Dennis Dunleavy

Journalistic ethics still matter even in a corporate media culture

Sometimes there needs to be a distinction between what people believe to be an ethical decision and a matter of taste. There are lots of disturbing images that may be distasteful to some, but not unethical to run in a newspaper or online. Cultural values and taste, not ethics, increasingly play a significant role in the decisions being made today about what picture see the light of day.

There is a tremendous amount of self-censorship going on in the news today. Many papers will not run disturbing images, not because they are afraid to tell the truth, but simply because of the push-back they get from advertisers and the public.

More than 70 percent of Americans feel they no longer can trust the news they get; and, they can't trust the pictures they see either. Reaction to this reality from editors is to be extremely cautious about running anything that might offend someone, especially advertisers.  It wasn't always this way. Editors have been pushed into a corner in terms of how decisions to run controversial images are handled. I imagine that even a "corporate suit" or lawyer may be consulted before a picture is used today.

The impact of poorly made decisions -- ethical ones --  comes down to perception. The currency of journalism has to be believability, creditability and legitimacy. Without creditability the line between what you see in the National Enquirer and what you see in the New York Times is blurred. If you can't believe what you see in the New York Times, why believe anything at all?

One really good example of ethical principle related to the positioning and placement of graphic images is how newspapers around the world handled a graphic picture of the 2004  Madrid bombing.

What I really like about this example iof ethical-decision making is how so many  newspapers came up with different choices in terms of how to display the image. In some papers you can clearly see a severed limb. Is this unethical? Who is to say what "ought to be" here? What is right and what is wrong about displaying the picture as a moment of truth. This is the reality -- 192 people were killed on the train and bodies were blown to pieces.  In other images, editors decided to make radical crops to avoid showing the limb. The editors were probably using the old "breakfast test" here -- a logic that believes that nothing put the front page should make people lose their breakfast over. Is the crop unethical in the sense that they are hiding the bloody truth from readers?

We could look at this from any number of ethical perspectives, including what's in the best interest of the public, what is in the best interest of the advertisers, what is in the best interest of the publishers, or what is in the best interest of the victims of the bombing.  Where do our loyalties lie in running such a disturbing image? What are the consequences of running it? Is it right or wrong to run such a picture? Clearly, all these editors had differing opinions on this issue and we can see them for ourselves here.  

In others cases, editors chose have the image altered or deleted from the frame. To falsify an image by removing an element is, by all photojournalistic standards, unethical. It is unethical because it is a deception. The strange thing about this type of logic is that even though the paper is lying to its readers, it still expects to be believed as a creditable source of information. The editors might argue how the bloody limb does not really contribute all that much to the story, or they might say they were afraid to offend readers. Even if the limb was not deleted from the scene, some editor opted to darken the limb in order to make it blend in with the background. With headlines reading "Massacre" and "Platform of Death," this type of manipulation makes the display almost ironic. Is toning an image to make it more acceptable unethical? Some editors would say it is. In 2003,  Patrick Schneider  of the Charlotte Observer was fired over manipulating the color in some of his award-winning pictures. It appears, then, that tolerance for any type of manipulation has become more rigid in this digital age.

Are there any clear guidelines for editors in these situations? How should newspapers and Web sites deal with graphic images -- images that might offend viewers?  Making ethical decisions in journalism is a critical responsibility of the press. The public deserves a press that is consistently honest and ethically principled. Having an on-call citizenship committee of peers and the public to help editors decide what people might perceive as right or wrong about using a disturbing image is a good idea. Some publications do have such committees to call upon.  Further, communicating with the public about the ethics of using such images is also an important issue. Journalists need to educate the public about their responsibilities as eye-witnesses to acts of great compassion as well as acts of terrible injustice. Today, much of the corporate/consolidated media, however, avoids such accountability when. Therefore, it is no wonder the public has lost confidence in the press when it comes down to making decisions that require insight, empathy, and ethical reasoning.

The art of deception: Pictures can lie, but people lie a lot more

Photo Credits: (missiles) Sepah News photo via Agence France-Presse/NY Times, (Powell)  The Associated Press

Lying is a moral choice people make. Individuals lie. Governments lie -- some lie more than others. The truth is, lying is a fact of life.

Ethicist Sissela Bok puts it this way, "Deception and violence -- these are the two forms of deliberate assault on human beings" (Lying: Moral choice in public and private life, 1978, New York: Vintage, p. 19).

In this age of photo ops and digital photographic manipulation, the "deliberate assault" on human beings appears unremitting. Deception leads to violence against humanity. In fact, when was the last time a lie got us out of a war? This article compares two forms of deception used by individuals and government to shape public opinion – the digitally altered image and the photo op.  

Who can forget one of the first major digital deceptions -- the 1992 OJ Simpson mug shot on the cover of Time magazine?

Despite the uproar caused by the darkening of Simpson's skin, the manipulation appeared an anomaly -- a fluke produced by an artist who decided to take creative license with a mug shot.

In a 2006 survey I conducted to help clarify what professionals consider to photo manipulation, I used three different definitions and asked respondents to agree or disagree.

When questioned, “I define photo digital manipulation as changes to the content of a picture after it is made through electronic means,” nearly 90 percent of respondents agree with the statement. 

In a similar way, when asked, “I define photo digital manipulation as a process that changes the content of a picture by adding or removing visual elements from the original,” again, the majority agrees with the definition.

However when asked, “I define photo digital manipulation as a process that helps to make the picture better aesthetically,” responses greatly varied.

In this case, 10 percent strongly agree, while 27 percent agree. The remaining 62 percent remain either neutral on the definition or disagree with the statement. As one respondent suggests, “This is a small part of photo digital manipulation, not necessarily THE definition. I would guess this is where the amateur checks in--cleaning up redeye or other little messy details that are easily fixed in this digital world.”

At the same time, when presented the definition, “I define photo digital manipulation as a process that helps to make the objects in the picture more visually interesting,” a majority affirmed the statement.

This raises an issue of semantics, since making “the picture better aesthetically” and making “the picture more visually interesting” seem, at least to me, fairly closely related. In fact, one participant asks, “Can we define the difference 'manipulation' vs. 'image enhancement/post-processing' (tone, color, contrast, brightness, etc.).

Perhaps this is where the line begins to be drawn for many people. For decades, post-production processes have accepted the enhancement through dodging and burning, yet today event long-standing antecedent practices appear to be under the magnifying glass.

Recently, major news outlets around the world, including The New York Times, The Los Angles Times, and the Chicago Tribune, used a photograph of an Iranian missile launch. The photograph turned out to be digitally altered. Headlines accompanying the picture showing four long-range missiles coming off pads were written, true to form, to both seduce as well as edify readers.

The logic here is that if big media buys into a lie, then the public will follow. Not so, thanks to an intrepid army of bombastic bloggers ready to pounce on the slightest journalistic misstep, the truth was revealed. The Iranian government's official news agency manipulated the image. Stop the presses. Why should surprise anyone that Iran would use deception in its current high stakes game of threats against the West?

