photograph; "one hears both a bell and the sound that it makes" (24).

Don't we also say that we 'see' Lincoln in a painting? Walton argues that this is fictional seeing, and this is because the sort of seeing involved applies equally to non-existent painted objects. Walton's theory of photography and of the way it differs from painting is based on the mechanical process of forming images which characterizes photography. Whether through an optical-and-chemical or digital process, once the shutter is triggered the image is determined by what is in front of the lens, not by the beliefs of the photographer:

The essential difference between paintings and photographs is the difference in the manner in which in which they … are based on beliefs of their makers. Photographs are counterfactually dependent on the photographic scene even if the beliefs (and other intentional attitudes) of the photographer are fixed. Paintings which have a counterfactual dependence on the scene portrayed lose it when the beliefs (and other intentional attitudes) of the painter are fixed. (38)

If a painter who is trying to depict the scene in front of her believes that there is a gorilla in the scene, she will put it in the painting even if it is not actually there, whereas even if a photographer also has that belief, a gorilla will not appear in the image if one does not exist in front of the camera.

The transparency of photographs is not about how photographs look, but about how we take them to imply that the objects we see in them existed. This explains, he suggests, why we experience a sort of shock when we learn that a Chuck Close photo-realist self-portrait is not a photograph: "We feel somehow less 'in contact with' Close when we learn that the portrayal of him is not photographic" (27). By contrast, "[v]iewers of photographs are in perceptual contact with the world" (48). This is not to deny that photographs, like some mirrors, can distort, nor that some photographs are constructions (combinations) that taken as a whole are not transparent.

Walton even allows that a "photograph, no less than a painting, has a subjective point of view" (35). Still, his account raises the question of whether the causal process that announces the existence of the objects photographed is the only defining characteristic of photography. Doesn't the photograph also show how these things appeared? Do we not only see our dead relatives, but also that the scene appeared a certain way ? Yet that appearance is the result of adjustments of many variables by the photographer. Although Walton says, "[p]hotography can be an enormously expressive medium," (35), it is not obvious how his account of the literal seeing involved in seeing a photograph addresses the subjective and expressive aspects of photographs. In literally seeing the objects in a photograph do we also literally see what they looked like? We think we do, but is there a basis for this thought in the transparency of photography?

The four papers that follow Walton's all grapple with photography's realism or truth. Freeland's "Photographs and Icons" points out that there are two senses of "realism," an epistemological sense related to truth and accuracy, and a psychological sense related to psychological force. She usefully employs terminology of Patrick Maynard's to mark this distinction as the difference between the "depictive" function of a picture and its "manifestation" function, which is similar to Walton's notion that we 'contact' the objects we see in the photograph. By describing an impressive parallel between photographs and religious icons, she presses the argument that photographic realism as the manifestation of the objects photographed has less to do with our beliefs in the epistemic status of photography than it does with our attitudes and emotions, such as the desire to sustain contact with departed people. In so far as her argument centers on portraits, whether of saints in icons or of people in photographs, it would be interesting to ask if it implies that we do not feel in contact with the non-human objects in, say, landscape photographs.

In "Photographs and Evidence," Meskin and Cohen approach realism from a different angle. They reject Walton's claim that we literally see the objects in photographs. Instead, they analyze the special epistemic status of (depictive) photographs in terms of their information content: "photographs typically provide information about many of the visually detectable properties of the objects they depict" (72). They follow Dretske in understanding that "information is carried when there is an objective, probabilistic, counterfactually supporting link between two independent events" (72). Because it is an objective link, their notion of the information carried by a photograph is independent of any subject's beliefs or other mental states. Their claim about photographic information is weaker than it might at first appear to be. Consider color: "photographs typically carry information about the color of the objects they depict -- if the colors of the objects had been different then the photographic image would have been different" (73). This concedes that the photograph does not tell the viewer what the color is ; as they note, "systematically replacing the colors of a picture with their complements would not thereby change the informational content of that picture" (74). They contrast visual or v-information about the appearance of objects with information about the egocentric location of the objects they depict, which they call e-information. In their view, the special epistemic status of photography is grounded on the fact that photographs provide v-information without providing e-information, whereas ordinary seeing provides both sorts of information.

Walden's "Truth in Photography," looks at photographs as potential sources of true beliefs. He contrasts objectively formed images -- those produced mechanically, such as photographs -- with subjectively formed images, such as handmade images. He argues that "we generally have better reason to accept beliefs engendered by viewing photographic images than we do those engendered by viewing handmade ones" (104). He concludes by considering whether the wide-spread adoption of digital-imaging techniques will undermine our confidence in the objectivity (mechanical nature) of the image-forming process. He argues that it is in "our collective interests to resist the implementation of such techniques [that undermine objectivity]" (109). One reason is that even if we still form true beliefs from looking at an image, these will be less epistemically valuable if we lack grounds for confidence in their truth.

Savedoff's contribution explores what she calls the documentary authority that we ascribe to photography: we regard a photograph as capturing a bit of the actual world. She makes this key to the ways that art photographs work; whether recognizably depictive or more abstract, they depend on and play off of this authority. The effectiveness of many artistic photos depend on our taking them as factual. She shows how the irony or humor of a photograph is made more profound because we regard the scene depicted as really in the world, not constructed by the photographer. She goes on to show how artistic photographs, because of their authority as photographs, often force the viewer to disambiguate complex images and thus see the world made strange. This authority also accounts for an important distinction between abstract paintings and abstract photographs. In the latter we are enticed to play a game of identifying the actual objects photographed. In a Cubist painting "the forms refer to objects … In the case of photographs, the forms are the forms of the objects before the lens" (122).

A second group of articles revolves around Roger Scruton's position. In "Photography and Representation" Scruton couples many of the same basic facts about photography that other authors accept with his own not implausible view of what an artistic representation of the world is to conclude that photographs as such can never be artistic representations: "photography is not a representational art" (139). It should be said that he is referring to a logically ideal photography, which he defines as having a purely causal and non-intentional relation to its subject. An ideal photograph of x implies that x exists and that it is, roughly, as it appears in the photograph. Yes, there is an intentional act involved in taking the photo, but it is not an essential part of the photographic relation. The appearance of the subject, therefore, is "not interesting as the realization of an intention but rather as a record of how an actual object looked" (140). Appearances in a representational painting are a different story. "The aim of painting is to give insight, and the creation of an appearance is important mainly as the expression of thought" (148). Given how they are defined, ideal photographs cannot express thoughts. He argues that "if one finds a photograph beautiful, it is because one finds something beautiful in its subject" (152). On the other hand, in so far as the photographer manipulates the image in some way, going beyond the 'ideal' photographic process, for example in a photo-montage, she becomes a painter. So, Scruton in effect presents a dilemma for anyone who would defend the possibility of photographs as art: either a given photograph is an 'ideal' photograph and hence not an artistic representation or it is in important ways not photography but a form of painting. To answer this challenge one would have to show that the photographic process involves possibilities for expression of the artist's thought and style that lie outside of Scruton's stark options.

Articles by David Davies and Patrick Maynard follow and counter Scruton's argument by going into details of photographic composition. Davies' "How Photographs Signify" takes direct aim at Scruton's argument by developing ideas drawn from Rudolph Arnheim and Cartier-Bresson. Davies shows how the geometry of a carefully composed photograph prevents the viewer from perceiving it as a "transparent window upon its subject" and instead leads her "to see the subject in a particular way." So, contra Scruton, there is a "thought embodied in perceptual form" (182-183). Maynard ("Scales of Space and Time in Photography") presents the most detailed analysis of the various dimensions of a photograph -- negative space, dynamics, etc. -- to argue that there are "inextricable but irreducible artistic values in snapshot art." Savedoff's sensitive discussion of various genres of art photography also provides weight to the argument against Scruton.

A third theme of the collection involves comparisons between films and still photographs. Scruton inspects film's credentials to be art in spite of its being a series of photographs (an artistic defect from his point of view). Gregory Currie ("Photography and the Power of Narrative") compares the ability of still photographs and film to support a narrative. In his second contribution to the anthology, "Landscape and Still Life," Walton investigates the differences between what can be depicted in a still picture and in a moving picture. Both Walton and Currie sketch accounts of the viewer's imaginative experience to explain the difference between what can be depicted in still and moving photographs.

Noël Carroll ("The Problem with Movie Stars") notes that movie stars often bring a persona to a movie role and that this persona is sometimes essential to our understanding of the narrative of the movie. He argues that this fact is inconsistent with standard assumptions about how we should understand fictional narratives. These assumptions dictate that extra-work information about an actor is not relevant to an understanding of the fictional world of the work. The cognitive background relevant to appreciating photographs as photographs is also explored by Dominic Lopes ("True Appreciation"). He contrasts two principles of adequate appreciation in general. One drawn from the theories of nature appreciation of Allen Carlson and Malcolm Budd requires that "an appreciation of O as a K is adequate only if O is a K" (212). One's appreciation of a whale will be inadequate if one appreciates it as a fish rather than a mammal. A different principle requires that "an appreciation of O as a K is adequate only as far as it does not depend counterfactually on any belief that is inconsistent with the truth about the nature of Ks" (213). He suggests reasons to favor the latter requirement as a general principle. However, this principle implies that our aesthetic appreciation of photographs is inadequate to the degree that we find them compelling because we have false beliefs about the accuracy with which photography records how things look.

I note in conclusion that Walden provides a thorough Introduction and an extensive Bibliography. As you would expect, there are photographs (32 of them) that illustrate the arguments. There is also a substantial Index, which is a bonus in an edited book. All in all, this is a very valuable collection that gathers together a set of articles and issues that should be of general interest to philosophers of art. As an anthology of analytic philosophy of art this collection may be most appropriate for upper-division and graduate aesthetics courses, although it would also be a provocative addition to interdisciplinary courses in photographic or film theory.

The New York Times

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During this year’s tumultuous World Press photo competition , a large number of images were disqualified because of manipulation or excessive digital postprocessing. In addition, one major prize was revoked amid allegations of staging and misleading captioning.

These events sparked months of spirited discussion and introspection about ethical practices in photojournalism. In response, the World Press organization is changing its rules for next year’s contest and creating a code of ethics for photographers entering the contest. Along with Oxford University’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, World Press also surveyed photographers who entered the 2015 contest. The 63-question online survey was completed by 1,549 of the 5,158 entrants. About half of the respondents were from Europe, and 9.2 percent were from North America.

One of the most disturbing findings was that more than half of the news photographers who replied said they sometimes staged photos — with 12 percent saying they did so at least half the time. All of the major wire services and newspapers in the United States forbid staging news photos.

The study’s authors said some news photographers might have responded thinking of portrait assignments, rather than news stories. “Even if that is the case, there is an important gap between codes of ethics that prohibit staging and what happens in the field,” the authors said to Lens. “It certainly suggests the idea of the photographer being a fly on the wall and not in any way affecting the news event they picture is unsustainable.”

To further the conversation on these ethical concerns, Lens asked several photographers and editors to comment on the issue and to share their experiences in the field. After reading those essays, we invite you to add your thoughts about staging journalistic photos in the comments below. We will add selected comments of fewer than 250 words to this text to further the conversation.

Stanley Greene is a founding member of Noor Images , a photography collective, agency and foundation in Amsterdam. His books include the autobiographical “ Black Passport ” and “ Open Wound: Chechnya 1994-2003 .” He won the W. Eugene Smith Grant in 2004.

I think setting up photos — where they are completely staged — is very widespread. I’ve seen it done by very-well-known photographers, mostly in conflict or disaster situations. I’ve witnessed photographers try to recreate moments when they arrived to a scene too late.

