- How might your work be (or not be) considered a ‘peculiar practice’?
- Think about how the context affects how people view your work.
- Reflect on your practice in the context of other visual practices and theoretical points.
I believe that photography can only reproduce the surface of things… what people see is what’s already inside them.
Ruff in Dorment, 2003
The realistic nature of photography compared to any other form of image making can be problematic for an audience, any photograph taken at surface value can be seen as truth. The issue with this comes to light when photographs are misused in the media; for example the digital editing done to female celebrity bodies that present unrealistic expectations and body comparisons. Even before digital photography and the ability to manipulate images being more widely available than ever before, the photograph has been used regardless of context in order to support a perspective.
As soon as a photograph leaves Eden and enters into circulation, it becomes culturally coded, transforming the image and putting it into the realm of connotation.
Elkins, 2007, p.15
In the article ‘Photography, Vision and Representation’ Snyder and Allen discuss the importance of how we understand and process photographs through their own perspective as well as reflecting on previous theorists writings. Looking at Rudolph Arnheim’s views on understanding a photograph, it is important to see note that Arnheim is completely aware of the level of authenticity automatically granted to the photography over other image making processes. Therefore he is right to question “Is it authentic?” “Is it correct?” and “Is it true?” (p. 157). In my opinion it never is, the only reason it can be perceived that way is because it looks real.
Because of this fundamental peculiarity, photographs have “an authenticity from which painting is barred by birth” (p. 154).
What I can really identify with here is that the majority of the images I see on a daily basis are presented in the context of social media and are carefully selected images geared to show the individual in the way they want to be seen and on the most part it is taken as reality. What does this leave us with? The ability to edit your own appearance, selecting your best image from as many as you want to take and in turn the influence that feeds down from seeing edited social media posts – how will that affect the way in which we perceive each other and ourselves. Surely the way we interact with the photograph on social media will have a growing and lasting affect on self-confidence, body dis-morphia, mental health or FOMO…
what is true of photographs is true of the world seen photographically
Sontag, 1977, p.79
Susan Sontag rightly asserts that a photograph can only really show you what a camera sees – not what an eye sees. Snyder and Allen explore this further by saying “The notion that a photograph shows what we would have seen had we been there ourselves” has to be qualified to the point of absurdity.” Their qualification is that in order to for us to see what the camera saw we would need to see with the equivalent lens, see in the same color properties that the film produces combined with the photographic paper. It is also important to note that the elements that do go together in capturing an image are all choices, therefore every photograph is a construct.
By this standard, I am happy to declare that I regard every photograph I take as a construct, whether it is commercial portraiture, a fine art staged scene or family snap shots. In some way or another I am constructing either a narrative, a context or perhaps an aesthetic, there is nothing completely authentic about the images I create.
References
CRJ 