Pictures, after all, have been used to provoke conflicts for a very long time. In 1897, media baron William Randolph Hearst allegedly told his artist in Cuba, Frederick Remington, who was apparently bored with his assignment for lack of action, "You furnish the pictures, I'll furnish the war." Even though Hearst disputed the quote, there is something prescient in the statement. History tells us that Hearst made a moral choice to provoke a conflict with Spain. After the sinking of the U.S.S. Maine, Hearst's newspaper and others fabricated stories about Spanish atrocities against civilians in Cuba and Puerto to force intervention. Hearst's moral choice to lie was motivated mostly by blind ambition. Hearst needed to build up his media empire. What better way to build a news business than by inventing a war?  However, Iran's motivation to manipulate images of its defense system is purely rhetorical -- a way of flipping off the United States after all the chest thumping it has been getting from the White House. The picture is a rhetorical act because it traffics in persuasion and ideology. Lying is a mind game. In game theory, credibility and veracity are cornerstones of influencing an opponent's choices. Bloggers, anxious to make a little news of their own, called Iran's digital bluff, but the game is far from over. In fronting Iran's play, bloggers may have actually escalated tensions between the countries and forced us closer to war.

Different kinds of Deception

While digital photo manipulation is an explicit lie, there are other forms of deception that are far more insidious.

These lies, as illustrated in the photo op pictured above, are more ambiguous and at times even more deceitful.  When former Secretary of State Colin Powell held up a vial containing a model of anthrax during it was to convince the world that Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction presented a clear and present danger. The vial was a prop used to signify peril and that if the U.S. failed to rid the world of Hussein we could only imagine the worse possible scenario. Powell's visual cues were supported by statements such as "My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence" and "there can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more." Although the U.N. Security Council didn't buy Powell's rhetoric, the U.S. press did.  Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan notes the White House press corps were "complicit enablers" in the buildup to the war in Iraq. Much of the media at the time were eager to have "good" visuals to accompany White House rhetoric and Powell's waving of the pseudo biological weapon worked like a charm. The picture appeared on the pages of most U.S. newspapers and magazines and helped to sell the war to the American public.

While Iran's digital altered missile image was an explicit lie, Powell's pretentious viral rattling theatrics, however, was a more insidious form of deception. The moral choices made at this level are more ambiguous and implicit. Moreover, it is harder to detect the lies when they are presented as "official" news. When political strategists try to spin messages they rely heavily on educated guesses about what they can get away with selling to the American public.

The press often appear to unabashedly play by the rules of the game, and the political image-makers own the rule book. Therefore, much of what we see has been managed to provide predictable responses. Powell's visit to the U.N. was a pseudo-event far more interested in winning hearts and minds than it was about telling the truth.

Staged pseudo-events are part of our political culture and rarely called into question by the public. But there also appears to be greater tolerance for verbal shock and awe over pseudo-events that use physically altered images. Robert Warren explains Daniel Boorstin's theory of the pseudo-event as "a manufactured happening that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy through media exposure."

Stirring up public fear through the influence of government propaganda as played out in the press, be it by Iran or the U.S., continues to deliberately assault human beings around the world through deceit and violence.

Despite overly self-absorbed and obsessed with smoking guns theory bloggers are acting as change agents in this country. Bloggers challenge journalists to live up their implicit promise to “afflict the powerful and comfort the afflicted.” Moreover, bloggers are setting the tone for more engaged and visually sophisticated audiences. Bloggers are now beginning to speak truth to power by calling into question the deceptive practices committed by institutions of authority in this country.

Play by play: The social function of news images

Photo Credit: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

Pictures have weight -- sometimes they crush. The social function of news images reside not only
in their capacity to inform, but also in their ability to entertain. In our increasingly visual culture, pictures must draw and hold the viewer's attention.  Perhaps it is for this reason that editors believe pictures must be packaged and repackaged for us.

The social function of news images is grounded in the rhetoric of persuasion. Just as a lawyer may seek to sway a jury to his or her side of an argument, a picture, through its variety of visual cues, establishes a context of understanding that shapes perception and constructs a sense of reality.

The analysis:

"Mr. Clemens" -- the subject -- the sign -- in soft-focus foregrounding leads the eye upward to a carefully framed center of Mr. Clemens. 

Pictures, as David Fleming (1996)  eloquently contends, cannot be in and of themselves seen as arguments, but inevitably they seem to be able to cause a few.

The pictures freezes, frames and fixes in our memory a moment in time that can conjure up other memories. With the stoppage of time the persuasive determinacy of the picture emerges. Pictures may be a species of rhetoric, as Susan Sontag (2003) claims, for the very real sense that they appear before us as rational and orderly entities of time.

In this case, Clemens' testimony before Congress on steroid use may bring to mind other high-profile hearings such as in Iran-Contra with Oliver North or Anita Hill during Clarence Thomas'  appointment to the Supreme Court.  The low camera angle is iconic in that it produces  a recognizable perception in which the subject is made to appear larger-than-life.

The camera angle is not trivial or a trick since it modifies our sense of a normal eye-line match. In other words, speaking in terms of grammar, the camera angle acts like an adverb -- it modifies the subject.  Further, the sign, in this case, "Mr. Clemens,"  is indexical and points toward formality, courtesy and solemnity. The gesture is wholly symbolic. Clemens' look away from those questioning him, his raised hand suggesting defense.  In addition, the essential framing of Clemens with his pseudo-archangelic lawyers. The gestures of  Clemens' lawyers speak  louder than words. Here we have the million-dollar pitcher in the proverbial "hot seat" and is million-dollar lawyers act as his intellectual bodyguards.

As mentioned earlier, news images function to both inform and entertain, but the real objective of making pictures is to make us think. Any object in the world, and pictures are objects, that can make us think about bigger ideas and issues can't be all that bad.  We shouldn't have to settle for someone else's interpretation of the world if what is represented only serves to reinforce a status quo. The ultimate objective of a news image should not only be to serve us a preconceived packaged reality, but to wrestle with convention and conscience.

The evidence:

Recently, this point was brought home on the Magnum photo site when Christopher Anderson's bare-bulb approach to photographing presidential candidate Mitt Romney came under fire from some viewers.  Anderson's approach was the "anti-photo op." Tired of making the same stale and banal images that most of the press pack gets of the candidates, Anderson blasted Romney through what appears to be a rain-splattered lens.


Click to go to Magnum's Picture of the Week

In his defense Anderson commented:

These events are rather ridiculous. they are staged and repetitive....It was a conscious decision to flash with this technique. It is as if throwing too much light on it might somehow expose these campaign photo ops for what the really are. The designers of these events want us to make a pretty picture. but a pretty picture to me felt like something that would be false to this event. I almost thought of the flash as being like an xray that would reveal what I really see at an event like this.

Anderson brings up one of the biggest challenges faces photojournalism today -- mediocrity. If news images do not seek to edify they run risk of becoming nothing more than someone else's spin. What we are tasked with here is to understand the relationship between the art of making news pictures and the larger implications of how these pictures function in society.

Picturing the emotional candidate

An inordinate amount of attention is being paid to Hillary Clinton's emotions these days as people search for ways to separate her and her Democratic contender, Barack Obama.

