Andi's blog

New Theory Page: Roland Barthes on photography

Andi — Sat, 08 May 2010 16:27:33 +0000

I recently posted a new page to the theory section of viz. that explores the photographic theory of Roland Barthes' Camera Lucida.

Picturing Memory: Space and Faces of Trauma

Andi — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 18:19:57 +0000

Image credit: Nebojsa Seric Shoba

"Battle of Waterloo. Belgium. 1815"

Lens, The New York Times

Over the past two weeks, Lens, the photography and photojournalism blog component of the New York Times, has featured two different photographic collections concerned with memory, trauma, and war. Nebojsa Seric Shoba's "Battlefields" is comprised of images of former battle sites. Shoba returned to photograph the places where the Battle of Brooklyn (1776) or the Battle of Waterloo (1815) were fought. Rather than return to earlier places, Maciek Nabrdalik took portraits of Holocaust survivors, focusing closely on the faces of his subjects as they are lit against a stark black background. Both sets of images press the viewer to consider the possibilities and failures inherent in any attempt to make memory visible.

Image credit: Nebojsa Seric Shoba

"Battle of Verdun, France. 1916"

Lens, The New York Times

While I've considered the intersections of landscape, photography, war, and memory before, Shoba's images raise additional questions for me about the way memory should or can by visualized. His images rely on juxtaposition to invoke memory--they depict empty serene spaces in contrast to what must have been earlier scenes of chaos and violence or they depict battlefields that now contain McDonald's signs or rusting trucks. In either case, these images seem to suggest that they way we are remembering war is just not quite right.

Image credit: Maciek Nabrdalik

H/T: Rachel/Lens, The New York Times

Image credit: Maciek Nabrdalik

H/T: Rachel/Lens, The New York Times

Nabrdalik's images, on the other had, remove all possibility of juxtaposing the past with the present. His minimalist portraits are devoid of context--it is almost as if there can be no present for his subjects. Moreover, these images suggest that there is only one correct way to remember the Holocaust. This is memory of the past that suggests no future; nothing beyond the initial trauma. Unlike Shoba's images which suggest that we may have forgotten the past, Nabrdalik's portraits allow for nothing but memory of the past.

Stereographs: site and sight of cultural privilege

Andi — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 20:14:17 +0000

Image credit: Underwood and Underwood

Over past week, as I reworked a syllabus for a course on Photography and Literature, I spent some time skimming through the online finding aids and databases that catalog the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center. The Stereograph collection at the HRC seems particularly fascinating—it contains over 4,000 images, most of which date to the period between 1870 and 1900. Introducing students to stereographs can form a jumping off point for considering the intersections of vision, modernity, science and technology, early photography, and tourism.

Image credit: Keystone View Company

The majority of the images in the HRC collection were purchased by the Keystone View Company from Underwood and Underwood in 1912. Part of the fascination of the stereoscope was its ability to create the illusion of depth—viewing two slightly different images set side by side on a card and placed before a stereoscope replicated the perception of depth. This technology was considered cutting-edge in the last decades of the nineteenth century and is not all that different from techniques used for Viewmasters or even 3-D films.

Image credit: Underwood and Underwood

Many of Keystone stereographs contain extensive captions printed on each card and several participate in a narrative of American imperialism through images of both domestic and foreign spaces. Circulated among a predominantly middle class audience and displayed in middle class parlors, stereographs offered viewers a culturally-privileged vantage point from which to view the world. Without ever leaving the sanctity of the domestic space, middle class viewers were able to experience his or her own private mode of mini-imperialism. Flipping through a pile of stereograph cards, owning and displaying these images of foreign people and places, replicated the broader national project of imperialism. It might be worth comparing these images to more contemporary ones found in National Geographic or considering them alongside 3-D modern marvels (that raise many of the same questions) such as Avatar.

Innocence and Exploitation: Kids with Cameras

Andi — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 15:46:47 +0000

Image credit: screen shot of The New Orleans Kids with Camera Project

For our class on social documentary film, we screen Martin Bell’s Streetwise—a documentary that follows young homeless kids through their daily routines. Our class discussion always considers the question of consent and the issue of exploitation with subjects who are so young. This is an issue that always arises when there are cameras trained on kids—recently, however, we also considered the question of training kids to work with cameras. Over the last several years there have been many projects that seek to empower children by providing them with cameras and an opportunity to discuss their artwork. The New Orleans Kid Camera Project attempts to offer an “unfiltered view of New Orleans through the eyes of its youth.” These organizations— for instance, Kids with Cameras and The New Orleans Kid Camera Project and films like Born into Brothels—are surely providing an excellent experience for young people who might not otherwise have had access to cameras and a space to discuss artwork. Although these projects that provide kids with cameras claim to offer a therapeutic experience for participants and access to an innocent vision through the photographs for viewers, many of the issues of consent and exploitation are still at play here.

Image credit: screen shot of website for Born into Brothels

In one of the opening scenes of Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman’s 2005 documentary film Born into Brothels, an eleven-year-old girl introduces the viewer to her fellow student and herself. She is smiling, and obviously at ease on film. The camera angle is direct, shot at the same level as this young girl. As she narrates the film cuts away to still photographs of the children she is naming. The narration, the angle, the sequencing here all seem to suggest that it is Puja and the other children born to prostitutes in Calcutta’s red light district that are in control of their representation. Certainly Briski and Kauffman’s attempt to empower their subjects by handing over the camera contributes to the sense that this film is an example of unmediated, self-representation and that as such, the film mitigates those power dynamics that typically arise in social documentary photojournalism.

Born into Brothels seems at first to solve some of the disparities in power by inverting the expected relationships of photographer and subject; the young children to which the title refers are given cameras, the filmmaker appears often on screen. However, this documentary does very little self-reflexive questioning of the methods of representation. Rather this film seems to suggest that this inversion provides access to an objective truth. In many ways, Born into Brothels is a respectful, sensitive portrayal of many of these children. In fact, Briski and Kauffman go well beyond the typical level of involved, concerned filmmakers to alleviate the situation of their subjects. Viewers of the film and the film’s website are encouraged to purchase signed prints of the children’s photographs with all of the proceeds going towards their education. Simply because it does a better job than most documentary films at attempting to avoid exploitative situations, does not mean that this representations is unproblematic.