The public has lost trust in the media. We have to be ambassadors of the truth, we have to hold ourselves to a higher standard because the public no longer trusts the media. We are considered merchants of misery and therefore get a bad rap.

It seems that the honor system is not working. Editors need to be a little tougher and demand those raw files to see the timelines and those mistakes when there is a suspicion that something is not correct.

“It’s up to the editors and photo festivals to hold photographers’ feet to the fire.”

— Stanley Greene

We have to get back to looking at all the frames so you can see the timeline. If you look at my contact sheets you get to see how I think. With digital files we manipulate them and edit them so that it’s very hard to track the truth.

I put the contact sheets in my book “Open Wound” because I wanted the audience to see that I wasn’t setting up shots and to show them how I thought. I wanted to show the warts and all.

There’s a lot of good guys out there, but there’s also a lot of bad guys who are giving us a bad rap. And a lot of bad guys who are getting awards. It’s up to the editors and photo festivals to hold photographers’ feet to the fire.

Santiago Lyon is the vice president of photography for The Associated Press.

Much attention has been rightfully given recently to the digital manipulation of photojournalistic images — the altering of news photographs using software in order to willfully deceive the viewer by adding or subtracting elements of a photo or by toning the image in a way that no longer reflects the reality of the scene as the photographer witnessed it.

But there is another type of image manipulation — when a photographer orchestrates a scene to fit his or her own narrative by asking the subject(s) to do things they would not ordinarily do, or by asking them to repeat things they were doing prior to the photographer’s arrival. For example, the photographer who might ask a combatant to fire their weapon so they can capture a more dramatic image. Or the photographer who agrees when the subject proposes doing something solely or primarily for the benefit of the camera — burning a flag or chanting during a demonstration.

“Photojournalists and photo editors have serious responsibilities to the viewers of their images, and clarity, accuracy and transparency are our allies.”

— Santiago Lyon

Sadly, this “setting up” of images sometimes occurs in photojournalism, often in places where there is limited understanding of journalistic ethics. It is the visual equivalent of fabricating quotes in a written story, and it has no place in journalism.

Education and training are the best remedies to this issue. They allow the employer (or commissioning editor) to clearly define standards and expectations while, at the same time, teach and instruct the photojournalist how to behave in an ethical and truthful manner.

But sometimes it is not the photographer who manipulates the scene, but rather the organizers of media events through what is known as a “photo opportunity,” where the subject(s) of a picture are asked to pose for the photographers — politicians shaking hands for the cameras or victorious athletes holding up their trophies.

While these scenes are real, in the sense that they actually happened, they should be clearly captioned as photo opportunities for maximum accuracy and transparency.

The same accuracy is also necessary when describing portraiture — those occasions when photographers pose their subjects for formal portraits.

Photojournalists and photo editors have serious responsibilities to the viewers of their images, and clarity, accuracy and transparency are our allies.

Donald Weber is a member of the VII Photo Agency. His books include “Bastard Eden, Our Chernobyl” and “Interrogations.”

In practice, photography is a Western-dominated, predominantly Western-controlled profession, where global stories told from a singular cultural perspective create the ghost in the machine. Local context is obliquely considered. A choice at some point has to be taken. A picture must be taken by the photojournalist. And it is in that moment of decision when the classical entreaties of photojournalism fall short, when we elect to hide behind the aesthetic veil of approved conduct — when, in reality, our actions will always be deceitful.

“The story dictates the way it wants to be told. Institutions, competitions, media outlets do not.”

— Donald Weber

We need to look beyond the photographs themselves and their representation and look to the photographers.

Photographs lie, photographers do not.

Today, there are no limits, so our struggle is to liberate our reliance on technical capabilities and place our faith in the voice of the story and the author.

There can be no one way of doing anything, and a code of ethics should not hinder the aims of photography. In fact, it must work to liberate the story from stultifying confines, and help the photojournalist to engage an audience. How do we begin the transformation?

To me, it’s simple: The story dictates the way it wants to be told. Institutions, competitions, media outlets do not.

If a story wants to be told as a series of portraits, so be it. If a story wants to be told in staged photographs, so be it. If the story wants to be told in reportage, so be it. The point is, the form is decidedly irrelevant. What is relevant, however, is how the author has decided to engage you, the viewer of the image.

Michele McNally, director of photography and an assistant managing editor at The New York Times, headed the jury for the 2015 World Press Photo contest.

A staged photo is not acceptable in news pictures that are thought to depict real-world situations and events. Portraiture, fashion and still lifes are, of course, produced and directed, which should be obvious to the viewer.

That said, no publication is immune to getting burned. For example, one of our photojournalists covering conflict in Lebanon once gave me a heads-up that I wasn’t going to see a dramatic image of a dead baby being paraded through the streets. That’s because the crowd saw the photographers and actually dug the baby’s corpse from its grave, held it aloft and paraded it. He refused to take that picture.

“No publication is immune to getting burned.”

— Michele McNally

There was also the case of Time magazine’s Russian child prostitution cover story where the people shown were not child prostitutes, nor was the person touted to be a pimp. Five pages of pictures, all set up, unbeknownst to the editors.

There are many societies where photographers work without accepted ethical guidelines, but with a long history of producing propaganda disguised as “news.”

We operate under the credo “the truth as best we know it,” and thoroughly research a correction when we need to. World Press noted that there was no rule against staged photographs in last year’s contest rules. There are certainly magazines that would just clearly caption how the pictures were taken, and that would be acceptable, too. It is good to have this dialogue, but who really gets to define the rules of photojournalism in this time?

Sim Chi Yin is a photographer based in Beijing who often works for The New York Times. She is a member of the VII Photo Agency.

When I’ve taught young photographers, I’ve noticed some confusion over what is ethical and what is not in photojournalism. In a world inundated with imagery, some students seem to struggle to differentiate between what’s posed/constructed and what’s a found moment. And I’ve had the odd conversation with fellow practitioners, some of whom are old hands, where discussions on ethics are nervously laughed off or sometimes descend into “but Gene Smith did it too.”

It’s easy to understand how it’s very tempting when in-field to compromise on what might seem like a small matter. Hell, I’ve been tempted, when standing out in the hot sun for yet another hour, waiting for a person to go by in that spot of great light so I can make an interesting frame of a scene. Just cutting the corners a little bit would make for perfect frames in perfect light, in a much shorter time, with less effort. We wouldn’t need four years to shoot and produce one personal project.

But it’s a slippery slope. It all comes down to the integrity of the work and the person making it, in the end. Philip Blenkinsop once reminded me and a workshop class that integrity, once lost, can never be regained.

“Philip Blenkinsop once reminded me and a workshop class that integrity, once lost, can never be regained.”

— Sim Chi Yin

We’ve seen examples of ethical breaches among journalists across many countries. Having lived, worked and taught in China and this part of the world for several years, I sense that there is perhaps a looser understanding of journalistic ethics in places where there isn’t a strong tradition of journalism education or, indeed, where there is a history and political culture of the news agenda being driven by propaganda. For instance, in China, “news” 新闻 xinwen is still often used interchangeably as “publicity” or “propaganda” (宣传 xuanchuan), especially in the more official outlets.

I think the key is to be honest and transparent about how one made the image.

I don’t have a problem with set-up or intervened-with documentary work — that’s a different genre — as long as the viewer is not misled. It troubles me when set-up work is passed off as found moments.

Even with the introduction of clearly spelled-out stricter rules on what World Press Photo classifies as “manipulation” in next year’s contest (following this year’s controversy), while postproduction processing can be found out using forensic software, manipulation in the shooting — staging, directing — is very hard to detect or prove.

We will still have to rely on photographers to be honest and have integrity. And one hopes those basic principles can, in the end, prevail.

Darcy Padilla is a photographer based in San Francisco and is a member of Agence Vu. Her 20-year project on a woman with AIDS struggling with manic depression and drug use won a W. Eugene Smith Grant for Humanistic Photography, a World Press award this year and has been published as the book “Family Love.”

Setting up photos matters because as journalists, when we arrive at a scene, we say we witness this. We witness this and this is the truth, in practical terms, and we offer this to the public. And when you stage or pose or change that information you are jeopardizing our profession, and the trust involved in what we do. This is important to me because I don’t want people predisposed to look at my work and say that was set up, that didn’t really happen, doubting the integrity.

The first time I saw a staged photo, I was a young intern photographer at The San Francisco Chronicle covering the 1989 earthquake. I was at Crissy Field surrounded by journalists from around the world, waiting for Vice President Quayle to speak. There was this man reading the newspaper, wide open, while leaning on the police barricade in front of the crowd. The Chronicle’s headline read, “Hundreds Dead in Huge Quake.” As I started photographing him the man finished then folded up the newspaper and this photographer said, “Sir, can you open it up again and hold it?”

“What are you doing? You can’t do that,” I said, and I remember he replied, “Yes, I can do it.” We exchanged words as he took his photos. And the couple of photographers around him also took photos of what he had asked the man to do. Then they moved on. There have always been the “sometimes” journalists, and the survey does not surprise me.

I didn’t make the photo I wanted that day and since I’ve never considered setting up a news photo. I’ve always thought: I’ll try to get it the next time it happens.

And if there is no next time, then I wasn’t good enough.

After reading these statements, we invite you to add your thoughts about the photograph in the comments below. We will add selected comments of fewer than 250 words to this text to further the conversation.

Here are selected comments from readers:

Steve Liss, Associate professor of Media at Endicott College, former photographer for Time magazine

Candid = truth? That’s accountant’s truth. It’s comforting and seductive. But it’s simplistic, in my view. I would respectfully submit that a directed picture can sometimes convey a greater truth about a subject than a candid picture. We aren’t surveillance cameras. We’re thinking photojournalists searching for truth…sometimes as a direction, not a finite end. And we’re often limited by practical considerations of time and access. We’re called upon to make judgments all the time and, whether we want to admit it or not, we affect the scenes we photograph by our presence. Before presuming to anoint ourselves the final arbiters of the truth, we might do well to ask when the last time was that we conveyed truth to our readers from a staged White House photo op? Much magazine photography is, and has always been, directed to some extent. In the course of my own work, I’ve set situations in motion, and I’ve put up a light in circumstances where there was no light. Anathema to contemporary purists I’m sure. But I’ve never once lied to my readers. To honestly convey the essence of a story has been my life’s work. And that of much greater photographers than I. Yeah, times change. But W. Eugene Smith, much maligned by today’s practitioners of ‘superior’ morality for directing pictures, told, in my judgment, great and universal truths about humanity that strike me as just as valid as any we tell today within our lockstep definition of ‘ethics.’

Jack Zibluk

As the profession diversifies and changes, the ethical lines between staged and unstaged image use overlap and blur. As we use more video and sound, the traditions of print ethics and the traditions of broadcast ethics and other forms of storytelling don’t always coincide. In television and video, standups and narrations are often staged and it’s considered acceptable. But the photographer’s presence in a still photo as a shadow or reflection is considered unprofessional. In my classes at Southeast Missouri, where I am professor of mass media, we apply various professional codes of ethics to various case studies. Class members seldom agree on whether a staged picture can tell a truth better than an unstaged picture, which some students call “found art. The consensus is that it comes down to intent. We all agree that a willful deception of the audience is wrong. period. Beyond that, it’s pretty much an open dialogue, and I think the profession doesn’t have enough of these dialogues with professionals or with audience members.

