Comments on: Tod Papageorge and the ‘truth’ of photography

By: J M

J M — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 10:45:17 +0000

A good example of this delusion can be found in contrasting the contradictions between Barthe’s Death of the Author, were he concludes that there cannot be an ultimate reading of an authors work, and yet in his analysis of the photo of his mother in Camera Lucida he concludes that there is a subjective emotive reality in his personal relationship described in the image of his mother. This is as if to say that a photograph is some how truer than a written description. How can it be so?

By: J M

J M — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 10:06:04 +0000

Recently I showed my portfolio of photographs taken of everday life (without disturbing it) to an eminent french art historian, and I came up against these very same absurdly misunderstood preconceptions of the photograph as truth. Sadly many cannot yet come to terms with the fact that a photograph is just a picture and nothing more, just like the Pope when he is blessing a photo held out to him. Nothing is more deceptive than ‘belief’, photography is another form of mark making. The literal translation of the Japanese for photograph (i.e light drawing), is the oxymoron of ‘truth copy’ (i.e shashin) which highlights the paradox at the heart of the medium. If photography is free to express itself then society is also free to express itself. Only 150 years ago european’s were hanging writers publicly for transgressing the morals of the day, and as ‘the pictures generation’ (see spiritual america) proved morals are as transient as fashions in hats.

By: Benjamin Ball

Benjamin Ball — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 05:29:37 +0000

I’ve always thought of documentary photography as poetry. A nuanced image sings of possibility. It is succinct, but profound. This is surely why documentary photography has for so long succeeded as a form of communication.
But what is communicated? The poem is the form, not the message itself, and it surely has repercussions for the world from which it is extracted. I don’t think Sontag’s arguments and concerns about photography can be so lightly dismissed, or reduced to such simple terms. Photographs, like poems, are read, and the photographer has the privileged position of composing what is read. A poem is not expected to deliver truth in its entirety, nor an exact truth, but like photography it has the potential to communicate something true of the world and of ourselves. Something that resonates. Photography can communicate truth, especially when poetic. It needn’t be set up as a dialectic.

By: Sean

Sean — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 01:48:31 +0000

Notions of indexicality are complex, and contested – as the recent publication Photography Theory (ed :Elkins, James. 2007) highlights again and again. Indeed, many of the comments within the book – in response to the published round table discussion in an earlier section – bemoan this exclusive focus. And then there are many comments both for and against the indexicality of the photographic image.

What come out forcefully in reference to these discussions is striking a balance between discussing the photograph as a specific image type, and its relation within a broader community of images.

On first reading Tod Papergeorge’s quotes above, it seems that he rails against the indexicality of the photograph, its ability to testify, to witness (similar to Joel Snyder). However, after reading these again it might be that, rather than adopting such an emphatic view, he too adopts one that acknowledges the photographs inclusion within a wider community of images.

One additional point, however, is that (from the quotes above) the everyday use of the photographic image is not taken into account – which is to reference the photographs relation to the photographed. Holiday snaps are not theorized to such degrees!

By: Carlos Cazalis

Carlos Cazalis — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 07:43:42 +0000

I have to say that this diatribe on what photography is supposed to be and what label it needs to carry in order to be identified or polished and then classified is really destructive to the medium. Documentary, photojournalism, war photography, art or fashion photography is all the same, they are documents, visual images of what each person with a camera lives, experience or wishes to frame for us to see. What is further done with the compilation of images or image and set on stage by a curator, the photographer, the artist or and then an editor is simply the use of photography to make a cognitive human point. Poetry? Well, why the hell not, because our views are ever so subjective as humans that who are we to be so judiciary in our choices to determine and tell another what one thing that we are both looking at is?

Let photography be photography and let’s allow us to use it to communicate what we deem emotionally, culturally, socially and of course even politically important to our history. Ah history now that is a document worth playing with.