The photograph exists in the world as a real object.
The idea that we can hold on to experiences through the fixing of a moment in time as a photograph is compelling. The act of making images is ritualized by patterns of behaviors.
The social functions of a photograph are diverse and numerous. The social function of the photograph performs a variety of personal and social needs including the need, to inform, evident, validate, entertain, criticize, report, illuminate, or instruct.
Photography can become a ritualized activity because many of the processes that go into the making of a picture appear automatic and second nature.
At the same time, we shouldn't confuse how the term ritual as primarily been connected to religious ceremony. In this context, we are extending the original ideas about ritual to extend to daily life.
Ever since the Kodak One camera in the late 1800s, the visual behavior associated with making images have become part of every day life – with one hand we reach for a Kleenex to wipe the tears from our eyes, while with the other hand we reach for a camera to record the moment. There is no denying the emotional associations that move us to document moments in time.
For Catherine Bell (1992), A ritual may be “described as particularly thoughtless action -- routinized, habitual, obsessive, or mimetic-and therefore the purely formal, secondary, and mere physical expression of logically prior ideas.” In photography, ritual refers primarily to those activities that become embedded in all stages of the picture making process including, pre-visualization, interaction with subjects, composition, technical considerations, image capture, and post-production.
Thinking of photography as an activity guided by embedded ritual -- the interaction between photographer and subject, pose, gesture, shot, another pose, another shot, edit, presentation – all suggests patterns of behavior that govern expectations and obligations in the process.
Photographic ritual create conditions of knowing and being.
All of the expectations and obligations associated with the making of a picture illustrate the ritualized nature of photography.
When I make a picture, I expect it to come out, be of reasonably high quality, capture a moment that is meaningful to me, and represent what I am looking at accurately. Therefore, there are certain routines I engage in to make sure that my expectations are met.
In terms of obligation, most of what I feel toward my subject comes through the picture I make. I feel obligated to make a picture that the subject will be happy with (this is in a personal context, not necessarily in a photojournalistic context). I feel obligated to build a rapport with the person I am photographing that honors the individual when possible.