Years ago I sold some photographs as stock photographs. I pretty much quit after my young daughter saw one of my photos in a book and pointed out that the focus of the book was contrary to my values.\u00a0 The problem was not just the lack of control I had over the way stock photographs were used.\u00a0 It was, and is, the ambiguity inherent in most photographs and the implications this ambiguity has for truthfulness.<\/p>\n
Andy Grundberg puts it like this in his 1981 essay, “The Foreign and the Fabulous:” “Photography is like language. It can be employed in the service of the sublime, the ridiculous, or the desultory; it can reveal truth or distort it.\u00a0 But despite Edward Steichen’s hortation that the goal of photography is to explain man to his fellow man, the fact is that photographs suggest much but explain very little.”\u00a0 Grundberg continues:\u00a0 “…without language, the meaning of a photograph is inherently ambiguous.”\u00a0 (Crisis of the Real: Writings on Photography Since 1974<\/em>)<\/p>\n Photographs are powerful, and visual ways of knowing and communicating are essential, especially in this age of electronic media.\u00a0 Often – as in art generally – ambiguity is a key to an image’s power: ambiguity allows us to experience images in multiple and personal ways.\u00a0 But photographs as history, as journalism, as a documentation of “reality,” often need words to ground them.\u00a0 Without this grounding they can easily be misread or misused. Furthermore, without words our understanding is likely to be superficial.<\/p>\n Documentary and journalistic photographs tend to be of people and events.\u00a0 These by themselves do not describe or explain causes or even trends.\u00a0 Some documentary photographers are trying to use their medium to explore large forces and trends such as globalization or power relationships (e.g. Dianne Hagaman, How I Learned Not To Be A Photojournalist<\/em>) but this requires not only creativity but words in various forms:\u00a0 description, interviews, analysis, even poetry.<\/p>\n Several photo books from South African illustrate this.\u00a0 Its Truth and Reconciliation Commission (often cited, rightly or wrongly, as an application of restorative justice) has been extensively covered by journalists and academics.\u00a0 One of the most nuanced and provocative treatments I have seen is photographer Jillian Edelstein’s Truth & Lies:\u00a0 Stories from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa <\/em>(2001).\u00a0 The\u00a0 jacket calls it a “collective portrait” of a country going through an extraordinary transition from apartheid and violence.<\/p>\n The photographs themselves are varied and powerful.\u00a0 The majority are portraits; in a few, perpetrator and victim pose together.\u00a0 Some – like the portrait of death squad leader Dirk Coetzee with his gun, or Mrs. Seipel with the man who killed her son Stompie – are astonishing.\u00a0 Other photographs document historic and symbolic places or objects.\u00a0 While the portraits helps us to connect with the real people involved – perpetrators, victims, key historic figures such as Mandela and Tutu\u00a0 – what makes this work so rich is its grounding in words:\u00a0 interviews, descriptions, an essay by Truth Commissioner Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela (whose book A Human Being Died That Night<\/em> is a “must-read.”). They provide a more specific and much deeper understanding than would be possible with the photographs alone.<\/p>\n Although Truth & Lies<\/em> does not purport to provide a deep analysis or comprehensive picture of the TRC, the view it offers is multi-layered and nuanced, reflecting the many paradoxes and ambiguities of this story.<\/p>\n A more recent book (2004) by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin gives a glimpse into the complexity of the new South Africa. It is less ambitious than Edelstein’s, consisting of\u00a0 color portraits of a variety of people along with their words or stories.\u00a0 Mr. Mkhize’s portrait & other stories from the new South Africa<\/em> opens with these words:\u00a0 “Mr. Mkhize has been photographed twice before in his life.\u00a0 The first was for his Pass Book, which allowed the apartheid government to control his movement.\u00a0 The second was for his Identity Book, which allowed him to vote in the first democratice elections in 1994.\u00a0 Ten years later, we took his picture for no official reason.” Without words, this would be just another book of interesting faces.<\/p>\n David Goldblatt has been photographing in South Africa for over 50 years.\u00a0 His 2005 photo book Intersections<\/em> also has a documentary element but is framed more explicitly as a work of art than the two books mentioned above.\u00a0 It contains large, carefully-composed images, often of places but sometimes of people.\u00a0 The photos are expected to stand pretty much alone, however.\u00a0 There are extended descriptive captions but they are in the back of the book and easily overlooked.\u00a0 The essays in the book include an interview with the photographer and two essays about him and his work.\u00a0 I like the book and have it in my collection but it does not tell me as much about South Africa as did some of his earlier work exploring the nature of apartheid. (See, for example, his classic Some Afrikaners Photographed<\/em> in its new edition, Some Afrikaners Revised<\/em>.)<\/p>\n None of this is to say that photographs cannot stand on their own.\u00a0 Many can, and should, but it depends on our intent.\u00a0 If our goal is to help the viewer confront and understand historical reality, we may need to add words.<\/p>\n (Note:\u00a0 See my January 30, 2010 entry for “Part I”)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Years ago I sold some photographs as stock photographs. I pretty much quit after my young daughter saw one of my photos in a book and pointed out that the focus of the book was contrary to my values.\u00a0 The problem was not just the lack of control I had over the way stock photographs....<\/p>