User:Luisa Moura/graduation seminar/thesis/process/outline

Title / question

The Aesthetics of Ethics What is the role of photojournalism in the (visual) identity of ethics?

Abstract

The aesthetics of ethics is a research on photography, regarding the social reportage genre. It reflects on the way photography is used to illustrate and communicate social conflict. The visual grammar in question makes use of a great exposure of intimacy or violence, has a complex composition and regards a non staged snapshot of reality. It is a form of photography that is imbued with a great deal of realism; it claims minimal interference with the scene it witnesses. Even though it’s clear that a photograph is always a subjective framing of an action, this visual grammar is still very effective transmitting a sense of objectivity. It doesn’t only have an extremely rich formal value, but it also stands as an identity for the contents it usually portrays. The way conflict is photographed became its very identity, and it determines a mode of perception. The intrusive nature of social reportage, even though heavily criticized, is considered to be legitimate, once it informs. To accept the social reportage as it is, became a form of ethical burden. It is justified, once it is supposed to appeal for social empathy and political reform. This research tries to approach the social reportage as an illustration of ethics; it looks into the aesthetics of the photograph in order to reflect on the nature of its concerns.

Thesis Outline

PHOTOGRAPHICAL TYPOLOGIES AND IDENTITY CHAPTER-01: the importance of typology for the establishment of a visual language Photography, or the mechanical reproduction of one’s image, grew side by side with the increased attention on individual identity as tool for governmental control. The constitution of the Disciplinary Society that Foucault writes about relies on the depth of nuclear categorization, based on the scrutiny of human particularities, impossible without the help of objective means of visual documentation. Photography played an essential role in the definition of a contemporary notion of identity. 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. In the process of rendering visual an increased world of phenomenological complexity and allow comparison between what is believed to be similar or opposed, photography relied in the use of simplified typologies of record. This chapter attempts to approach the connection between modes of representation and the way it shapes the very identity of contents portrayed.

Bibliography:

FOUCAULT, Michel, “Discipline and Punish”, Penguin, 1991

The chapter on “The Means of Correct Training” unfolds the mechanisms at play in the definition of individual identity, general control, surveillance and behavioral correction. It is fundamental in this chapter to intuit the role played by photography in this process in the late XIX century.

HALL, Stuart, “Who Needs Identity” from du Gay, P. Evans, J. and Redman, P. “Identity: a Reader” pp.15-30, Sage Publications Inc, 2000

In this article Stuart Hall refers to the definition of identity in processes of discursive exclusion; the field of “equality” that defines identity finding its boundaries in the field of “what is not”; the role of photography as tool of methodic comparison.

MAXWELL, Anne, “Picture Imperfect 1870 – 1940”, Sussex Academic Press, 2008

In the Chapter “Emergence of Eugenic Photography”, Anne Maxwell contextualizes a broad range of attempts to illustrate individuals and groups with the clear ideological purpose of social reform based on racial, economical and social clearance.

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 objectivity. This chapter deals with examples of Dutch contemporary media and makes use of comparison between different modes of representation; it also goes back into the early XIX century forms of social reportage and on the Magnum storytelling heritage from the XX century, picking up on the topic of the first chapter regarding categorization and political purposes.

BOOT, Chris, “Magnum Stories”, Phaidon, 2004

SONTAG, Susan, “On Photography”, Penguin, 1984

TAGG, John "The Burden of Representation - Essays on Photographs and Histories" Communications and Culture 1988

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. 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 focuses 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.

NIETZSCHE, “Beyond Good and Evil” from “The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche (1909-1913)”, the Project Gutenberg EBook, 2003

RANCIÈRE, Jacques, “The Emancipated Spectator”, Verso, 2009

The paradox between the essential passivity of a spectator and the ethical urge to induce action through socially concerned performance; essential reading on the understanding the fictional potential of realism within representation

WITTGENSTEIN, Ludwig, Lecture on Ethics, Cambridge, 1933

Approach to Wittgenstein’s connection between aesthetics and ethics as one same thing, or as similarly transcendent concepts, not expressible in language

Conclusion: - Revision of photographical tactics regarding social concerns: an allegorical approach to ethics.

Glossary:

(http://www.oxforddictionaries.com)

Ethics: Moral principles that govern a person’s behavior or the conducting of an activity;

Aesthetics: A set of principles concerned with the nature and appreciation of beauty.

Allegory: A story, poem, or picture which can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one

Iconography: The visual images, symbols, or modes of representation collectively associated with a person, cult, or movement

Photojournalism: The practice of communicating news by photographs, especially in magazines.