Camille McOuat

Last year I did a personal project on heterosexual male intimacy in Istanbul. In every case I had seen the men doing the behavior, but often I asked permission before shooting. This was not to improve the photos, but for my own safety/respect to the subjects, as shooting young Kurdish men in Istanbul can be sensitive right now. Asking sometimes breaks the scene, so you gesture for them to resume. How does this figure into the debate?

Victoria Sheridan

Every time this topic comes up the stories of Eugene Smith are used as examples — yes, it is well known that Smith sandwiched negatives and orchestrated scenarios in order to make a photograph they he envisioned, but that doesn’t make it right nor does it make it an example with which to forgive our current manipulations in the profession. We study history in order to understand our past and become better not complacent nor to excuse failures. History should not be used to abdicate ourselves of our responsibilities but should be used to push us and our students to excel, move forward and be better. The histories of photography and photojournalism are littered with examples of manipulation and I assume it will continue to be so, but we don’t study history to use it as justifications for our current failures and dishonesties, we should study history in order to propel excellence.

Nick Nostitz

The question on staging and ethical behavior of photo journalism is far more complex than images being staged or not. A staged image obvious to the viewer is not unethical, be it a portrait, which is always part of reportage, or in a news setting, when demonstrators, for example, produce themselves in front of cameras (often i like to include the crowd of photographers in such scenes). The ethical questions which are rarely addressed though are the way how the images are taken. All too common are situations where crowds of photographers block the way to ambulances to get better images of the injured being carried away, or, even worse, where when mobs beat up or lynch people while escape routes are blocked by photographers. A certain amount of staging always takes place the moment a camera arrives, it is inevitable and integral part of modern society. For me the more important issue is that i behave in an ethical way while i take my photos, such as in certain situations ask for permission so i do not intrude into their privacy too much, and therefore may “stage” an image, or step back and let injured being carried away or try to stop someone from being lynched instead of taking pictures of it. What matters to me as a photographer is my interaction with the people and the subject matter i take pictures of, and that i am honest to my audience in communicating a story.

Follow @ slyon66 , @ Donald_Weber , @ chiyin_sim and @ nytimesphoto on Twitter. Lens is also on Facebook and Instagram .

October 15, 2015 — Pictures of the Day

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Photographic truth and documentary photography

Does a photograph represent “truth?” What makes it truthful? When is it untruthful? If it does convey truth, whose truth is it?  These questions have been with photography since its origins.  They have become more pressing with the advent of digital photography and the ease with which a digital image can be manipulated.  They are especially important for those of use who think of ourselves as working in the journalistic and documentary traditions of photography.

I recently re-read Jerry L. Thompson’s book of essays, Truth and Photography:  Notes on Looking and Photographing .  The following reflections are drawn in part from his opening essay by that title.

Early in its history photography was often seen as an objective representation of reality. It was a “true,” scientific, representation of the world.  So for early photographers, truth meant verisimilitude: that is, truth meant that that the picture looked exactly like what would be seen from the camera’s view (with one eye closed since the ordinary camera doesn’t have stereo vision).

Before long, however, self-reflective viewers and photographers began to realize that even the literal image had a subjective element. In addition to the abstraction generated by seeing the world in black-and-white, what photographers chose to photograph, and what they chose to include in the photograph – how it was framed – was highly subjective. As Thompson says, it was a view from a particular point of view.

So although early documentary photographers claimed to objectively represent the world’s realities, they soon became more self-aware, acknowledging that documentary photography had an interpretive and even artful dimension to it.

By the end of the 19th century and through much of the 20th, artistic expression became for many photographers the motivation for photography, and this affected even the documentary tradition.  The photographer’s goal was to express the her or his response to the world, to “express your creative vision” as so many camera ads have proclaimed.   The photographer’s goal in this view is not to directly copy something but to convey the subjective experience of the subject or the photographer’s mastery of it.  Sometimes, in fact, the subject itself is unimportant but is used  to convey a personal vision that might have nothing directly to do with the actual subject.  What is being documented is the photographer’s experience or impression of the subject.

Thompson analyzes Walker Evans’ photographs from the 1930s.  Although apparently they are straight, “documentary” photographs of buildings and people, they are in fact highly personal.  In fact, Walker saw them as projections of himself.  For Alfred Steiglitz during the same era, truth was his own emotional state and the true artist mastered the medium to shape the image in a way that conveyed his or her own truth.  In these views, then, truth means “fidelity to the subjective experience of the artist.”

So photography, Thompson notes, moves between descriptive  and expressive approaches.  Yet even the descriptive photograph is highly subjective and could depart substantially from “objective” reality.

The lines between these two poles are blurred in the work of Pedro Meyer, Truth & Fictions:  a journey from documentary to digital photography. In her introduction to the book, Joan Fontcuberta argues that only a myotic view of documentary work would exclude Meyer’s approach.  She gives an example of such a dictionary definition:  “Documentary photographs are thought of as those in which the events in front of the lens (or in the print) have been altered as little as possible from what they would have been, had the photographer not been there….” Sometimes Meyer, a Mexican photographer, does not make any alterations in the photos he presents: “…they ae perfect instances of found paradoxical situations….” But often Meyer invisibly manipulates and adds to photographs, creating a fantasy world in which it is difficult to distinguish what was actually there.  They are presented as a kind of document, but one that calls attention to the blurred lines between fact and fiction.  What is “real” and what is not?  Fontcuberta calls on artists to “seed doubt, destroy certainties, annihilate convictions….”

Thompson points out for many photographers – whether their intent isdescriptive or expressive – truth depends on the vision and mastery of the photographer.  Thompson is encouraged by the alternate possibilities suggested by a famous Walker Evans portrait in which the subject asserts her own “…overwhelming presence, a ravishing mystery that…delivers a gift, a gift of sight.” “The kind of large, open truth I am trying to attach to photography reaches back toward this initial, primordial sense of wonder, of awe.”  So photography as mastery is not the only way to conceive photography. As I have argued before, a photograph depends upon a kind of collaboration between photographer and subject.  Sometimes the subject takes, or is given, power in the relationship.

Mastery of the photographic medium has led present-day photography to its “truth,” Thompson acknowledges, but another broader truth endures and asserts itself from time to time in what he calls “genuine encounters.”  In my words, when the subject is genuinely respected and allowed to be co-creator with the photographer.  “If, at the start of the twentieth-first century, photography still has any unspent capital left, it may be that its greatest reserves will be found in this direction….”

2 comments on “Photographic truth and documentary photography”

It’s hard not to see the links with restorative justice work in the concluding remarks, given Howard’s references to collaboration, encounter, respect, etc. The relationship between practitioner and client, in my experience, similarly involves a clean, open-minded start on the part of the practitioner who comes to victims or offenders without heavy expectations on how to frame the ‘composition’ of the restorative process. There’s clearly a ‘truth’ that clients present to practitioners which calls for a creative response.

Part of empowering parties, I’m seeing better now, is in fact a process of allowing parties to co-create each progressive step with us. Hence, the non-directive style that Mark Umbreit often refers to, not only applicable within facilitated meetings but also throughout case development. Forgive me, Howard, for naming all of these parallels (as if your two vocational interests must somehow justify each other). Nevertheless, the linkages are there, and it was helpful for me to find some new language around that.

I agree you very informative post you have here, and I love reading your post.. thank you very much for sharing..

yes documentary photography had an interpretive and even artful dimension

Comments are closed.

Kathleen Robbins, Cotesworth , 2010. From the In Cotton series. Carroll County, Mississippi

Photography, Poetry, and Truth Eleanor Heartney

In considering examples that range from the so-called spirit photographs of the nineteenth century, whose doctored negatives purported to “prove” the existence of life after death, to today’s digitally altered Facebook images that place celebrity heads on compromised bodies, one can see that photography’s relationship to truth has always been somewhat tenuous. Documentary photography and its cousin photojournalism, in theory more reliable, have long been the tools of social crusaders and political activists intent on bringing us evidence of the real face of war, the gritty feel of poverty, and the evidence of crime and political malfeasance. Yet despite our desire to believe what we see in photographs, we know in our hearts that complete photographic veracity is an illusion. There is always an element of subjectivity and even deception in the most apparently objective images. A few cases in point: Renowned Civil War photographer Mathew Brady rearranged corpses on the battlefield to create more aesthetic compositions, Robert Capa staged his iconic photograph of a dying Republican soldier in the Spanish Civil War, and Walker Evans added an alarm clock to his photograph of a tenant farmer’s mantelpiece. Even when details are not consciously altered, photographers impose their biases through selection. As Susan Sontag remarked about photographers involved with the Works Progress Administration (WPA) project, they took dozens of images “until satisfied that they had gotten just the right look on film—the precise expression on the subject’s face that supported their own notions about poverty, dignity, and exploitation as well as light, texture, and geometry.”

If this lack of absolute verism is true for historical photographs, it is even truer in the digital era when technological tools make manipulation of photographic images both effortless and seamless. These technical advances coincide with a growing ambivalence toward objectivity, further blurring the line between fact and fiction. We live in a time of “fake news,” “alternative facts,” and “truthiness,” the latter term coined by comedian Stephen Colbert to suggest the condition of something that feels true, even if it actually isn’t. Both academics and ideologues argue that reality is a construct and history a narrative written to advance preexisting political and social agendas. In this climate the traditional aims of documentary photography are increasingly met with suspicion and derision.

Southbound brings together fifty-six photographers who use their medium to probe the complexities of the American South. Only some of the artists here are documentary photographers in the strictest sense, but they all owe a debt to that genre. Many are directly influenced by figures like Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Gordon Parks, and a number have actually followed in the tracks of their idols, exploring the same or similar communities, locales, and themes. At the same time, they are keenly aware of the photographer’s role in shaping reality and of the slippery nature of photographic truth in contemporary times. Thus we might ask: What is the proportion of “fact” to subjective vision, political ideology, stereotype, and deliberate deception in the photographs on display? What or whose South do these photographers present?

Alligator Alley, Oregon Road , 2009. From the Road Ends in Water series. Colleton County, South Carolina

Recent controversies over the display of Confederate monuments and symbols reveal the unsettled nature of Southern history. In the images here, one feels a tension between, on one hand, the powerful mythology of the Old  South, described by William Faulkner as a “makebelieve region of swords, magnolias, and mockingbirds,” and, on the other, a history that includes still-vivid scars from the Confederacy’s defeat in the Civil War, the legacy of slavery, the persistence of rural poverty, and the scourge of class and racial tensions. The South of today floats between these conflicting visions of past and present. Photographer Mark Steinmetz describes the dilemma: “Most contemporary photographers of the South I think go a bit overboard in making the South seem like an overly gothic, romantic place, though there might be a few photographers who go overboard in the opposite direction by depicting the American South through a ‘new topographic’ prism that makes it seem indistinguishable from, say, the Belgian/German border. I love the South for the weeds growing through the cracks of its sidewalks, for its humidity and for its chaos.”

Steinmetz’s philosophy recalls German filmmaker Werner Herzog’s assertion about the nature of documentary film. In his Minnesota Declaration , he stated: “There are deeper strata of truth in cinema, and there is such a thing as poetic, ecstatic truth. It is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylization.”

