TRUTH IN PHOTOGRAPHY IS...
An Essay Series
The opinions expressed in these essays are the author’s own.
SUMMER EDITION, 2024
by Carl Sidle
by Carl Sidle
The following text is from a conversation with Black photographer Carl Sidle, whose work is an integral part of the Texas African American Photography Archive. This text has been edited for length and clarity.
When you deal with truth, you have to deal with a lot of the political situations that exist in a community or a particular place: wherever you are, whatever society you live in. My approach, from a camera point of view, is that it's “still life,” you know? The two words speaks for themselves. You've captured a moment in time. How much truer can you be about something?
I'm the one behind the lens, and through my concept of truth, it’s partial to that degree. Within the frame, and from the artist’s point of view, that’s what’s in your head that you're trying to convey to the audience, or the world, through your pictures. Just like a catcher in baseball. He frames where he wants the ball to be thrown by the pitcher. A good catcher is very good at framing the portion of where he puts his glove, where he wants that pitch to be.
You take pictures of what you see, that speak to you, so from that point of view, it is narrowed down, and beauty is in the eye of the beholder – collectively, how other people see it and see the beauty that you saw, even though their parts of view are part of it, too. They might not be seeing it the same way you see it, but they see the bigger picture of it. And therefore, I'm really concerned about the mountaintop view. I think you're able to see power with a wide-angle lens, you can see the whole landscape. In the military, you want the high ground so you can see your enemy or what's coming. When you can’t see the forest for the trees, because you're in the midst, you can’t see everything.
I'm the one behind the lens, and through my concept of truth, it’s partial to that degree. Within the frame, and from the artist’s point of view, that’s what’s in your head that you're trying to convey to the audience, or the world, through your pictures. Just like a catcher in baseball. He frames where he wants the ball to be thrown by the pitcher. A good catcher is very good at framing the portion of where he puts his glove, where he wants that pitch to be.
You take pictures of what you see, that speak to you, so from that point of view, it is narrowed down, and beauty is in the eye of the beholder – collectively, how other people see it and see the beauty that you saw, even though their parts of view are part of it, too. They might not be seeing it the same way you see it, but they see the bigger picture of it. And therefore, I'm really concerned about the mountaintop view. I think you're able to see power with a wide-angle lens, you can see the whole landscape. In the military, you want the high ground so you can see your enemy or what's coming. When you can’t see the forest for the trees, because you're in the midst, you can’t see everything.
@ Carl Sidle
@ Carl Sidle
@ Carl Sidle
@ Carl Sidle
Previous essays
WINTER 2021 - CHRIS BOOT
WINTER EDITION, 2021
by Chris Boot, Executive Director, Aperture Foundation
by Chris Boot, Executive Director, Aperture Foundation
Truth in photography is a myth. Photography is a fictive medium.
My training in photography, under Victor Burgin and Simon Watney, at Polytechnic of Central London in the 1980s, presumed all photographs (or more particularly, every use of a photograph within its context) to be an act of rhetoric, or viewer manipulation. That’s regardless of whether the intention of the photographer or picture user was good or bad, honest or devious, and regardless of whether a given photograph might succeed or fail as evidence in court. The most “truthful” photographs, by court standards, might simultaneously be the worst lies.
Photography’s power surely rests not on some literal relation to thing observed, but rather, in how it triggers our imaginations, and shapes our perceptions and points of view. Like other fictive mediums - films, poems, or novels - photographs bear truth, but that may be tangential to their faithfulness of record. And especially so, in the age of Instagram, where every picture publicly posted intentionally projects an idealized reality, or its opposite. Truth may be in there, but the picture is deployed to serve an idea – an argument, or a desired outcome (envy for instance), or an ideal. Almost every ‘family’ photograph ever taken sets out to project a desirable fiction. Which is not to say that photography may not still stun us with something factual it reveals. The video that recorded the manner of the death of George Floyd, made by a bystander, enraged the world and inspired a cultural revolution. That footage is arguably the most consequential “photography” made this century so far.
Early in the era of Photoshop, National Geographic magazine got into trouble for digitally manipulating a photograph of the pyramids in Egypt, for a 1982 cover, where two of the pyramids were moved closer together, in the crop of a landscape picture, for the purpose of making a striking upright image. (A picture that might easily have been made without the need for Photoshop, if the photographer had set out to make an upright format picture in the first place, and if the featured camel train riders in the foreground had obliged him… which they probably would have, because my cynical assumption from looking at the picture is that the camel drivers were on the payroll). National Geographic’s embarrassment over being caught out led them in turn to implement new standards in their processes and practices, so that a viewer might believe every picture in National Geographic to be reliably true.
My training in photography, under Victor Burgin and Simon Watney, at Polytechnic of Central London in the 1980s, presumed all photographs (or more particularly, every use of a photograph within its context) to be an act of rhetoric, or viewer manipulation. That’s regardless of whether the intention of the photographer or picture user was good or bad, honest or devious, and regardless of whether a given photograph might succeed or fail as evidence in court. The most “truthful” photographs, by court standards, might simultaneously be the worst lies.
Photography’s power surely rests not on some literal relation to thing observed, but rather, in how it triggers our imaginations, and shapes our perceptions and points of view. Like other fictive mediums - films, poems, or novels - photographs bear truth, but that may be tangential to their faithfulness of record. And especially so, in the age of Instagram, where every picture publicly posted intentionally projects an idealized reality, or its opposite. Truth may be in there, but the picture is deployed to serve an idea – an argument, or a desired outcome (envy for instance), or an ideal. Almost every ‘family’ photograph ever taken sets out to project a desirable fiction. Which is not to say that photography may not still stun us with something factual it reveals. The video that recorded the manner of the death of George Floyd, made by a bystander, enraged the world and inspired a cultural revolution. That footage is arguably the most consequential “photography” made this century so far.
Early in the era of Photoshop, National Geographic magazine got into trouble for digitally manipulating a photograph of the pyramids in Egypt, for a 1982 cover, where two of the pyramids were moved closer together, in the crop of a landscape picture, for the purpose of making a striking upright image. (A picture that might easily have been made without the need for Photoshop, if the photographer had set out to make an upright format picture in the first place, and if the featured camel train riders in the foreground had obliged him… which they probably would have, because my cynical assumption from looking at the picture is that the camel drivers were on the payroll). National Geographic’s embarrassment over being caught out led them in turn to implement new standards in their processes and practices, so that a viewer might believe every picture in National Geographic to be reliably true.
