User:Luisa Moura/graduation seminar/thesis/final
moura.luisa@gmail.com
Thesis excerpt: Introduction
(...)
This study began with the acknowledgement that given social contents would be permanently photographed in the same manner, which would render them inevitably similar. Similarity allows the recognition of a concept, in this case social issues, as something objectified enough to be observed in a given manner. What is interesting here is not only that concern gets an actual visual outlook, but that its aesthetics define the relationship that one is expected to have with the topic. During the process of the research I acknowledged that the photographs in question belong to the social documentary genre. It is therefore in this manner that the topic will be further addressed; the focus of the thesis became the genre in itself. Documentary photography seems to imply a number of compositional elements that transmit a sense of authenticity. The composition is dynamic (no vertical lines, spatial distortion); people are submitted to a broader context and are often not aware of the camera (cropped bodies and marginal position of individuals within the frame); the light is low and frequently inadequate to clearly distinguish subjects or objects (blurred, dark or over exposed); the colors are often intense in contrast, ranging from black to deeply saturated bright tones (non harmonic balance between darker and lighter zones). The display of intimacy and private objects reinforce the authenticity of the capture, dragging the photograph away from the realm of common portraiture; individuals appear to have no chance to stage their own image. The documentary aesthetics attempt to reinforce the sense that the camera is an objective witness of reality; that what it frames is an actual bit of life and not a photographer’s subjective choice:
The rhetorical strength of documentary is imagined to reside in the unequivocal character of the camera’s evidence, in an essential realism (…) Vision, itself un-implicated in the world it encounters, is subjected to a mechanical idealization. Paradoxically, the camera serves to ideologically naturalize the eye of the observer (Sekula, 1979. p.172)
To deliberately neglect the camera’s capacity to produce sharp and light images has a very strong effect in the manufacture of an authentic scene. The capture is so truthful and spontaneous, that not even a sophisticated professional camera is able to be ready for it; reality must be stronger than any mechanical attempt to grab it. The error in the pictures is a powerful sign of its authentic nature; it suggests a misfit between representation and reality. This is essential to believe that reality surpassed the medium and is able to travel, in its pure state, from the outer world into our perception. This means that social vulnerability is represented by a medium that denies its very existence; or that claims to be totally neutral. The public is invited to consider what is represented as a bit of pure reality and to ignore the fact that its framing as such is a purely subjective choice.
In principle, documentary photography has an informative agenda that is explicit and transparent; it implies a sequence of photographs, not a single point of view; it claims to not interfere with the scene it witnesses; it involves an ethical concern. The very choice to document, determines the urgency of the topic in society’s consciousness. It renders a given context as something that must be seen, considered and ultimately acted upon (Tagg, 1988, p.8-9)
The material further displayed with the text relates to social documentary photography and photojournalism, including both contemporary and historical references. The selection stays within the field of social conflict, living or working conditions and leaves out situations of war, famine or natural catastrophes. It is in the illustration of everyday ordinary issues that the analysis of these photographs seems relevant. When the coverage refers to contexts that are distant, violent or enormously tragic, the theme in itself already packs the content of the photographs into the realm of the exotic. But what happens when the theme is ordinary, close and familiar? The documentary format, by electing given individuals to be looked upon within particular aesthetics, has the powerful capacity to render them exotic. The documentary lens is some sort of exoticizing tool, once it isolates the individual from the complexity of his existence into a simplified, manufactured narrative. And what does it mean for one’s identity to be photographed in this manner? What does it mean politically to perceive the unemployed, the elderly or the poor as someone exotic and not as peers with the same rights, capacities and democratic duties? The individual portrayed in this manner is not only rendered exotic, but his exceptional nature is also assumed as truthful as it could possibly be; the individual is not like the representation, the individual is the representation. Considering this, to understand the political meaning of documentary photography and its casual use in alien circumstances is fundamental. The use of this visual grammar changes deeply the way a photograph and its contents get to be perceived. Documentary form not only shapes an aesthetic way of looking at, but also delimits the field of issues that the collective opinion ‘shall’ be concerned about.
The thesis is organized in three parts: context, analysis and reflection. It starts with a historical thread that helped me to speculate about the origin, development and critical perception of the genre. The following chapter regards the analysis of contemporary case studies and the visual mapping of references. The last chapter reflects on the mechanisms of empathy or detachment associated with the documentary format. Ultimately, the study reflects on the notion of social concern by the very way it gets to be represented and perceived. What does it say about human rights, social identity or the exercise of citizenship?