The photographers in Southbound present a variety of strategies for getting at poetic truth. One widely practiced approach might be described as, Engage but also critique clichés . One of the most powerful of these is the trope of agrarian poverty. Photographers funded during the Depression by the WPA program, and later by magazines like Time and Life as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, saw themselves as shock troops in the effort to expose the depth of destitution in Appalachia. Although they revealed real problems, in retrospect they also placed an indelible stamp on this region. Shelby Lee Adams, who was born in eastern Kentucky, struggles with this legacy in his own work. He notes that, as an adolescent, he was charged with assisting War on Poverty photographers, and he later felt that he and his community had been exploited. He remarks, “It seemed little consideration was given to the people’s feelings or the deeper life they actually lived and certainly the culture was considered and seen only one way—poor…. That sense of betrayal affected the entire region, not just me. It was an embarrassment to all and still troubles and affects many today.” In his own photographic work, Adams struggles to provide a more rounded picture of the people and culture of Appalachia, creating portraits of individuals that preserve their humanity and dignity. 

One sees the same approach taken by many other of the photographers included here. Take, for example, Rob Amberg, who moved to the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina in 1973. He continues to live there on a small farm, sharing the increasingly threatened agrarian lifestyle of the friends and neighbors in his photographs. His images are populated by people who matter-of-factly pursue rural lives that would be unimaginable to their city kin. Similarly, Kevin Kline presents the faces of New Orleans today: students, musicians, laborers, and bartenders who look forthrightly at the camera, challenging the unequal balance of power that gave the WPA photographers their authority.

Lauren Henkin has a less pejorative attitude toward the so-called poverty photographers of the past. In 2015 she retraced the steps of the Great Depression-era photographer Walker Evans in rural Hale County, Alabama. Her work offers not only homage but also reconsideration. While Evans’s photographs present a world literally drained of color, Henkin’s images show the area in Technicolor, endowing both individuals and environments with a sense of vitality and hope. As she notes, “What I was trying to avoid were some of the more stereotypical images of social and economic divide that you see a lot coming from the rural South and really just trying to explore what I found and to leave some ambiguity in the photographs so that the viewers could impart their own narrative.”

As many of the images in this show reveal, the South still contains pockets of deeply rooted rural poverty seemingly untouched by the technological, social, and economic upheavals of the modern world. But that is only part of the story. John Lusk Hathaway chooses to present the clash of contemporary development and agrarian values, as RV travelers, tourists, immigrants, and modern consumers invade the no-longer timeless world of the South. Mark Steinmetz also offers glimpses of both the urban and suburban South, showing a world of highways, suburban sprawl, strip malls, and car culture. By contrast, Lucas Foglia sees strength in the fiercely libertarian streak that underlies certain groups’ resistance to modernity. He seeks out communities of people intentionally seeking to live off the grid. Here, the lack of modern conveniences signals freedom rather than deprivation, and Foglia’s photographs reveal people who seem to live simultaneously in a nostalgic past and a troubled present.

Several artists here remind us that places as well as people can be subject to stereotypes. Michelle Van Parys has explored the old plantations that are such a vital part of Southern mythology and tourism. Yet instead of the more conventional tableaux of rolling lawns, stately homes, and lush gardens, she offers unexpected details and juxtapositions that emphasize a counternarrative of decay, disruption, and dissolution. Thomas Rankin takes on another iconic theme in his exploration of sacred spaces of the South. He photographs African American churches and their adjoining cemeteries and churchyards in the Mississippi Delta, presenting them in black-and-white, devoid of people, emphasizing the hardscrabble emergence of the communities they serve from within an indifferent landscape.

A related strategy embraced by artists in Southbound is, Mix personal history with the complicated political and social history of South . This allows those photographers to accept and acknowledge the inevitable subjectivity of documentary photography. A number of artists in the show use photography to salvage some part of their own past and to explore how it is entwined with Southern history and culture. This is especially the case for artists who left and later returned to their childhood homes. 

McNair Evans, for example, grew up in a small farming town in North Carolina but left to explore the wide world. He was called back home by the death of his father in 2000, at which point he discovered that the man he had loved and admired was also a business failure. Seeking to square the man he remembered with this fact, he embarked on a photographic project that involved retracing the places in his father’s life and juxtaposing them with materials from the family archives. The result was Confessions for a Son , a photographic essay that also became an exploration of both the economic struggles of the small farming towns of the Southeast and the sense of both cultural and personal grief that emerges as the remembered past slips away. Evans’s photographs of his family home are suffused with a sense of loss, as simple objects—a pile of magazines, a collection of silverware—become stand-ins for all that has disappeared. 

Nashville native Greg Miller has also used photography to recapture his past. When Miller was a child, financial difficulties forced his family to move almost yearly around the city. Returning after an absence of twenty-two years, during which he made a life for himself in New York, Miller found Nashville greatly changed. In order to reconnect with his past, he made a project of revisiting and photographing his various homes and other significant places from his youth. The resulting photographs have an anachronistic quality because Miller deliberately sought out scenarios that reminded him of the 1970s and 1980s of his childhood. There is a sun-drenched sweetness to these images although, as Miller admits, “In the end, if someone is looking at my photographs to find out more about Nashville or even me, I imagine they will be disappointed. To my mind, if these pictures succeed, it is because so many make a similar journey back home.”

Kathleen Robbins tells a similar story. Her grandfather was a third-generation cotton farmer in the Mississippi Delta, and she grew up on her family’s farm. She now lives in Columbia, South Carolina. When she visited home as an adult, she discovered that cotton was disappearing and the life she remembered no longer existed. The camera became her way to retrieve her memories of a lost world. Like Miller, Robbins employs a kind of time travel through photography, making images of lonely farmhouses, empty fields, and dilapidated structures that are a poignant mix of past and present. 

Will Jacks presents a more joyful present-day paean to the past. A native of Cleveland, Mississippi, Jacks has copiously documented the juke joint Po’ Monkey’s Lounge outside of Merigold, Mississippi. Until the death of its owner, Willie Seaberry, a.k.a. Po’ Monkey, in June of 2016, this modest shack was a second home to musicians and music lovers throughout the region. Jacks recounts how frequenting Po’ Monkey’s helped him reconnect with old friends and classmates and gave him a sense of community. His photographs reflect what he has described as the “unconditional love” he felt there; they depict denizens merrily drinking, laughing, dancing, and socializing under the benevolently watchful eye of the establishment’s owner and patriarch.

Nashville native Bill Steber has a similar story to tell in his photographic history of the Mississippi blues culture. For twenty years he has documented the vibrant world of blues musicians, juke joints, hard drinkers, and Saturday night revelers. As he points out, these are not the famous bluesmen who left the Delta region to achieve fame elsewhere; rather, they are the  day laborers, farm hands, and itinerant workers for whom music is a solace and an escape from the difficulties of daily life. A musician himself, Steber sees this project as a mission, noting, “I was racing against time to photograph these places (generally disintegrating juke joints and shotgun sharecroppers’ shacks) and these people before they all were gone.”

While some artists intentionally put themselves in the story, Keith Calhoun and Chandra McCormick found themselves implicated involuntarily. Long-time residents of New Orleans, the pair is known for photographs of life in the African American communities in the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans and rural Louisiana. They fled the city during the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, only to return to find their home destroyed and boxes of negatives irreversibly water damaged. Rather than throw them out, they developed them and discovered that the ravages of the storm had transformed the images in unexpected and often beautiful ways. The photographs from this series, with the images partially or completely obliterated by cracks, mottling, and discolorations, become a metaphor for the disruption of lives by the monumental storm.

A third approach to the documentary tradition in evidence here is the adoption of the role of the roving photographer. It might be summed up as, Expand your horizons through the lens of a camera . Interestingly, many of the roving artists in this show are foreign born and bring an outsider’s perspective to their examination of aspects of Southern life.

In this category are photographers like Madrid-born Daniel Beltrá, who has traveled the seven continents to document environmental catastrophes and endangered landscapes. For Southbound he contributes aerial photographs of the effects of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico; his images are both alarming and disconcertingly beautiful. Lima-born Susana Raab takes a closer view with her exploration of the American character as seen through small-town fairs, theme parks, conventions, and rituals. Raab’s images represent the artist’s desire, in her words, to “show a part of the fullness of our experience and hope that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”

Magdalena Solé was born in Spain during the years of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship; as a child, she and her family were exiled to Switzerland. She connects this experience with her interest in outsiders and people living at the margins of society. She brings this perspective to her series Forgotten Places, which includes her explorations of the people and places of the Mississippi Delta. She notes, “The Delta is one of the poorest places in the United States with the saddest infant mortality rate, rampant unemployment and little hope for a better future. What is little known is the resilience, resourcefulness and family cohesiveness of its people.”

Meanwhile, Hong Kong-based Kyle Ford focuses on the tourism industry, bringing to life a world in which everyone is an outsider. In the images included here from his series Second Nature , he examines the way in which tourist attractions have domesticated, replicated, and otherwise reinvented the experience of nature, offering such enticements as sea animals frolicking in an aquarium and fake mountains on a carnival ride.

Whereas Ford’s photographs playfully mock our attempts to manufacture nature, other artists offer a more serious take on the reinvention of reality. The principle here might be stated as, Embrace fabrications that may lead to deeper truths . They deal in what we might designate faux history, either through adoption of old and antiquated photographic techniques or by seeking out situations in which history is replayed by contemporary actors. 

Outmoded photographic processes can seem to turn the present into the past. Lisa Elmaleh creates tintypes of musicians who play traditional American folk music in Appalachia. Tintypes, which are made by creating a direct positive image on a thin sheet of metal coated with a dark lacquer or enamel, were the favored medium of itinerant photographers in the nineteenth century. Elmaleh’s portraits evoke the formal poses and artificial backdrops of those earlier images, literally placing her subjects back into the history from which they have emerged. 

Euphus Ruth employs collodion wetplate photography using vintage cameras and lenses. Related to the tintype, this process was also popular with nineteenth-century photographers. In Ruth’s hands, it seems to transport subjects like river baptisms, old cemeteries, and Delta landscapes into the past, serving as an elegy for places, customs, and structures that are being erased in the name of progress. 

Civil War reenactments provide another sort of elision between past and present. Several artists in Southbound provide glimpses of the fascinating subculture that has grown up around these often very elaborate role-playing dramas. Anderson Scott’s series titled Confederates follows Civil War reenactors in Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, and Florida. He presents them not in full regalia at the height of battle, but in moments of repose or preparation when anachronistic details mar the illusion. He is interested in the clash between such historical role-play and the conveniences and realities of the modern world, noting “the incongruity that cropped up again and again of people trying to be historical in the current world.”

Thomas Daniel, by contrast, strives for an appearance of authenticity in his documentation of Civil War reenactments. Himself a Vietnam veteran, Daniel uses black-and-white film and dramatic lighting to present the soldiers and their battles as a documentary photographer in possession of today’s technology might have captured them. Although the action photographs he creates were beyond the medium’s capacity in the mid-nineteenth century, his images of battlefields strewn with bodies are deliberately evocative of the work of Civil War photographer Mathew Brady. 

Eliot Dudik takes yet another approach. He has created portraits of reenactors in costume as they lie on the ground, seemingly both dead and alive simultaneously. He has also, in the series represented here, returned to famous battlegrounds and photographed them as they are today. Even when not populated by reenactors reliving the battles, these landscapes are haunted by the death and destruction that overtook them one hundred fifty years ago. Dudik ascribes a political lesson to these photographs, noting, “These photographs are an attempt to preserve American history, not to relish it, but recognize its cyclical nature and to derail that seemingly inevitable tendency for repetition.”

Equally immersed in a difficult past, Jeanine Michna-Bales uses photography to re-create a history for which almost no images exist. Her subject is the Underground Railroad, the crisscrossing paths and havens that runaway slaves used in their bid for freedom. Having exhaustively researched this highly secret network, she has created a haunting sequence of photographs that suggest the route an individual slave could have taken to freedom, through the landscapes of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Indiana, Michigan, and, finally, Sarnia, Ontario. The scenes in the South are all nocturnal, reflecting the reality that slaves could only move safely at night. Through photographic fiction, viewers are provided a sense of the fearsome reality that faced the runaway slave. 