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Pyramids of Giza, Egypt, February 1982. Photo by Gordon Gahan.
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No doubt well intentioned, the ensuing debate also served as a smokescreen. Contradicting the truthfulness of National Geographic’s “window on the world” – as Catherine Lutz explores in her fascinating book Reading National Geographic (1993) – their photographs ultimately said far more about their own institutional, neo-colonial values, prejudices, and assumptions, and what they thought would appeal to their readers, than they said about the distant cultures whose truth they claimed to faithfully present. Depending on your point of view, the National Geographic pyramids cover issue and the beginning of the digital age either signaled the end of the reliability of photographs to be truthful, or the exposure of photography finally as intrinsically a tool for bending truth.
I don’t think the photograph in which the pyramids were moved is any more of a lie than the unaltered version. Both are lies! The picture serves us a romantic, fictive version of place and history – the iconic monuments, the “ooh” sunset, with the camel train perfectly silhouetted in the foreground. Deploying a range of rhetorical devices, no matter what exactly was recorded on the photographer’s film, this is a fictive idealization.
And we all know it, because at one time or another we’ve all been to a tourist site, where we’ve worked to make that perfect picture of the given place, struggling to focus on the romantic details, while omitting any visual information that undermines the perfection we want to project. We create a picture, every bit as much as we capture something in a picture. Because we all do it all the time, we all have the experience of making a photograph that’s a perfect lie.
I don’t think the photograph in which the pyramids were moved is any more of a lie than the unaltered version. Both are lies! The picture serves us a romantic, fictive version of place and history – the iconic monuments, the “ooh” sunset, with the camel train perfectly silhouetted in the foreground. Deploying a range of rhetorical devices, no matter what exactly was recorded on the photographer’s film, this is a fictive idealization.
And we all know it, because at one time or another we’ve all been to a tourist site, where we’ve worked to make that perfect picture of the given place, struggling to focus on the romantic details, while omitting any visual information that undermines the perfection we want to project. We create a picture, every bit as much as we capture something in a picture. Because we all do it all the time, we all have the experience of making a photograph that’s a perfect lie.
SPRING 2021 - SANDRINE COLARD
SPRING EDITION, 2021
by Sandrine Colard, Assistant Professor of Art History/ACM Department/Rutgers University-Newark, USA
by Sandrine Colard, Assistant Professor of Art History/ACM Department/Rutgers University-Newark, USA
Truth in photography is… always just one truth.
One of the earliest debates about truth in photography raged internationally at the dawn of the 20th century. The victory of the partisans of the medium’s sincerity brought down a king and put an end to what has been described as one of the first massacres of the 20th century. I am referring to the so-called “Congolese atrocities’” pictures, these horrific portraits of mutilated Africans that emerged in Europe and America in order to condemn the brutal regime of King Leopold II of Belgium in his personal colony of Central Africa, then called the Congo Free State (1885-1908). If this episode was long eclipsed from the history of world photography, it has resurfaced for the last fifteen years in various scholars’ works and exhibitions for the incredible yet long untracked influence that they had on both humanitarian photography, the representation of Africa, and finally, on both Westerners’ and Congolese’s relation to veracity in photography. The theoretical underpinnings that accompanied this traumatic moment and debate are spread in the literature and press of the turn of the 20th century; from Mark Twain’s declaration of faith into the power of the “ incorruptible Kodak,” to the newspapers’ articles about the deceiving nature of photography and the publication of photomontages. Eventually, the side of the first prevailed over the second.
One of the earliest debates about truth in photography raged internationally at the dawn of the 20th century. The victory of the partisans of the medium’s sincerity brought down a king and put an end to what has been described as one of the first massacres of the 20th century. I am referring to the so-called “Congolese atrocities’” pictures, these horrific portraits of mutilated Africans that emerged in Europe and America in order to condemn the brutal regime of King Leopold II of Belgium in his personal colony of Central Africa, then called the Congo Free State (1885-1908). If this episode was long eclipsed from the history of world photography, it has resurfaced for the last fifteen years in various scholars’ works and exhibitions for the incredible yet long untracked influence that they had on both humanitarian photography, the representation of Africa, and finally, on both Westerners’ and Congolese’s relation to veracity in photography. The theoretical underpinnings that accompanied this traumatic moment and debate are spread in the literature and press of the turn of the 20th century; from Mark Twain’s declaration of faith into the power of the “ incorruptible Kodak,” to the newspapers’ articles about the deceiving nature of photography and the publication of photomontages. Eventually, the side of the first prevailed over the second.
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For all the scientific consensus on the constructed, malleable essence of the photographic medium, it is difficult to dismiss as incorrigible credulity the comprehension and impact that pictures have had and continue to have on justice or on the course of history. As the anti-Leopold campaign shows, viewers of the early 20th century were not more naïve than supposedly more sophisticated 21st century, technologically savvy spectators. Yet, this has never removed photography from the realm of evidence, and this, with often revolutionary results. The end of an abusive regime in the Congo in the hands of a megalomaniac monarch was in a large measure provoked by the outcry over the “atrocity” pictures. What made them “true” for the time? The still novel shock of the depicted violence? The words—lectures, captions, testimonies—that accompanied them? Or the identity of the photographers, often missionaries? And what was kept out of the frame? What points of view were recorded while others ignored?
Today it is difficult not to see the long-lasting consequences that this group of photographs has had on the general vision of the Congo, and the mixed blessing that they came to carry: that of rightful denunciation of a crime against humanity, but also, the production of a visual stigma. The perpetual tragedy associated with the country is often a lazy extrapolation of past images, a lack to open up the repertoire of truthful representations. The Congolese themselves are highly aware of that gross simplification, and the defiance that they often manifest to extraneous photographic captures is a rebellion against the tyranny of the single truth. It is an acknowledgment that a photograph can only be just one truth, at a given moment, for a given maker and audience. Danger arises and photography turns into a harmful mythology when it poses as the whole truth. |
Photographs by Alice Harris and W. D. Armstrong, before 1905. Reprinted from Mark Twain, King Leopold's Soliloquy (1905).