Headlines recounting Clinton's emotions such as,  "For Crying Out Load: Hillary Turns on the Tears Again", "Hillary's Crying Campaign: The Tears of a Clown" and "Hillary Clinton's Crocodile Tears," signify how gender bias impinges on this year's presidential campaign, at least on the Democratic side. Pictures showing Clinton wiping her eyes or attempting to control her emotions in front of the cameras continues to set off a media frenzy, with bloggers leading the way. 

Where is the substantive news value in repeatedly running pictures of the candidate rubbing her eyes or blowing her nose?  Are we to assume that an individual would not make a good president if they cannot control their emotions publicly?

It is difficult to say conclusively that coverage focusing on Clinton's emotional displays is having a negative impact on her chances to become the next president, but in a world that remains dominated mostly by men, it doesn't seem to be helping her all that much.

Photo Credit: Getty Images

Anthropologist Catherine Lutz notes that emotions are culturally constructed as signs of danger, irrationality, and weakness – characteristics commonly associated with women. Please note the term "culturally constructed" because this is where many of our interpretations come from.

When a picture captures the viewer’s attention, it puts into play cultural beliefs and values associated with gendered emotional displays. Some right wing media have jumped on Clinton for her emotional moments claiming that she is using tears to garner sympathy and votes.   New York magazine, for example, began an article about Clinton with the lead, "Yep, it's official. Hillary Clinton is running to be Crybaby-in-Chief," and The New York Post, not known to be overly kind to liberals, began their reportage with "It was another two-hanky day on the campaign trail yesterday, as Hillary Rodham Clinton teared up at an event targeting female voters on the eve of the Super Tuesday." elections."

Robinson (2002) suggests, “Most work on gender and emotion has stressed how a gendered rhetoric of emotional control reinforces women’s subordination within societies that privilege rationality, self-control, and the stable boundaries between interiority and exteriority that emotions appear to breach.” 

This may help explain how some media have turned on Clinton's outward expressions of emotion as a sign of weakness.  But, research describes emotion not only in terms of the physiological changes of an inner-self, but also as social, cultural and linguistic operator (see Catherine Lutz's research).

The two images shown here exemplify the antithesis of the “boys don’t cry” stoicism of the American male experience -- a domain which Clinton threatens to disrupt if she were to become president. The photographs suggest a turn away from American middle-class "emotional culture" promulgated by the belief that men, not women, are obligated to control emotions for the greater good of the country.

Cultural morays and beliefs are inextricably bound to emotion.  As Catherine Lutz argues, “Western discourse on emotions constitutes them as paradoxical entities that are both a sign of weakness and a powerful force.”  To show emotions makes the person experiencing feelings weaker or deficient in character.

Hillary Clinton is not only running for president  this year, she is challenging a male dominated paradigm which preconditions public performance and cultural outlook. Tears, in this case, threaten the stability of this paradigm because we believe that emotion is irrational and unstable. Could it be that the recesses of Hillary Clinton's inner life, through the pictures we see of her, undermine her opportunity to become our commander and chief.  Perhaps, in the end, America is not mature enough to handle an emotional presidency, since individuals who wear their hearts on their sleeves are often considered unfit to serve.   

Pictures, Memories and Emotions

There is little doubt that pictures affect how we not only understand the world around us, but also how we feel about it. I have been wrestling with coming to terms with the relationship between pictures and memory. I think there is a connection between what we see and what we remember. It is the memories that are stirred up by a picture that trigger emotion. In turn, emotion is closely associated with beliefs, values and norms. From our beliefs we begin to act toward something. Since pictures can be emotionally charged objects, the individual processes feelings both subjectively and objectively.

I am thinking of John Moore's image of a man reacting to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. In the image, the man's outward expression of shock and disbelief is carefully framed symmetrically, with a tangle of mangled bodies on the ground behind him. If an image could sum up the emotion of grief, this one would do well. There is little ambiguity about this image, despite attempts by mainstream broadcast media to blur out the bloody bodies.

What memories does this image trigger for us?

Photo Credit: John Moore/Getty Images

Susan Sontag, in Regarding the Pain of Others, observes, "It seems that the appetite for showing bodies in pain is as keen, almost, as the desire for ones that show bodies naked." Memories of the collapse of the World Trade Center and a century of countless images of calamities from around the globe come to mind. Memories, as Sontag suggests, alter the image, according to memory's need to confer emblematic status on things we feel worthy of remembering. The emotions associated with images depicting emotion are complex.  We may feel shame, fear, anxiety, disgust, anger, sadness, and remorse. But there is also another side to emotional control -- one that conjures up relief that such events as the Bhutto assassination do not occur in our neighborhood. There may also be feelings of alienation, disconnection and disbelief. Here we find the image to activate a memory-emotion-belief cycle. This cycle assumes   that for someone to experience an emotional response to an image there must be some value belief system behind it. We feel, because we believe in larger, more abstract and symbolic constructs, than physical pain. Belief systems underpin our emotional responses to the images we see. The norms and values we hold for ourselves and others are constructed by the cultural norms we share. We are taught that violence is wrong, yet wars and killing remain a reality. Images of violence do not seem to deter us. Media, from video games to Hollywood films continue to celebrate the objectification and degradation of the human body and spirit. How, then, could one picture -- such as the one John Moore has made -- move us from the belief that violence is wrong to a call for action?

This is a morally complex question since many people might argue that there is little or no connection between what we see and what we end up doing about what we see. At the same time, I believe that cultural norms are in a state of constant negotiation between the essential self and the social self. If more people took the time to reflect upon the values held closest to the center of who they think they are, the essential self, then, the possibility of changing our social self would emerge. The social self is the outward expression of who we present ourselves to be in our every day life -- who we think other people think we are. If we are truly moved in our essential self by an image to act, then our social self will change.

One way to think about the tensions between the essential and the social self is to consider symbolic behaviors. In Moore's picture, despite cultural, ethnic and religious differences, the symbolic behavior of grief and horror is clear to us. Pictures, as a visual language, transfer  symbolic behaviors across the cultural and linguistic barriers that often divide us. At the same time,  we remain divided and disharmonious species.

Unfortunately, the habitual ways we are conditioned to respond to violent image influences  our capacity to separate reality from fantasy and fiction. Our habituated ways of seeing, understanding, and acting, also impinge on our ability to respond emotionally to images depicting violence and suffering. Pictures are indeed a form of agency, they goad us to think and act out of the feelings that they conjure up for us. But our visual culture has become so saturated with such pictures that the capacity for images of violence to shock is diminished. As Sontag contends:

"Making suffering loom larger; by globalizing it, may spur people to feel they ought to 'care' more; It also invites them to feel that the sufferings and misfortunes are too vast, too irrevocable, too epic to be much changed by any local political intervention."

We live in a world where sentiment and emotion is exploited by external forces. How much control do we really have over our feelings? From this perspective, images desensitize our capacity for compassion. In this way our memories appear to fail us as we can longer distinguish between  essential experiences and socially constructed realities.