Right from the start, and despite Puja’s seeming narrative control, the viewer is invited into the film in a position of power. There are very few scenes of adults taking care of these kids and so the film asks us to protect them. As Puja tells the camera she will have to join the line of prostitutes and “they say it will be soon” the film encourages the viewer to alleviate her situation. Because the film introduces each child through his or her photographs juxtaposed with scenes of that child in Briski’s photography class, the film offers the viewer a powerful vantage point similar to that of the teacher who must recognize the talent in each child (especially Avijit) and then validate that talent. Setting aside questions concerning the voyeurism that surrounds a filmic excursion into the red light district of a foreign country, and questions concerning permission when documenting the lives of such young people, Born into Brothels still seems problematic in its presentation of the poverty of its subjects. Because the film focuses solely on these few children and what can be done to change their lives, Born into Brothels implies that if the viewer watches, understands, and perhaps contributes to their college funds then all pictured problems will be alleviated. There is no attention paid to the broader structural issues that have created the situation in the first place and no attention is given to any grassroots organizations that may be working to address the same problems in Calcutta’s red light district. This film privileges a model of missionary work in which a white Western woman enters into the third world to save her subjects. It seems that offering the camera to the subject does not entirely alleviate the filmmaker from the burden of representation.

Violence in Images

Andi — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 23:08:09 +0000

Image credit: screen shot of Harlan County, USA

Over the past few weeks my students have been discussing several documentary films and a recurrent topic has been the line between an emotional appeal and an exploitative image of the body in pain. We have considered key scenes in the documentary Harlan County, USA (1976) in which director Barbara Kopple closely trains her camera on a man struggling to breathe through the pain of black lung. We will also discuss the inclusion of several open-casket shots of a child’s dead body in Martin Bell’s Streetwise (1984). The ethics of documentarians is a topic I’ve considered before on this site, but this week my student’s surprised me by probing the distinction between images of an actual body in pain and simulated images of a body in pain.

Now I wish I had anticipated this turn in the discussion—had I been prepared I might have thought to bring in clips from several documentary filmmakers and images from several photographers. Re-enactment scenes from historical documentaries, images of torture of popular films such as Saw and violent clips from video games like Grand Theft Auto, along with Cindy Sherman’s film stills series might have helped us consider the many ways image-makers have troubled the line between representation and reality.

Image credit: Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #14

In his article, “Wound Culture: Trauma in the Pathological Public Sphere,” Mark Seltzer contends with the condition of postmodernity and although he does not explicitly address photography I think some of his work might have been applicable to our discussion. Seltzer posits a postmodern “wound culture” in which there has been a breakdown in distinctions between external/internal, public/private, self/other. This breakdown occurs because the “virtual and figurative look just like and hurt just as much as, the literal and the real: perception and representation change places” (Seltzer, 24). For Seltzer is the site of the wound that collapses the boundary between real and representation by splaying the private body before public eyes. At the same time, the wound fascinates us because, despite the trauma of this collapse, it seems to maintain such a clear distinction between what is real and what is not. What can be more real than the wound? It is hard to argue with blood and guts.

Selzter’s analysis of the would as the site of all this blurring of boundaries can be extended to the photograph: a private moment captured and circulated for the public eye, an image that is both of reality and a representation of reality. Several of the distinctions Seltzer notes —between external/internal, public/private, self/other—are broken down within photographs. The shots of miners struggling to breath and the open-casket images prompt questions about the use of violent images or images of violence. Is there really a difference between images of an actual body in pain and simulated images of a body in pain? Is there any connection between violent images and violence in the world? Is the act of taking a photograph always violent? Seltzer seems to suggest that in a “wound culture” it is impossible to imagine any experience not marked by violence. It seems worth asking whether we can imagine a photographic experience that is not violent?

Historical Anatomies: Visualizing the Body

Andi — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 20:38:03 +0000

Image Credit: Sarlandière, Jean-Baptiste. Anatomie méthodique, ou Organographie humaine en tableaux synoptiques, avec figures.

(Paris: Chez les libraires de médecine, et chez l'auteur, 1829).

Historical Anatomies on the Web

This week I thought I play far afield from my usual subject areas by exploring the image database for the National Library of Medicine, History of Medicine Division. This database--Historical Anatomies on the Web--showcases many high-quality digital images of the NLM’s collection of illustrated anatomical atlases dating from the 15^th to the 20^th century. The quality of the images, the detailed historical introductions to each anatomical atlas, and the descriptions of the illustration techniques all contribute to the immense pedagogical potential of this collection.

Accompanying this collection of images is an online exhibition called Dream Anatomy centered on the history of anatomy as a field. This interactive online component of the database explores the many ways that anatomy has evolved and considers how the history of depicting the human body has always moved toward a “visual vocabulary of realism” (Dream Anatomy).

Image credit: Gersdorff, Hans von. Feldtbůch der Wundartzney : newlich getruckt und gebessert.

(Strassburg: Hans Schotten zům Thyergarten, [1528]).

Historical Anatomies on the Web

Both the images in the database and many in the online exhibition are in the public domain and so may be freely distributed and copied when given proper acknowledgement (click here for more on use). While the collection is not easily searchable, it is incredibly fun to browse. Each page is full of detailed thumbnails so scanning the many images in each atlas is a quick way to familiarize yourself with what types of illustrations are in the collection. It seems likely that these images would be helpful for viz. readers working with or teaching the rhetoric of the body, the history of medicine, or the rhetoric of science.

Advertising in America

Andi — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 03:39:45 +0000

Image credit: screen shot of Emergence of Advertising in America database

On March 26^th Noel will be leading our workshop on Best Practices for Digital Images here at the DWRL and in preparation for that meeting many of us at viz. are compiling several blog postings on image databases. This week Rachel posted about Radical Software—a database that provides access to work done in the ‘seventies with the creation of and theorizing about digital and video media. I’d like to take us back even further to a database dedicated to making available early advertising images from the mid-nineteenth century through to the 1920s. I found Emergence of Advertising in America, 1850-1920 to be extremely entertaining to browse and can easily imagine integrating it into my classroom practice.

The Emergence of Advertising in America, 1850-1920 is housed at the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising and Marketing History as part of the Duke University Libraries. The database is home to over 9,000 images from the early period in American advertising. Because the strength of this collection centers on the period of increasing professionalization within the field of commercial advertising and the rise of national print magazines, this database holds many many images that will be of use to those of us who work with visual culture. Moreover, the ability to access so many early advertisements may provide several unique opportunities for the use of these images in our classroom. Obviously, these images would be useful for any unit providing a history to advertising in this early period but I also think that access to so many early ads might offer some contextualization for popular advertising campaigns today. Introducing students to these earlier advertisements may help to denaturalize to pervasive nature of contemporary marketing tools.

The database is easily searchable—especially fun is to use the search function to look up early advertisements for particular products. Typing in “perfume” or “soap” or “cola,” for instance, yields several fascinating results. Browsing through the collection strengths was also amusing—the database has designated pages for the history of specific campaigns, including Pond’s, Kodak, as well as for the history of particular types of advertising strategies, including broadsides, trading cards, calendars, and advertising cookbooks. I hope this resource proves as useful for your research and your pedagogy as it might for your entertainment.

