lovehistory.net

Points if you can see the person.

I truly loved the Errol Morris article that we read for class today. I remember last semester in CLIO I discussing how schools don’t really teach visual literacy – I know I didn’t begin learning how to read visual sources until I entered college, and then only in certain courses. These articles are deep visual literacy – Morris and his interviewees not only read the images as presented but investigate the history of the creation of the images and the changing meaning/uses/understanding of the images over time. This approach is deeply historical and should go far to prove that images are valid historical sources. And, just like any print source, they are biased, their creation is complicated and perhaps unknowable, and their legacies are unique, changing, and completely their own. Even their creators lose control over them.

Reading the article I initially had to laugh because my first reaction was, “Have these people ever known a photographer?” Anyone who’s ever known or been a photographer knows what a strange business making images is (and what quirky and dedicated people it attracts to do it well). The camera is an extension of the eye, and therefore it comes with all its same limitations and biases. I do a lot of nature photography, which initially to me seemed a pretty objective subject. But I also remember the day that I realized in order to take a good picture you don’t look through the camera and photograph what you see, you have to see the shot first, then look through the camera and try to recreate it that way. This in and of itself is a manipulation. What about that stretch of coastline do I want to capture? How to you manipulate the framing of the image, the focus, to convey that meaning? Should I include the little purple flower in the shot, or does leaving it in the frame add a bit too much life? Including it or not means moving the lens an inch, but its a different photograph either way. But I’m not manipulating the scenery. What if I include it in the shot but crop it out in post? What if? What if? Which picture is the “real” one?

In my own photography I found I liked desolation – huge sweeping landscapes dominated by overwhelming natural features, devoid of people. Most of my photography looks this way, but I was photographing at national parks, often crowded ones, though you’d never know it from the images I shot. The Pacific Ocean made me feel small, so I wanted my photographs of it to do the same – when people appear it’s one lone person photographed from a far distance to emphasize the isolation.

North Shore at The Great Beach, Point Reyes National Seashore, Point Reyes, CA. This image has been altered.

And that brings me to the issue of test shots. Dr. Petrik said it last class – don’t keep 500 pictures of seals when you only have 8 good ones. It’s so easy, especially now, to take a million pictures and pull out the 3 the hit capture that you wanted. The idea of a man moving around a skull a bit and playing with light and exposure doesn’t bother me. Because that’s what photographers so. I’m an amateur, but my friends who are professionals, dear god it can be tedious to be around them even when they’re not shooting in a studio. They’re not working for the FSA, but they’re mind’s eyes is equally active trying to document the world around them. A photograph is a memory of “physical reality,” but it’s also a memory of a mood.

At the end of the day “getting to the bottom of it” can become just as muddy as with any other source. Photographs are not objective representations of the truth, just as print is not. But this difficulty does not disqualify visual sources. Instead, it makes them deeper, richer, because as we explore their meaning, their construction, the change in that meaning over time, the way we remember them, we learn even more about history. Every step of the way teaches us something. We just have to learn to do the leg work.

<strong>I commented on Margaret’s blog this week.</strong>