The Things We Don't Take Photographs of (and Why They're Important)

In a world increasingly governed by images, the decision to confer something with the status of existence or absence may be the most powerful of all the photographic effects...

In “Unconcerned but not Indifferent”, Broomberg and Chanarin critique The World Press Photo Awards, drawing on their experience as jury members in 2008.

Their statement opens with two quotes:

 

“The most political decision you make is where you direct people’s eyes”

Wim Wenders, The Act of Seeing

 

and;

“The tremendous development of photojournalism has contributed practically nothing to the revelation of the truth about conditions in this world. On the contrary photography, in the hands of the bourgeoisie, has become a terrible weapon against the truth. The vast amount of pictured material that is being disgorged daily by the press and that seems to have the character of truth serves in reality to only obscure the facts. The camera is just as capable of lying as the typewriter”

Bertolt Brecht, 1931

 

In sharing these quotes Broomberg and Chanarin premise their discussion with the notion that the testimony of a photographic image (in its essential character and typical usage) is one of opinion dressed as truth.

However, unlike a partisan position in other mediums (e.g. writing) the “dressing” comes not from authorship, but rather the implicit selection of what information is shown and what is not. This as an idea is worth exploring

The “trick” is that a photograph – or sets of them – are taken to be a truthful representation broader reality and, as such, synecdoche.

The camera’s mechanism records what is in front of it with an unwavering mechanistic totality.

The content of the image is drawn from a moment in reality and an assortment of objects and spatial relations. (1) Thus the resulting image is convincingly viewed as an analogous representation of reality.

But what is not present is that which escapes the frame in both space (the spatial periphery) and time (the non-essential moments left to lapse).

When we think of the quantum the camera misses, both in terms of:

• what is not captured due to lack of motivation on the part of the photographer (what they choose not to capture);

and:

• what escapes the limited purview of time and space beyond the frame even if faithful authenticity was nonetheless sought (the everything else);

we come to understand the strange dislocation between reality as shown in images, and reality as it is.

Whilst the exponential production of images seems to offer many more perspectives upon the world, there surely remains an incredible discrepancy between reality and the visual record.

The Photographic Act as Political

How We Look

Wenders classifies this omission/emphasis (mechanical or motivated) as a political act.

The political concerns power, granted to that which receives visual attention; this is further explored by Laura Mulvey and the power dynamics she observed in the gaze of the camera in the Golden Age of cinema.

This concerns, of course, how the camera looked (and continues to look) at women, and clearly demonstrates how power can be expressed through perspective.

Here the political is all too clear in the encoded nature of looking upon female subjects in films. When watching a film, or observing any photographic media, we take the perspective of the lens as our own, including its view upon the world and it’s subjects.

Internalising viewpoints through photographic media places the audience within the worldview of the lens, whose perspective may (as in this case) place treat some subjects differently from others.

Mulvey’s is but one significant macro example of this fundamental phenomena within any photographic recording, from the state document to the journalistic to the deeply personal.

In each case, we take one another’s perspective as a held or derived truth, with all the inherent limitations of an externally forced subjective bias. Yet seen and evidenced with our own eyes.

 

Toward an “image-world”

When viewing the World Press Photo entries, Broomberg and Chanarin noted the highly conventional nature of each photographic item, and how established genres and ways of recording experience seemed to encompass the general competition.

Broomberg and Chanarin offered a cynical typology in relation to the World Press Photo awards:

“Again and again similar images are repeated, with only actors and settings changing.

• Grieving mothers
• charred human remains
• sunsets
• women giving birth
• children playing with toy guns
• cock fights
• bull fights
• Havana street scenes
• reflections in puddles
• reflections in windows
• football posts in unlikely locations
• swaddled babies
• portraits taken through mosquito nets
• needles in junkies’ arms
• derelict toilets
• Palestinian boys throwing stones
• contorted Chinese gymnasts
• Karl Lagerfeld
• models preparing for fashion shows backstage
• painted faces
• bodies covered in mud
• monks smoking cigarettes
• pigeons silhouetted against the sky
• Indian Sardus
• children leaping into rivers
• pigs being slaughtered”

 

When this conventionality is considered in the broader production of images, we gain perspective on what Susan Sontag described as the “image world“: a conventionally established grammar of presentation for how we see the world.

But as Brecht’s criticism notes, the representation of the world that is seen in images is conspicuously incomplete.

 

Omission (The Long Blink)

Brecht’s quote directs ire upon the bourgeois journalistic cadre of the period, whose selective photographic representation of the world he believed did not match reality.

“ On the contrary photography, in the hands of the bourgeoisie, has become a terrible weapon against the truth…”

The implication here is editorial: the cadre determined what was seen and what wasn’t, with the consequence that certain subjects were not granted an audience at all.