Chris Sims, meanwhile, reveals how enactments serve a very contemporary military purpose. In a series titled Theater of War , he photographs the fake villages set up as training grounds by the U.S. military in the forests of North Carolina and Louisiana. The villages provide soldiers preparing to be shipped off with scenarios and environments very like those they may expect to find in the real battle zones of Iraq and Afghanistan. Sims enters these villages both as an authorized visitor and as a player enacting the role of a war photographer. Ironically, many of the “villagers” the soldiers interact with are themselves recent immigrants from those embattled countries who now re-create moments in the lives they left behind.

And finally, Southbound presents a number of artists who share the reforming zeal of the pioneering documentary photographers of the WPA. The principle they ascribe to might be formulated as, Pursue a political/social agenda in the spirit of the WPA photographers, but update and complicate the problems you present .

Thus, for instance, Georgia native Sheila Pree Bright employs photography in her fight for racial progress in America. She draws a line between the often violent clashes of the 1960s civil rights struggles and today’s Black Lives Matter movement. Her black-and-white photographs of the latter are deliberately reminiscent of news photographs from the earlier era, underscoring the continued survival of such problems as police brutality and the mass incarceration of black men. 

Tennessee native Jessica Ingram is also immersed in the history of civil rights. She approaches the subject in a very different way, documenting the now seemingly innocuous sites where atrocities like lynchings, Ku Klux Klan rallies, and slave trading took place. She thus describes her mission as “a meditation and a recapturing, a new memorial to these events—some of which have been excluded from the collective and mediated retelling of this period in our history.”

Although an outsider to the region (she hails from New York), Gillian Laub found herself drawn into a contemporary story about the persistence of racial injustice. Sent by Spin magazine to the small Georgia town of Mount Vernon for a story on segregated proms, she ended up working there for twelve years, getting to know the community and its tensions. During this time she observed how the local high school homecoming events eventually became integrated while the prom remained segregated. Meanwhile, she also began to follow related stories, among them the killing of a young unarmed black man by an older white man and an apparently fraudulent local election that snatched victory from a black candidate for mayor. The fruits of her labor include an HBO documentary as well as a series of photographs of the segregated prom, whose publication in the New York Times finally brought about integration of the prom. Photographs from that event appear in this exhibition and catalogue.

Other marginalized groups have also been given voice by Southbound artists. When Arkansas native Deborah Luster was thirty-seven, her mother was murdered by a hired killer. In a remarkable act of compassion, Luster has come to terms with that wrenching memory by photographing inmates in Louisiana state prisons who have been convicted of violent crimes. Instead of reducing them to the worst acts of their lives, she presents them as they would like to be seen, allowing them to pose themselves and choose their props and contexts. The works included here present inmates dressed in homemade costumes for their roles in the prison’s Passion play in 2012 and 2013.

Sofia Valiente photographs a group of ex-convicts who have left prison but still find themselves trapped by their past. Her subjects are the inhabitants of a Florida community called Miracle Village, which was founded by a Christian ministry to provide homes for sex offenders. Living in the village are men (and one woman) who have essentially been shunned by society and, due to Florida’s strict residency restrictions, have no other place to live. Like Luster, Valiente restores humanity to a population that tends to be demonized, giving visibility to their comraderie, loneliness, and social isolation. 

Other Southbound artists explore the toll exacted on traditional mores, communities, and landscapes by development and modernization. Although their investigations are grounded in the South, the work they do points to problems evident in the larger society as well. For example, Tennessee-based artist Rachel Boillot has made a photographic study of the disappearance of rural post offices. Lauded as a cost-cutting measure, this development threatens to impoverish even further communities that are already overlooked. Her photographs document this endangered species as well as various marginalized groups, among them migrant workers and American roots musicians. 

Mitch Epstein examines the impact of America’s insatiable thirst for energy in his series American Power . His photographs take on all aspects of energy production and consumption, personalizing it with images of the users and producers as well as scenes of environmental impact and community disruption. The series is meant to challenge the American belief that growth always represents progress. A similar motivation lies behind Daniel Kariko’s documentation of the impact of real estate foreclosures in Florida. His desolate aerial photographs of abandoned developments chronicle the end result of a cycle of boom and bust that followed from unfettered expansion. Jeff Rich, meanwhile, focuses on water issues ranging from recreation and sustainability to exploitation and abuse. In his photographs we see the remaking of lives and landscapes under the sway of the Tennessee Valley Authority, the institution that regulates all aspects of water management in the Tennessee Valley. By focusing on individuals, community groups, and specific landscapes, Rich humanizes the operations and impacts of this massive public works project.

The American South is a subject rich in contradiction and fraught with tension. Tamara Reynolds could be speaking for many of the photographers represented here when she says, “I cringe at how the country has stereotyped the South as hillbilly, religious fanatic, and racist. Although there is evidence of it, I have also learned that there is a restrained dignity, a generous affection, a trusting nature, and a loyalty to family that Southerners possess intrinsically. We are a singular place, rich in culture, strong through adversity. We are a people that have persevered under the judgment of the rest of the world. Ridiculed, we trudge carrying the sins of the country seemingly alone.”

In On Photography , her classic meditation on the medium, Susan Sontag says, “To collect photographs is to collect the world.” This exhibition is part of that effort. There are so many faces here—young, old, white, black, Hispanic, grizzled, clean, careworn, pampered. So many landscapes—pitted country roads, threadbare main streets, expansive cotton fields, urban throughfares, mysterious bayous, sun-dappled swimming holes, manicured suburban lawns, disrupted waterways. So many reminders of history and markers of mortality—Confederate flags, historic churches, magnificent plantation houses, derelict trailers, dilapidated shacks. Revealed here is the dark side of the human soul, but also flashes of hope and happiness bursting through in musical celebrations, joyful communal rituals, and dusky skies darkened with flocks of birds. Represented in these photographs are personal visions and public spectacles, histories that were and histories that might have been. Together they create a mosaic that approaches reality, a South that is multifarious, and a truth that is manifold.

1 Susan Sontag, On Photography (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1973), 4.

2 william faulkner, the sound and the fury , 2nd ed. (new york: w. w. norton & company, 1993), 229., 3 “interview with mark steinmetz,” ahorn magazine , no. 5; http://www.ahornmagazine.com/issue_5/interview_mark_steinmetz/interview_steinmetz.html ., 4 werner herzog, minnesota declaration: truth and fact in documentary cinema (minneapolis, minnesota: walker art center, april 30, 1999.), 5 roger may, “looking at appalachia | shelby lee adams—part one,” walk your camera (september 7, 2012); http://walkyourcamera.com/looking-at-appalachia-shelby-lee-adams-part-one/ ., 6 nick brown, “hale county photo exhibition: new perspective on old tradition,” b-metro (october 27, 2016); http://b-metro.com/henkin-exhibit/30512/ ., 7 gregory eddi jones, “interview with greg miller,” petapixel (july 9, 2013); https://petapixel.com/2013/07/09/interview-with-greg-miller/ ., 8 betty press, “will jacks: the states project: mississippi,” lenscratch (december 17, 2016); http://lenscratch.com/2016/12/will-jacks-the-states-project-mississippi/ ., 9 tim ghianni, “photographer bill steber captures fading legends on blues highway,” the nashville ledger (september 9, 2016); http://www.tnledger.com/editorial/article.aspxid=91540 ., 10 aline smithson and susana raab, “the states project: district of columbia,” lenscratch (november 7, 2016); http://lenscratch.com/2016/11/susana-raab-the-states-project-district-of-columbia/ ., 11 magdalena solé, “cottonland—the mississippi delta,” fraction magazine , no. 28; www.fractionmagazine.com/magdalena-sole/ ., 12 drew jubera, “q&a: photographer anderson scott on ‘whistling dixie,’ where the civil war rages on,” artsatl (march 12, 2013); http://artsatl.com/qa-4/ ., 13 “mossless magazine interviews eliot dudik,” mossless magazine (april 14 2014); https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/7b743a/mossless-in-america-eliot-dudik/ ., 14 lauren schneidermann, “jessica ingram: a civil rights memorial,” visura magazine , no. 11; http://www.visuramagazine.com/jessica-ingram ., 15 aline smithson, “tamara reynolds: southern route,” lenscratch (july 31, 2013); http://lenscratch.com/2013/07/tamara-reynolds-southern-route/ ., 16 sontag, 1., presented by.

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Photography: researching its history, processes, and photographers: History, theory, and criticism of photography

• Reference Sources and Bibliography
• History, theory, and criticism of photography
• Photographic processes and terminology
• Researching Photographers
• Finding articles
• Photography journals
• Photography societies & associations
• Women in photography
• Nonwestern photography and photographers
• David A. Hanson Collection

Daguerreotype

Anonymous American photographer.  "Gustav Adolf Hiller, his wife Julia, and their daughter Luise," 1851-52.   In: A Guide to Early Photographic Processes, e dited by Brian Coe and Mark Haworth-Booth, p. 36. London: Victoria and Albert Museum in association with Hurtwood Press, 1983.

Atkins, Anna. "Festuca ovina (fescue grass)," 1854.  (Victoria and Albert Museum, London). In:  A Guide to Early Photographic Processes, edited by Brian Coe and Mark Haworth-Booth, p. 79. London: Victoria and Albert Museum in association with Hurtwood Press, 1983.

Talbot, William Henry Fox. "The Open Door April," 1844.  (Victoria and Albert Museum, London).  In:  A Guide to Early Photographic Processes,  edited by Brian Coe and Mark Haworth-Booth, p. 41. London: Victoria and Albert Museum in association with Hurtwood Press, 1983.

Marville, Charles.  "Paris, Rue Glatigny," 1865. (Private collection.)  In:   Photography, 1839-1937: [exhibition March 1937],  edited by Beaumont Newhall, plate 25. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1937.

Woodburytype

Thompson, John.  "Covent Garden Flower Women," 1877.  (John Paul Getty Museum.)  In:   Looking at Photographs: A Guide to Technical Terms , by  Gordon Baldwin and Martin Jürgens, p. 90 . Malibu, CA: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2009.

Atget, Eugene.  "Ragpicker," early 20th century. (Collection of Berenice Abbott).  In:   Photography, 1839-1937: [exhibition March 1937],  edited by Beaumont Newhall, plate 44. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1937.

Histories of photography

Burgin, Victor, editor.   Thinking Photography .  Communications and Culture. London: Macmillan Press, 1982.

Essays intended as "contributions towards photography theory...'towards' rather than 'to' as the theory does not yet exist; [though] as these essays indicate, some of its components may already be identified."  Includes articles by Walter Benjamin, Umberto Eco, Victor Burgin, Allan Sekula, John Tagg, and Simon Watney.

Clark Stacks NE2606 T45

*Clarke, Graham.   The Photograph .   Series: Oxford History of Art.  Oxford, NY:  Oxford University Press, 1997.

Concise but immensely useful exploration of the photograph, including chapters on What is a Photograph?; how we read photographs; landscape, the city, the portrait, and the body in photographs; documentary photography; the photograph as fine art; and the manipulated photograph.  Also includes a bibliographic essay, timeline, and glossary.

Clark Stacks  NE2606 C53  

Coke, Van Deren.   One Hundred Years of Photographic History: Essays in Honor of Beaumont Newhall . Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1975.

