User:Luisa Moura/writing/graduation thesis outline

Thesis Question

• What is the role of representation in a collective sense of ethics
• What is the role of photography in illustrating and shaping collective ethics
• What is the role of photo journalism in illustrating and shaping collective/shared ethics

• What is the role of photojournalism in the visual identity of ethics?

Abstract

(first draft)

(...) Why does photojournalism deliberately neglect lessons from marketing in the portraying of socially urgent topics? 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 they 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 a good citizen, but frequently nobody knows exactly 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 (...) What is the role of photojournalism in the visual identity of ethics?

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)

- 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

- 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

- 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