Don't You Dare Go Digital

Andi — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 20:05:45 +0000

Rachel’s post this past week about the low-fi appeal of recent music videos raises similar questions to those surrounding a recent controversy over a digitally altered image stripped of its status as a World Press Photo contest winner. And, what was the alteration that led to this disqualification? Third prize winner in Sports Features, Stepan Rudik removed a foot from the finished photograph. World Press Photo, an organization known for promoting professional standards in photojournalism largely through the means of awarding one of the most prestigious photography prizes, disqualified Rudik because the jury discovered that he had digitally altered one of the images in his photo-essay submission. Both the low-fi aesthetics of the OKGO video and the field of professional photojournalism privilege a definition of technical prowess that does not include manipulation of the image beyond much capturing and cropping. The value of the image and the skill of the image-makers, in both of these respects, reside in the moment the photograph is shot and not at any other point in the process in which the photograph is made.

It is interesting that World Press Photo takes such pains to distance itself from the artisanal aspects of making a photograph and falls back on a presumption of authenticity aligned with the decisive moment. So, good photojournalism is not made but captured? Are these prizes just awarded to extremely lucky individuals? For the award committee, there seems to have been an implicit emphasis on aesthetically stunning images combined with an explicit emphasis on photographs captured at that lucky pivotal moment. And, always, the assertion that nothing has been altered. Amazing technical prowess at the moment of capturing combined with low-fi levels of retouching at the moment of making the photograph. Consider several of these past prize winners:

Image Credit: Jean-Marc Bouju

World Press Photo of the Year, 2003

Image Credit: Anthony Suau

World Press Photo of the Year, 1987

Image Credit: Nick Ut

World Press Photo of the Year, 1972

Although many of the prizes are given for images that are aesthetically beautiful, the truth-claim of those photographs deemed excellent photojournalism lies in the assertion that they have not been altered. World Press Photo’s rule reads, “the content of the image must not be altered. Only retouching which conforms to the currently accepted standards in the industry is allowed” (Worldpressphoto.org). Perhaps this assertion is not all that surprising—after all, it may be quite the slippery slope that runs from the removal of a foot to the faking of photographs of missile tests. But, where is the exact difference between altering aesthetics and manipulating content? Is it okay to punch up the grain of the image or switch from color to black-and-white? Is it wrong to crop out relevant context or wipe out a misplaced foot? What is the exact difference, in terms of truth claims, between framing, cropping, and photo-shopping?

Rephotography Take Two

Andi — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 22:31:18 +0000

Image credit: Bill Ganzell

A few weeks ago I posted about rephotography projects—after thinking through some of the issues surrounding these images I began wondering why so many of these rephotographic projects appeared in the 1980s. Two texts in particular caught my attention: Bill Ganzell's 1984 Dust Bowl Descent, and Michael Williamson and Dale Maharidge's 1989 And Their Children After Them. Ganzell rephotographed several of the same images captured by documentary photographers during the Great Depression while Williamson and Maharidge retraced the steps of Walker Evans and James Agee for their 1936 photo-text Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Taken decades after the initial Depression Era images, these rephotography projects of the 1980s are a record of change.

I suppose it is not surprising that the rephotographers of the 1980s took up their cameras just as it became clear that the earlier historical moment of the New Deal had disintegrated. The decades between the ‘thirties and the ‘eighties saw a gradual decline in the influence of unions, the crumbling of the liberal-Left coalition, and a turn towards conservative politics and policy that favored the wealthy at the expense of the poor. The decline of this "New Deal Order" is linked, according to Gary Gerstle's The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order with the ascendancy of the Reagan administration.

Image credit: Arthur Rothstein

Image credit: Bill Ganzell
Ganzel tracked down and rephotographed several of the same subjects and shots of earlier FSA photographs. He animates several of the earlier FSA images, solving problems suggested in the photograph. The power, for instance, of Arthur Rothstein's photograph "Fleeing a Dust Storm" comes from the viewer experiencing these subjects frozen in an uncertain moment where survival seems less than inevitable. James Curtis in Mind's Eye Mind's Truth (and more recently, Errol Morris) points out that Rothstein manipulated the circumstances of this situation in order to capture a more dramatic event. When Rothstein took this image there was no rising dust storm to flee and he staged his subjects in front of a dilapidated storage shed rather than the home where they actually lived because the smaller, more rickety structure increased the seeming precariousness of the situation. Darrel Coble, the youngest child falling behind his father and brother in Rothstein's 1936 photograph, is rephotographed by Ganzel smiling and sitting safely in his home, a copy of the FSA picture framed behind him on the wall. Ganzel seems to find a way to visually alleviate the tension within the first image and, perhaps, alters the rhetorical and political impact of the earlier photograph through the rephotograph.

Image credit: page from And Their Children After Them

Michael Williamson, Dale Maharidge, Walker Evans

Williamson and Maharidge construct Children After Them with exactly the same format as Famous Men. In their layout of the images—the original above the rephotograph both on one page—Maharidge and Williamson convey a sense of the passing of time. The photograph and rephotograph of Maggie Louise Gudger shows the same woman standing before a wooden structure at two points in her life almost fifty years apart. Although this reimaging suggests that Maggie Louise is still a victim of poverty and in need of aid, this second photograph evokes a kind of stasis. It is as though she has been silently standing there all this time. Maggie Louise stares hauntingly back at the viewer with a similar expression to that in the earlier image of her as a child. The implication is that this woman is still living an uncertain life of fear and poverty. Maggie Louise certainly had her own motivations for posing for this photograph, however, Williamson's decision to portray her exactly as Evans had in the 1930s robs her of the opportunity to convey any of that agency. She simply seems trapped, stuck in the same place and socio-economic situation as fifty years earlier.

I am curious as to how we should read these rephotographs—are they jeremiads calling the audience to reinvest in the effort to end poverty or evidence of the ultimate success of New Deal reform efforts? Ganzell’s visual solutions and Williamson and Maharidge’s records of unchanging poverty suggest that the social action urged in the original image is no longer needed or was completely ineffectual. Originally intended as rhetorical tools aimed at rationalizing the reform and relief efforts of the New Deal, the FSA photographs are reduced to talismans of a distant past in these reimages. That past is present in these images from the 1980s, suggesting that it cannot and should not be forgotten. At the same time, these rephotographs remove the uncertainty in these images of the past by showing us their future.

Struggling with the Ethics of Image-making: Sontag, Arbus, Snapshots, and Portraits

Andi — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 16:21:00 +0000

Image credit: Diane Arbus

As part of the final project for our “Rhetoric of Social Documentary” class my students will be completing a brief documentary film on a local issue and so we spent this week talking about the ethics of documentary filmmaking and the discomfort many people feel in having their picture taken. We began the class with a discussion of Susan Sontag’s chapter “America, Seen Through Photographs, Darkly” from On Photography in which she considers the work of Diane Arbus and the shift in photography away from lyrical subjects toward material that is “plain, tawdry, or even vapid” (Sontag, 28). Sontag explores the artist’s decision to focuses on people she terms “victims” or “freaks” and argues that Arbus attempts to suggest a world in which we are all isolated and awkward.

