Truth in Photography
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  • Introduction
  • Looking for Truth in a Digital Age
  • Democratization of the Camera
  • Citizen Journalism
  • Education
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  • Advocacy
  • Community
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  • Citizen
  • Culture
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SPRING 2021

Black Lives Matter Protest, New York City, May 29, 2020. © Fanta Diop / Bronx Documentary Center

The truth of photographic images has been challenged since the 19th century when the means for making them were invented. While the medium was embraced by the public at large, photographers grappled with the methods and techniques available to them, experimenting with technologies as they emerged and discovering the capacity of the medium to represent the world they experienced.
 
Photographs are inherently subjective in the ways in which they are made and perceived. There is no absolute truth in the photographic image. Photographers frame the reality that they see, whether the process is spontaneous or planned.


The truth of photography relies not only on the integrity of the image, but on its accessibility. If truth in image making is a commodity, how much is it worth, and how do we determine its value?

VIEWING TRUTH IN PHOTOGRAPHY

The exhibitions can be viewed in sequence or in whichever order the viewer chooses. Select a theme from the menu bar at the top of the page, or click one of the buttons below.​​
LOOKING FOR TRUTH IN A DIGITAL AGE
DEMOCRATIZATION OF THE CAMERA
CITIZEN JOURNALISM

LOOKING FOR TRUTH IN A DIGITAL AGE

Truth in photography is a constantly evolving landscape. What we perceive as truth today may appear to be fiction tomorrow. The way in which we frame the truth depends on time, place, composition, and point of view. The amount of visual documentation of the killing of George Floyd is staggering, from cell phone videos and photographs to bodycam footage and surveillance recordings from the grocery store where he allegedly cashed a counterfeit twenty dollar bill. What makes us believe or trust the veracity of an image is contingent not only on factual details, but on how it makes us feel. Truth is intangible.
In this installment of Looking for Truth in a Digital Age, we feature:
  • Sabiha Çimen's photographs of the rarely seen world of Quran schools in Istanbul, Turkey
  • ​Nigel Poor's examination of photographs made by correctional officers in San Quentin State Prison
  • The Struggle for Gun Control, highlighting work by Documentary Arts, Magnum Photos, and Flickr photographers

GIRLS OF QURAN SCHOOLS
​​Sabiha Çimen

To make images of female students in Quran schools in Turkey, Magnum photographer Sabiha Çimen must tread a difficult line between the demands of protocol and acceptability.
PHOTO ESSAY
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SAN QUENTIN PROJECT
Nigel Poor

Artist Nigel Poor came across a trove of negatives from San Quentin State Prison, taken between the 1930s to the 1980s. These have become powerful tools as she teaches photography to incarcerated persons.
PHOTO ESSAY
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The Struggle for Gun Control

GUN BUYBACK
Alan Govenar

Voluntary gun buyback programs encourage gun owners to sell their firearms, “no questions asked.” In Dallas, Texas on January 19, 2013, two gun buybacks with different ideologies competed.
PHOTO ESSAY
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GUN CONTROL PROTESTS
Alessandra Sanguinetti
Fibonacci Blue

Following the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, there were several months of intense protests, captured in photographs by Magnum photographer Alessandra Sanguinetti and Flickr photographer Fibonacci Blue.
PHOTO ESSAY
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DEMOCRATIZATION OF THE CAMERA

The Brownie Camera, introduced by the Eastman Kodak Company in 1900, democratized photography. Low-cost, light weight and efficient, the Brownie was the cell phone camera of its day. Anyone could be a photographer. The snapshot quickly became a new visual language that was expressive, informative, and widely accessible.
Frances Benjamin Johnston with a group of children looking at her Kodak Brownie camera
Frances Benjamin Johnston with a group of children looking at her Kodak Brownie camera, ca. 1900. Courtesy Library of Congress.
The Brownie camera was used both personally and professionally. It was a portable camera that could be used by trained journalists as well as by individuals with no photographic experience.
​Frances Benjamin Johnston (1864-1952) was a pioneering photographer and photo journalist, whose work spanned five decades. After graduating from Notre Dame of Maryland Collegiate Institute for Young Ladies in 1883 and studying art at Académie Julian in Paris, she received training in photography and dark room techniques from Thomas Smillie, director of photography at the Smithsonian Institution. George Eastman, a close friend of her family, gave Johnston her first camera — the new light-weight Eastman Kodak he had invented.
A class in dressmaking, Hampton Institute, photograph by Frances Benjamin Johnston
Self-portrait of photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston in her studio in Washington, D.C., ca. 1900. Courtesy Library of Congress.
Frances Benjamin Johnston wrote an article about photography for the Ladies Home Journal in 1897.
READ THE ARTICLE
In her self-portrait titled “New Woman,” Johnston styles herself as a liberated woman, with petticoats showing and beer stein in hand, and at the time appears to mimic the portrayal of the New Woman in advertising during the period 1890-1910.
Frances Benjamin Johnston, Self-Portrait as “New Woman” Washington, DC, 1896
Frances Benjamin Johnston, Self-Portrait as “New Woman” Washington, DC, 1896. Courtesy Library of Congress.
Vernacular photograph, ca. 1890-1910
Vernacular photograph, ca. 1890-1910
Vernacular photograph, ca. 1890-1910
Vernacular photograph, ca. 1890-1910

Henri Cartier-Bresson

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Henri Cartier-Bresson with his brownie camera, ca. 1921-1922. Courtesy Collections Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson.
Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004) was a French photographer, considered a master of photography, and an early user of 35 mm film. He pioneered the genre of street photography. His seminal book The Decisive Moment (Simon and Schuster, 1952) had a profound influence on the history of photography.