The truth hurts: "Reality is a lie"

Photo Credit: New York Times

It was only a matter of time before an increasingly number of computer scientists began  wrapped their heads around digital imaging in a big way, at least in their spare time. That's exactly what Carlo Baldassi, a student in computational neuroscience did, after looking at some pictures of his girlfriend that appeared too constrained and out of proportion. Baldassi has created an automatic photo-editing software tool that always the user to stretch an image without it looking stretched. Peter Wayner's article in The New York Times quotes Baldassi as saying, "Reality is a lie." Nice quote perhaps, but the implications are much more far-reaching as software such as the one Baldassi has made becomes commonplace.

Wayner observes:

Automated tools like Mr. Baldassi’s are changing the editing of photography by making it possible for anyone to tweak a picture, delete unwanted items or even combine the best aspects of several similar pictures into one.

The tools are giving everyone the ability of the Stalin-era propagandists, who edited the photographic record of history by deleting people who fell out of favor.

Wayner's last statement is a bit troubling. Sure, we have the tools now to seamlessly stretch the truth, but do we need to? In my on-going survey on digital manipulation more than 40 percent of respondents indicated that they could tell when a picture had been altered.

2007-2008 snapshot of the photo manipulation survey related to whether people can tell if a picture has been altered.   2006-2007: Note that the sample sizes differ considerably.


During my time surveying people about digital photo manipulation, a fairly high percentage of people report they can tell when a picture has been altered. I find this opinion interesting, because in my own experience I am not as skillful.

In my own experience, I find myself having less time to carefully scrutinize pictures. I do  assume, though, that there is an increase in altered images in the media with the introduction of digital technologies, but because of the volume of pictures flooding our consciousness, I tend, like many people, to just scan images quickly. I tend to judge the authenticity of a picture on the context and source in which it is disseminated. For example, I would tend to trust the authority of a news image in The New York Times over an advertising image any day. This means that I wouldn't typically spend time looking for manipulated images in The New York Times, while I just assume that most advertising images have been altered to varying degrees.

Getting back to Baldassi's software, which is based on the seam carving work of Shai Avidan and  Ariel Shamir, it makes sense that many of these tools will become commonly accepted by people over time. In the future, we will just expect that the images we see have been enhanced in some way and that the notion of objective reality is nothing more than a passing fancy.    

Photo of WWII correspondent Ernie Pyle resurfaces after more than 60 years

Photo Credit: Alexander Roberts/ Via AP/ Richard Strasser

He is among the most venerated war correspondents in American History. When Ernie Pyle died in April 1945, covering the battle of Okinawa, the country mourned his loss. Pyle was in the prime of his journalistic career and had developed a style of war-reporting that was riveting and heart-felt.  Richard Pyle of the Associated Press reports that pictures showing Pyle's death were censored by the government and then lost to memory for more than six decades. Recently, Alexander Roberts' image of Pyle's body resurfaced. Historically, the image is important in that it reminds us of the sacrifice people pay for freedom.  Pyle knew the risk he was taking in covering the war, but this picture reminds us of what that risk would ultimately mean.  

Ways of Seeing

There is something exciting about a new snow fall. The things I take for granted on my walks suddenly come in to focus so much more clearly. My ways of seeing the world change. It's too bad we couldn't see the world around us the same we see the world covered in snow. I would imagine that if you live in a snowy place and suddenly find yourself in the tropics, the experience might be the same.

More Thoughts about High-level/Low-Level Photographic Practices

I would like to continue thinking through what I introduced the other day about how expectations and advances in technologies are changing the practice of photography. A low-level photographic practice was described as a snap shot, but it could also be what news photographers call the "grip and grin" or the "shin plaster." Low-level practices often do not consider the essential characteristics of making a photograph compelling -- immediacy, intensity and intimacy. Expectations are directly linked to how satisfied an individual is with the photograph they make, of course, but there is also the social function of the image to consider. One way to think about low and high levels of photographic practice is by considering how tolerant the viewer is of the ambiguities in the frame. A tolerance of ambiguities is essentially a heuristic process -- a way in which meaning is made through discovery. 

Since pictures are so heavily context dependent, a person's tolerance of ambiguities would change depending upon familiarity, memory, and emotional attachment to the subject. Low-level photographic practices other privilege content and context over composition and technique. Suffice it to say, that in high-level photographic practices, the photographer is more conscious of  not only the content, but also acutely aware of compositional and technical matters as well.

Increasingly, people are becoming more visually literate about the persuasive nature of images. People are becoming more away of the importance of technique and composition in the process. And the cameras are making this all the more easier.

In addition, with photo-sharing on the Internet, communities of photographers have formed to offer advice and support for improving photography at all levels. Even digital point and shoot cameras offer a level of sophistication that allows people to move beyond just snapping a picture to think about what's in the frame.

The distinction between low-level and high-level practices in photography is changing. Pictures uploaded to the Web from just about anyone can now end up illustrating a news story or selling a product in an advertisement. At the same time, this doesn't herald the death of professional photography or photojournalism. It simply means that photography is getting a whole better.

Photojournalist as humanitarian: Bringing the message home

Marcus Bleasdale/VII on Media Storm

Recenlty, I showed some of the multimedia journalism being produced and presented by Brian Storm at the MediaStorm Web site. Halfway through a slideshow on drug abuse one student got up to leave the room. I stopped the presentation in anticipation of such a strong response as a way of emphasizing how important the work being presented online is becoming. One question that was raised in class, was why we don't see this sort of work on television, especially cable. On cable television there is no shortage of violence or sex, but when it's real and presented in both still and video, with a photojournalist's voice narrating the story the message is different. Many of the projects one might watch on MediaStorm fail to be commercially viable. The content is either too close-to-the-bone disturbing or it doesn't appeal to the wider target audiences commercial interest covet.

Marcus Bleasdale's recent work on Media Storm about the Democratic Republic of Congo is a case in point. If we didn't know or care about what is happening to this African nation before Bleasdale's voice and pictures, it's time we did. Advocacy photojournalism has a strong tradition in our culture and there is no reason why it should go away, even if every thing seems to be about making money and consumption. The main reason why so many people go into photojournalism is that they can tell stories that make other people care.

Bleasdale's photography wrenches reality into our consciousness in ways other media cannot do. The images speak to the powerlessness of a people, especially the children, that are forced into lives of desperation and despair so that leaders in government and the warlords can reap enormous profits. According to Human Rights Watch, more than 5 million have died in the DRC since 1998. The country seems to be feeding off its own flesh, yet international outrage about the conditions there seldom enter our world view.   

Oh! Baby: Obama does the baby lift -- long live the photo cliché

Photo Credit: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

Hail to the cliché.

Just when pictures of Barack Obama on the campaign trail were all looking about the same -- like they could have been taken in Iowa or New Hampshire -- up pops Jonathan Ernst's picture of the candidate holding a baby. Candidates holding and kissing babies is a widely accepted trope in visual arsenal of political campaigns. Babies make good props for the media. Babies aren't controversial and they show the candidate in as a compassionate human being. That said, this picture may tell us something more about Obama then anything he says from up on the soap box. First and foremost, even though candidates and babies are cultural commodities, this picture shows some genuine emotion. It's not the usual display of stoicism we've become accustomed to.