Festschrift for Beaumont Newhall, "the preeminent photographic historian of our time and...one of the most influential personalities in modern photography," written by important scholars in the field such as Helmut Gernsheim, John Szarkowski, and Minor White.

Clark Offsite Storage  N25 N48 C63

Eder, Joseph Maria .   History of Photography .  Translated by Edward Epstean.  NY:  Dover Publications, 1978.

"The most extensive history of photomechanical printing published." (Hanson Collection catalog.)  Important history of photography-related technology with a German emphasis; also contains international biography and social history.  Translated edition is not illustrated.  The chapter on “Photographic technical journals, societies, and educational institutions” is useful for bibliography.

Clark Stacks  NE2606 E3g E Repr.

———.  Quellenschriften Zu Den Frühesten Anfängen Der Photographie Bis Zum XVIII. Jahrhundert . The Sources of Modern Photography . New York: Arno Press, 1979.

Reprints original source texts, usually in Latin, with German translations, in the earliest history of photography up to the 18th century.  Includes an introductory essay by Eder and texts that describe eight seminal discoveries leading to the understanding and use of photographic chemistry.

Clark Stacks NE2606 E3 Repr 1979

Fouque, Victor.   The Truth Concerning the Invention of Photography: Nicéphore Niépce, His Life, Letters, and Works . Repr. ed. Literature of Photography. New York: Arno Press, 1973.

Makes the case that Niépce, not Daguerre, was the inventor of photography; to that end it publishes letters and an unpublished note addressed to the Royal Society of London that document these early developments in the history of photography.  Includes as well a biography of Niépce and a history of the works to which he devoted himself, often together with his brother Claude; a history of the invention of heliography, the original name of Photography, and the events and facts connected with it during Niépce's lifetime; and genealogical notes and history of the Niépce family.

Clark Stacks NE2698 N674 F68 1973

Frizot, Michael, editor.    A New History of Photography .  Köln: Könemann, 1998.

Translation of  Nouvelle Histoire de la Photographie,  Paris: Bordas, 1994.  Magisterial survey composes a “history” by combining 41 topical essays by noted authors.  Insets focused on a specific photograph or topic are included in each essay.  Fourteen additional illustrated sections enhance the text.  Includes an illustrated glossary of photographic processes by Anne Cartier-Bresson and a bibliography by Fred and Elisabeth Pajersky.

Clark Stacks  NE2606 N47

Gernsheim, Helmut, and Alison Gernsheim .   The History of Photography from the Camera Obscura to the Beginning of the Modern Era .   NY:  McGraw-Hill, 1969.

“The standard history and reference work on photograph” (at least as of 1969).  Second edition has broader geographical coverage, updated information on technology, and more discussion of the artistic trands of the 20 th  century.  Includes annotated bibliography, comprehensive lists of photographic journals, annuals, and societies for the first ten  years, and bibliographic footnotes.

Clark Stacks  NE2606 G47 1969

Gernsheim, Helmut.    The Origins of Photography .  London:  Thames and Hudson, 1982.

This revised 3 rd  edition includes the first part of the History of Photography (above), with a new chapter on the origins of photography in Italy.  Covers the pre-photographic era through the use of calotype and oher paper process, whilce Gernsheim;’s The Rise of Photogaphy (below) begins with the albumen and collodian processes.  The final three sections on the gelatin period, some applications of  photography, and photography and the printed page hve not been released in a new edition.  Text and organization essentially unchanged from the relevant section of History of Photography but with additional illustrations.  An excellent source for historical data, photographers, and technologies.

Clark Stacks NE2606 G47 1982o

_____.    The Rise of Photography: 1850–1880, the Age of Collodion.   London:  Thames and Hudson, 1988.

The second part of Gernsheim’s History of Photography appears here in a revised third edition.  Begins with the introduction of the collodion process and continues through the development of dry plate processes.  Text and organization essentially  unchanged from the original History but with additional illustrations.  An excellent source for historical data, photographers, and technologies.

Clark Stacks  NE2606 G47 1988

Museum of Modern Art.   Photography, 1839-1937: [exhibition March 1937] .  Edited by Beaumont Newhall. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1937.

Catalog of the landmark exhibition curated by Beaumont Newhall. Includes an important essay on the history and aesthetics of photography and a brief bibliography.  See The History of Photography: From 1839 to the Present below for the most recent edition of Newhall's historical text.

Clark Stacks NE2606 N48 1937

Newhall, Beaumont.   Focus: Memoirs of a Life in Photography . Boston: Little, Brown, 1993.

Chatty, interesting, well illustrated memoir by one of the most influential curators of modern photography.

Clark Stacks N27 N548.6

*———. The History of Photography:  From 1839 to the Present .  Boston:  Little, Brown, 1982.

Extensive revision and expansion of the landmark essay in Photography, 1839-1937 (see above), with new text and illustrations and revised bibliography, follows the same scheme of technological and aesthetic development of photography.  Expands coverage of topics thinly covered in previous editions, e.g. Dada and Surrealist photomontages.  Final chapter "New directions" ends with the mid-1960s. 

Clark Stacks  NE2606 N48 1937 5th ed. 

Rosenblum, Naomi .   A World History of Photography , 4 th  edition .  NY:  Abbeville Press, 2007.

Broadest coverage currently available for pre-1839 to early 1900s worldwide.  Extent of coverage does not allow thorough contextual development of specific topics of photographers.  Provides more focused examination in three short technical histories and six primarily illustrated sections on 19 th  century portraiture, the Western landscape, origins of photojournalism, origins of color in camera images, photography and social issues, and the industrial ethos.

Clark Stacks  NE2606 R67 2007

——— .   A History of Women Photographers , 3 rd  edition .   NY:  Abbeville Press, 1994.

Extensive coverage of a topic that has received scant attention in most histories.  The attempt to produce a comprehensive text does not allow in-depth discussion of individual photographers.  Primarily U.S. and European photographers.  Includes general and individual bibliographies by Peter Palmquist.

Clark Stacks  NW2606 R67w 2010

Schwarz, Heinrich.   Techniken Des Sehens: Vor Und Nach Der Fotografie: Ausgewählte Schriften 1929-1966 .  Fotohof Edition, Band 70. Salzburg: Fotohof, 2006.

Sections on photography as art, photography and painting, the mirror and camera obscura. Includes a bibliography and list of source works.

Clark Stacks NE2606 S34t

Snelling, Henry Hunt.   The History and Practice of the Art of Photography .  Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y: Morgan & Morgan, 1970.

Reprint of the original 1849 publication.  One of the first textbooks on photographic processes, prior to which initiation into the secrets of the trade was by personal instruction and experimentation.  Emphasizes the daguerreotype process, but includes detailed instruction on the paper negative process invented by Henry Fox Talbot.

Clark Stacks NE2600 S64

Sobieszek, Robert A., editor.   The Prehistory of Photography: Five Texts.  The Sources of Modern Photography. New York: Arno Press, 1979.

Includes reprints of five important texts by Germain Bapst, Georg Friederich Brander, Georges Potonniée, Henry Vivarez, and Isadore Niépce.

Clark Stacks NE2606 P74

*Szarkowski, John.   Photography Until Now .  New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1990.

Szarkowski, director of photography at MOMA for 25 years, presents his own history of photography, supporting his observations with an exciting choice of well-reproduced and seldom-seen images: portraits, news and war photos, landscapes, still lifes, architectural views, advertising, and medical images. Chronological chapters trace the mutual influences and evolution of technology and style, from "Before Photography" to the post-1960s period, "After the Magazines."

Clark Stacks NE2601 N48 1990

Werge, John. The Evolution of Photography . (Series: The Literature of Photography .)  New York:  Arno Press, 1973.

Reprint of the 1890 edition, which included the subtitle: "with a chronological record of discoveries, inventions, etc., contributions to photographic literature, and personal reminiscences extending over forty years."  Not intended as a textbook, the work endeavors to provide "a comprehensive and agreeable summary of all that has been done in the past, and yet convey a perfect knowledge of all the processes as they have appeared and effected radical changes in the practice of photography."

Clark Stacks NE2606 W454

Theory and criticism of photography

Bolton, Richard, editor.    The Contest of Meaning: Critical Histories of Photography .   Cambridge, MA:  MIT Press, 1989.

Postmodern criticism has campaigned for multiple “histories” vs. the monolithic “history” of photography.  Monographic “history” volumes are increasingly being supplemented by edited collections of essays that question traditional assumptions and methods.  Bolton’s collection includes work by 14 eminent contemporary critics, including Douglas Crimp, Abigail Solomon-Godeau, Carol Squiers, and Allan Sekula.

Clark Stacks NE2606 C65

Eisinger, Joel.    Trace and Transformation:  American Criticism of Photography in the Modernist Period.   Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995.

Straightforward examination of photographic criticism in the U.S.  Good introduction to Sadakichi Hartmann, Alfred Stieglitz, Beaumont Newhall, Minor White John Szarkowski, the Postmodern critics, and others.  Includes sections on pictorialism, straight and documentary photography, popular criticism, subjectivism, formalism, modernism and postmodernism.  Includes bibliography.

Clark Stacks   NE2612 E38

*Elkins, James, editor .   Photography Theory .  London: Routledge, c2007.

P resents forty of the world's most active art historians and theorists, including Victor Burgin, Joel Snyder, Rosalind Krauss, Alan Trachtenberg, Geoffrey Batchen, Carol Squiers, Margaret Iversen and Abigail Solomon-Godeau, in animated debate on the definition and nature of photography.

Clark Stacks  NE2606 P4686

Hershberger, Andrew E., editor.   Photographic Theory: An Historical Anthology.   Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Wiley Blackwell, 2014.

A compendium of readings, spanning ancient times to the digital age, related to the history, nature, and current status of debates in photographic theory.  Offers an authoritative and academically up-to-date compendium of the history of photographic theory and is to date the only collection to include ancient, Renaissance, and 19th-, 20th-, and 21st-century writings on the subject.

Clark stacks  NE2606 P4835

Marien, Mary Warner.    Photography and Its Critics: A Cultural History, 1839–1900.   NY:  Cambridge University Press, 1997.

From the series  Cambridge Perspectives on Photography .  “Presents photography as an idea, shaped by social concerns and inherited concepts, and as a burgeoning visual practice. “  Consistently citing 19 th -century sources as well as more modern critics, provides a history of the idea of photography, revealing both the existence of diverse photographic practices and shifting notions of modernity. 

Clark Stacks  NE2609 M37

Tagg, John.   The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories.  Communications and Culture. Basingstoke: Macmillan Education, 1988.

"Drawing on semiotics, on debates in cultural theory, and on the work of Foucault and Althusser, John Tagg rejects the idea of photography as a record of reality and the notion of a documentary tradition, and traces a previously unexamined history that has profound implications... for the history and theory of photography."

Clark Stacks NE2606 T34

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Columbia University in the City of New York

Miriam and ira d. wallach art gallery.

• Visitor Information
• Exhibitions
• Publications

Moscow: City, Spectacle, Capital of Photography

April 30–june 21, 2003.

Moscow: City, Spectacle, Capital of Photography , an exhibition of 20th-century photographs of Moscow, opens at Columbia University's Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery on Wednesday, April 30, 2003 and remains on display through Saturday, June 21, 2003.

