I have just spent a week away from art school recuperating after an operation on my knee. Its given me lots of time to think but not a lot of chance to do...
I have been thinking a great deal about photography and its relationship to the truth. At the same time i have been putting together a seminar for this week which is Entitled "Photojournalism: Media Frenzy" So i have been thinking a lot about the relationship of the media+photography+"the truth"
I was interested to read, again, about the photography in the 1850's of Henry Peach-Robinson. He made a montage photograph in 1858 entitled "Fading Away". At the time this had not been done before with such success, and success i belive in this context means "truth".
He came under great criticsim because it revealed an intimate scene. A young girl lies dying with memebers of her family in attendance and her father staring out to sea with his back to her...
So he was first berated for it being a record of far to an intimate event to be made public (its the 1850's rememeber, compare that to today...)
Then when he reveals, at a photography society evebnt that it is in fact a constructed image made from 5 seperate negatives the photography community went crazy beacuse Peach-Robinson had "decived them"...
This is so interesting especially as the image, when viewed, is in fact very convincing even by todays photoshop standards.
I digress...but what does this mean today>? How do we reconcile ourselves with the subject of truth in the photographic image>??? Human nature seems to be to trust, almost without condition, photographs because the camera "..never lies..." Yet we have had this lie proved to us time and time again (Iraq-WMD, ExReuters photgrapher Adnan Hajj, Iran's missile testing) ... starting way back with Peach-Robinson!
Its driving me to drink. What does this mean for my own photography? would it be viewed suspiciously?? what causes the suspicion of a photograph being fake? not real? not truthful?
Could we also argue that photography has been bending the truth since its inception? twisting perspective and making "the real world" into a flat 2D image??? TO many questions.
I guess watching the matrix doesn't help with your ideas about "the real" ether ha ha!
1 comment:
Hey Alex! Some great writing here - I can see that you clearly know this subject area so don't let it melt your brain too much!It strikes me that your dilema lies in your wionderful ability to think around the whole argument and all sides, rather than take just one - which although may feel like a problem for you right now - is exactly the way to unravel the problems of the argument/discussion to an audience (i.e. in your presentation), and is a skill that not everyone has, so embrace it! ... so this is just a wee note of encouragement - you're doing good!
(and p.s. drink for good reasons, not bad ones!!!)
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