One of my students seized on Sontag’s argument about Arbus’ awkward depictions of her subject and suggested that feeling awkward while having a portrait made is common to all of us but that looking awkward in a portrait is seldom the goal of the sitter. This comment led us to consider whether Arbus might be exploiting her subjects or, at the very least, seeking their least flattering image amongst many shots in a series. As a class, we discussed the photograph of the child above with respect to the issue of consent from the people we photograph. The question of consent, however, brought us to question what it might mean to depict our subjects in a manner at odds from their own desired self-presentation—we looked at the contact sheet that shows the many portraits from which Arbus might have chosen and compared these to the one she did select.

Image credit: Diane Arbus

The relationship between the intentions of the person photographed and the photographer is a sticky one for documentary filmmakers and my students grappled with how to balance the ethics of taking someone’s picture (or mercilessly editing someone’s interview—we looked at some Michael Moore footage) with the goal of making an argument about a social issue. Sontag reminds us that the camera can function as “a kind of passport that annihilates moral boundaries and social inhibitions, freeing the photographer from any responsibility toward the people photographed”—a claim that my students really struggled with in our discussion of ethical image-making.

Posing for a photographic portrait is always uncomfortable. Barthes notes the anxiety that accompanies this experience and argues that in the act of posing, before the photograph is even taken, "subjects transform [themselves] in advance into an image" (Camera Lucida, 10). As a class, we considered the differences between posed portraits and snapshots and the possibilities for accounting for the goals and preferences of our subjects. Arbus’ snapshot portraits seem as uncomfortable as her static posed compositions. There seems no guarantee that the photographic genre will protect the wishes of those photographed. In fact, in many cases of social documentary the larger argument is in direct conflict with the desired self-representation of the subjects. Tricky territory here for my students and I am looking forward to watching them craft their larger rhetorical claims while keeping in mind the ethics of image-making.

"Migrant Mother" Again and Again

Andi — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 21:04:55 +0000

Image credit: Food for the Poor, Inc.: www.foodforthepoor.org

H/T: Nhi Lieu

This week my students and I were working our way through our lesson on visual rhetoric that ends with my students working collaboratively to analyze Dorthea Lange’s “Migrant Mother” using many of the tools that our previous classes and readings have provided. Rather than supply my students with the context surrounding this image, I thought I’d see what shared cultural knowledge we had as a group and so asked them to jot down what they know already about the iconic photograph. In No Caption Needed (a book and a blog), Michael Hariman and John Louis Lucaites argue that iconic photographs circulate broadly as a vital part of public discourse in a liberal democratic society. Not surprisingly, my students were able to draw on their collective knowledge to identify most of the contextual framing I would have been able to provide in my brief introduction to the image.

Our brief exercise in identifying context, however, brought one of my students to question whether we even needed to know the specific cultural context surrounding the original image to be able to identify the pathetic appeal. My students considered the emotional appeal within the image divorced from context. They also questioned how much context one needed to know to respond to the photograph; one student arguing that the work of the image in the current moment is to simply stand in as an icon for the Great Depression.

These questions and comments connected directly to those posed by Lucaites and Hariman who consider the many instances in which the original photograph of the “icon of poverty” has been excised from its original context and altered or reproduced for contemporary purposes—as when, for instance, a recent commercial for Allstate includes the photograph and connects the economic troubles of the recent downturn to those in the ‘thirties in an attempt to sell car insurance. Within this same class, we also considered a mailer distributed by Food for the Poor, Inc. that solicits empathy and donations by drawing explicit links between the images taken by photographers working for the Farm Security Administration and more recent images of poverty that visually echo the earlier photographs. These two examples of reproduction and rephotography provided our class an excellent opportunity for discussing the relationship between context and pathos in social documentary photography.

Image credit: Food for the Poor, Inc.: www.foodforthepoor.org

Magnum Photos Collection at the Harry Ransom Research Center

Andi — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 22:19:46 +0000

Image credit: Screen shot of Magnum Photos Digital Collection

H/T: Katherine Feo and George Royer

On Tuesday, the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center announced that the Magnum collection of photographs would be catalogued, housed, and made accessible to scholars for research and to the public through exhibitions. Magnum Photos was founded in 1947 by Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson and several other photographers as one of the first photographic cooperatives. While the Magnum website hosts the “living archive” of over 500,000 images in a searchable digital library that is updated daily, the HRC will preserve and make available the nearly 200,000 original press prints including several vintage prints dating back more than 60 years. In a press release announcing the partnership between the HRC, Magnum Photos, and the new owner of the original press prints, Michael S. Dell’s private investment firm MSD Capital, Dr. Tom Staley—director of the Humanities Research Center noted, "This is a singularly valuable collection in the history of photography [that] brings together some of the finest photojournalists of the profession and spans more than a half century of contributions to the medium. We are delighted to make these remarkable materials accessible to researchers and students."

Archivists are, of course, both creators and collectors of “value” and this collection is surely a valuable addition to the HRC. One of Dr. Staley’s collecting maxim’s – “Ten percent of an archive represents ninety percent of its value” – indicates the relationship between the portion of an author’s or artist’s papers that seem the most relevant and the rest of the collection that the HRC must take along with that ten percent. (“Final Destination,” in New Yorker, D.T. Max, June 11 2007). This quote (and a conference paper written by Katherine Feo) led me to consider the other ninety percent. Simply put, these valuable collections are massive. The same New Yorker article referenced above contains several anecdotes about the size of the collections housed at the HRC. For instance, Norman Mailer’s papers contained 25,000 letters, weighed in at over 20,000 pounds, and was deposited here in Austin via a tractor trailer.

Arrival of the Magnum Collection

Image Credit: Pete English, www.utexas.edu

The arrival of the Magnum Photos collection came in two trailer trucks and the journey from New York to Austin set Mark Lubell, Magnum director, to worrying and checking the GPS tracker on the trailers every few minutes (New York Times). I have to admit, I love the thought of GPS trackers affixed to trailers full of photographs. Not that I don’t see the value in these images—this collection is one I am anxiously awaiting to explore. There is, however, something striking in the image of two trailers traveling south on I-81 loaded with one of today’s most significant photographic collections and equipped with a global positioning tracker. This mental image raised for me a constellation of questions surrounding the physicality of a photograph. Does the sheer size of this two-trailers-large archive lend even more significance to each individual photograph via its association with the collection? Does the “value” of the collection follow these physical prints to Austin or remain with the members of the cooperative who retain the rights to the images? In other words, what value do we attach to the physical print as distinct from the image? How does an archival world that is increasingly digital impact the value of actual press prints?

