The power of images
If you haven't noticed yet, there's a common thread running through most of these writings. It deals with the fact that we tend to believe what we see. And since photos are visual subjects, we tend to believe what we see in them - as long as we interpret the subject matter as "real". As a result, images can be a very powerful form of communication. But where there is power, there is always the possibility of corruption. And photography is no different than any other instance where this is true.
It’s easy to see how the use of computers and software in photography offer the photographer enormous amounts of power. But let’s get a little deeper than that. I want to talk about what makes a photo powerful, yet dangerous – without the aid of software.
The biggest problem of discerning truth from an image appears in the form of context - or lack thereof. We know in literature that the paragraph before and the paragraph after help us understand the paragraph in the middle. When a photograph is made, however, we usually don’t get to see the “before” and “after” – just a fraction of a second of our world. But because it’s just one fraction of a second that’s recorded, we miss the context of the preceding and succeeding seconds, minutes or hours - all of which is necessary to understand the truth of a photo. We should be aware of the fact that the fundamental process of photography takes our world out of context. This lack of context isn’t inherently bad. But it can be problematic when we try to discern truth from an image.
As an example, there was a recent news item involving photos of drowning victims on an Italian beach surrounded by people who seemed to go about their business getting a suntan. The beachgoers seemed to pay little attention and show even less concern that two children were laying dead on the beach. That’s what the photos showed, at least. And the photos were the catalyst that caused the emotional furor that followed. The article accompanying the photos didn’t attempt to add any context to support them. It just basically said the photos showed how folks just turned their heads and didn’t care for their fellow human beings. And given just the photos, that IS what it looks like.
We have to remember, though, that these photos are just part of a story taken out of context. We can’t really say for sure if the people in these photos are as cold-hearted as they look, because we don’t know the before and after. There may be a perfectly logical and socially acceptable explanation for their behavior. But we don’t know the whole story because the photograph can’t tell it.
But this is not a new problem.
Occasionally, a photo's inability to tell a complete story can give rise to a completely different one. One of the most famous images from America’s Dust Bowl era is Dorothea Lange’s “Migrant Mother”. The photo depicts several destitute-looking children surrounding a woman whose far-off gaze and troubled expression convey a feeling of hopelessness. Lange describes the family as that of migrant workers who came to California to work at a pea-pickers camp – only to find the crop had been destroyed, and therefore, no work. The photo had great impact. However the story accompanying it was not, for the most part, true.
In Lange’s attempt to get a great photo, she made the biggest mistake a journalist can make: she assumed. And what happens when we assume? Exactly. Lange failed to get the correct story from her subjects. All she had to do was ask. She would have found out that they were not migrant workers at all. They were at the camp only because they’d had car-trouble.
In defense of Lange, I’ll say that a lot of good did come from the publishing of this photo. When it was published in San Francisco the next day, the government sent in 20,000 lbs of food to the pea-pickers camp. The irony is that the “migrant mother” and family didn’t see any of it. They had already moved on.
My point is this: we all tend to infer stories from photographs. In fact, photographers count on that. We want our photos to tell a story. We just need to be aware and vigilant that the “truth” we extract from them is most likely not the whole truth. But neither is it all fiction. It’s just somewhere in between.
-Steven Broome
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