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"The map is not the territory." Korzybski
THE PHOTOGRAPH:
The photograph is our most direct representation of what we see, a record of our perception. also a very evocative form of art, stirring emotion and association of ideas. Consider:
• A photograph is not reality. It is a two dimensional representation made possible through technology. We learn to "read" photographs.
• What is selected to be photographed? What is in the frame: what slice of space, what frozen moment of time? Why this and not something else?
• What is emphasized within the framed shot, and how? lighting? centring? colour? focus?
• What devices have been used to communicate a particular version of the scene represented? what lens? what enhancement in printing? what touch-ups in printing? what computer modifications to the image?
• In what context is the photo used? Is what it communicates affected by placement with other images, or language?
What purpose is being served, and by whom? How effective is the photo for its purpose? At what point does personal subjectivity become manipulative bias? To what extent can a photograph be judged "true" or "false"?
How do photographs contribute to what we know in many areas of knowledge?
How do they affect how we perceive future scenes? How do they affect how we interact with other people and the world?
Below are some excerpts from Susan Sontag, On Photography. (Anchor Books, Doubleday) Toronto, 1989. This is a very good introduction to
In teaching us a new visual code, photographs alter and enlarge our notions of what is worth looking at and what we have a right to observe. They are a grammar and, even more importantly, an ethics of seeing. Finally, the most grandiose result of the photographic enterprise is to give us the sense that we can hold the whole world in our heads – as an anthology of images. 3
A new sense of the notion of information has been constructed around the photographic image. The photograph is a thin slice of space as well as time. In a world ruled by photographic images, all borders ("framing") seem arbitrary. Anything can be separated, can be made discontinuous, from anything else: all that is necessary is to frame the subject differently. (Conversely, anything can be made adjacent to anything else.) Photography reinforces a nominalist view of social reality as consisting of small units of an apparently infinite number – as the number of photographs that could be taken of anything is unlimited. Through photographs, the world becomes a series of unrelated, freestanding particles; and history, past and present, a set of anecdotes and faits divers. The camera makes reality atomic, manageable, and opaque. It is a view of the world which denies interconnectedness, continuity, but which confers on each moment the character of a mystery. Any photograph has multiple meanings; indeed, to see something in the form of a photograph is to encounter a potential object of fascination. The ultimate wisdom of the photographic image is to say: "There is the surface. Now think – or rather feel, inuit – what is behind it, what the reality must be like if it looks this way." Photographs, which can not themselves explain anything, are an inexhaustible invitation to deduction, speculation, and fantasy. 23
. . . photography developed in tandem with one of the most characteristic of modern activities: tourism. For the first time in history, large numbers of people regularly travel out of their habitual environment for short periods of time. it seems positively unnatural to travel for pleasure without taking a camera along. Photographs will offer indisputable evidence that the trip was made, that the program was carried out, that fun was had. Photographs document sequences of consumption carried on outside the view of family, friends, neighbors. . . 9 A way of certifying experience, taking photographs is also a way of refusing it – by limiting experience to a search for the photogenic, by converting experience into an image, a souvenir. 9
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Should I believe it?: A Guide to Evaluation
bias and manipulation of language
bias and manipulation of photographs
bias and manipulation of statistics
bias and manipulation of maps
logical fallacies