(...)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ARBUS, Doon, ISRAEL, Marvin (1971) Diane Arbus, Millerton, Publication Aperture
ARENDT, Hannah (2001) Compreensão Política e Outros Ensaios, Editora Relógio d’ Água
AZEVEDO, Leonel Lucas (2010) Ethics and Aesthetics in Ludwig Wittgenstein, PhD Dissertation, Universidade Nova de Lisboa
BARTHES, Roland (1984) Camera Lucida, Fontana Paperbacks
BERGER, John (1977) Ways of Seeing, Penguin
BOOT, Chris (2004) Magnum Stories, Phaidon
BURKE, Edmund (1998) A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Beautiful and the Sublime (1757) Oxford World's Classics
CURTIS, James (1989) Mind’s Eye, Mind’s Truth; FSA Photography Reconsidered, Temple University Press
DASTON, Lorraine, GALLISON, Peter (2010) Objectivity, Zone Books, New York
COPPENS, Jan (1999) Duchenne de Bologne (1806-1875) Zenuwarts en Fotograaf: de Fisieke Werking van onze Gezichtsuitdrukkingen, Photohistorisch Tijdschrift
ECO, Umberto (2007) A História do Feio, Difel
EIJK, Gwen van (2013) Hostile to Hierarchy? Individuality, Equality and Moral Boundaries in Dutch Class Talk, Academic Article, Leiden University
FLUSSER, Vilém (2007) Towards a Philosophy of Photography, 3rd Edition, Reaktion Books
FOUCAULT, Michel (1991) Discipline and Punish, Penguin
FOUCAULT, Michel (1988) Madness & Civilization, Vintage Books
FREUND, Gisèle (2014) La Fotografia como Documento Social, editorial Gustavo Gili, Barcelona
FROMM, Erich, The Fear of Freedom, Routledge Classics, 2001
GRAHAM, Dan and others (2001) Dan Graham: works 1965-2000, Richter Verlag
HALL, Stuart ([1973] 1980): Encoding/decoding. In Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (Ed.): Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972-79, pp. 128-38, London: Hutchinson
HALL, Stuart (2000) Who Needs Identity, from du Gay, P. Evans, J. and Redman, P. Identity: a Reader pp.15-30, Sage Publications Inc
HEDGES, Nick, SEKULA, Allan and others (1979) Photography/Politics: One, Photography Workshop, London
HINE, Lewis, by Vicky Goldberg (1999) Children at Work Prestel - Munich, London, NYC
LEE, Anthony W., PULTZ, John (2003) Diane Arbus: Family Albums, Yale University Press, New Haven and London
LUBBEN, Kristen (2011) Magnum Contactafdrukken, Thoth | Lannoo
MACHIAVELLI, Nicolò (2009) O Príncipe, Guimarães Editores
MAXWELL, Anne (2008) Picture Imperfect 1870 – 1940, Sussex Academic Press
MOHOLY-NAGY, Lazló (1967) Painting, Photography, Film, Lund Humphries, London
MOHOLY-NAGY, Lazló (1969) Vision in Motion, 8th Edition, Paul Theobald and Company, Chicago
MOMA (1967) New Documents [Online] Available from: https://www.moma.org/learn/resources/press_archives/1960s/1967
MUYBRIDGE, Eadweard (1955) The human figure in motion, Dover publications, inc., NYC
NIETZSCHE, Friedrich (2003) Beyond Good and Evil from: The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche (1909-1913)”, the Project Gutenberg EBook
NIETZSCHE, Friedrich, On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense [Online] Available from: http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl201/modules/Philosophers/Nietzsche/Truth_and_Lie_in_an_Extra-Moral_Sense.htm
NIETZSCHE, Friedrich (2000) O Anticristo, p.5 in O Anticristo, Ecce Homo, Nietzsche contra Wagner, Relógio D’Água Editores
PHÉLINE, Christian (1985) L'image accusatrice 17 - Cahiers de la Photographie
RABINOWITZ, Paula (1994) They Must be Represented – The Politics of Documentary, Verso
RANCIÈRE, Jacques (2009) The Emancipated Spectator, Verso
RIIS, Jacob (2014) How the Other Half Lives, the Project Gutenberg EBook
Rothstein’s First Assignment: a Story about Documentary Truth (2011) Documentary Film. Directed by Richard Knox Robinson [Online] Available from: http://www.robinsonphoto.com/Rothstein%27s%20First%20Assignment.html
SEKULA, Allan (1986) The Body and the Archive, The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
SOBIESZEK, Robert A. (1999) Ghost in the Shell – Photography and the Human Soul 1850-2001, Los Angeles County Museum of Art + MIT press, Cambridge Massachussets / London, England
SONTAG, Susan (1984) On Photography, Penguin
SONTAG, Susan (2004) Regarding the Pain of Others, Penguin
TAGG, John (1988) The Burden of Representation - Essays on Photographs and Histories, Communications and Culture
WILDE, Oscar (1982) The Soul of Man under Socialism, p.17 in De Profundis and Other Writings, 2nd edition (5th print), Penguin
ZEGHER, Catherine de (2000) Martha Rosler: Posiciones en el Mundo Real, Actar, Barcelona