Archives and Associated Press

Andi — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 20:43:38 +0000

Image credit: Screen shot of APimages.com

A recent development in Shepard Fairey's ongoing legal battle with the Associated Press sent me thinking through some of the issues surrounding large private, not-for-profit, and commercial archives of stock photography and photojournalism. Last year, the AP claimed that Fairey violated copyright laws when he based his "Hope" poster for the Obama campaign on one of their photographs. Fairey countered that he was protected under fair use, but his situation suffered a setback last week when he admitted to knowingly submitting as evidence images that were different than those under consideration in the trial. While this case raises several interesting questions about the doctrine of fair use and visual allusion, I am also curious about the extent of influence the Associated Press has on our daily interactions with visual images. How does this massive news agency--with over 10 million images in its library--shape our access to and understanding of contemporary photojournalism?

Image credit: Shepard Fairey, Manny Garcia,

The Associated Press, and Myartspace.com

The Associated Press is a news cooperative comprised of several radio, television, and print sources that both contribute to and make use of material generated by staff journalists and affiliated journalists. The agency was originally founded during the Mexican American war by several New York newspapers but has since expanded in scope and size. According to their website, the Associated Press has 243 bureaus in 97 countries, distributes material to 1,700 newspapers, and has won 49 Pulitzer Prizes including 30 for photography. The agency generates over 1,000 images a day and the library houses negatives dating back over 100 years. Clearly this institution has had a long history of defining and developing our notion of photojournalism.

I had quite a bit of fun simply playing around with their search engine, typing in various combinations of terms--for instance, "war" and "women"--to gain a sense of how the AP organizes and indexes its images. The AP images archive allows "image buyers" to purchase prints for personal use or the rights to photographs for circulation. Images are organized into categories we might expect--"domestic news" and "sports"--and others that I found more surprising--"polar bears" and "faces of Obama." Without spending hours and hours culling through these collections (a prospect, I have to admit, that seems daunting and tempting), I can still begin to sense the sheer enormity of this archive and the extent to which I am at the mercy of the archivists, meaning-makers in the surfeit of visual information. Although in "The Body and the Archive" Alan Sekula wrote about the time period between 1880 and 1910, spending just a few minutes searching through the AP's digital collections today makes clear his argument that the creating of archives makes a claim on a particular vision of history with some images privileged and others others omitted or relegated to less visible spaces.

Documentary Photography and the Caption

Andi — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 20:27:45 +0000

Image Credit: Rolex Dela Pena, European Press Photo Agency

H/T: Lens, The New York Times

While scrolling through the Lens photojournalism blog this morning I came across this photograph of a the hand of a dead body partially obscured by caution tape. The photographed victim was one of over forty people killed in violence following the election on Monday in the Philippines--many of the people kidnapped and killed were lawyers, journalists, and relatives of a local politician. What struck me most about this image was its relationship to text; both within the photograph and beneath it in the caption. Across the image the photographer has captured the text of the caution tape "Police Line Do Not Cross." It seems, however, that the photographer and the viewer disregard this warning by visually transgressing past the barrier and the victim's hand disregards this warning by physically transgressing beyond the tape. It is the textual warning on the tape that contributes to a sense of action within the image--agency on the part of the victim and the intrusion on the part of the viewer/photographer.

This possibility of action dissipates when we consider the text beneath the photograph. The caption reads, "A dead body was covered in banana leaves along a hillside in Ampatuan, Maguidanao Province in the southern Philippines. The Philippines declared emergency rule and dispatched additional security forces to a southern province as the death toll in the country's worst election-related violence reached 46." Susan Sontag has argued that the caption is an attempt to fix the meaning of the image and that "only that which narrates can make us understand" (Sontag, On Photography). This caption certainly does fix the significance of the photograph--there is no agency left for this victim. The passive construction of the description, the lack of any attempt to identify the dead body strip the victim of any ability to signify on his or her own. Moreover, the quick jump to the ongoing violence fixes the significance within a national context.

Of course, this type of captioning both within and beneath the photograph is prevalent (and probably necessary) in all documentary photojournalism. Miles Orvell has considered the horrific subject matter focused on by documentary photographs as a visual tactic aimed to help us “overcome our habituation to shocking images…to make us feel the burden of our own responsibility" (Orvell, American Photography). Certainly this documentary image of the violence in the Philippines, like all documentary images, draw the viewer’s attention to a social issue with the intention of inspiring change. However, there seems little guarantee that the photographs of bodies in pain or of people in need will be little more than invitations to voyeurism. This image highlights this problem with documentary photography more intensely through the inclusion of the outstretched hand—the reaching hand suggests in some way that this subject is calling out for aid. There is, however, no assurance that looking at a documentary photograph will motivate that viewer towards political or social action. Enter the caption as the attempt to cajole that viewer into action.

The relationship between a documentary photograph, the caption, and the call to action was of particular importance to documentary photographer Dorothea Lange. Linda Gordon argues that much of Lange’s FSA photography was explicitly political and aimed at creating specific changes in agricultural policy. The difficulty of communicating an immediate social reality drove Lange to write extensive captions for her documentary images because she “wanted to fix the meanings of photographs” (Gordon, “The Photographer as Agricultural Sociologist” The Journal of American History December 2006, 717-718). The images of Lange and other FSA photographers did help to galvanize public support for the federal relief programs of the New Deal. However, simply because these images contributed to broader social change does not mean that they always did or always will communicate a social and political message. There is no guarantee that the documentary image will be interpreted as a call to political and social action no matter how extensive the caption.

Remembering War

Andi — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:35:50 +0000

Image Credit: Simon Norfolk

"Gold Beach" from The Normandy Beaches: We Are Making a New World

Last week I had wanted to post about Veterans Day and the intersections between war, photography, and memory but Emily's consideration of the images of Fort Hood sent me thinking about the representation of recent tragedies. Simon Norfolk is a landscape photographer who creates images of places in the aftermath of war and genocide. His images of the beaches at Normandy are haunting photographs that visually echo earlier works such as Robert Capa's images of landings on D-Day and yet evoke absence and suggest extreme temporal distance from the earlier atrocities by depicting ethereal empty landscapes.

Image Credit: Robert Capa

"D-Day Landings, 6-6-1944"

Robert Capa’s “D-Day” photograph of a young soldier struggling in the surf to land on Omaha Beach is one of only eleven images to survive a darkroom debacle, yet the blurred face of the soldier, the grainy, over-exposed negative, and the indistinct depiction of the landscape all contribute to the rhetoric of authenticity that documentary photo-journalism privileges. Taken from the beach as the first wave of soldiers were landing, Capa’s image is cropped so as to pushed to viewer forward into the frame without the benefit of any visible land to orient the perspective. Although not an effect intended by Capa, this unpolished hazy aesthetic and the closely-cropped frame recreate for the viewer some of the disorientation and chaos of the original experience.