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SUMMER 2021 - STÉPHANIE SOLINAS
SUMMER EDITION, 2021
by Stéphanie Solinas
by Stéphanie Solinas
Truth in photography is… a game of sight.
In his book La photographie judiciaire (Legal Photography), published in Paris in 1890, Alphonse Bertillon, the world's forerunner in crime laboratories and legal anthropometry, writes: “With some exceptions, the lens doesn't lie.” A man of his time, Bertillon founded his methods of inquiry and identification on the values of scientific objectivity of the photographic medium.
In reality however, the systems that he developed demonstrate that he quickly came to realize the complexity of the relationship between photographic images and the truth. Beyond his cautious statement (“with some exceptions”) which he does not develop further, the 110 or so pages that the author uses to meticulously deploy the regulation of the shooting before the physical-chemical imprint (choice of light, framing, scale, etc.) demonstrate that the exactitude that photography allows is not automatically a synonym of truth. Then, at the other end of the image chain, faced with the variable interpretation of the descriptive photographs by his agents, Bertillon also invented the “spoken portrait,” an attempt to objectify photography through language - with only words seeming able to say what should be seen in the image.
It thus appears that if photography “does not lie,” it is not because it necessarily delivers the truth, but rather because it says nothing, or in any case nothing that is absolute. Through his work, Bertillon revealed that photography is not ontologically objective, nor naturally legible, synthetic, analytical or universal. His system does not reproduce identities in a scientific truth as he had hoped, but rather according to an esthetic construction and conventions which he established, and of which our societies of today are the heirs. While Bertillon admits that, all in all, “photography doesn't help very much,” he never abandoned photographic images, just as governments, following on from him, continue to require that our photographs be on our identity documents.
But what is it then that “speaks the truth” in this photography which persists? For Bertillon, the value of the face portrait lies essentially in its capacity to be recognized by witnesses. Photography is thus thought to contain a collective substance of identity, acting as a support for projection of the regard of Others, and thus their way of seeing us, with their truth.
From this part of our identity which lives in the eyes of the Other, from the impossibility of the neutrality of the act of representation which is inevitably accompanied by a loss and also a creation of information, rather than trying to constrain them, I wanted to work with their very effects by deploying them as artistic tools. Between 2004 and 2010, I carried out a study in 6 stages of all of the Dominique Lamberts in France, based on the official identity representation tools.
Dominique is the most common mixed (male/female) first name given in France, and it is also the 27th most common first name; I associated with Lambert, the 27th most common last name. I thus defined as my study population the 191 Dominique Lamberts listed in the telephone book (White Pages, France). I sent a letter to each of them requesting that they fill in a personality questionnaire. Based on this, for the Dominique Lamberts who responded, I developed a written portrait, with the help of the Consultative Committee for the Description of Dominique Lamberts (composed of a psychologist, a statistician, a police inspector, and a lawyer). This text constituted the basis of the portrait drawn by the painter Benoît Bonnemaison-Fitte. The portrait drawn was then transformed into a composite photograph by Dominique Ledée, an Investigator at the Paris Prefecture of Police in the Forensic Identification Department - founded by Bertillon in 1883. I then sought a model presenting an obvious resemblance with the composite sketch, in order to photograph him. A stamped envelope containing the ID photo of Dominique Lambert, author of the personality questionnaire, closed the chain of representations.
On the walls of the lecture hall where Alphonse Bertillon gave his lessons in “spoken portraits,” he had these words written: “The eye only sees in things what it looks at there, and it only looks at that which is already in the mind.”
In his book La photographie judiciaire (Legal Photography), published in Paris in 1890, Alphonse Bertillon, the world's forerunner in crime laboratories and legal anthropometry, writes: “With some exceptions, the lens doesn't lie.” A man of his time, Bertillon founded his methods of inquiry and identification on the values of scientific objectivity of the photographic medium.
In reality however, the systems that he developed demonstrate that he quickly came to realize the complexity of the relationship between photographic images and the truth. Beyond his cautious statement (“with some exceptions”) which he does not develop further, the 110 or so pages that the author uses to meticulously deploy the regulation of the shooting before the physical-chemical imprint (choice of light, framing, scale, etc.) demonstrate that the exactitude that photography allows is not automatically a synonym of truth. Then, at the other end of the image chain, faced with the variable interpretation of the descriptive photographs by his agents, Bertillon also invented the “spoken portrait,” an attempt to objectify photography through language - with only words seeming able to say what should be seen in the image.
It thus appears that if photography “does not lie,” it is not because it necessarily delivers the truth, but rather because it says nothing, or in any case nothing that is absolute. Through his work, Bertillon revealed that photography is not ontologically objective, nor naturally legible, synthetic, analytical or universal. His system does not reproduce identities in a scientific truth as he had hoped, but rather according to an esthetic construction and conventions which he established, and of which our societies of today are the heirs. While Bertillon admits that, all in all, “photography doesn't help very much,” he never abandoned photographic images, just as governments, following on from him, continue to require that our photographs be on our identity documents.
But what is it then that “speaks the truth” in this photography which persists? For Bertillon, the value of the face portrait lies essentially in its capacity to be recognized by witnesses. Photography is thus thought to contain a collective substance of identity, acting as a support for projection of the regard of Others, and thus their way of seeing us, with their truth.
From this part of our identity which lives in the eyes of the Other, from the impossibility of the neutrality of the act of representation which is inevitably accompanied by a loss and also a creation of information, rather than trying to constrain them, I wanted to work with their very effects by deploying them as artistic tools. Between 2004 and 2010, I carried out a study in 6 stages of all of the Dominique Lamberts in France, based on the official identity representation tools.
