I recently be re-reading "Photography after frank, Essays by Phillip Gefter" When I came across the essay "Photographic Icons, Fact, Fiction or Metaphor? Originally published in Aperture Magazine, winter 2006. The essay discusses what value is lost in photojournalism when photographs are constructed or staged?
"Truth- telling is the promise of a photograph- as if face resides itself in the optical precision with which the medium reflects our native perception. A photograph comes as close as we get to witnessing an authentic moment with our own eye while not actually being there. Think of all the Famous pictures that serve as both documentation and verification of historic events ...Lewis Hine's chronicle of industrial growth in America... aren't they proof of the facts in real time, moments of history brought to the present? Of course, just because a photograph reflects the world with perceptual accuracy doesn't mean it is proof of what spontaneously transpired. A photographic image might look like actual reality, but gradations of truth are measured in the circumstances that led up to the moment the picture was taken."
The most interesting question proposed by Gefter in this particular essay is "Just how much of the subject matter does the photographer have to change before fact becomes fiction, or a photography becomes metaphor?
I feel that we should interpret photographs as a "metaphorical" truth, surely this has more value than a cold factual image? It captures more than just an event in history, and that is what has truly made photography an art form. Perhaps we should stop looking for truth in photographs, in regards to photojournalism, we know these events are happening, so does a constructed image really decrease the value of what the the photograph is representing, and can photograph even create an accurate historical record? Perhaps our we need to re examine and redefine our notions of "truth".
Here is another interesting article written by Brian Appel that I would suggest reading: Contemporary photography: Truth and the burden of reality. http://www.iphotocentral.com/collecting/article_view.php/16/20/1
The fictional 1983 film "Under Fire" also plays on some of these themes and might be worth watching if you are interested "Nicaragua 1979: Star photographer Russel Price covers the civil war against president Somoza. Facing the cruel fighting - people versus army - it's often hard for him to stay neutral. When the Guerillas have him take a picture of the leader Rafael, who's believed to be dead, he gets drawn into the happenings. Together with his reporter friends Claire and Alex he has to hide from the army"
Death of a loyalist militiaman, Robert Capa
"Truth- telling is the promise of a photograph- as if face resides itself in the optical precision with which the medium reflects our native perception. A photograph comes as close as we get to witnessing an authentic moment with our own eye while not actually being there. Think of all the Famous pictures that serve as both documentation and verification of historic events ...Lewis Hine's chronicle of industrial growth in America... aren't they proof of the facts in real time, moments of history brought to the present? Of course, just because a photograph reflects the world with perceptual accuracy doesn't mean it is proof of what spontaneously transpired. A photographic image might look like actual reality, but gradations of truth are measured in the circumstances that led up to the moment the picture was taken."
The most interesting question proposed by Gefter in this particular essay is "Just how much of the subject matter does the photographer have to change before fact becomes fiction, or a photography becomes metaphor?
I feel that we should interpret photographs as a "metaphorical" truth, surely this has more value than a cold factual image? It captures more than just an event in history, and that is what has truly made photography an art form. Perhaps we should stop looking for truth in photographs, in regards to photojournalism, we know these events are happening, so does a constructed image really decrease the value of what the the photograph is representing, and can photograph even create an accurate historical record? Perhaps our we need to re examine and redefine our notions of "truth".
Here is another interesting article written by Brian Appel that I would suggest reading: Contemporary photography: Truth and the burden of reality. http://www.iphotocentral.com/collecting/article_view.php/16/20/1
The fictional 1983 film "Under Fire" also plays on some of these themes and might be worth watching if you are interested "Nicaragua 1979: Star photographer Russel Price covers the civil war against president Somoza. Facing the cruel fighting - people versus army - it's often hard for him to stay neutral. When the Guerillas have him take a picture of the leader Rafael, who's believed to be dead, he gets drawn into the happenings. Together with his reporter friends Claire and Alex he has to hide from the army"
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