Image Credit: Simon Norfolk

"Omaha Beach" from The Normandy Beaches: We Are Making a New World

Norfolk’s photograph of Omaha Beach taken more than sixty years later returns to the same location tocapture an ethereal landscape completely devoid of the chaos and grit of the earlier image. His “Omaha Beach,” taken from the same perspective as was Capa’s, still denies the viewer any sense of orienting perspective, however the effect here creates a calming sense of surrendering to the surf. The translucent grays and greens of “Gold Beach” (above) contribute to the solemn, haunting feeling Norfolk creates by holding open the shutter for an extended length of time to capture the movement of the mist and the water as it passes through the remaining battlements still present decades after D-Day. Norfolk’s intentional blurring of the water and mist hearkens back to Capa’s earlier image and yet the most striking feature of these recent photographs is the glaring absence of the body of the soldier. One way to interpret this image is as a call to the viewer to recreate the absence—to remember the war onto the empty beach. These photographs are so tranquil that the viewer senses the temporal distance between the two moments—of war and of remembrance of war—and imaginatively projects the past onto such a pristine landscape. The incongruence of the juxtaposition is harrowing.

It is worth asking of Norfolk's work whether this is the way we want to remember our wars? To construct a collection the echoes several images of the atrocity of war recast in a serene space reifies the earlier photographs as safely ensconced in the past and romanticizes that past through commemoration. Norfolk's work attempts to explore “war” and “remembrance” as though they were only nouns—passive, inert objects of history—and not actions chosen by people, enacted on others. An exhibition panel from a showing of Norfolk’s work characterized it as “more about the memory of the event than the horror of it.” Why, especially given our current situation, would we ever want to remember a war without remembering the horror?

Documenting Documenting a Tragedy

Andi — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 22:17:42 +0000

Screen capture of www.nbcdfw.com

Emily's post this past week considers the ways in which many of the images of the shooting at Fort Hood reflect a "conflicted understanding of this event as both a military and a domestic tragedy." Her insightful comments sent me searching through much of the photojournalism that surrounds this recent tragedy and I found that many of the collections of slide shows contain at least one, if not several, photographs of the media documenting the aftermath of the event. Some of these photographs show the media set against the setting sun while others focus on a key speaker surrounded and almost swallowed by a sea of cameras and microphones. While it is no surprise that, with the onslaught of the 24-hour news cycle and the need for news, the media likes to focus on the impact of the media, I wonder whether we might see these images of image-making as more than just meta?

Screen capture of www.nbcdfw.com

These photographs of the photographing emphasize what we might call the "newsworthiness" of the event. The prevalence of so many photographs of the media documenting the tragedy leads to a feedback loop in which the event is depicted as worthy of being documented simply because so many people are documenting it. This is not to suggest that the Fort Hood shootings were not a significant event nor am I intending to diminish the tragedy. Rather, I am interested in thinking through why these images of image-making appear during the documenting of a tragedy but not, for instance, within the photo-essays documenting the New York marathon or a second tour of duty in Afghanistan.

Screen capture of www.nbcdfw.com

Perhaps these photographs of the media at work are meant to allay anxiety that the media is capitalizing on a tragedy and transforming it into spectacle. I suppose, actually, that we could read these images in multiple ways: the image of the swarm of photographers suggests that the media frenzy may be building the event into a spectacle. Or, conversely, the image of the many photographers may suggest that the recent event is so significant that it requires extensive documentation. In a paper she gave at the GLASA conference on visual culture, Elisabeth Ross argued that media coverage of the recent political campaigns has tended to include images of image-making much like these documenting the Fort Hood shootings. In many ways these images make a claim to truth by laying bare their constructed nature--images of image-making show us the man behind the curtain.

Screen capture of www.nbcdfw.com

These photographs of the photographers at work document the media's role in and relation to the event but there is another trend running through these photographic slide shows. Many of the collections also privilege photographs of people holding photographs of victims of the Fort Hood shooting. While the images of image-making may suggest that this tragedy is being documented so that we will remember this one day in the future, the images of family members holding photographs may suggest the memories of an entire life lived and lost on this one day.

The First Photo Album

Andi — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 22:26:19 +0000

Photo Credit: Anthony Almeida

"The First Marriage" by Jodi Kandor, The New York Times Magazine

Last Sunday the New York Times Magazine ran an extended piece on Barack and Michelle Obama's relationship titled, "The First Marriage." The article examines the couple's negotiation of their private relationship in the public eye and considers how the presidential couple and the presidential family are expected to conform to a set of proscribed roles and the ways in which the Obamas are challenging those norms. Accompanying the article is an extended photo-essay culled from several moments since the Obamas married in 1992. The images are arrayed in chronological order--many are candid snapshots of the first family at milestone moments on "the road to the White House" and are captioned accordingly. This photo-essay that mimics the form of a family photo-album provides an opportunity for thinking through the intersections of photography and the family, of the private and public, of marriage and politics.

Both the text of this article and the images consider the public nature of a presidential relationship and the branding of the Obamas as a couple. The image on the cover of the magazine (above) suggests that the viewer has access to a behind-the-scenes look at the couple as they gaze at each other (oblivious to the viewer's gaze) and wander off stage and toward the camera after a public event. The photograph that begins the article, however, includes at its center an image of the embracing Obamas displayed on a massive television screen flanked by several large advertisements and looked upon by a large crowd. Here we have both the private voyeuristic look into their marriage that the article promises along with the recognition that this is a relationship that exists in the broader public sphere.

Today at the annual meeting of the American Studies Association I attended a panel titled "The Cool of Barack Obama" at which Nghana Lewis presented a paper considering the ways in which Barack and Michelle Obama redefine and represent black love. Lewis placed Barack and Michelle Obama within a long trajectory of representations of black heterosexual relationships arguing that the Obamas both work within and challenge cultural representations of black love. Although Lewis did not explicitly consider Jodi Kandor's recent piece in the New York Times Magazine, many of her arguments might easily extend to this First Family Photo Album. Marianne Hirsch argues that the family photo-album is a collection of choreographed and staged images that "position family members in relation to one another and to the 'familial gaze'--the conventions and ideologies through which [members] see themselves" (Hirsch, The Familial Gaze). Certainly we can see Barack, Michelle, Sasha, Malia positioned in relation to one another in ways that both uphold and undermine normative representations of the American family. How, then, does this First Family Album position us in relation to the First Family? How do these images of the First Family suggest that we should construct our own families?

"Trick or Treat, Smell my Feet..."

Andi — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:28:36 +0000

H/T: The New York Times

I found that I just couldn't resist finding some possible posting that connects to Halloween and it didn't take me long to stumble across an article in the New York Times that focuses on grade school guidelines for appropriate costumes. Apparently several elementary and secondary schools across the county are urging (or requiring) students to limit their choice of costume to selections that are not scary, not offensive, not violent. While it seems completely understandable to restrict students from wearing costumes that rely on offensive stereotypes, I wonder where these schools draw the line on what exactly is appropriate. Restricting children's costumes raises several provocative questions: is Halloween a tradition that does/should celebrate horror? Are children already exposed to too many violent images (in other words, is a zombie scarier than Grand Theft Auto)? What should be the role of the parent in policing appropriate costumes? the role of the school in policing appropriate dress?

