It's open season on photojournalism these days, and critics are having a field day destroying the integrity of a profession grounded in truth-telling and ethical behavior.
No matter the degree of the infraction, photojournalism, and by association, mass media, is feeling the heat.
Jim Lewis’ scathing critique of photojournalism in Slate.com holds newsgathering organizations to task for the recent spate of problems -- problems ranging from digital manipulation to the staging of news pictures.
It’s not that these issues have never existed before, but the frequency of the transgressions have placed a profession, photojournalism, under great scrutiny.
The problem with Lewis’ self-indulgent photobash is that he spends a lot of time repeating what others have been saying for some time now. His language is vindictive, which may lead a lot of photojournalists to flat out dismiss his arguments.
Nevertheless, it is worth spending a little time reflecting on some of Lewis’ ideas.
Lewis notes:
It’s beginning to look as if every major institution that prints photos has printed doctored or manipulated photos: Time and Newsweek, the New York Times and USA Today, Harvard University and Science magazine, and the 2004 Bush campaign…. all of them undermine the public's trust in the reality of photographs. And so much the better, because that trust is badly misplaced.
What, after all, do we believe when we believe that a photograph is true?
Susan Sontag, in Regarding the Pain of Others, examines the question: “Who are the ‘WE’” at which pictures are aimed.
This is what comes to mind when Lewis frames the "we" perspective in his analysis.
When it comes to looking at pictures depicting the suffering and pain of others, Sontag reminds us, the “WE” should never be taken for granted (p.7).
There seems to be no denying that the notion of a collective “WE” has changed from the days of our fathers, grandfathers, and forefathers.
For many, the idea of a united “WE” seems inextricably bound to the creation of an US and a THEM. The photographs and words seen and read in newspapers and magazines reaffirm a “WE” that attempts to create the illusion of consensus (Sontag, p.6).
What appears so bothersome to many observers about the recent photo manipulation of burning buildings in Beirut is that manufacture of the “WE” was so poorly executed.
Why did the photographer feel compelled to make the damage appear worse than it was?
Perhaps the photographer, Adnan Hajj, believed that making the damage appear worse is what his patrons (be it Reuters or Hezbollah) wanted the viewers to see? This is the imaginary "WE" that operates in the background of human consciousness.
Hajj’s manipulations are failed attempts at constructing a societal “WE”. He just did it really poorly.
The pictures were manipulated to emphasize the US against THEM commonsense viewpoint. The pictures are meant to agitate and solicit empathy, but they are also reiterate mythology (David and Goliath), or peddle an underdog ideology.
Hajj’s picture threatened to pull the curtain back on the ways people perceive the conflict just like TOTO in exposing the all-too-humanness of the less than all-powerful Wizard of Oz.
Bloggers, just like little TOTO, pulled the curtain back on the vulnerability of constructing and peddling one particular truth about the conflict.
In the political endgames that come with all war, any visual truth must be suspect, be it by the photographer or a government with an ideology to sell.
The camera may mimic reality but it is the photographer and the viewer that must negotiate the truth that emerges.
The “WE” that is constructed as an image of this war is but part of a larger pretense – something that goads the audience to believe in one view of the experience -- one perspective of reality -- one carefully crafted truth.
Lewis’ question – “What, after all, do we believe when we believe that a photograph is true?”
Lewis’ question is a taunt -- a wordsmith's turn of a phrase.
Ultimately, there is no such animal as a photographic truth.
Horrible things happen in the world everyday and there are photographers who record them, but the truth is only believable if we use to make it so.