Mike Johnston's recent column and HC-B

[sliu]

Mark, you are right about that reality is subjective.

 

Only the photographers themselves know whether they are TAKING a slice of reality they want to show to the viewers or they are MAKING a slice of virtual reality for the audience, consciously or subconsciously. But if a photographer is TRAINED as a director, he/she would tend to modify the subject the make the scene perfect and at the end, even himself/herself wouldn't tell which one is staged which one is not. For audience, they never tell if the photographer is skillful, as shown in the examples of Jeff Spirer.

 

Mixing reality and virtual reality is dangerous to the mind of photographer. If you want to do that you'd better call yourself as a cinematographer, and mentally seperate the role of a cinematographer from that of a photographer. That is honesty.

 

BTW, those two kids were just running around. They were in a group jewish kids taking a field trip to Staten Island. They were the most excited group of people on that boring ship. (It was not tourist season yet.)

[travis1]

Man, somerimes things/people move so fast in the streets I had no time to pay them.;)

[travis1]

sometimes.

[will_perlis]

"everyones reality is different."

 

And it's also different for the same individual depending on mood, physical condition, chemical enhancements, and so on.

 

As long as what we wishfully call facts don't contradict each other I don't see getting roshomoniacal about "reality".

 

Or perhaps I've just been through too many end-of-year financial wrap-ups to believe in the truth-fairy.

[roberto_watson_garc_a]

In a documentary photography workshop I attend years ago, a discusion about the work of Avedon came up, every one condemn it as a non documentary work, arguing that putting a man before a withe cloth and photographing them was not documentary, it was out of reality!, for me having all this caracters, even surrounded by a white cloth and difused ligth, was a documentary work, when or where reality ends where or when documentary begins?, even Charles Harbutt prefered to leave the discusion open.

 

Very important and first of all is to understand that everyone´s reality is subjective, even documentary work in it´s purest form is related to the subjectivity of it´s creator. Just make that clear and don´t let prejudices bother you.

 

Very interesting point readden in this post, just wanted to add my 2 cents

[jim_stogdill]

Why on Earth should journalistic standards be applied to photographs that aren't destined to be in a newspaper? Same medium, different reason for using it. Should all painting look like "authentic" court room sketches?

[marcus_k.]

</i>

<p>Didn't Schrodinger's Cat teach us anything from physics?

 

<p><b>The very fact that you are in the scene with a camera changes it.</b> I think it's

silly to think that the Dorthea Lange Migrant Mother picture was not posed. How else

would she get a portrait of the women that close? A camera in the face of a person is

definitely going to change <i>"reality"</i>.

[richard_temple2]

This is an interesting discussion.

 

I think that it is important to distinguish between the different purposes to which the image is put.

 

The point with propaganda is that people use a photograph (picture or prose) to deceive their audience. In doing so they can use unstaged photographs. I cannot think of a good photographic example, but I can remember reading an article about school history books used in Germany and the UK in the thirties and early forties that seems relevant. The authors concluded that the German histories contained almost no errors of fact but that the facts were not representative of the events or periods the histories were purported to cover, and that the interpretation of them was largely false. They were propaganda with unstaged photographs. The problem with propaganda, advertising, and other such things is the deception or manipulation of the audience and not the technique used to take the photograph.

 

This use should be distinguished from reportage and documentary photography. In these types of photography the artists (photographers, journalists, photo-editors etc) are assumed to be telling us something about the real world. I think that most people would agree that even the most sincere of these artists will fail in this duty. They won't know the whole truth and probably won't be able to communicate it. However, an acknowledgment of the inevitability of failure does not excuse such artists from an obligation to do their best to capture the truth in their art. Artists who present as reportage or documentary photographers, but don't try to capture and convey something real are really as bad as the propagandists.

 

We can divide the manipulation of the subject into issues of audience's and subject's rights. The audience's rights are violated when they are misled by the manipulation of the subject. The subject when the influence of the photographer is negative. Such manipulations can be dangerous to the reportage or documentary artists cause, they should not be undertaken lightly and the audience should generally be informed.

 

Wildlife photography is generally assumed to be true to its subject, but the nature forum on this site has many examples where photographs have been staged. Some photos of wild animals were really of animals in game parks, some were even of stuffed animals in a studio! In the threads I have followed, the general consensus has been that there is a need to inform the audience of such manipulation. I suspect that the magazines do not do this, because people are not willing to knowingly spend money on photos of stuffed ducks.