The article includes the details of a memo circulated by Riverside Elementary School in Southern California elaborating on the parameters for costumes including "no costume should depict gangs or horror characters, or be scary" "no weapons, even fake ones" and "no fake fingernails." This memo also suggested that no costume should be demeaning with respect to race, nationality, gender, or ability. Now prohibiting fake fingernails seems less obvious to me, and I can't begin to know how exactly "scary" will be defined, but restricting costumes that are demeaning seems a no-brainer. A quick scan of the collection of children's costumes online yields many ridiculous choices.

Screen capture: HalloweenCostumes4Kids.com

The first website I looked at has an "Indian Running Bull" costume for young boys and Princess Jasmine from Disney's Aladdin for girls. These costumes certainly have the Disney-esque about them but many scholars and critics have slammed Disney for its demeaning depictions of race, ethnicity, gender. These costumes are not "scary" but I wonder whether we would really categorize them as "positive" (a costume characteristic called for by several Texas schools). Are young children remaking themselves in the image of their favorite television character any less "scary" than ghosts, goblins, or ghouls?

Several in Eight Million

Andi — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 22:49:50 +0000

Screen shot of New York Times

H/T: Becky

I recently spent a large chunk of time browsing through the collection of profiles in sound and images, "One in 8 Million" on the New York Times website. I went there in search of examples of narrated slide shows for my students who are creating their own this month for our class on social documentary. The series focuses on the "passions and problems, relationships and routines, vocations and obsessions" of New York City's "parade of people" it labels "characters" (Series Intro). The series certainly does treat its individual subjects as quirky characters worthy of being paraded and I found myself endlessly trolling through profile after profile until it seemed the subjects were all the same in their uniqueness. "One in 8 Million" allows viewers into the lives of the "Ex-Bank Robber" or the "Blind Wine Taster" and suggests that each is fascinating for its quirkiness but the ubiquity of that quirky quality acts as the great equalizer here.

Rather than close-reading one of these profiles (it was too hard to chose just one!), I began thinking about how this project functions as a collection. The interactive component of the project allows the viewer to scroll through the collected narratives, see one photograph, and hear one snippet of narration from each profile. The collection comprised of black and white photographs recalls the "Family of Man" exhibit and yet the language used to describe the project ("parade" of "characters") and the labels by which each profile is introduced ("the Sneaker Connoisseur" or "the Urban Taxidermist") seems evocative of Arbus' focus on people she depicted as social others. Despite its awkward descriptive labels and language, this project invokes an inclusiveness in its attempt to collect a broad range of individuals.

Moreover, the collection implies a kind of comprehensiveness by which each profile serves a representative function. We might not all know an obsessive shoe collector, but surely we know someone similar. Browsing this collection left me wondering about the current popularity of projects such as "One in 8 Million" or the StoryCorps project. Literary critic Susan Stewart argues "the collection presents a hermetic world. The have a representative collection is to have both the minimum and the complete number of elements necessary for an autonomous world--a world which is both full and singular, which has banished repetition and achieved authority" (Stewart, On Longing). Are these collections an attempt to appeal to a broad range of people because they represent a broad range of people? Are these collections attempts to claim an authoritative depiction by deploying a rhetoric of objectivity through sheer exhaustiveness? Why do we want to see one in eight million?

Imaging the Republican Party

Andi — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 21:13:41 +0000

Screen shot of gop.com

This past week the Republican National Committee launched its new websiteand found itself mired in technical difficulties and contending with several scathing reviews. The website features a blog by chairman Michael Steele and several links to other forms of new social media as part of the GOP's most recent attempt to revamp its image. I, however, was drawn to two different galleries of photographs featured on the website: the "Patriots: American Heroes and Famous Republicans" page which seems to tell a particular history of the party through the several black and white photographs it features and the "Republican Faces" page which features the personal photographs and testimonials uploaded by visitors to the site.

The creators of the site collected the photographs of several prominent Republicans and placed them in the gallery of "Patriots: American Heroes and Famous Republicans." These images are all in black and white--both the portraits of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass (as, of course they must be) but also the portrait of Ronald Reagan--and are arranged beneath a glittering banner proclaiming those pictured heroes and above text that emphasizes the "rich history of men and women who fought for freedom and equality."

Screen shot of gop.com

In an attempt to characterize the party as having held a long history of diversity, thirteen of the eighteen portraits feature women or people of color. Critics balked at the inclusion of a portrait of Jackie Robinson, who helped campaign for Nixon but who was also a registered independent who expressed grave misgivings about the party's policies during the Civil Rights Era and the turn toward Goldwater in 1964. I was also intrigued by the narrative photographs construct in linking the 19th century Republican party of Abe Lincoln and Hiram Revels to the party of Ronald Reagan and Dwight Eisenhower. While it is true that all of these images depict Republicans, the layout of the images suggests that these illustrious men and women were all the same type of Republican and elides the massive changes within the party over the many decades documented in this "rich history."

Visitors to the site can find their way to the gallery of heroes by clicking on the "Learn" tab but they can also end up there by clicking on a 19th century photograph of Pinckney Pinchback (state senator of Louisiana in 1871) placed within a graphic so that it appears to be a polaroid. An anachronistic choice for a page that privileges the "history" of the party and an odd choice for a website that otherwise privileges social media.

Screen shot of gop.com

That emphasis on social media includes a section in which visitors to the site can upload their personal portraits and twitter feeds. The "Republican Faces" page includes a gallery not unlike that of the "Famous Heroes" and so suggests that this diverse and democratic (small "d") collection of party members falls in line with the longer narrative of the history of the party. Moreover, the banner on the homepage features a constantly changing "face of the party" within the "O" of the GOP and the portraits there are pulled from both the historical and the contemporary galleries. Interestingly, the link on the homepage to the page of "Republican Faces" is currently centered beneath a call from Michael Steele to submit a personal photograph and a testimonial as why one is a Republican. To participate viewers select a button labelled "Take Action." While I have my misgivings about whether uploading personal photography can be a form of social action, and about the narrative of inclusion and diversity depicted on the site, I can certainly appreciate the rhetoric at work here.

Documenting a Dog Fight

Andi — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 23:27:21 +0000

Screen shot of narrated slide show, Shelter for the Scarred

featured on Washington Post website

Photographer: Carol Guzy

This past week the Supreme Court heard oral arguments considering the constitutionality of U.S. v. Stevens, a case that makes it a federal crime to make and sell visual images of animal cruelty. Although originally created by Congress to curb the market for "crush videos"--images of people in high heel shoes stomping on small animals for the purposes of titillating the viewer--the statute contains language so vague that it led the justices to propose a slew of bizarre hypotheticals ranging from the artistic value of images of force-feeding fowl for foie gras to the possibility of a pay-per-view human sacrifice channel. Now I have to admit that I am slightly shaky on all of the legal issues at stake here, but this transcript of the oral arguments certainly made for some interesting reading. Moreover, and not surprisingly, many of the questions raised within the oral arguments align with issues we often consider with respect to documentary studies and visual culture.