Dominique is the most common mixed (male/female) first name given in France, and it is also the 27th most common first name; I associated with Lambert, the 27th most common last name. I thus defined as my study population the 191 Dominique Lamberts listed in the telephone book (White Pages, France). I sent a letter to each of them requesting that they fill in a personality questionnaire. Based on this, for the Dominique Lamberts who responded, I developed a written portrait, with the help of the Consultative Committee for the Description of Dominique Lamberts (composed of a psychologist, a statistician, a police inspector, and a lawyer). This text constituted the basis of the portrait drawn by the painter Benoît Bonnemaison-Fitte. The portrait drawn was then transformed into a composite photograph by Dominique Ledée, an Investigator at the Paris Prefecture of Police in the Forensic Identification Department - founded by Bertillon in 1883. I then sought a model presenting an obvious resemblance with the composite sketch, in order to photograph him. A stamped envelope containing the ID photo of Dominique Lambert, author of the personality questionnaire, closed the chain of representations.
On the walls of the lecture hall where Alphonse Bertillon gave his lessons in “spoken portraits,” he had these words written: “The eye only sees in things what it looks at there, and it only looks at that which is already in the mind.”
FALL 2021 - JOAN FONTCUBERTA
FALL EDITION, 2021
by Joan Fontcuberta
by Joan Fontcuberta
Truth and photography is… a trap against dogma.
Photography has historically been connected with truth. But what kind of truth regime are we talking about? Not axiomatic truth (two plus two equals four), but rather empirical truth, which depends on the interpretation of data. Truth bursts out as the most plausible version of the available data. Even science is no more than a set of provisional truths. We must therefore applaud those who seek the truth, while being suspicious of those who claim that they have found it. The truth is a quest, the camera is only a path.
The boundaries of truth are elusive. Ethics are not an attribute of technology, but rather of the photographer. It turns out to be more productive to identify the opposite of the truth: the absence of truth as a result of the photographer’s decisions.
Various categories appear:
A large part of my work ascribes to this last modus operandi. It is both a pedagogy and a prophylaxis, because I have always thought that a good photographer is the one who is good at lying the truth
Photography has historically been connected with truth. But what kind of truth regime are we talking about? Not axiomatic truth (two plus two equals four), but rather empirical truth, which depends on the interpretation of data. Truth bursts out as the most plausible version of the available data. Even science is no more than a set of provisional truths. We must therefore applaud those who seek the truth, while being suspicious of those who claim that they have found it. The truth is a quest, the camera is only a path.
The boundaries of truth are elusive. Ethics are not an attribute of technology, but rather of the photographer. It turns out to be more productive to identify the opposite of the truth: the absence of truth as a result of the photographer’s decisions.
Various categories appear:
- falsehood: non-equivalence between speech and facts. It is a property of judgment. It is a matter of ontology.
- lie: conscious volition to turn speech away from the facts. It is a property of speech. It is a matter of ethics.
- deception: conscious action so that a lie is accepted by the receiver as the truth. It is a property of will. It is a matter of ethics.
- imposture: deception with the appearance of truth. It is a property of rhetoric. It is a matter of ethics.
- fraud: a deception through which the issuer obtains a benefit and the receiver suffers. It is a property of social interaction. It is a matter of the law.
- fiction: something that is faked or simulated. It is a statement that has to do with things imagined rather than facts. It is a property of experience. It is a matter of epistemology.
- post-truth: deliberate disinformation which tries to manipulate public opinion, appealing to emotions rather than rationality. It is a strategy of propaganda. It is a matter of politics.
- fake news: false information, which does not correspond with verifiable facts, disseminated to influence the points of view of a given audience regarding a certain issue. It involves cultural studies and the sociology of information. It is a matter of journalism.
- mockumentary: a projected fiction, which appears to be genuine and which infiltrates information transmission systems, camouflaging itself under the appearance of a familiar and recognizable genre. It is a strategy of creation. It is a matter of art and activism.
A large part of my work ascribes to this last modus operandi. It is both a pedagogy and a prophylaxis, because I have always thought that a good photographer is the one who is good at lying the truth
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(Ivan Istochnikov was created as an elaborate 1998 modern art exercise by Joan Fontcuberta. The below photos have Joan Fontcuberta's captions.)
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Official portrait photo of cosmonaut Ivan Istochnikov
In front of his majestic spacecraft, Ivan Istochnikov gives a short speech to journalists and academics
Above: original photo sold by Sotheby’s in New York on 11 December 1993. It is dated 7 November 1967 and signed, from left to right, by Leonov, Nikolajev, Istochnikov, Rozhaaadestvensky, Beregovoi and Shatalov
Below: the same, manipulated, image, as published in the book Path to the Stars by Boris Romanenko
Below: the same, manipulated, image, as published in the book Path to the Stars by Boris Romanenko
The “small Ivan the Terrible” during his time at Aviatsioni Teknikum
Ivan I. shakes hands with MIK technicians who are assembling components for his spacecraft
Photo of lift off from the service structure
Ivan and Kloka in their historic extra-vehicular activity
Posthumous joke or desperate SOS? A message in a vodka bottle floating in space
Surface of the Kadok asteroid with Hexar its moon, photographed by the suicide probe sent by Soyuz 2. Image intensified by computer.
WINTER 2022 - DIDIER DAHAN
WINTER EDITION, 2022
by Didier Dahan
by Didier Dahan
Jean-Luc Godard said, “Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second.”
Where is the truth when the first act of a photographer is to choose a body, a lens, an aperture, a shutter speed, a sensitivity?
Where is the truth when the first act of a photographer is to choose a body, a lens, an aperture, a shutter speed, a sensitivity?
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Choosing black and white or color adds to the interpretation. The photographer has immediately put in a personal touch. Then he chooses the subject, the way of composing the image and filling the frame. His choices can only deform the reality.
Today it is even easier to edit an image with digital techniques. Removing a detail, even a trivial one, means altering reality. A photograph never tells the truth, only the truth of the photographer at a precise moment in time. Regardless of the technique used, the place, and the subject, he lets us see a moment and an intention which no longer exist. Each person can interpret it as they please. Knowing whether this photograph is true is of no importance. It exists by itself. It has its own existence. What counts is each person's feeling of the story told, the one we want to transmit, the one that can be interpreted later on by each spectator. The issue is knowing why we have this need to freeze time with these images, the dust of frozen seconds. The photographs taken only tell about us, our vision of the world, the place where we are at that precise moment. In that sense, it is an act of our own truth, it belongs to us. In Moscow in 2001, I took a photo of big eyes looking above a bridge on the Moscow River. Is this picture true? There is no mystery, it is just a question of looking and letting yourself be charmed, or not, by my intention. |
© Didier Dahan
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SPRING 2022 - PAULINE VERMARE
SPRING EDITION, 2022
by Pauline Vermare
by Pauline Vermare
Truth in photography can only exist through adequate representation.