Photo Credit: CBS/via AP

Political campaigns increasingly rely as much on depicting a candidate's personality as much as they do on getting substantiative messages across to voters. It's all part of the package.

Making candidates appear affable and emotional in public is a major part of a campaign's strategy. Of course, it is difficult to always manage how a politician will appear in the media and the reactions they engender, but one thing remains constant -- the universality of the visual cliché.

Caught: Can apologies excuse bad judgment?

It's more than ironic that the flap over Golfweek's controversial race-bating cover would fall around the same time our nation takes a moment to remember civil rights leader Martin Luther King. Despite the suspension of a Golf Channel announcer who made a racist comment on air, as well as the sacking of the Golfweek editor who approved the illustration above, nothing seems to escape the fact that our predominantly white-controlled media remains, at times, clueless when it comes to reproducing offensive stereotypes. Playing fast and loose with stereotypes, and in this case a visual metaphor, only serves to remind us how much work we need to do in order to come to terms with our legacy of cruelty and inhumanity toward blacks and peoples of color in this country. 

From a Piercean semiotic perspective, it is possible to see  the relationship between icon, index, and symbol in action as they construct meaning. The icon, a swinging noose, points toward a powerful symbol -- one that resonates memory and emotion. The visual language operates through symbolic action -- pictures trigger emotion, and emotions trigger beliefs. This explains some of the failings of Golfweek's editorial process. The editors knew they were working with a powerful symbol by selecting a noose to illustrate the TV commentator's lynching remarks, but they failed to make the deeper connections between the symbol, the emotions this symbol conjures up for people, and the belief systems behind the emotions.

I wonder what Dr. King would have to say about the controversy?

Clearly some strides toward reconcile and reform have been made since Dr. King's day, but the sad truth is that we still have a lot work to do in understanding just how powerful words and images are in shaping public perception and constructing our social reality.

iJournalism: stop the presses, reporters with cell phone cameras

Photo Credit: David Corn/Mother Jones

They're convenient, cool, and irresistible - iPhones on the campaign trail. Mother Jones magazine Washington Bureau Chief, David Corn recently posted an essay of pictures he made with an iPhone while covering the New Hampshire primary. Hardly a photojournalistic coup, Corn's access to the candidates, his infatuation with the new technology, and his status as a bureau chief at the magazine give him an inside track on publishing pictures that probably wouldn't make it beyond the picture desk at our local newspaper.

Corn isn't a photojournalist, but having an iPhone might makes him one -- well, almost. It seems to me that the pictures shot from ringside at many of the campaign stops in New Hampshire count more as novelty and curiosity  then they do as serious visual reportage. Nevertheless, Corn's approach is most likely something that will remain with us in an age where anyone with a camera phone can snap away a kilter and publish the results instantly. This certainly doesn't suggest that photojournalism is doomed or ever dead, it simply indicates that the field is rapidly changing. Even if the pictures aren't perfect, they still count as a visual record of events. The more people like Corn remain enthusiastic enough to play around with the iPhone at major events, the more extensive the visual reportage becomes. And that isn't all that bad.

On the politics of emotions

In the theater of political campaigning, emotions play a prominent role in a media frenzy always hungry for ways in which to distinguish between candidates. When  so much of the mind-numbing campaign rhetoric floods the consciousness, the coverare turns personal. How Hillary Clinton does her hair all of a sudden becomes "big news." For example, Clinton's recent "soft" moment, a welling up with a few tears, reverses the perception that she is a cold-hearted, calculating political machinist.

In Hendrik Hertzberg's recent commentary, "Second those Emotions," in The New Yorker  goes a good ways in describing how politicians have banked on emotional displays to humanize themselves in the court of public opinion. Pictures reproduce cultural values and beliefs by capturing emotional displays. The stereotypes of "boys don't cry" and women are emotional beings play increasingly important in the horse-race of campaign politics.

Photo Credit: AP Photo/Jim Cole

It appears that many of the pictures showing Clinton have presented her as an intense individual -- something less-than-womanly. It could be argued that these sorts of images  accumulate in the collective memory of the public to negatively shape perception. Pictures do elicit emotional responses from readers and news images have a significant role to play.

 

 

Emotional encounters

Photo Credit:  Staff Sgt. Russell Klika, U.S. Army.DoD

In their book, No Caption Needed, Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites  argue that images convey emotions by "activating  vital repertoires of social behavior." People respond to images in which a universal human condition, such as sorrow, joy, or anger, is  captured for the viewer to experience. For example, when we examine the image here the narrative being played out is persuasive because it activates feelings within us.  As Hariman and Lucaites explain, "These emotional signs and responses operate reliably and powerfully because they are already presented within the society's conventions of display...." (p.35).

There are a wide array of emotions that may be triggered for us in such an image.  The emotions that come to mind here are anxiety followed by sadness, disinhibition, and guilt. Although the natural way to analyze such an image is to describe or explain what is being shown, I liked go beyond this to explore the relationship I have with the image. It is through the relationship of the objects and emotions signified in the image that leads to meaning making for me, the viewer. We interpret the event through our feelings and beliefs based on our own experiences and cultural understandings.  Even those the photographer plays a role in constructing the substance of our experience, it is still up to us to select out and make sense of the image. There is a powerful relationship between the image, the event,  and our beliefs, emotions, and behaviors.

Now I should explain further how these emotional responses register within. The constructs of anxiety and guilt are to be found within the contextually broader framework in which the picture is displayed. Anxiety, sadness, and disinhibition, however, are more immediate, personal and visceral interpretations. These are my own emotions, which are projected through my interpretation of the image. The image cannot stand alone. It must be recognized has having several layers of meaning. First, there is the personal layer of meaning made -- the feelings I have concerning family and leaving home for the uncertainty of war. Secondly, there is the larger ideological context in when the image resides. After more than five years of war in Iraq, I have become desensitized to seeing such images. The pictures have become a naturalized aspects of my media landscape -- they are ordinary and predictable.  It is through the naturalization of these images in my visual repository (my brain), that feelings of guilt and powerlessness emerge.

Digital obliterators: How the media sanitizes our news

The media, it has been said, may not tell us what to think, but it does tell us how to think about things. When the media frames a story in a particular way it also helps to shape our perceptions about an event or an issue. The recent assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan is no exception. Now we are learning that some media crossed the line when major networks digitally blurred the background on images showing the devastation surrounding the assassination.

Obliterating reality and censoring the truth is probably the most damaging thing the mainstream media can do to itself. It is interesting, that in a culture of violent movies and video games, the  gatekeepers at the major networks felt compelled to clean up and sanitize the message before sending it out to the public. Was the self-censorship caused by a concern over offending our sensibilities or was it because the networks didn't want to rankle their corporate sponsors and possibly see a dip in their ratings? In this instance, the media is no better than any other instrument of censorship. Mano Singham observes:

Propaganda is far more effective when there is no overt control or censorship of journalists but where they can be persuaded to self-censor, because then everyone, reporters and reading public alike, think that what they are getting is 'objective' news and are thus more likely to believe it. Implementing such a sophisticated propaganda model requires some overt pressure initially, but reporters and editors quickly learn what they can and cannot say if they want to advance their careers.