At several points within the discussion the justices probed the question of whether the presence of the camera, or the act of taking the picture encouraged the violent action documented. Or conversely, they considered whether classifying images of animal cruelty as unprotected free speech might dry up the market for the images and thus reduce the instances of violent conduct. Justice Scalia pressed Deputy U.S. Solicitor General Neal Katal to distinguish between the attempt to limit the activity (dog-fighting or crushing small animals) from the attempt to prevent communication about those acts (images of dog-fighting or images of small animals being crushed). Katal linked his argument to an earlier decision in New York v. Ferber in which the Supreme Court ruled that child pornography is not protected under the First Amendment. Justice Ginsburg suggested that Mr. Stevens was only filming the dog-fighting and that the fighting would occur whether or not he was present whereas the "simultaneous abuse of the child, it occurs only because the picture is being taken." She went on to urge Mr. Katal to confront that "the very taking of the picture is the offense. That is the abuse of the child" (Transcript, 25). This line of argument prompted several key questions about whether the images of animal cruelty were staged solely for the camera--a set of questions that is often posed about the ethical obligations of photo-journalists and documentary filmmakers.

For me, one of the most intriguing moments in the oral arguments, however, occurred when Justice Scalia chastised Lawyer Patricia Millet for engaging with the language of the statute that provides for exception in the case of educational, artistic, journalistic, or scientific depictions. Justice Scalia notes, "I really think you should focus not on the educational value for -- to make people hate bullfighting and things, but on quite the opposite, it seems to me. On the right under the First Amendment of people who like bullfighting , who like dog-fighting, who like cock-fighting, to present their side of -- of the debate" (Transcript, 45). One of the key components here is the multivalent nature of images of, say, dog-fighting. These images--as Ms. Millet pointed out--can be used by documentary filmmakers or by PETA activists as in the images above to argue against dog-fighting but--as Justice Scalia indicates--may also be used by advocates for the activity. In fact, because of the slippery nature of the caption, the very same images can be used to argue any number of interpretations. And they were in this instance--Mr. Stevens argued his images were historical and had value as documentary. The jury saw otherwise.

While the vague wording of the statute will probably lead to its being overturned, it also led to some fascinating moments in which the justices tested the legal limits of the language. In addition to the gripping discussion about whether the depiction of modern men and women dressed as gladiators fighting to the death would hold historical value, the court also considered the distinction between images of dog-fighting and staged images of dog-fighting. After mulling over these debates about the reality of the referent, the justices considered whether there was a difference, more generally, between images of violence and images of simulated acts of violence. This discussion continued until the question was raised whether images of violence lead to an increase in the number of incidents of violence within a community. And this point brought the court back to the consideration of whether regulating the image will restrict the act depicted and whether restricting the act depicted justifies restricting free speech.

There is more to be had within the transcript for scholars of visual studies and we'll hear more from the justices when their decision is released in a few weeks.

Images of an American Soldier

Andi — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 03:18:32 +0000

Image Credit: Craig F. Walker, The Denver Post

H/T: The New York Times

Noel’s comments this past week about the circulation of iconic images of violence and the role of affect in our reception of these images left me wondering about contemporary photojournalism and its treatment of war. In their text and blog, No Caption Needed, John Louis Lucaites and Robert Hariman have written extensively about the way iconic images, such as the photograph of General Loan executing a suspected member of the Viet Cong, circulate in public culture but what should we make of images that are less well known or that focus on the more mundane aspects of war?

Image Credit: Craig F. Walker, The Denver Post

From July of 2007 through August of 2009 photographer Craig F. Walker and journalists Kevin Simpson, Michael Riley and Bruce Finley documented the life of Ian Fisher as he enlisted in the U.S. Army, went through basic training, and served in Iraq. The series of photographs follow Fisher as he graduates from high school, says good-bye to friends and family, struggles through basic training, and serves on escort missions in Iraq. Quite a few of the photographs, however, show Fisher and other enlisted men waiting around, smoking by the side of the road, or sleeping while they wait to be deployed. The daily practice of war looks like a lot of standing around. In fact, the bulk of the action shots document Fisher's time spent in training. Moreover, the only images that capture and convey any affect focus on the emotional response of Fisher, his friends, and his family as he leaves and returns to the U.S.

This depiction of the waiting around of war seems to play off the more iconic images and cliches that have been burned into our collective memory. The photo-essay begins by focusing on Fisher's love for his country but later captions tell us of his frustration at having to dig ditches and complaints about having to pick up trash. Taken as a whole, the essay undermines many of the more traditional narratives of war--we see no transformation from boy into man. There is little focus on homosocial bonding and friendships forged through fire. Fisher's love of country slowly devolves into a lament over the tedious tasks of waging a long war.

Perhaps this portrait is able to emphasize the mundane aspects of war because the photo-journalists spent so much time with Fisher. Are these photographs simply the byproduct of extended time spent documenting Fisher's service? Or, maybe we can read this collection of images as anti-iconic. If we have become inured to the violent or iconic images, perhaps it is time to consider the daily, the dull, and the less-than-decisive-moments of war.

Exposure to Exploitation

Andi — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 16:07:25 +0000

Image Credit: Peter Davis, Hearts and Minds

This past week my students and I were considering the representation of the Vietnam war in network news coverage and in documentary films such as Peter Davis' Hearts and Minds (1974). Several of the images we considered depict bodies in pain or men, women, and children dead or dying. As we discussed the appeals to the emotions of the viewer at work in these images, the conversation gradually turned to the ethics of the photographers and filmmakers but I left the classroom wondering about the ethics of teaching these images.

My students grappled with the question of whether the filmmakers might have exploited the pain of their individual subjects in order to make a larger rhetorical point about the impact of war. We considered the possible level of involvement of the photographer or filmmaker in capturing these images of pain and death. Should the documentary filmmakers and photographers have intervened on behalf of their subjects? Should the photojournalists have denied access to media to people causing pain to themselves or others (as in the case of self-immolating monks)? Do these images fetishize the body in pain? Do these images minimize the pain of the individual in order to recast that pain within a larger ideological context? Can there be agency for these subjects?

While I am familiar with many of the ethical questions surrounding the role of the documentary filmmaker or photographer, I found myself wondering about the ethics of using these images in the classroom. I wondered whether I might be using these images for my own purposes (in this case as a pedagogical tool to help my class consider the ethics of documentary) and thereby engaging in a similar set of ethical problems. How can we teach images of trauma without also exploiting the pain of others? Can there be agency for these subjects in our consideration in the classroom?