Photography As Evidence

This lecture was about how photography can be used as evidence and how itcan provide knowledge of certain events. I have elaborated the key points of the lecture with my own knowledge and research.

John Tagg is a key figure in this topic because he looked at how the 19th century changed, and the ways in which photography was part of that change. He stated that photography became an instrument of surveillance and control. He also stated that "knowledge is power, and photography a crucial form of information".
(Vicki Goldberg, „The Power of Photography‟, Abbeville Press, 1991, p. 61)

Photography has a representational task, in that the photographer, viewed as a special seer, chose to make a particular photograph. This gives authority and credibility to the image. According to Umberto Eco, the camera is like an eye.

One example of how photography can be used as evidence is the work of Lewis Hine. He worked with a labour board of child employment, and photographed the children working as a form of evidence. Hine said:
"I had to show what it was really like…The photograph has an added realism of its own…the average person believes that the camera cannot falsify."

Lewis Hine, a New York City schoolteacher and photographer, believed that a picture could tell a powerful story. He felt so strongly about the abuse of children as workers that he quit his teaching job and became an investigative photographer for the National Child Labor Committee. Hine traveled around the country photographing the working conditions of children in all types of industries. He photographed children in coal mines, in meatpacking houses, in textile mills, and in canneries. He took pictures of children working in the streets as shoe shiners, newsboys, and hawkers. In many instances he tricked his way into factories to take the pictures that factory managers did not want the public to see. He was careful to document every photograph with precise facts and figures. To obtain captions for his pictures, he interviewed the children on some pretext and then scribbled his notes with his hand hidden inside his pocket.

http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/hine-photos/

 

Other ways photography can be used as evidence:

• Surveillance
• Identification, however not always good for detection
• Mug shot
• Police photographs

Problems with photography as evidence:

• Kozloff developed the idea of the photograph as a witness with possibilities of misinterpretation, false witness and partial information
• It is time based. Barthes - "it was made there but it is here now"
• Truth
• Different meanings can be generated

Advertisements

Since the development of computer manipulation tecnology, there have been issues raised as to whether advertisements can be classed as 'truthful'. Editors can now reach into the guts of the photograph and can manipulate any part of it.

"The reader cannot rely upon his or her experience, and sense of what is real, based upon photography‟s similarity to human sight, to decipher the veracity of these kinds of composites because they are too well done. A government will be able to deny the veracity of images of torture… and it may be difficult to prove otherwise", (Fred Ritchin, „Photojournalism in the Age of Computers‟. In Carol Squires (Ed), „the Critical Image‟, Wisehart, London, 1990, p. 28 –38).

Advertising creates an atmosphere and makes the product different to others, even though it is probably very similar.

Before and after images of Kiera Knightley, showing photo editing

Codes - Intertextuality. Portraiture

Definitions

Intertextuality - referring to other texts within a text. For example homage and parody.
Julia Kristeva, (1941-) Intertextuality - reference to other texts, borrow from allude to other art works. Narratives woven from echoes of other texts a ‘mosaic of quotations’

Homage -  making reference to a text intended for respect
Parody -  making reference to a text intended for humour

Appropriation -  using material from sources other than the artist's own: extracting, reproducing, recontextualisation, using 'ready mades', copying, simulation, quotation, parody, forging.

Authorship - past view of the artist having a 'contact' with the work resulting in the original and unique work of art. Foucault and Barthes argue 'death of the author' was part of a system of meaning.

Portrait - express the character of a person and beyond details of their appearance.

Arnold Newman's parody of Salvador Dali's Mona Lisa



Photography as Communication

The key points of this lecture were:

• Photography as communication
• Structuralism
• Binary oppositions / divides
• Process model of communication
• Codes

Anthrapologist Claude Levi-Strauss was the first to study the concept of myths, taboos and totems. He discovered the unconscious foundations in primitive societies including cooking, manners and other forms of social practice.


Communication has an effect on both the sender and the receiver, it doesnt take place in isolation.

Structuralism - Binary Oppositions - Structuring oppositions in myth systems defined in terms of opposition. For example black and white, hot and cold, primitive and modern.

Eikoh Hosoe #28,Embrace1969

Structure and language

‘aims at revealing how we understand each other by… (following) conventional rules – how we ‘signify’ to each other… Sim and

‘ language organises and constructs our sense of reality – different languages in effect produce different mappings of the real’ Storey (2006) p88Van Loon (2004) p63

Process Model of Communication

A photographer makes or takes a photograph in a particular way (using a series of signs) with a particular purpose in mind, the photograph is viewed in a context (newspaper, exhibition, family album) by a viewer who perceives and understands the codes used, and responds to the message.

Noise – disruption of signal between transmission and reception between sender to receiver. Problems with model – efficiency of communication not content or meaning. No account of feedback or context (where, when) or other forms of classification.

Photographic Codes

Cultural - Details that determine style or genre

Intertextuality -  Refers to other images e.g homage and parody

Aesthetic -  Treatment, what to include / leave out, composition

Technical - Lighting, camera angle, black/white, colour, darkroom techniques, quality

Reading the Signs - Semiotics

The key points of this essay were:

• signs and signification: signifier and signified

• iconic and arbitrary (or symbolic)

• denotation, connotation, myth

• paradigm and syntagm

Definitions

Signification - the process of signs being noticed and understood

Sign - combines both the signifier (the object) and the signified (the meaning)

Iconic - how close a sign is to the real thing, how restricted it is by the thing it represents. For example a portrait.

Arbitrary (symbolic) - how far away a sign is to the real thing, how unrestricted it is by the thing it represents. For example a person's name.

Iconic is one extreme, arbitrary is another extreme.

Denotation - what the sign is

Connotation - what the sign suggests

Myth - the ideological or political meaning of the thing

Paradigm - a set of signs available to be used in a context. For example, a paradigm of landscape.

Syntagm - the particular selection of signs (from the paradigms) which are available. For example a coastal landscape in the afternoon.

My Response to the Lecture

I wanted to find out more about these terms, so I read Daniel Chandler's Semiotics for beginners website: http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem06.html

Distinctively we make meanings through our creation and interpretation of 'signs'. According to Peirce 'nothing is a sign unless it is interpreted as a sign'. Anything can be a sign as long as someone interprets it as 'signifying' something - referring to or standing for something other than itself.

 The sign is the whole that results from the association of the signifier and the signified. The relationship between them is called signification, which is shown in Saussure's diagram opposite.




A paradigm is a set of associated signifiers or signifieds which are all members of some defining category, but in which each is significantly different.The use of one signifier (e.g. a particular word or a garment) rather than another from the same paradigm set (e.g. respectively, adjectives or hats) shapes the preferred meaning of a text.

A syntagm is an orderly combination of interacting signifiers which forms a meaningful whole within a text - sometimes, following Saussure, called a 'chain'. Such combinations are made within a framework of conventions. Syntagms are created by the linking of signifiers from paradigm sets which are chosen on the basis of whether they are conventionally regarded as appropriate.

Barthes gave a good example of explaining paradigm and syntagm. He said that paradigmatic elements are the items which cannot be worn at the same time on the same part of the body (such as hats, trousers, shoes). The syntagm is the combination of different items worn.