Over the past few years, the world of photography has been fixing its blind spots and filling critical gaps. Representation has been one of the central subjects of conversations: who represents, who is being represented. These conversations have put forward the importance of the multiplicity, diversity, and agency in photographic representation.
Female representation has been on the forefront. These past few years, an incredibly rich array of photobooks made by women photographers, and dealing with the female experience in history, have come out. To name a few, Bieke Depoorter’s Agata, Carolyn Drake’s Knit Club, Nona Faustine’s White Shoes, Justine Kurland’s SCUMB Manifesto, Diana Markosian’s Santa Barbara, Zanele Muholi’s Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness, Momo Okabe’s Ilmatar, and Deanna Templeton’s What She Said are all striking examples of intimate narratives highlighting the importance of photography as a conveyor of personal history, and (re)claiming personal truths. These books confirm the importance of photographic self-representation, reminding us of Nan Goldin’s introduction to The Ballad of Sexual Dependency: “I don’t ever want to be susceptible to anyone else’s version of my history.” The liberating truth of self-representation, of self-expression, is at the core of all these bodies of work. All of them highlight the importance of photography as an enabler, as a medium to express one’s own truth, to share it - to be heard and to be seen.
Other recent projects were enablers of another kind: making other voices heard, or heard again. Luce Lebart and Marie Robert’s Histoire Mondiale des Femmes Photographes, and Russet Lederman and Olga Yatskevich What They Saw: Historical Photobooks by Women, 1843–1999, contributed to represent and to celebrate countless female photographers in history. These anthologies coincided with archival rediscoveries, such as Lora Webb Nichols’ online archive and beautiful publication Encampment, Wyoming: Selections from the Lora Webb Nichols Archive 1899-1948; or Jennie Ross Cobb, the first-known female Native American photographer. An extensive online platform dedicated to the history of Japanese women photographers, produced over the past five years by curator Carrie Cushman and professor Kelly Midori McCormick, will be launching at the end of April: "Behind the Camera: Gender, Power, and Politics in the History of Japanese Photography". A number of exhibitions also contributed, and continue to enhance, female representation in photography, including collective exhibitions such as Marie Robert’s Qui A Peur des Femmes Photographes? at the Musée d’Orsay; Andrea Nelson’s The New Woman Behind the Camera at the National Gallery of Art; Femmes Photographes de Guerre at the Musée de la Libération; Roxana Marcoci’s Our Selves: Photographs by Women Artists from Helen Kornblum at MoMA; and 10/10, Contemporary Japanese Women Photographers, that I co-curated with Lucille Reyboz and Yusuke Nakanishi, the founding directors of Kyotographie. All these projects re-affirm the fundamental importance of the representation of female experiences and truths in photography.
The history of photography needs to be thoughtfully questioned and amended. While researching for my Ph.D. on the representation of Northern Ireland during the Troubles, it occurred to me that we knew close to nothing about the women photographers who worked there between the 1970s and 1990s. But indeed, there were quite a few – including Christine Spengler, Catherine Leroy, Paula Allen, Donna DeCesare, Rosalind Fox Solomon, Christine Halsall, and Dana Tynan - who made extraordinary work there, and cared deeply about the subject, but were somehow not included in the history of that period. Their work will be shown for the first time at the Gallery of Photography, Dublin, in the Protest! exhibition opening this month. Speaking about Northern Ireland in 1981 for Camerawork, British photographer Christine Halsall said, “It is vital that the people who are part of any struggle should have the means to represent themselves.” It is vital to be able to represent oneself, to have agency. It is also vital to be represented in the history, and in the present, of photography. This is also the impetus behind the book on Japanese women photographers that is currently in the works.
Over the past few years, the world of photography has been fixing its blind spots and filling critical gaps. Representation has been one of the central subjects of conversations: who represents, who is being represented. These conversations have put forward the importance of the multiplicity, diversity, and agency in photographic representation.
Female representation has been on the forefront. These past few years, an incredibly rich array of photobooks made by women photographers, and dealing with the female experience in history, have come out. To name a few, Bieke Depoorter’s Agata, Carolyn Drake’s Knit Club, Nona Faustine’s White Shoes, Justine Kurland’s SCUMB Manifesto, Diana Markosian’s Santa Barbara, Zanele Muholi’s Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness, Momo Okabe’s Ilmatar, and Deanna Templeton’s What She Said are all striking examples of intimate narratives highlighting the importance of photography as a conveyor of personal history, and (re)claiming personal truths. These books confirm the importance of photographic self-representation, reminding us of Nan Goldin’s introduction to The Ballad of Sexual Dependency: “I don’t ever want to be susceptible to anyone else’s version of my history.” The liberating truth of self-representation, of self-expression, is at the core of all these bodies of work. All of them highlight the importance of photography as an enabler, as a medium to express one’s own truth, to share it - to be heard and to be seen.
Other recent projects were enablers of another kind: making other voices heard, or heard again. Luce Lebart and Marie Robert’s Histoire Mondiale des Femmes Photographes, and Russet Lederman and Olga Yatskevich What They Saw: Historical Photobooks by Women, 1843–1999, contributed to represent and to celebrate countless female photographers in history. These anthologies coincided with archival rediscoveries, such as Lora Webb Nichols’ online archive and beautiful publication Encampment, Wyoming: Selections from the Lora Webb Nichols Archive 1899-1948; or Jennie Ross Cobb, the first-known female Native American photographer. An extensive online platform dedicated to the history of Japanese women photographers, produced over the past five years by curator Carrie Cushman and professor Kelly Midori McCormick, will be launching at the end of April: "Behind the Camera: Gender, Power, and Politics in the History of Japanese Photography". A number of exhibitions also contributed, and continue to enhance, female representation in photography, including collective exhibitions such as Marie Robert’s Qui A Peur des Femmes Photographes? at the Musée d’Orsay; Andrea Nelson’s The New Woman Behind the Camera at the National Gallery of Art; Femmes Photographes de Guerre at the Musée de la Libération; Roxana Marcoci’s Our Selves: Photographs by Women Artists from Helen Kornblum at MoMA; and 10/10, Contemporary Japanese Women Photographers, that I co-curated with Lucille Reyboz and Yusuke Nakanishi, the founding directors of Kyotographie. All these projects re-affirm the fundamental importance of the representation of female experiences and truths in photography.