It is far easily to leave all this mess behind and retreat into the chaos of our own lives, but images speak to us, especially those that are powerful enough to rock us out of the deep sleep of our day-to-day worlds.

Wonkette, the popular political buzz blog, got it right in writing about the assassination photos:

I think we see a hell of a lot of graphic fake violence at the movies, in video games and on the news and we know that it’s not real and there’s so much of it that it has lost its power to offend. But, when it comes to real violence to real people, we all turn away and thus make it less real than the fake violence. These are pictures of real violence, and of the horrible things people all over the world will do to one another, and it isn’t conveyed by seeing the reaction of another person. This look of this man’s pain, and shock, and horror doesn’t do justice to the carnage at his feet, even as real as that pain on his face is.

Emotional images such as those made in Pakistan should make us stop, drop, and roll, as if we were on fire. However, when exposed to such pictures from around the world, especially given the feeling that the media is holding back the reality from us, all we are left is a sense of  powerlessness, disdain, and apathy.

The pictures showing graphic violence and the extermination of human life should lead us to action.  But what action can we take to make sense of the senseless bloodshed in the world? Should we take to the streets, march on Washington, gather in communities to discuss alternatives, or come together in other acts of non-violent protest? Will our elected representatives really listen to our concerns?

Pictures, have throughout history, helped to move humanity into action. The dead at Gettysburg,  the squaller of 19th century tenement life, child labor, and the dust bowl, are all example of pictures that help to raise awareness about issues.

Today, unfortunately, I am not confident this holds true. How many pictures of starving African babies do we need to see before we feel pressed into action to stop the madness? Now we are presented an image, one that is being sanitized for our protection, of a man crying out in grief and shock in the middle of a sea of blood and bodies. Will this picture soften our hearts and make us work for peace in the world.  Inevitably, some people that truly feel the pain of this man and his country enough to take action, but what of the majority? 

I return to the image of the distraught man repeatedly not out of repulsion or morbid interest, but out of fear. I fear that the day will come, or has already come if you think about 9/11 or incidents of school violence, that I too could be this man. That this man is already inside me.

The reality of the media sanitizing our news should be another wakeup call -- we should care -- we must care -- about the images we see. We must recognize that these images form a  constellation of points on our horizons -- they create for us the conditions of knowing we need in order to make decisions about our lives and the world in which we live.

Handshakes, hugs and hoopla -- What pictures don't tell us

Photo Credit: Jim Young/Reuters

In a political cycle of relentless photo-ops, countless handshakes, hugs and flag-waving hoopla, it is refreshing to see beyond the candidates to the more human side of life. Young's picture, showing two tired children holding campaign signs in Winterset, Iowa on December 22, offers some comic relief at a time when everything we see and hear out of Iowa or New Hampshire these days seems to little more than create more apathy toward the political process. Thousands of images are transmitted to news organizations each day, but what do they really say about a candidate?

One assumption is that the pictures say very little about the candidate's ability to lead a nation. Instead, what most of the images represent are more about the what the campaigns and media thinks the audience wants to see.  At times, there is a glimpse of a human side of a candidate, but for the overwhelming majority of pictures just tastes like a spoonful of cold canned peas. The candidates attempt to project and protect his or her political image, something often proscribed by media handlers. The media, for their part, dutifully carry the message and image, out in the public domain. But increasingly, the message lands flat or is met with incredulity and suspicion.

Pictures frame, freeze and fix a moment in time -- a moment, which has traditionally been grated a lot of credit as a faithful representation of reality and truth.  In a political climate where there seems to be more similarities than differences between those seeking power in this country, pictures become a form of mind-numbing anesthesia.

The same thing could be said for other events.  How many images have we seen now of President Bush visiting the hospital beds of soldiers injured in Iraq.  Is there anything significant in Bush's patting the head of a bed-ridden Army Sgt. John Wayne Cornell of Lansing, Mich., and posing for a photo-op?


Photo Credit: White House

One way of looking at the image is that president would like us to see how much he really cares about the soldiers fighting in the Middle East.  Another way of looking at the picture is as propaganda: Go to Iraq, get hurt, get a pat on the head from the Commander-In-Chief.

It's hard not to be a little disrespectful or cynical at times when photo-ops masquerade as reality. In fact, this critique should not be viewed as another Bush-bashing ploy. It doesn't matter who's in office -- the response, and the pictures that represent the response, are almost always predictable.

Images, Symbols and Power

Photo Credits: Jim Cole/AP, Jose Luis Magana/AP

What can we learn from looking at pictures? The signification of these two recent images of presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton is striking. On the left, we see a close-up of Clinton caught in a "real" and unflattering moment, while on the right, we get what one might expect from most media managed events -- the santized moment, flags, the powerful gesture.

Human beings are symbol-making animals. We use symbols to make sense of the world and photographs increasingly contribute to meaning and consciousness. When we think of objects, ideas, and constructs, our brain transforms these things into symbols so that we can share our experiences with others. Symbols connect us through language. When we use the words such as reality, love, peace, justice, terror, poverty, pride, or patriotism, images come to mind – images associated through convention with the words we choose to describe our every day experiences. Kenneth Burke reminds us that when we think of reality, what we are relying on has been built up for us through our “symbol systems.” Burke observes, “What is our ‘reality’ for today (beyond the paper-thin line of our own particular lives) but all this clutter of symbols about the past combined with whatever things we know mainly through maps, magazines, newspapers, and the like about the present?”

When we view an image in the media we are given to substituting the meaning of the image with something connotative and symbolic. A presidential candidate stands before a giant American flag, which in turn produces a symbolic relationship. The candidate is by proximity of the flag immediately associated with notions of patriotism, loyalty, duty, public service and sacrifice. The flag is reduces to a backdrop – a symbol that condenses and naturalizes how the viewer should look upon the candidate. Symbolicity is emphasized through the shape, size and colors of the flag. Burke may argue that the language (words) used to describe this scene act as a sort of screen or filter on meaning.

Many years ago, in a cathedral in Texas, there was a wall covered with pictures and petitions from the faithful. The first Gulf War was underway and people used the wall as a commonplace for pictures of loved ones, alive and deceased – a symbolic collective prayer. Images hold within their frames many symbols.

Looking again at the variety of images made during Hillary Clinton's campaign stops, it is hard not to imagine the intensity and determination of the candidates as they are beseiged under the glare of the media. At the same time, we are inudated by "the clutter" of symbols and struggle to understand and draw meaning from one picture to the next.

Digital art and political consciousness in the classroom

Photo Credit: Topps Company/Collage by Matt Frederick

Former Senator George Mitchell's nearly two-year investigation into baseball's drug scandal is generating a lot of concern in the media and with the public. The 1990s, it is turning out, seems to be one of baseball's darkest eras -- greed, self-interest, and deceit.