This erasure is equally – perhaps more – impactful than a subject disempowered by forced perspective, whether a conscious or unconscious desire of the photographer (1).

Those subjects not captured are denied existence in the image-world which corporeally mirrors our own 1:1.

Within documentary, this has the effect of erasure of critical subjects within visual discourse. Therefore the image-world is inherently political, and through representation grants or withdraws power from the events, people, objects and places it contains – in a very substantial way.

Important work is done by those that refuse to allow erasure such as this to occur, and to record what is otherwise denied a rightful audience.

Case in point: J A Mortram’s series ‘Small Town Inertia’, which documents a range of people forced to the fringes of society in Dereham.

In its patience, compassion and loyalty to the people who work in partnership with Jim, critical stories are told about those who would otherwise disappear from the attention of the wider public.

This empathetic approach to documentation speaks volumes of what is possible in terms of empowering those in images who are otherwise absent or at best reduced to superficial symbols of the human condition.

The effect of disparity between what is and what isn’t recorded can be seen to permeate photography in all its various guises.

In a world increasingly governed by images, the decision to confer something the status of existence or absence may be the most powerful of all the photographic effects.

 

The Personal Political (Instagram as “image-world”)

In 2019, more images will likely be produced than ever before (1.7trillion were produced in 2017).

One might correlate an increased production of images with wider coverage and thus a more accurate and proportionate “image-world”.

However, this exponential growth is driven largely by smartphones and social media, and so the polity of photography takes a newly pervasive form.

As with Broomberg and Chanarin’s perspective on documentary, there appears to be a high degree of conventionality within personal images.

Might a similar cynical typology be offered of Instagram…?

• Selfies (2)
• Food pictures
• Lens flare landscapes
• Cloud pictures
• Pictures of your dog
• Group photos amongst peers
• Progress shots from the gym
• …

Instagram’s main feed is where people share curated highlights within these conventions, altered with various editing tools made available through the app. This typically results in a halcyon digest of the individual’s experience.

As many Instagram users consume hundreds of others’ curated highlights, many of them (along with studies) note that the app makes them feel anxious, sad or experience more acute mental health issues.

TIME quotes: “Previous studies have suggested that young people who spend more than two hours a day on social networking sites are more likely to report psychological distress. ‘Seeing friends constantly on holiday or enjoying nights out can make young people feel like they are missing out while others enjoy life,’ the #StatusOfMind report states. ‘These feelings can promote a “compare and despair” attitude.’… Such reports typically cite Instagram as a common site for this emerging phenomenon.

One might infer that this psychological effect comes from a false image of the outer world as seen through the app, contrasting negatively with the individual experience; a sense of dissociation with a false (or incomplete) image-world. It is a disempowering notion to reckon with the impossibility of a life that surpasses sundry Instagram highlights (4).

Even influencers who use the platform professionally find themselves unable to manage with the heightened expectations that they place upon themselves as a consequence of careful curation and comparison.

This image-world can express positive self-representation on an individual level, but holds psychologically fraught and inhospitable implications for the collective.

Crucially this arises as a consequence of the socialisation of the camera and the distribution of images amongst a wider network.

The personal has become political in the sense that what is shown seeks to empower the individual within their network (and wider networks) of others who conduct the same careful activity.

Success means gratification, and at the basic level seratonin which may be correlated directly to recognition. Failure means a sense of isolation and dissociation from a world which mirrors only the aspiration of our own – wherein an erasure or subjugation of the self constantly threatens a sense of self amongst a socially hygienic collective.

 

The Things Photographs Don’t Show (and Why They’re Important)

What remains outside the purview of photography is that which reassuringly grounds us in the banal, ordinary reality.

As we have seen, an image-world curated of the exceptional only serves to create a continual aspirational requirement that may never be sated.

While photography corporeally and convincingly appears to mirror our world, it is important to be conscientious of what has been denied representation, whether inherently or by design.

The effect of this erasure is impactful, on an institutional basis or an individual level, whether a subject is empowered or disenfranchised. At each level, the erasure effect situates the subject of the image(s) amongst the wider world and determines its status and significance.

When we are surrounded ever more by images in the real world, the implications of this effect will only continue to manifest.

—

by Dr. Martin Douglas Hendry (c) 2019

1. Broomberg and Chanarin take particular note of the conventionality and authorship within World Press Photo entries and how this, in particular, seems to contravene the notion of the document as it is judged on aesthetic grounds.
2. Imagery being created by machine learning and neural networks will increasingly challenge this fundamental aspect of photography (this and prior challenges to photographic veracity are saved for another entry).
3. The selfie is its own terrain of study and interest, but might be understood as us placing ourselves within the image world we have cultivated about our lives (and which exists amongst a network of others). They are highly significant images in terms of self-concept, and typically curated with extra special care.