(BTW this happens in painting too, in the TV series American Visions (I think) Hughes talked about people feeling betrayed when they discovered that they couldn't visit some of their favourite landscapes. The painters had manipulated the images - moving mountains and lakes.)

 

The nature photography forum also contains some examples of ways in which the behaviour of the photographer can damage the subject: such as drawing a predator's attention to a nest.

 

I think it is important to distinguish between the reality of nature and documentary photography, where audiences have an expectation of seeing a representative, unstaged photograph, and other types of photography.

 

I think that Bill Henson's photography, which is staged, is a personal interpretation of reality, that his audience knows that the photographs are staged and that they appreciate his art for what it tells them about adolescence. It is clearly not reportage.

 

(recently saw I doco on him, here is a link to some of his photos: http://www.roslynoxley9.com.au/artists/?aid=18&eid=98 )

[jim_a]

</i> see if this closes the italics...

[sliu]

Richard raised another very intereting point. For those of you who had seen the movie <a href="http://www.sonyclassics.com/wingedmigration/home.html">Winged Migration</a>, what is your opinion about the "imprinting" technique in the documentary film? Personally I felt cheated after I found out the trick. The movie is beautiful though.

[tim_atherton9]

Photogrpahy usually has little to do with "reality" or even the "truth"

 

Andre Kertesz was known tat times to direct some of his most well know "street" photogoraphs (e.g. the couple kissing on the bench in the park - in Budapest I think it is). As did Gary Winogrand - for example insterting his own children into a scene that lacked what he was looking for, and telling them to "go and do something itneresting over ther". Gene Smith directed the "country Doctor" to cross that open patch of field several times until he got the look of the hurried doctor and the darkenign sky just right (exasperating the doctor in the process by all accounts)

 

Are the photogorpahs any less real or authentic? I think not.

[tim_atherton9]

"Our tragedy is that directed photography becomes normal in photojournalism, or I shall say photo-propaganda. In my eyes, there is no difference between "The image of the flag raising over Iwo Jima", "The Kiss at l�Hotel de Ville", "Migrant Mother" and those propaganda photos by Nazi and Communist."

 

Actually, the first of those three was a genuine "caught moment". It was a second raising of the flag - with a larger one - but not for the benefit of the photogorapher.

[tim_atherton9]

"The reality of a photograph is that it reflects reality. Alter and manipulate it, but the original reality is there."

 

Photography always has much less to do with reality than we would like to think. Photography isn't really a "literal" medium, it only appears to be one. What it's more about is the photographers opinion of what they are photogorpahing. And how they make that photogorpah and express that opinion doesn't really matter.

[richard_temple2]

Maybe it is best to think of this in terms of communication or performance. As photographers we need an audience that is willing to look at our photographs with open minds. Can you imagine showing your photographs to someone who had already decided to criticise them ... no, to use them to criticise you, whatever their merits? Think of the power of James Nachtway's photographs of people starving in Ethiopia or Somalia, and then imagine him showing them to a meeting of white supremacists and not the shrill ones of today, but the confident ones of the early nineteenth century.

 

In general we do not have to imagine such things. People tend to be moved by the things that they see, people tend to believe them. Reportage and nature photography are modes of photography that people assume to be sincere, so we give Nachtway our time and really look at his photos. If they were all staged, if there had never been any violence in Rawanda or South Africa, I think that we would all have a right to feel cheated.

 

But back to the main topic, I don't think, on reflection, that I would consider the photograph in Mike Johnston's article to be deceptive or misleading if it was staged. It does not really fit into the reportage/documentary photography I was thinking about (guess I went on a tangent)it conveys no obvious message. I cannot be deceived if I don't take home a message, so I cannot really feal cheated. If it appeared in a book on candid photography? well that would be a different matter..

[data]

<p>People have been dancing around the point without ever hitting directly on it. All photography is subjective. A photograph is a two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional space. The photographer consciously chooses how that space is translated into two dimensions. There are an infinite number of translations, the photographer only captures one. There is no reality in this context, just a two-dimensional image.

 

<p>I think a more important point about photography was made earlier on in the discussion by S. LIU.

 

<p><i>I have a copy of Bruce Davidson's "East 100 Street". Almost all the photos in the books were staged, there is no way to conceal a large format camera. What amazing is that it took Bruce Davidson two year (4000 negatives) to finish that project. When I look at these photos, I see more than the staged images, something deeper.</i>

 

<p>He says he sees something deeper in these pictures. Roland Barthes wrote about this idea in <i>Camera Lucida</i> (I haven't had a chance to read it yet but I have read <i>The Photograph</i>, part of the Oxford History of Art series, which has a chapter that applies Barthes' theory to documentary photography).