Moscow has been a powerful magnet for many Russian photographers of the 20th century. Moscow: City, Spectacle, Capital of Photography presents the work of 31 photographers, whose images have defined the visual experience of Moscow from the 1920s to the present. Diverse in form and strategy, the 90 photographs chosen for the exhibition trace the history of Russian documentary photography and offer insight into individual practices. From Aleksandr Rodchenko's constructivist visions and Evgenii Khaldei's humanist landscapes to Igor Moukhin's scenes of urban spectacle and alienation in the works of Russia's key 20th-century photographers, Moscow ventures beyond the expected image as a site of famous landmarks, architectural treasures and dramatic lifestyles.

Early 20th-century photographers Boris Ignatovich and Arkadii Shaikhet saw themselves in the vanguard of an emerging mass-media culture, defining with their cameras the visual experience of Soviet modernity. For nearly 70 years, Soviet photography was assigned the duty of maintaining the ideological rigidity of the Soviet State. Yet, as examples of the work of Iakov Khalip, Anatolii Egorov, Mikhail Savin, and Mark Markov-Grinberg show, Soviet photographic practices were much more complex than has been previously acknowledged. The works of these photographers remain intensely compelling to a modernist eye.

Contemporary Russian photographers, such as Lev Melikhov, Valerii Stigneev and Sergei Leontiev, engage with the legacy of the Soviet documentary photography. But for them the documentary is a complex and multivalent genre, which incorporates subjectivity, ambiguity and reflexivity and comments on social and cultural issues without losing sight of the position from which that commentary is made. In the recent photographs by Vladimir Kupriyanov, Igor Moukhin, Anna Gorunova and Pakito Infante, the "real" space of Moscow is replaced by an imaginary and optical spaces of virtuality.

The works in the exhibition are on loan from Moscow's Cultural Center Dom, and many are being shown outside Russia for the first time. In conjunction with the exhibition, the Wallach Art Gallery is publishing an illustrated catalogue with a scholarly essay by the exhibition curator, Nadia Michoustina, a Ph.D. candidate in Columbia University's Department of Slavic Languages. The essay presents a nuanced history of Russian photography of the 20th century, and contributes to an interpretation of extraordinary images.

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Moscow: City, Spectacle, Capital of Photography

By Nadia Michoustina

Foreword by Vitalii Patsyukov

Interview with Valerii Stigneev

The history of photography, more than of the city, is traced through 34 monochrome works by photographers who lived and worked in Moscow from the 1920s to the present. These photographs are from the collection of the Cultural Center Dom, Moscow, and were exhibited at Columbia University from April through June 2003. An essay, interview, and biographies are included.

Shooter Files by f.d. walker

Street Photography Tips, Interaction, Travel, Guides

Apr 24 2017

City Street Guides by f.d. walker: A Street Photography Guide to Moscow, Russia

*A series of guides on shooting Street Photography in cities around the world. Find the best spots to shoot, things to capture, street walks, street tips, safety concerns, and more for cities around the world. I have personally researched, explored and shot Street Photography in every city that I create a guide for. So you can be ready to capture the streets as soon as you step outside with your camera!

At over 12 million people, Moscow is the largest city in Russia and second largest in Europe by population ( Istanbul is #1). An urban, cosmopolitan metropolis with more than enough glitz and glam to cater to the elite, but without losing its fair share of Soviet era roughness around the edges. It can be fast paced, brash, busy, and trendy like other big cities, but it has its blend of West meets Russia atmosphere and beauty that provides plenty of unique interest. The Red Square is as famous as it gets, but there’s so much more to this city, including the most beautiful subway system you’ve ever seen. It would take years to capture all of Moscow, but that means you have an endless amount of areas to discover.

So here’s a Street Photography guide so you can be ready to capture all that Moscow has to offer before you even arrive!

• Patriarch’s Pond
• Old Arbat Street
• Maroseyka Street
• Tverskoy Boulevard

Top 5 Street Spots:

1. red square.

The Red Square is the most famous square in not just Russia, but all of Eastern Europe. The name actually doesn’t come from the color of the bricks or communism, but from the name in Russian, Krásnaya, once meaning “beautiful” before its meaning changed to “red.” This large plaza is what you see on the cover of guide books and magazines for Moscow, with St. Basil’s Cathedral being the center piece next to Lenin’s Mausoleum surrounded by the Kremlin Wall. Of course, the Red Square attracts hordes of tourist due to the main attractions, but all that activity around an interesting atmosphere does provide street photo opportunities. It’s also the central square connecting to the city’s major streets, providing a good starting point to explore outward.

You’ll also find the popular pedestrian only Nikolskaya Street connecting the Red Square to Lubyanka Square. This line of expensive shops includes plenty of activity, while also leading you to another popular square. Filled with history rivaling any city, the Red Square and surrounding areas are the heart and soul of Russia.

2. Patriarch’s Ponds

Patriarch’s Ponds is one of the most exclusive neighborhoods in Moscow. Despite the name being plural, there’s only one large pond, but it’s worth a visit with your camera. It’s a popular spot for locals and expats to come relax or take a stroll around the pond. You get an interesting mix of young and old too, from young love to “babushkas” feeding pigeons. It’s a very peaceful park atmosphere in one of the nicer areas within the city center, while bringing enough activity for street photography. 

The pond is shallow and in the winter becomes a popular spot for ice-skating too. The area is also well-known for the location in the famous Russian novel, The Master and Margarita. 

3. Old Arbat (Stary Arbat)

Old Arbat is the most famous pedestrian street in Moscow, and dating back to the 15th century, also one of its oldest. Originally, it was an area of trade, but soon became the most prestigious residential area in Moscow. During the 18th century, Arbat started attracting the city’s scholars and artists, including Alexander Pushkin. Cafes lined the streets and impressive homes filled the neighborhood. Since then, New Arbat street was created as a highway in the area, while Old Arbat was paved for a 1km pedestrian only walkway.

Due to the historic buildings, famous artists that lived here, and the bohemian atmosphere, Old Arbat has become a big attraction for tourists today. Now, there’s a mix of cafes, restaurants, souvenir shops, street performers, street merchants and other attractions for visitors, and some locals, to come enjoy. It can get really busy here and there’s usually something interesting going on so it’s a good street to come walk with your camera for guaranteed life.

4. Gorky Park

One of the most famous places in Moscow is Gorky Park. The official name is Maxim Gorky’s Central Park of Culture & Leisure, which gives you an idea of what goes on here. When built, it was the first of its kind in the Soviet Union. Divided into two parts, it stretches along Moscow River. One end contains fair rides, foods stands, tennis courts, a sports club, a lake for boat rides, and more. This end brings more active life due to its number of attractions, while the other end is more relaxed, where you’ll find gardens, trees, older buildings, and an outdoor amphitheater.

Gorky Park attracts mostly locals so it’s a good spot to capture the non-tourist side of Moscow life. Muscovites come here to escape the city and unwind in a picturesque setting. The park remains alive outside of the warmer months too, especially when the lake turns into the city’s largest outdoor skating rink. I’d recommend taking the metro out here to spend at least half a day exploring the massive park’s life with your camera.

5. Maroseyka Street

Maroseyka Street is a popular area not too far from the Red Square. The long, winding street turns into Pokrovka and is lined with restaurants, cafes, bars and places to stay. It’s actually where I like to stay when I’m in Moscow due to its location and solid street photography opportunities itself. You have Kitay-gorod station near and if you keep walking southwest, you’ll get to the Red Square. But if you walk northwest, as it changes to Pokrovka, you can find a long street of activity for photography with its own interesting atmosphere.

6. Tverskoy Boulevard

Tverskoy Boulevard is the oldest and longest boulevard in Moscow, beginning at the end of Nikitsky Boulevard, and finishing at Pushkin Square, a spot to come for activity itself. The boulevard is made up of two avenues, with pedestrian walkways in-between. You’ll find grass, shrubbery, trees, benches and more walking it’s almost kilometer length. Many people come here to enjoy some relaxation, walk their dog, or just to use it to walk wherever they’re going. Its center location also provides a nice place to walk with your camera near plenty of other spots you’ll want to check out anyway.

Sample Street Walk:

For a full day of Street Photography, covering some of the best spots, you can follow this sample street walk for Moscow:

• Start your morning walking around the Red Square (1), while exploring the surrounding area, including Nikolskaya Street
• Then walk northwest to Patriarch’s Ponds (2) and slowly walk the pond and surrounding area with your camera
• Next, walk east to the Pushkin Monument and stroll down Tverskoy Boulevard (6)
• Once Tverskoy Boulevard (6) ends, it will turn into Nikitsky Boulevard. Follow this down until you get to the start of Old Arbat Street (3), across from Arbatskaya station
• After you’re done walking down Old Arbat Street (3) for more street photography, spend some time checking out Moscow’s beautiful metro stations
• To finish off the day with more street photography, get off the metro near Red Square (1) again, Maroseyka Street (5) or wherever you’re staying for the night.

3 Things I’ll Remember about Shooting in Moscow:

1. museum metro.

The Moscow metro system was the first underground railway system in the Soviet Union and today includes 203 stations across 340km of routes. The elaborate system has some of the deepest stations in the world too, with escalators that seem to go on forever. None of this is what makes it so special, though. Many of its stations feel like stepping inside a museum, making it without a doubt the most interesting and beautiful metro system I’ve been in.

When built, Stalin wanted to make the metro stations “palaces for the people” with marble, chandeliers, and grand architecture. The best part is the variety of architecture and styles used, making many of the stations a completely different experience visually. You could easily spend a whole day traveling the stations and there are even tours available for people who wish to do just that. My advice, though, would be just to buy a ticket and hop on and off at different stations, while exploring different lines. The museum-like surrounding mixed with the crowds of characters can make for a great photography experience.

Since there are so many stations, here are some of my favorites to check out:

• Novoslobodskaya
• Mayakovskaya
• Elektrozavodskaya
• Komsomolskaya
• Ploschad Revolyutsii
• Dostoyevskaya
• Prospekt Mira

2. Moscow is Big

It’s no secret that Moscow is a big city, but it can feel even bigger with how spread out much of it is. This is especially true if you compare it to cities outside of Asia. If I compared it to cities in Europe, I’d probably say only Istanbul would warrant more time to really discover the depths of this city. Most only explore around the Red Square and surrounding area, but that is such a small part of the city. Although, that central area does give you plenty to see on its own.

Fortunately, I had a good friend living in the city to show me around, but it opened up my eyes even more to how much there is to discover in Moscow. It’s a big city with a variety of atmosphere that can take you from “east” to “west” and trendy to rugged depending on where you go. I’d imagine you’d have to live here a while to really know the city.

3. Cosmopolitan Mix of East meets West

Modern skyscrapers mixed with amazing architecture, a world-class metro system with museum-like beauty, trendy fashion and chic clubs, Moscow is a rich mix of Russian culture and history in a more western cosmopolitan package. There is a push to keep the Russian culture, while also pushing forward with a modern metropolis the whole world will envy. This comes with an impressive skyline, that continues to grow, and endless modernities, but with soviet nostalgia and atmosphere mixed in for good measure.

Mixed in with this grand western cosmopolitan atmosphere, is a strong national pride in Russia. This includes their famous leader, Vladimir Putin. Maybe no other place will you see a country’s leader more often. All over, from the pricey tourist shops to the underground walkway stalls, you’ll find goods with Putin’s likeness covering them. From t-shirts to magnets to Matryoshka dolls. There’s a strong national pride that can be seen around the city, which also extends to their leader. Moscow is many things. It’s East meets West, modernizations meets Soviet era, and a whole lot more.

What To Do For a Street Photography Break?:

Eat at a stolovaya.