The history of photography needs to be thoughtfully questioned and amended. While researching for my Ph.D. on the representation of Northern Ireland during the Troubles, it occurred to me that we knew close to nothing about the women photographers who worked there between the 1970s and 1990s. But indeed, there were quite a few – including Christine Spengler, Catherine Leroy, Paula Allen, Donna DeCesare, Rosalind Fox Solomon, Christine Halsall, and Dana Tynan - who made extraordinary work there, and cared deeply about the subject, but were somehow not included in the history of that period. Their work will be shown for the first time at the Gallery of Photography, Dublin, in the Protest! exhibition opening this month. Speaking about Northern Ireland in 1981 for Camerawork, British photographer Christine Halsall said, “It is vital that the people who are part of any struggle should have the means to represent themselves.” It is vital to be able to represent oneself, to have agency. It is also vital to be represented in the history, and in the present, of photography. This is also the impetus behind the book on Japanese women photographers that is currently in the works.
Donna DeCesare, Portadown, Northern Ireland, 1986. © Donna DeCesare
A few days after the invasion of Ukraine, in February 2022, British photographer Mark Neville, who lives in Ukraine and just released his prescient Stop Tanks with Books, shared a very timely post on Instagram: “World press and media. I have a Ukrainian press pass. I live in Ukraine. My friends live here to. Instead of sending more and more and more reporters from abroad, who do not understand the situation or the language or how to move around, contact me and either I will do it for you for no or little money, or I will connect you with amazing Ukrainian photographers who will do a better more accurate job than any of us. Have some respect for these people, this country and this conflict.” A few weeks later, New York based Ukrainian photographer Ira Lupu organized a photography show in Brooklyn that was intended to give a representation of the Ukraine by Ukrainians photographers, a show that would not be about the war, but about Ukraine. The exhibition, In Ukraine, co-curated with photo-historian Fred Ritchin, features work by photographers and documentarians from the country, as well as Russia. Lupu wanted to provide “an understanding of Ukrainian culture, not simply a reflexive reaction to war.” These two instances also talk to the truth of representation: the world of photography now knows that the beauty of the medium relies on the ability of individuals to be able to represent themselves, their own truth - “their own version of their own history.” Not to say that only they can tell the story - many foreign photojournalists, including Linsey Addario, have reminded us over the past few weeks that photography’s role is crucial in documenting the truth of a conflict - but to say that their story, that of women photographers, that of Ukrainian photographers, that of “the people who are part of any struggle,” needs to be heard and seen. Ultimately, it is the multiplicity of representations that brings the fullest potential of truth in photography. Like democracy itself, photography needs to be a representation of the people, by the people, and for the people.
FALL 2022 - NEIL MCQUILLIAN
FALL EDITION, 2022
by Neil McQuillian
by Neil McQuillian
At the time of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, I was a freelance features editor on the Magnum Photos website. An image came in from Nanna Heitmann of a Russian tank rolling into eastern Ukraine, a few soldiers atop and poking out of the monster vehicle, gazing at Heitmann’s camera. We put it into an article.
I’ve not examined the picture since. Without looking at it now, my memory surfaces young soldiers with Mona Lisa smiles, like lads arriving at a stadium for a dead-rubber football match. The backdrop is could-be-anywhere forest, a blank Brothers Grimm thicket of green. There are diagonal lines of compositional timelessness.
It’s often said that rolling news coverage and mobile footage have made frontline photographic reportage redundant. Yet the arresting aesthetics of Heitmann’s tank photo sank the fact of the invasion more deeply into me than any moving images from those early days of the conflict. (In fact, I’ve misremembered some of the details – only one soldier’s face is clearly visible and the trees are sparse and thin – but what I suppose my brain has computed is the photo’s perfect, bare-bones momentousness.)
I’ve not examined the picture since. Without looking at it now, my memory surfaces young soldiers with Mona Lisa smiles, like lads arriving at a stadium for a dead-rubber football match. The backdrop is could-be-anywhere forest, a blank Brothers Grimm thicket of green. There are diagonal lines of compositional timelessness.
It’s often said that rolling news coverage and mobile footage have made frontline photographic reportage redundant. Yet the arresting aesthetics of Heitmann’s tank photo sank the fact of the invasion more deeply into me than any moving images from those early days of the conflict. (In fact, I’ve misremembered some of the details – only one soldier’s face is clearly visible and the trees are sparse and thin – but what I suppose my brain has computed is the photo’s perfect, bare-bones momentousness.)
A convoy of Russian tanks entering the self-declared (pro-Russian) Donetsk People's Republic, moving towards the front line, beginning the invasion of Ukraine. Donbas, Ukraine, February 24, 2022. © Nanna Heitmann
Conflict is crowded with brief, monumental moments. A deliberate, unhurried border-crossing by an invading force; a frantic one by refugees. A train leaving an overcrowded station. A scurrying civilian shot. A hands-tied civilian kicked into a grave. Some moments are briefer than others.
By being so suited to capturing these war moments, photography can seem like a sense-making tool. Certainly we want to see the photos. Our impulse to rubberneck kicks in at the start of a conflict. We hunger for images from the blossoming war, for nightmarish visions telling us over and over again that something terrible is happening amongst humans. But of course this in-the-moment photography can’t make any sense of the terrible. It can’t answer our whys or hows or what nexts.
Moving images complement photography as we inch towards some sort of understanding. The haunting what-new-devilry-is-this? glow billowing in the distance behind TV reporters. The horrendous mobile footage shared on social media. Vice-versa, photography fills in some of the gaps for film – by freezing facial expressions at those teeming train stations and border crossings.
We know, however, that little of this amounts to much in the way of substantial truth. It doesn’t tell us anything other than ‘Bad is happening’. Close equalled good for Robert Capa, but it doesn’t give us the bigger picture. Much of the film and photo evidence coming out of Ukraine might as well be audio recordings of screams and sobbing. (And this is without even touching on the question of how we know the imagery is authentic – that it’s not from old conflicts, or Photoshopped or, as the Kremlin would have it, faked courtesy of crisis actors and film-set mannequins.)