 

<p>Barthes uses two terms to describe any photograph: <i>studium</i> and <i>punctum</i>. <i>Studium</i> is that part of the photograph that is studied and under the photographer's control. It is the subjectivity of pointing the camera and pressing the shutter button, but it can also include arranging objects in the scene or even paying models. <i>Punctum</i> is the much more important part of the picture. It is the part that is not under the control of the photographer. It is the puncture in presentation of the photograph that allows you to enter the photograph and get more out of it.

 

<p><i>Punctum</i> is that deeper part that S. LIU talks about. He even says that he sees more than a staged photograph, because it is the unintended parts of the picture that open it up to interpretation.

 

<p>Take the runners for example. Even if it was staged, S. LIU couldn't control where the runners' feet were, their facial expressions, the distance between them, exactly how the would be positioned when the shutter released. At best, he could have said, "Chase one another around the corner."

 

<p>The same is true for HC-B. Even if he did ask the girl to run up the steps (I agree he almost certainly didn't), he couldn't control exactly how she did it or exactly (I mean exactly) how it would be recorded on the film. Does it matter to the photograph if he did? Really, it only matters if he lied about it.

 

<p>The majority of pictures you see out there only have <i>studium</i>. Ever look at a picture and say, "That's beautiful," and then just move on. It's because it's the perfect sunset/flower/girl/street scene and nothing more. Without <i>punctum</i> there is no engagement of the viewer. There's nothing deeper to look for.

 

<p>I suspect pictures used for propoganda have nothing but <i>studium</i>. We think that some photographers are great, whether they stage their shots or not, because they give us more.

[blueviews]

Wow:

S Liu's thesis is that Cartier Bresson didn't ask the girl to run up the stairs so it is a great picture. But what if he did ask her (no one knows but HCB) does that change the perception of the picture? Does it change anyone's opinion of HCB's photos if they were all staged? Not at all in my mind. Most of Brassai's pics were staged (most exposures were more than 20 secs or so) does that make them less interesting. Judge the photographs on their merit not on some "feel good" opinion on honesty or moral value. They are only pictures for crying out loud. If the pic is in the paper telling me some news then I want to know that it is what the story says it is. Otherwise if it is trying to be art let it be art. Art doesn't have motives (artist do of course).

Also, I guess that anyone who thinks Mike thought HCB staged the picture didn't read the article.

 

BVA

[Allen Herbert]

Reality as you saw and experienced it, or wish it to be. Your last sentence is meaningless - you might as well say that "to take a photograph you have to exist."

 

 

You are playing with semantics my friend, not reality. Reality of an image is to do with the perceived perception of the image-maker. However, we work with a original image, based on reality. How we perceive, create that image is subject to the photographers perception.

 

Art, non photographic, has no such restrictions. Of course photography with p/s is changing that reality. For the better: a individual subjective thought.

[Allen Herbert]

Reality, is more defining, than pure Art.

[._._z]

Anyone translate that into english?

[jbs]

I think thats something like, " Truth is stranger than fiction."

Too bad this wasn't in the philosophy forum....;)...J

[sliu]

From Andre in Canada.<div></div>

[._._z]

Anyone want to translate <b>that</b>?

[nesrani]

I think it means something like "where's my waitress" but I don't usually do translations with English as the source language.

[jbs]

I'll bet it's a book on photojournalistic philosophy in China. Bresson maybe. It's titled "Other China"

 

....;)....J

[mark_gatehouse]

"Roland Barthes wrote about this idea in Camera Lucida (I haven't had a chance to read it yet but I have read The Photograph, part of the Oxford History of Art series, which has a chapter that applies Barthes' theory to documentary photography).

 

Barthes uses two terms to describe any photograph: studium and punctum... Punctum is the much more important part of the picture. It is the part that is not under the control of the photographer. It is the puncture in presentation of the photograph that allows you to enter the photograph and get more out of it.

 

Punctum is that deeper part that S. LIU talks about. He even says that he sees more than a staged photograph, because it is the unintended parts of the picture that open it up to interpretation."

 

An idea and a term (punctum) developed somewhat earlier by Berenice Abbott in her writings on Atget. Writing which Barthes was certainly aware of, but lets say he never obviosuly bothered to attributed this to Abbott in his own writings. That is to say the concept and term punctum was never Barthes own - even if he failed to say so....