Stolovayas are Russian cafeterias that became popular in the Soviet days. You grab a tray and walk down the line of freshly prepared local dishes, and select whatever you want from the chefs. They’re usually inexpensive and a much better value than restaurants, while giving you the opportunity to try from a wide selection of everyday Russian food. They’re also very tasty. I always include some borsch on my tray and go from there. The places themselves are all over Moscow and usually come with Soviet-era aesthetics to complete the experience.

Street Safety Score: 7

*As always, no place is completely safe! So when I talk about safety, I’m speaking in general comparison to other places. Always take precaution, be smart, observe your surroundings and trust your instincts anywhere you go!

Being the 2nd largest city in Europe with over 12 million people, you’re going to have your dangerous areas, but for the most part, it feels safe walking around. Russia is statistically higher in crime compared to most of Europe, but this generally doesn’t apply to tourists and visitors. Around the Red Square and surrounding city center, you should feel completely safe walking around. Pick pocketing can happen, but no more than other touristic places. I always explore Moscow freely without coming across too much to worry about. It’s a spread out city, though, so of course it matters where you are. Just use basic street smarts, know where you are and Moscow shouldn’t give you a problem. 

People’s Reaction Score: 7

Moscow is fast paced, big city life, which usually means people aren’t too concerned with you, or your camera. I don’t find people notice or pay much attention to me when I’m out taking photos in Moscow. For the most part, people just go about their day. You shouldn’t get too many looks or concern. But it can depend on the area you are in. The more you stick out, the more you might get noticed with suspicions. I’ve never had any problems in Moscow, or Russia, but just be careful who you’re taking a photo of if you get out of the city center. Other than that, it’s about average for reactions. 

Street Tips:

Learn the alphabet .

Much of Moscow, including the metro system, doesn’t use english. The Russian alphabet uses letters from the Cyrillic script, which if you aren’t familiar with it and don’t know the sounds, can be hard to decipher the words. This is most important for street names and metro stops when trying to get around. It can save confusion and make it easier getting around if you learn the basic alphabet. At the very least then, you can sound out the words to see which are similar in the english conversion, which can help matching them to maps. When out shooting street photography, getting around is as important as anything. So save yourself some time and frustration by learning the Russian Alphabet.

Use the metro

While Saint-Petersburg feels very walkable for a city its size, Moscow can feel very spread out, even for its bigger size. Outside of the Red Square area, you can have plenty of walking before getting anywhere very interesting, so you’ll need to take the metro a lot if you really want to explore the city. Maps are deceiving here too, it will always be further than it looks.

Another reason it’s less walkable than Saint-Petersburg is its completely different set-up. Moscow’s streets are mostly contstructed in rings with narrow, winding streets in-between. This is common with medieval city cities that used to be confined by walls, but you usually don’t have it in a city this massive. Saint-Petersburg has a more grid-like pattern that also uses the canals to help you know your way around. When it comes to navigating on foot in Moscow, it can be more difficult, so bring a map and take the metro when needed. It’s why Moscow’s metro carries more passengers per day than the London and Paris subways combined.

Explore other areas if you have time

Moscow is really big. While most people stay around the Red Square within the Boulevard Ring, there’s so much more to the city. I covered some other spots outside of this circle, but if you really want to see the city, you’ll need time. If you do have time, some other areas I’d check out first are Zamoskvarechye, along some of the south and western Moscow.

Inspiration:

For some more inspiration, you can look through the Street Photography of Moscow photographer Artem Zhitenev  and check out 33 of my photos taken in Moscow .

Conclusion:

Moscow’s name brings a certain mystique, but once you’re there it might bring a different atmosphere than you expect. It’s big and sprawling, but beautiful in many ways. It can feel like a European capital on a grand scale, but you can definitely find its Russian side in there.

The urban sprawl of Moscow can be intimidating, but give it enough time and you’ll be rewarded with plenty to discover. All with the world’s best metro system to take you around.

I hope this guide can help you start to experience some of what Moscow contains. So grab your camera and capture all that Moscow has to offer for Street Photography!

If you still have any questions about shooting in Moscow, feel free to comment below or email me!

(I want to make these guides as valuable as possible for all of you so add any ideas on improvements, including addition requests, in the comment section!)

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NPR in turmoil after it is accused of liberal bias

NPR is facing both internal tumult and a fusillade of attacks by prominent conservatives this week after a senior editor publicly claimed the broadcaster had allowed liberal bias to affect its coverage, risking its trust with audiences.

Uri Berliner, a senior business editor who has worked at NPR for 25 years, wrote in an essay published Tuesday by The Free Press, a popular Substack publication, that “people at every level of NPR have comfortably coalesced around the progressive worldview.”

Berliner, a Peabody Award-winning journalist, castigated NPR for what he said was a litany of journalistic missteps around coverage of several major news events, including the origins of COVID-19 and the war in the Gaza Strip. He also said the internal culture at NPR had placed race and identity as “paramount in nearly every aspect of the workplace.”

Berliner’s essay has ignited a firestorm of criticism of NPR on social media, especially among conservatives who have long accused the network of political bias in its reporting. Former President Donald Trump took to his social media platform, Truth Social, to argue that NPR’s government funding should be rescinded, an argument he has made in the past.

NPR has forcefully pushed back on Berliner’s accusations and the criticism.

“We’re proud to stand behind the exceptional work that our desks and shows do to cover a wide range of challenging stories,” Edith Chapin, the organization’s editor-in-chief, said in an email to staff Tuesday. “We believe that inclusion — among our staff, with our sourcing, and in our overall coverage — is critical to telling the nuanced stories of this country and our world.”

Some other NPR journalists also criticized the essay publicly, including Eric Deggans, its TV critic, who faulted Berliner for not giving NPR an opportunity to comment on the piece.

In an interview Thursday, Berliner expressed no regrets about publishing the essay, saying he loved NPR and hoped to make it better by airing criticisms that have gone unheeded by leaders for years. He called NPR a “national trust” that people rely on for fair reporting and superb storytelling.

“I decided to go out and publish it in hopes that something would change and that we get a broader conversation going about how the news is covered,” Berliner said.

He said he had not been disciplined by managers, though he said he received a note from his supervisor reminding him that NPR requires employees to clear speaking appearances and media requests with standards and media relations. He said he didn’t run his remarks to The New York Times by network spokespeople.

When the hosts of NPR’s biggest shows, including “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered,” convened Wednesday afternoon for a long-scheduled meet-and-greet with the network’s new CEO, Katherine Maher, conversation soon turned to Berliner’s essay, according to two people with knowledge of the meeting. During the lunch, Chapin told the hosts that she didn’t want Berliner to become a “martyr,” the people said.

Berliner’s essay also sent critical Slack messages whizzing through some of the same employee affinity groups focused on racial and sexual identity that he cited in his essay. In one group, several staff members disputed Berliner’s points about a lack of ideological diversity and said efforts to recruit more people of color would make NPR’s journalism better.

On Wednesday, staff members from “Morning Edition” convened to discuss the fallout from Berliner’s essay. During the meeting, an NPR producer took issue with Berliner’s argument for why NPR’s listenership has fallen off, describing a variety of factors that have contributed to the change.

Berliner’s remarks prompted vehement pushback from several news executives. Tony Cavin, NPR’s managing editor of standards and practices, said in an interview that he rejected all of Berliner’s claims of unfairness, adding that his remarks would probably make it harder for NPR journalists to do their jobs.

“The next time one of our people calls up a Republican congressman or something and tries to get an answer from them, they may well say, ‘Oh, I read these stories; you guys aren’t fair, so I’m not going to talk to you,’” Cavin said.

The next time one of our people calls up a Republican congressman or something and tries to get an answer from them, they may well say, ‘Oh, I read these stories; you guys aren’t fair, so I’m not going to talk to you,’” — Tony Cavin, NPR’s managing editor of standards and practices

Some journalists have defended Berliner’s essay. Jeffrey A. Dvorkin, NPR’s former ombudsperson, said on social media that Berliner was “not wrong.” Chuck Holmes, a former managing editor at NPR, called Berliner’s essay “brave” on Facebook.

Berliner’s criticism was the latest salvo within NPR, which is no stranger to internal division. In October, Berliner took part in a lengthy debate over whether NPR should defer to language proposed by the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association while covering the conflict in Gaza.

“We don’t need to rely on an advocacy group’s guidance,” Berliner wrote, according to a copy of the email exchange viewed by the Times. “Our job is to seek out the facts and report them.” The debate didn’t change NPR’s language guidance, which is made by editors who weren’t part of the discussion.

Berliner’s public criticism has highlighted broader concerns within NPR about the public broadcaster’s mission amid continued financial struggles. Last year, NPR cut 10% of its staff and canceled four podcasts, including the popular “Invisibilia,” as it tried to make up for a $30 million budget shortfall. Listeners have drifted away from traditional radio to podcasts, and the advertising market has been unsteady.

In his essay, Berliner laid some of the blame at the feet of NPR’s former CEO, John Lansing, who retired at the end of last year after four years in the role. He was replaced by Maher, who started March 25.

During a meeting with employees in her first week, Maher was asked what she thought about decisions to give a platform to political figures like Ronna McDaniel, the former Republican Party chair whose position as a political analyst at NBC News became untenable after an on-air revolt from hosts who criticized her efforts to undermine the 2020 election.

“I think that this conversation has been one that does not have an easy answer,” Maher responded.

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Trump Calls for Defunding NPR After Senior Editor's 'Viewpoint Diversity' Essay

A fter a senior editor at National Public Radio on Tuesday blasted his employer of 25 years for not having any Republicans on staff, Donald Trump called for the nonprofit media organization to be defunded.

"NO MORE FUNDING FOR NPR, A TOTAL SCAM! EDITOR SAID THEY HAVE NO REPUBLICANS, AND IS ONLY USED TO 'DAMAGE TRUMP.' THEY ARE A LIBERAL DISINFORMATION MACHINE. NOT ONE DOLLAR!!!" Trump wrote in all caps on his Truth Social media platform Wednesday.

On Tuesday, Uri Berliner wrote an op-ed for The Free Press lamenting the "absence of viewpoint diversity" at NPR, writing that he found "87 registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero Republicans."

Berliner wrote that, due to DEI initiatives that focus on hiring people of diverse ethnicities and genders, "an open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don't have an audience that reflects America."

Berliner also wrote that he "eagerly voted against Trump twice," but was upset that "what began as tough, straightforward coverage of a belligerent, truth-impaired president veered toward efforts to damage or topple Trump's presidency."

An award-winning journalist himself, Berliner added that "despite our missteps at NPR, defunding isn't the answer."

"As the country becomes more fractured, there's still a need for a public institution where stories are told and viewpoints exchanged in good faith," he wrote. "Defunding, as a rebuke from Congress, wouldn't change the journalism at NPR. That needs to come from within."

NPR editor-in-chief Edith Chapin defended the organization in  response  to the piece, saying she and the leadership team "strongly disagree with Uri's assessment of the quality of our journalism."

Journalist Mehdi Hasan also weighed in on the issue Tuesday, tweeting, "This essay has it backwards: you can't blame NPR for conservatives not listening. You have to ask why conservatives have gone down conspiracy holes (climate change, 2020 election, vaccines) & how on earth mainstream media is supposed to cater to them now?"

Per NPR's website, its income comes from dues and fees paid by member stations, underwriting from corporate sponsors and annual grants from the publicly funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Less than 1% of its funding comes directly from the federal government.

NPR is currently rated as "leaning left" by Allsides.com , which assesses media bias, more centrist than the "left" status of The Huffington Post .

The post Trump Calls for Defunding NPR After Senior Editor's 'Viewpoint Diversity' Essay appeared first on TheWrap .