User:Luisa Moura/graduation seminar/thesis/process/outline/process
Thesis Question
What is the role of photojournalism in the visual identity of ethics?
Abstract
(first draft)
(...) People seem to engage into imitating models they feel identified with; this is the phenomena that unleash greater consumption levels or consistent collective movements. Social reportage plays neither with factors of identification, once it focus on the portraying of error, misery or despair, neither in the illustration of something that people might be willing to re-enact themselves. The exposure to this visual grammar is commonly understood as the truth that one must be confronted with in order to be politically conscious, but it is frequently unknown how to act upon it. This leads to a great amount of guilt that finds mainly two outputs: the acritical tolerance regarding this kind of imagery and the vulnerability towards donation-based action (...) Does photojournalism play a role in the very way we perceive and exercise ethical concerns?
Thesis Outline
The Aesthetics of Ethics (possible alternative for the previous title 'Exotic Other')
What is the role of photojournalism in the visual identity of ethics?
PHOTOGRAPHIC TYPOLOGIES AND IDENTITY
CHAPTER-01: the importance of typology for the establishment of a visual language (Foucault, Tagg, Phèline and others)
Photography, or the mechanical reproduction of one’s image, is deeply related or grew side by side with the very notion of individuality in the XIX century. The individual value attributed to each member of society appeared as part of a general institutional effort of documenting, archiving and categorizing individuals for the most various purposes, from criminal control to medical research (…)
- The role of Photography in the definition of identity: institutions, archive
- Photographic Typologies: identity and categories, from individual to groups
- Realism and Photography: context and purpose of realistic approach to photography (FSA and Eugenics); the heritage of
documentary photography and its authority in the exercise of concerned citizenship
SOCIAL REPORTAGE AND THE REALISTIC APPROACH
CHAPTER-02: the social reportage and the gathered material; analysis of its similitude, formal character and potential meaning
The Social Reportage in photojournalism has a specific formal, visual language, a given Historical context and a typological nature that this chapter will try to address. Its association with a form of realism imbues the genre with a great informative authority, even though its dynamic nature (snapshots of true action) drags it paradoxically away from a claimed objectivity
- Dutch contemporary media: display of collection under analysis
- The Social Reportage, Storytelling genre: Magnum and the Documentary Photography
- Realism and its fictional nature
- Media from early immigration waves into the Netherlands: which kind of photos?
EMPATHY OR DETACHMENT AND THE LEGITIMACY OF EXPOSURE
CHAPTER-03: reflecting on the political effects of objective information
This chapter reflects on what appears to be a paradox between the legitimacy of personal exposure in the social reportage and
its apparent inefficiency on generating action or political consciousness.
- The phenomena of detachment and empathy regarding messages of social concern:
- Rancière and the spectator paradox: the performance of interventionism
- Exposure of intimacy and break of cultural codes: any role in detachment?
- The realism and its fatality versus the sense of personal empowerment
- Between Information and Action: social awareness and citizenship
- Marketing and ethics, the strategy differences between models and anti-models.
Conclusion:
- Revision of photographic tactics regarding social concerns: an allegorical approach to ethics.
Bibliography / short list
FOUCAULT, Michel, “Discipline and Punish”, Penguin, 1991 (the role of photography in the building up of 'individuality'. The individual file / information / archive and personal image as tools of both self identification and means of centralized control)
MAXWELL, Anne, “Picture Imperfect 1870 – 1940”, Sussex Academic Press, 2008 (PHÉLINE, Christian "L'image accusatrice" 17 - Cahiers de la photografie, 1985) (the political purpose and use of photographic typologies in order to categorize individuals and groups; the definition of a way of 'looking at' and 'act upon')
RANCIÈRE, Jacques, “The Emancipated Spectator”, Verso, 2009 (the paradox between the essential passivity of a spectator and the ethical urge to induce action ...)
SONTAG, Susan, “On Photography”, Penguin, 1984
TAGG, John "The Burden of Representation - Essays on Photographies and Histories" Communications and Culture 1988