People are responding to Mitchell's report very differently, but for students, the opportunity to find a voice through the power of digital art means the message is getting through.

Study this collage by Southern Oregon University's Digital Media Foundations student Matt Frederick. The visual metaphor resides in the progression of images illustrating Barry Bonds's presence as a public figure and role model to millions of young people. 

The story begins with a normal healthy-looking Barry Bonds the Younger, moves through to the pumped-up fleshy steroid-induced era of the 1990s, and finally rests in the irony of esmaculation and destitution. In this final scene of the triptych, Bonds' face is juxtaposed onto the withered frame of a Sudanese refugee. The message comes full circle here in all its simplicity. Digital art, in all its immediacy, takes license with reality so that people will notice the complexities and ironies of their day to day existence.

As an educator working with digital media, it is important to recognize the limitless potential new technologies afford us. With very little training, students can express themselves in new and powerful ways. I believe that part of our jobs, as educators, is to allow people to experiment with these new technologies so that they can find their voice in the world. And one of the best ways to do this is to engage students in learning the skill-sets and then just stepping out of their way as quickly as possible.

Why study attitudes toward doctoring images digitally?

Can you tell if this picture was digitally altered?

In it's second year, the annual survey on digital photo manipulation seeks the participation of photojournalists and photographers, professionals and enthusiasts, from around the world to help us understand how attitudes toward digitally altered images may be changing.

Last year, more than 745 respondents participated in the annual survey on digital photo manipulation. Part of the study seeks to clarify how photographers define photo manipulation and another part explores how attitudes toward image altering my be changing over time. The study is part of a long-term evaluation of attitudes people have toward accepting digitally altered images in the media and elsewhere.

For example when asked,  "I can tell when a photograph has been digitally altered," 42 percent of respondents (n=738) agreed or strongly agreed that they could tell the difference last year. However, 58 percent either disagreed or were undecided about whether they could tell a picture has been altered.  Could it be possible that over time, given advances in image editing software, more people will be unable to tell. The survey encourages the participation of both professionals and amateurs photographers and explores other issues such as if it is okay for images of Hollywood celebrities to be altered but not okay for images of politicians.

In terms of defining what constitutes digital photo manipulation four questions were presented:

1)  I define photo digital manipulation as changes to the content of a picture after it is made through electronic means.

2) I define photo digital manipulation as a process that helps to make the picture better aesthetically.

3) I define photo digital manipulation as a process that helps to make the objects in the picture more visually interesting.

4) I define photo digital manipulation as a process that changes the content of a picture by adding or removing visual elements from the original.

Other areas worthy of tracking over a long period of time include how photo digital manipulation is defined and whether the issue remains important in the public sphere.

More than 87 percent of respondents agreed to define photo digital manipulation as changes to the content of an image through electronic means, while 44.9 percent believed  it to be process that helps to make the objects in the picture more visually interesting. When asked if photo digital manipulation helps to make the picture better aesthetically, 37. 8 percent disagreed, 23 percent had no opinion, and 38 percent showed agreement. In the last question, "I define photo digital manipulation as a process that changes the content of a picture by adding or removing visual elements from the original," more than 85 percent expressed agreement with the statement.

Although these results do not reflect any true surprises, it is important to help clarify how people define the terms they use to describe phenomena. When polled about whether participants feel photo digital manipulation is an increasingly important issue in society today, more than 85 percent agreed that it was.

(Answer: Nothing was altered on the picture above, but it sure looks like it could be. I made this picture at a home leisure booth at a county fair and there were a lot of odd things around the girl taking a nap.)

Photography is not dead, just different

Discussions concerning photography's demise as an art form are always problematic and provocative. If we consider how digital technologies have influenced photography in the past two decades, we need to place the debate within a larger context.  Consider how painters must have felt in the mid to late 19th century when photography emerged as a viable alternative to capturing realistic representations. At that time, photography was the "new technology", which surely stirred up lots of emotion.

For centuries, painting was far from experimental. Artists were concerned, in large part, with realism -- the ability to make objects in the world appear real on a two-dimensional surface. Many portrait artists lived off the making visual likenesses of their patrons with paint on canvas. Photography's influence on painting cannot be overstated. With the invention of photography, painters were released from the constraints of realism. For example, the early impressionists of the 1860s, artists such as Claude Monet, Vincent Van Gogh and others, were inspired by candid photography. The impressionists were able to take chances with form and style. Photography's realism filled a niche -- it was faster, less expensive, and more accessible than painting. Further, you didn't need to have extensive training in drawing and painting to produce a representation of the world around you.

Photography is not dead, it's just changing. Just the same it changed in the 19th century for traditional artists.

Today, the commonly held perception that a photograph provides a reasonable likeness to what is seen in the "real" world is changing. Digital technology, with its capacity to reconfigure reality, is viewed as a threat to the status photography once enjoyed as a form of conveyance  -- one burdened by the responsibility of being perceptually accurate.  We now have cameras that can make people look thinner, remove blemishes, correct color and tone, and sharpen the clarity of the pictures produced. Visual veracity is now in the mind of the beholder. Pictures, however, may still be worth a thousand words, but what makes the medium difference today is that the technology is increasingly able to determine what those words may mean.

Gazing from space: Destractions and Detachment

Dzerzhinsk, Russia. 2006.  Photo Credit: Google Earth/Terra Images

We have become accustomed to looking at our earth from space. Seldom do we consider the remarkable significance of such perspective. The technology that makes it all possible, the aesthetics of the frame from miles above the planet, and the meaning and context of what we are privileged to view --  are all signs of things.

From the perspective of space, one might not guess that what they are looking at is a stretch of the most polluted real estate on earth -- Dzerhinsk, Russia.  Decades of industrial chemical waste makes Dzerzhinsky a toxic hell, with ground water reportedly 17 million times more contaminated than anything considered safe to consume.

Barry Lopez, in an article for National Geographic on Bernhard Edmaier's "Cold Scapes" aerial images," observes:

"The world is beautiful, in many unfathomable ways. In our hurrying through, we frequently miss what is beautiful around us, in the same way that we forget from time to time what we want our lives to mean. Just to stay afloat in the modern world, many of us reluctantly choose detachment from the constant stimulus. We even turn away from beauty, as if it were another thing we had had too much of."

Lopez is right. We have created a culture of detachment, but not just of all things beautiful. What is beautiful, for instance, about looking down omnisciently on Dzerhinsk with a god's eye knowing that human behaviors have contributed so terribly to the destruction of our enironment.

When I view, from above, the lace-like patterns of rivers swirling near Dzerhinsk against the mottled tones of greens and browns there is indeed beauty in the image. However, to simply conclude that this beauty exists without a context leaves me detached and in denial of the realities. To interpret such an image without digging deeper into the human conditions of life on the surface leads only to greater obfuscation.

 

Photo Digital Manipulation End of the Year Survey

Since August of 2006, I have been collecting responses from readers concerning attitudes toward photo digital manipulation.