By being so suited to capturing these war moments, photography can seem like a sense-making tool. Certainly we want to see the photos. Our impulse to rubberneck kicks in at the start of a conflict. We hunger for images from the blossoming war, for nightmarish visions telling us over and over again that something terrible is happening amongst humans. But of course this in-the-moment photography can’t make any sense of the terrible. It can’t answer our whys or hows or what nexts.
Moving images complement photography as we inch towards some sort of understanding. The haunting what-new-devilry-is-this? glow billowing in the distance behind TV reporters. The horrendous mobile footage shared on social media. Vice-versa, photography fills in some of the gaps for film – by freezing facial expressions at those teeming train stations and border crossings.
We know, however, that little of this amounts to much in the way of substantial truth. It doesn’t tell us anything other than ‘Bad is happening’. Close equalled good for Robert Capa, but it doesn’t give us the bigger picture. Much of the film and photo evidence coming out of Ukraine might as well be audio recordings of screams and sobbing. (And this is without even touching on the question of how we know the imagery is authentic – that it’s not from old conflicts, or Photoshopped or, as the Kremlin would have it, faked courtesy of crisis actors and film-set mannequins.)
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Some outstanding photographs from the Ukraine war – like Heitmann’s tank photograph, which became a TIME front cover – manage to carry the weight of history-happening. The image’s aesthetic power makes us pause and opens up space, and in that pause and space the moment sinks in.
Other images are viscerally unpleasant or heart-wrenching. I administer these to myself as shots, as reminders to feel. Even if we can have next to no impact on the Ukraine war, such images show us moments of horror so that we might avert future ones. Maybe frontline photographers act now so that we’ll be more likely to act later. But I won’t look to photography for any nuanced truths about this war until it is over, via the sensitive, cautious work of committed photographers – the likes of Newsha Tavakolian and Moises Saman – who, with thoughtful contextual framing and long experience of conflict, may come to present their personal visions of what happened. By painstakingly telling their own truth about war, such photographers demonstrate how complicated truth is, and perhaps model a balance of pause and readiness that we can invoke next time the tanks roll in. |
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Winter 2023 - richard sharum
WINTER EDITION, 2023
by Richard Sharum
by Richard Sharum
“Truth in photography” is a complex issue, one that has far-reaching implications for our continued practice.
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First it should be said that the idea of truth itself is a vague one, and a moving target. We all have our truths that are personal, and there are those that are shared, or “collective truths.”
We all know that the entirety of a situation is very rarely, if ever, captured in a single image. This is where the power of a series of images, or a long-term project, comes into play. This of course depends on who the photographer is, and the ethical path with which they have chosen, conscious of the device in their hand. Shall it be for thyself, or in the service of others? Through the act of total immersion by the photographer, and the resulting work, the general public may discover similarities between themselves and the subjects, providing the photographer an opening in the ossification of public apathy. This is the path in which a truth can be found and agreed upon by all, including the subject. Absolute truth is impossible, we know this, but getting as close as one reasonably can, is attainable. In fact, it is mandatory. In my opinion, this should be the proper role of all photography, as the inherent power of the image to initiate change has been well established through precedence (look to Jacob Riis and Larry Burrows). They, and others, have shown that through the documentation of a “collective truth,” the potential for greater good is possible in photography. I implore this way of working as a criticism against a supposed “post-truth” world where the popular trend towards introversion (in the form of conceptualism) has fostered an industry-wide belief against the necessity, or even validity of long-term documentary work. |
As part of their belief, Mennonites get on their knees and cover their faces when praying. A part of the Antebaptist family of religious sects, they still segregate the men and women during worship. Part of Spina Americana (American Spine), a long-term book project on the Central U.S. (in progress). Mennonite Church, Arlington, Kansas, June 20, 2021. © Richard Sharum
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Immersing with the unknown, with others who look different, with what we see as confrontational is key to our survival as photographers doing battle in an empathetic vacuum. Social documentation, by its very nature, is a call-to-action for the general public (and photographers) to immerse themselves in the unknown, as a practice of both humanism and collective duty.
I am concerned that there may be a growing social isolationism within our practice, especially by newer photographers, who are looking to the industry to guide them. The industry is becoming less inclined towards the commitment and dedication of documentary work, and instead opting for the commercialism and salability of individualist conceptualism.
I am concerned that there may be a growing social isolationism within our practice, especially by newer photographers, who are looking to the industry to guide them. The industry is becoming less inclined towards the commitment and dedication of documentary work, and instead opting for the commercialism and salability of individualist conceptualism.
Mariana, 11, practices math equations, in the van that is her home. She hasn’t been to school in 3 years, but she practices what she remembers. Her mother, behind her, puts on make-up for New Years Eve, even though she has no plans to go anywhere. Part of Homeless in School, a two year project on homeless children either attending public school or attempting to. December 31, 2018. © Richard Sharum
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River Body. This man had been found floating, mostly decomposed on a sweltering midsummer's day. The medical examiner is seen here looking at the skull to see if there are any bullet holes or fractures. Part of American Homicide, long-term book project (in progress). Dallas, Texas, June 30, 2022. © Richard Sharum
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This turning away by the industry is rooted in this movement towards the nullification of “truth” in photography. Time and time again, the rejection of what deserves to be seen by the public as true rears its head, in the form of decrees, usually by those who have never fully immersed themselves as photographers, in the up-close and the unknown.
All photographs are propaganda, but that doesn’t make them inherently untrue. The question becomes, as the creator, what is the message you are trying to spread? Is it based on your truth, or are you trying to document a collective truth, for the collective good?
How many of you reading this can recall the photographs that made you love photography in the first place? I’d be willing to bet they were documentary in substance, captured in real-time, which is what intrigued you in the first place – the wonder of someone having the consciousness of space to suspend it and make it permanent, for you to witness somewhere distant, many years later. At that moment, you, the subject and the photographer all became one in that image.
This is what we are in danger of losing from a new generation of photographers if we continue down this self-destructive path of believing that all imagery is based in fallacy, through the simple act of light encapsulated with form.
