WEEK 12: PHOTOJOURNALISM

I always admired the work of photojournalists in giving a series of photographs to show us the prove of reality. I always believed that Photojournalism has the motive to show the reality which differentiates its purpose from photography which sometimes depicts an illustration of reality. I rely on the work of photojournalist to see the reality that I wasn’t there to conceive with my own eyes, and with my own experience. The postmodern era marks the beginning of digital photography that has been claimed as the destruction to photojournalism on giving reality. My purpose of writing this journal is to argue that neither digital photojournalism nor traditional photojournalism is able to portray reality. Reality as it is cannot be conceived through camera. I want to raise the issue of “photographic truth” as the ethics of photojournalism in the photograph that do not involve manipulation and how these photographs  become untrue.

Photojournalism is the combination of photography and journalism. Stuart Allan in his book journalism: critical issues stated the statement made by Barbie Zelizer that "Photojournalism records an event by using pictures to make their own point of view of that particular issue. The importance of photography to support their point of view is that for many of us of age in mediated era, seeing is believing” (Allan, 2005).

Philosopher Immanuel Kant in his critique of pure reason introduced the transcendental idealism where he declare two different perception of how human being perceived reality, intuition and concept. He quoted that “intuition contains merely the form under which something is intuited” this means that our immediate perception gives us reality as it is. However, his other perception involves what he called a concept which is “through the former object is given to us, it is though in relation to that representation (Guyer, Wood, 1997).This means that our immediate perception (intuition) is where reality is being conceived as it is but the mediate perception (concept) involves our active mind to choose or to select certain aspect of that reality we conceived through the intuition , When human active mind chooses certain aspect of that reality, it is no longer the whole reality, it is already a representation.

Digital photojournalism has been accused as unethical as it involves the manipulation of reality through technologies while non-digital photojournalism portrays reality. I don’t think that either of these two portrays reality. I would like to use Immanuel Kant’s view on intuition and concept to be compared to photojournalism. Photojournalist conceives reality immediately as his eyes sees the events, his immediate perception is called intuition but as his mind becomes active, his mind allows him to select some parts of the events he want to depict through his camera, this selection of  the aspect of reality  is called a "concept". If non-digital, unaltered photograph are taken based upon the photojournalist point of view/perspective, doesn’t this already making it a mere representation of reality. The frame itself is taken upon his point of view making the narrative itself is selected by the photographer to be presented to the audiences. Doesn’t this show that audiences are already been force to interpret the events exactly like what the photographer want, they cannot interpret otherwise since the story portrays by the narrative is based upon photographer's agenda.

This is the photograph of war which depicts the event around the war, all the reality of the despair, the battle are presented as a story through the photograph without any technical involvement of photo manipulation. The photographer might not interfere with the events of the war, he took the picture and he left like a bird without altering anything in front of him. This might seems ethical, but think about the purpose of photojournalism, they offer to show audiences with reality. They claim that reality is captured through their camera, promising only reality. I think photograph like this is biased because it shows only one point of view of war; the photographer selected his frame base on his agenda to show only one aspect of war which is the battle. Audiences do not have a freedom to interpret this image by themselves as the frame is already selected for them. They can only see the denotation of the soldiers in a battle running in water with their guns. Audiences cannot interpret otherwise, they cannot think about any other meaning besides what has been presented to them. The glory of war is not selected in this frame even though in reality, war has a defeat as well as a glory. This picture alone cannot depict reality of war as it only shows one biased point of view. Audiences cannot see the portrayal of glory of the war due to the photographer’s biases in presenting his agenda.

This is the famous picture called "the migrant mother" taken in 1936 by Dorothea Lange. The mother who is living in poverty in USA depicts the portrayal of the truth of her condition. But we never think about the photographer’s agenda and also the subject of her photographs. The photographer shows only one aspect of her agenda which is to show the cultural critique of poverty, thus selecting this frame as her narrative. The photographer’s already choose this frame for interpreter’s to interpret, this do not leave any freedom for people like us to interpret what we want to interpret, and I can only interpret on what I see, through the photographer’s agenda. I also want to argue that this photograph is taken from a specific focus/angel which portrays the face of the mother. It seems that the mother was aware of the fact that she is being photograph. Once the subject is aware of the camera in front of her, doesn’t this make her human nature to act or to behave a certain way for the camera?  Surely this shows the reality of the mother being poor, but this picture is just the representation of her poverty.

This is another photographic picture of Hitler and the Nazis. In this picture, the subjects which is Hitler and the rest of the Nazis were perfectly aware that they are being photograph. This awareness makes their human nature to behave in front of the camera, hiding their true personality to make themselves look fierce, powerful and cruel. They act in front of the camera to reveal the brutality of being a Nazis.This picture masked the subject true selves, therefore this picture is not the portrayal of the reality of the Nazis, as its narrative is being structured by the subject themselves.

I have shown three photographs to illustrate my claims that taking a frame based on photojournalist point of view is already a manipulation to the truth, so I ask myself; what makes this different form digital manipulation like adobe Photoshop, cropping and editing. This is a form of manipulation as well; even though the manipulation does not involve technologies.

It is the nature of human beings to see, to think and to doubt. Due to the interferences of our mind, reality as it is in the external world will never be the same as it is to the mind of human being. Our mind enables us to think and to choose what we wanted to see. We are so attracted with the supposedly reality portrayed in photojournalism without any doubt that our mind became the destruction of that reality. This has leads us in an ongoing debate of the never ending ethical issues regarding the search for “photographic truth” in photojournalism.

References:

Allan, Stuart. (2005). Journalism: critical issues (Ed). Open University Press. Berkshire.

Guyer, Paul. Wood, Allen W.(1997). Immanuel Kant : A Critique of Pure Reason. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge.