Photography as a Weapon

[darr]

As almost everyone knows by now, various major daily newspaper published, on July 10, a photograph of four Iranian missiles streaking heavenward; then Little Green Footballs (significantly, a blog and not a daily newspaper) provided evidence that the photograph had been faked. Later, many of those same papers published a Whitman’s sampler of retractions and apologies. For me it raised a series of questions about images.[1] Do they provide illustration of a text or an idea of evidence of some underlying reality or both? And if they are evidence, don’t we have to know that the evidence is reliable, that it can be trusted?

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[nelsonfotodotcom]

Ah, Errol Morris wrote it. Threw me for a loop, initially.

C.

[Fred Leif]

As I recall, a photo by itself isn't admissable as evidence in a court of law. It takes someone (the photographer or someone else), under oath, to testify that the photo is a true and accurate representation of what they saw.

[Walter Calahan]

I think the frame around a photograph is more of a weapon then the print itself. Grin.

Basically, don't trust anything any government (even the US) puts out as 'official'.

The Iranians have Photoshop just like everyone else. One or two missiles misfired or fired late, so they sent out the propaganda image altered.

"Mission Accomplished"

[claudiocambon]

Photographs are more about belief than facts, and belief is used to influence a sense about the facts. For being a moment extracted from its time sequence, photography is by nature non-narrative, in the sense that it does a poor job in and of itself of telling you what specifically and factually happened. But it does a marvelous job of making you believe that it represents that. The whole joy of the medium, both for users and viewers, rests on this paradox: something removed from its original context of space and time, which shuts out so much, and yet, which says so much about a larger whole.

When I say that photography is inherently non-narrative, that doesn't mean that it doesn't tell a story. It does, but that sense of an inner truth that it advocates often has little to do with facts; tat relationship can be there, but it is non-necessary. In a way, it is ill-adept at journalism, or rather, very vulnerable to the verbal frameworks that it accompanies. Hence, so much manipulation of arguments through the suggestion of iconic references that may not correspond to what is actually happening, but suggest plenty. In the hands of a committed photojournalist or honest editor, a truth can be advocated through the force of the images, and, sadly, millions can be manipulated at the hands of insincere forces who wish to promote another kind of agenda. Either way, the maker contends with the viewer's belief more than an understanding of facts.

[domenico Foschi]

Claudio,
put it beautifully.

I have in mind now the Manzanar project of Ansel Adams about the Japanese internment camps.
He showed a completely different reality from the one the Japanese community was living.

[paulr]

I think more to the point, a photograph doesn't tell a truth (or a lie), it presents a fact (or a falsified fact.) As Walter said, it's the frame around the photograph that counts, which is to say that it's the context in which the photo (or other fact) is presented that creates a truth.

A photograph can be thought of a circumstantial evidence, much like a fingerprint. By itself it conveys no truth. But if it can be verified factually (in the sense that we can prove that it hasn't been altered) and if we can trust the information that provides the context (which, as Fred points out, the courts require) then photographic fact can support a larger truth.

As much as anything else can!

[MIke Sherck]

A photograph conveys information and is therefore propaganda to some extent. It can be true or it can be false but you can rarely tell which just by looking at it. More to the point, information is also a weapon if it is used that way, so a photo is also.

Mike

[claudiocambon]

Or, as Lewis Hine put it, "Photographs never lie, but liars may photograph."

[paulr]

A photograph conveys information and is therefore propaganda to some extent. It can be true or it can be false but you can rarely tell which just by looking at it. More to the point, information is also a weapon if it is used that way, so a photo is also.

Mike

But how can it be true? Or False? Or Propaganda? I don't know how it can be any of these things unless it's framed with some context that ascribes a meanting to it.

As an experiment, you can show the same photograph to several different people. Don't give them any context. No captions, no cues that could tell them "this is art" or "this is journalism" or "this is a cultural document" or whatever. Ask them what the picture means. Or more interesting: ask them what story it tells. Most people will give you an answer, because they bring enough of their own ideas to any image. But it's rare that people will give you similar answers.