Natural chaos in imagery, delivered with geometry and as parcels of a larger truth (this is key), is preferable to those even outside of our industry because chaos is reality, therefore making chaos relatable.
A photographer’s “control” must be limited to the frame (only) and should be used cautiously at that, with the ultimate goal of providing the subject a suspended, permanent equity. The role of the photographer should be merely one of a visual mediator, between two groups of people who will never speak, either through distance or desire.
Therefore a “collective truth” in photography is very much possible, when everything is considered carefully, and it is still available to all those willing to seek it, practice it, and defend it. More importantly, the subjects, and their individual stories, demand it.
All photographs are propaganda, but that doesn’t make them inherently untrue. The question becomes, as the creator, what is the message you are trying to spread? Is it based on your truth, or are you trying to document a collective truth, for the collective good?
How many of you reading this can recall the photographs that made you love photography in the first place? I’d be willing to bet they were documentary in substance, captured in real-time, which is what intrigued you in the first place – the wonder of someone having the consciousness of space to suspend it and make it permanent, for you to witness somewhere distant, many years later. At that moment, you, the subject and the photographer all became one in that image.
This is what we are in danger of losing from a new generation of photographers if we continue down this self-destructive path of believing that all imagery is based in fallacy, through the simple act of light encapsulated with form.
Natural chaos in imagery, delivered with geometry and as parcels of a larger truth (this is key), is preferable to those even outside of our industry because chaos is reality, therefore making chaos relatable.
A photographer’s “control” must be limited to the frame (only) and should be used cautiously at that, with the ultimate goal of providing the subject a suspended, permanent equity. The role of the photographer should be merely one of a visual mediator, between two groups of people who will never speak, either through distance or desire.
Therefore a “collective truth” in photography is very much possible, when everything is considered carefully, and it is still available to all those willing to seek it, practice it, and defend it. More importantly, the subjects, and their individual stories, demand it.
Last Flu Vaccine. Naranja, Cuba. July 10th, 2019. An elderly man receives the last flu vaccine in the region, administered by a country nurse, who has walked 4 hours up the mountainside to reach him. Part of Campesino Cuba (GOST Books, 2021). © Richard Sharum
SPRING 2023 - MIKKEL HØRLYCK
SPRING EDITION, 2023
by Mikkel Hørlyck
by Mikkel Hørlyck
Truth in photography happens when you connect with people; where there is connection, there is love. If you tell the truth, people get motivated, interested and curious. It creates growth. Truth is infinite. I believe all good energy comes from being honest. It is a strong process. If you want to be strong, you have to be honest. Everyone can be that. It is our nature to be that. Because it is the greatest thing you can do for the community, for people and everything around you. Truth releases you from mental and physical limitations. So it brings everything forward. That is why it is so important to be truthful, in the things you do, the things you say, the things you write and the story you do, as a photographer and artist.
The Neglected explores the emotional life hiding behind the walls of an old institution for disabled boys in the town Orhei in Europe’s poorest country, Moldova. Most of the boys never receive visitors. Marius (12) is lucky. His parents have come to visit this Friday. They have brought homemade strawberry mash and sit down on a bench below a tree. Marius’ dad, Grigore, fetches his cane and takes Marius, who suffers from autism, by the hand. Together they dance, until Marius falls into his father’s arms.
Grigore suffers from multiple sclerosis; therefore Marius’ mother is the only one providing for the family and their three children. That is why the parents had to put Marius in the orphanage six years ago. © Mikkel Hørlyck
It is important to be true to the atmosphere of the story in the choice of photographic format and the post-editing. That is the most important part for me, when making my choice, in how it should be edited. Then, it stays strong to the people and their lives from the beginning, to the end of the project's process. When the project is told precisely in emotion, with coherency, complexity, and the relations between the people portrayed, it can become timeless.
SUMMER 2024 - JASON JOHNSON-SPINOS
SUMMER EDITION, 2023
by Jason Johnson-Spinos
by Jason Johnson-Spinos
Truth in photography is the same as truth everywhere else. Truth can be found in a photograph, but it can also be obscured, pushed slightly out of frame, like the figures of the past omitted from history books. The truth of a photograph can be manipulated, like a politician might twist the words of their opponent for a negative campaign ad. And sometimes truth comes from the cumulative proof of a multitude of similar images from different sources, like the truth of six positive pregnancy tests in a row.
For many people, technology has made life harder, not easier. Social media can cause immense anxiety and mental health problems, especially for today’s youth, who question the truth of their relationships based on virtual interactions. And the evolution of photo-editing and AI has made finding the truth in a photograph harder as well. How do we know which images are real? Which to be offended by? Affected by? Inspired by?
There is truth in photography. Sometimes it’s the cold, hard truth of dead bodies thrown in an open grave. Sometimes it’s the emotional truth held in the eyes of a woman posing for a photograph. Sometimes it’s the metaphorical truth found in a manufactured image created by an artist.
And yet, not everyone will see these things as truth. They may find their truth in other images, just like they may find their truth in ideas that I might find abhorrent.
Which of us is right? Which photos are true? Which ideas are true? Which morals are true? What is truth?
Yes. That is the question. Finish the sentence, “Truth is…”
I dare you.
For many people, technology has made life harder, not easier. Social media can cause immense anxiety and mental health problems, especially for today’s youth, who question the truth of their relationships based on virtual interactions. And the evolution of photo-editing and AI has made finding the truth in a photograph harder as well. How do we know which images are real? Which to be offended by? Affected by? Inspired by?
There is truth in photography. Sometimes it’s the cold, hard truth of dead bodies thrown in an open grave. Sometimes it’s the emotional truth held in the eyes of a woman posing for a photograph. Sometimes it’s the metaphorical truth found in a manufactured image created by an artist.
And yet, not everyone will see these things as truth. They may find their truth in other images, just like they may find their truth in ideas that I might find abhorrent.
Which of us is right? Which photos are true? Which ideas are true? Which morals are true? What is truth?
Yes. That is the question. Finish the sentence, “Truth is…”
I dare you.
Promotional photo for Outcry Youth Theatre's production of The Diviners. Photograph by Jason Johnson-Spinos.