In 1947, with Robert Capa, George Rodger, David ‘Chim’ Seymour and William Vandivert, Henri Cartier-Bresson founded Magnum Photos.
“Like many children I had a Box Brownie, but I only used it occasionally to fill small albums with my holiday snaps.”
~Henri Cartier-Bresson
​“It was around the age of thirteen or fourteen that Henri Cartier-Bresson began to practice amateur photography.

​ With his little Kodak camera he captured the joys of his friends, and relatives, family life, holidays and open-air activities with his fellow boy scouts.”
~Clément Chéroux
Discoveries: Henri Cartier-Bresson, 2008
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Delve deeper

Henri Cartier-Bresson: Here and Now​ by Clément Chéroux
PURCHASE
From the Brownie to the Polaroid to the iPhone, ever-evolving technological advances have brought the camera into the hands of more and more people worldwide. Over 5.13 billion of the estimated 7.9 billion people in the world own cell phones. The number who use their phones as cameras is incalculable, as is the number who own some other form of camera.

HOW THE IPHONE CHANGED PHOTOGRAPHY
​​​​Bart Weiss

When Steve Jobs held up the first iPhone, he changed the way we think of photography, the way we think about truth, and just about everything in the world.
PHOTO ESSAY
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BRONX DOCUMENTARY CENTER
​​​
Michael Kamber and Cynthia Rivera

The Bronx Documentary Center provides free education programs for middle and high school students as well as a professional education program for historically underrepresented adult Bronx-based photographers. Executive Director Michael Kamber and exhibition manager Cynthia Rivera talk about the BDC's founding, their approach to truth, and creating citizen journalists in their community.
PHOTO ESSAY
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CITIZEN JOURNALISM

​Citizen journalism is energized by public engagement, whether written, visual, or virtual. In photography, citizen journalists are often ordinary people, who today may have a cell phone but historically might have had a Brownie or Polaroid camera. But to simply define citizen photojournalists as amateurs misses the crucial point that the images made at a time of crisis are propelled more by the urgency of the moment than the training of the maker. Being at the right place at the right time is everything. The capacity to convey truth depends on the honesty of the photographer, whether amateur or professional. Clearly, framing and composition affect perception, but the truth lies ultimately in the experience, the interaction between the subject and the photographer, and the context through which images are made and distributed.
 
In today’s world, cell phone cameras are able to create visual reportage from any place in the world, from scenes of catastrophic disasters, caused by hurricanes, tornadoes and tsunamis, to scenes of terrorism, police brutality, and social and political protest and unrest. The work of citizen journalists can be quickly disseminated, using websites, blogs, and social media.
The photographs featured here all express the core impulse of citizen journalism, the need to document the world around us at an important moment of time: the photographs of Henryk Ross of the Lodz Ghetto in 1943, Mary Moorman’s polaroid of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the snapshots made at polling places in 2007, Corky Lee’s photographs of police brutality and the daily life of Asian Americans, the Black Lives Matter protests from the viewpoint of teenager Fanta Diop, and photos made on January 6, 2021 by Flickr photographer Brett Davis juxtaposed with Magnum photographer Peter van Agtmael.

HENRYK ROSS: PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE LODZ GHETTO
A RECORD OF THE BRUTAL INJUSTICES
​​By
Kristen Gresh

During World War II, Henryk Ross was forced to produce propaganda images for the Nazi-run Jewish Administration's Statistics Department in the Lodz Ghetto. Forbidden to take unofficial photographs, he risked his life to record the horrors of ghetto life.
PHOTO ESSAY
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Mary Ann Moorman

On November 22, 1963, U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Mary Ann Moorman was standing on the side of Elm Street in Dealey Plaza across from what is now called “the grassy knoll.” She had brought her polaroid camera to photograph the motorcade for her son, and as it was passing by, she unknowingly made a photograph of the fatal head shot that killed President Kennedy.
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Assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Photograph by Mary Ann Moorman. Dallas, November 22, 1963.
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Governor John Connally, Nellie Connally, President John F. Kennedy, and Jacqueline Kennedy in presidential limousine, Dallas, November 22, 1963. Unidentified photographer. International Center of Photography.
The Silent Witness Speaks
In this short film by Alan Govenar, Mary Ann Moorman talks about making her polaroid photograph on the site where she was standing 50 years after the assassination.

VOTE HERE
​By William Brenttel and Jessica Helfand
Aperture #189, Winter 2007

A week before the 2006 U.S. midterm elections, Polling Place Photo Project launched an online initiative to advance innovations in citizen journalism by documenting voter experiences. Through an open call for photographs, citizens were asked to post images and visual stories that would create a collective portrait of voting in America.
PHOTO ESSAY
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CORKY LEE

Young Kwok "Corky" Lee, a self-taught Chinese American photojournalist, died in January of complications of Covid-19. He leaves a legacy of documenting Asian American history.
PHOTO ESSAY
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BLACK LIVES MATTER
Fanta Diop
​​Bronx Junior Photo League student

A student from the Bronx Documentary Center's Bronx Junior Photo League documents the Black Lives Matter protests in her community in New York City.
PHOTO ESSAY
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CAPITOL RIOT
Peter van Agtmael and Brett Davis

The unprecedented number of images of the Capitol riot formed a lasting impression of a nearly catastrophic event.
PHOTO ESSAY
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