In order to sample changing attitudes over time, I am relaunching the survey and will begin to compare results. Anyone can take the survey and all participation is voluntary, confidential, and anonymous. For instance, a respondent's IP address is not stored in the survey results, which protects the identity of the individual to some extent.

The intention of the survey is to understand the way people think about digital manipulation over time. In 2006, more than 735 people weighed in on the issue. One of the questions I would like to track is whether or not people can tell if a picture has been manipulated. Many people believed they could. Is that claim still true a year later? Let's find out.

Click Here to take survey

Picturing Resignation

Photo Credit: Lauren Victoria Burke/AP

There are poignant moments in the life of a politician which become iconic --  even if it is for a moment -- a moment before it fades from public consciousness.

Each day photojournalists seek out images of the powerful, and even the not so powerful -- images that tell stories beyond the typical sound byte and the banal rhetoric of politics.

Even though this image was made more than a month ago, it has been given legs again because of Lott's decision to resign his seat in the Senate before the end of the year.  Lott, the Republican Senate Minority Whip from Mississippi, is ending a 35-year-long career in Congress and plans to start a new career as a lobbyist.

The image was made by the Associated Press on Capitol Hill on Oct. 24, 2007, after the Senate confirmed Judge Leslie Southwick to the federal appeals court in Mississippi. The picture was also used by the Washington Post.

To believe in storytelling is to believe in journalism

Photo Credit: James Estrin/The New York Times

At a time when it has become extremely easy to climb on board the media-bashing express, there is still a lot of great journalism left in the world.

James Estrin's coverage of the life of Jeffrey Deskovic, a man vindicated by a DNA test in a rape case, epitomizes the importance of journalism in American society. Estrin's images are thoughtfully layered with bits of information or cues about a world Deskovic has stepped back into after 16 years in prison.

What makes Estrin's photography so powerful is the ability to capture, with great patience and detail, the moral and emotional complexities of one man's struggle to persevere despite the hardships he has endured. There are no camera gimmicks -- chopped up frames and off-kilter horizons -- in Estrin's work. There's no reason to employ anything less than straight up visual reporting -- the sort of work that takes a lot of time and understanding to complete. Estrin does not appear to try to make something more than what he sees as an eyewitness to the human condition. There is value to his work because it comes across as compelling and insightful.

In Estrin's frame we see Deskovic riding the subway, head down, fingers barely grasping the support above him. To the right, there are two couples -- one kissing, and the other, appearing to be looking down at Deskovic. What does such a scene signify? Are we to infer that the image represents or symbolizes,  in some important way, a lost soul trying to make sense out of a shattered existence?

We look toward the image as proof that what we hear and read or even see for yourselves is true. The signification of a human life, however, can rarely be captured in one frame. The frame is just one moment among countless moments. But nevertheless, there it is -- life --  1/60th of a second -- in a subway car -- in one of the biggest cities in the world. It is easy to underestimate the commitment journalists like Estrin engage in to share such stories with others.

You can read the NY Times story here.
An interactive feature on exonerated prisoners can also be found here.

 

In the line of fire: Military wants photojournalist to be tried in Iraq

For nearly 19 months, the U.S. military has held Bilal Hussein, right, an Iraqi Associated Press photographer, in detention for allededly taking part in insurgent activities, including making bombs.

Hussein, who was seized by the military in April of 2006, is now caught in a battle not only for his freedom, but for the rights of a free press. The government alleges that Hussein had links to terrorists and that an Iraqi court to decide his fate. AP, meanwhile, feels they have sufficient evidence to counter the allegations.

The ramifications of Hussein's trial will be far-reaching.  At issue here, beyond  the photographer's life and livelihood, is how the U.S. press has become so extraordinarily dependent upon native in-country staffers and stringers for its news. It's not clear how well Americans really understand how much of the news is actually produced by foreign journalists.  Typically, wire services, in places like Iraq, have to outsource their news gathering capabilities, especially photojournalism, to people with better command of the language and the culture. 

The at the core of this issue is one of trust and credibility. In August 2006, for instance, Reuters discovered that one of its stringers, Adnan Hajj, had manipulated images during the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict in Lebannon.  The Hajj incident has had the effect of placing doubt in the minds of an already skeptical public about the authenticity and credibility of the news we receive from overseas. Utlimately, it is hoped that justice and truth will prevail -- however, in times of war -- both of these ideals are at risk when power and politics are at stake.

Photo-Op: Bush and the Irony of a Can of Beans

Photo Credit: Jason Reed/Reuters

This picture reminds me of one of those famous credit card commercials:

The scene: A food bank in Anywhere, USA
Roll Camera: The President, with a sour expression, stands before the camera.
Voice Over: The melodious baritone voice of the announcer comes in.

• Oxxford hand-tailored suit: $2,000 - $14,000
• Haircut: $30 - $60
• Bush's Best Beans: $1.59
• Cost of the War in Iraq:  $200 million a day

The Irony of a Presidential Photo-Op: Priceless

Is the president really mugging for the camera with a can of beans? Could the visual metaphor be any more perfect at this time of year? 

As Americans prepare to gobble up more than 1.6 billion pounds of turkey, 1 billion pounds of pumpkin, and more than 800,000 tons of beans this Thanksgiving, the photo-op signifies what appears to be another surreal moment for the Bush presidency.

While, Bush symbolically pardoned the White House turkey this week while more than 35 million Americans, including 12.6 million children, will experience hunger. Further, more than 38 million Americans will be eligible to receive Food Stamps. In 2006, The U.S. Conference of Mayors reported that requests for emergency food assistance increase by 7 percent across the country.

There is a significant different between how images denote and connote meaning. As cultural theorist Stuart Hall suggests, pictures are encoded with symbolic meaning. But it is ultimately up to the viewer to "unpack" or decode what the symbols mean. Much of this decoding is determined by context, convention, as well as the disposition of the viewer. Ultimately, the ability to make sense of a picture becomes contingent upon how that picture resonates in every day life for the viewer.  For me, the expression "full of beans" comes to mind. Originally,  "full of beans" originally meant to be full of energy and high spirits, but over time the phrase has come to represent something more akin to someone who is being less than genuine or honest -- basically someone who is "full of it."

Ultimately, any analysis of this sort probably won't amount a "hill of beans."

Nevertheless, pictures should provoke thoughts, and in turn, hopefully, thoughts will lead to action.

 

When photojournalists turn to Art for Inspiration Some Cry Foul

Photo Credit: Elissa Eubanks, Atlanta Journal-Constituition

When photojournalist Elissa Eubanks' picture of Atlanta's Veterans Day parade ran on the front page, some readers were less than impressed with her attempt to turn a run-of-the-mill assignment into something a little different. Unfortunately, some folks didn't see the art in cutting Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, the parade's grand marshal, head in half. The effect did please Constitution-Journal editors, but some readers have expressed outraged -- claiming that the picture was demeaning and disrespectful.

Are photojournalists working too hard to make images more appealing and interesting?

Are photojournalists becoming overly focused on making "art" rather than practicing bread and butter visual reports of everyday events?

I am not suggesting a return to the days of the "shin-plaster" or the "grip and grin," but there is obviously a line between the science and art of doing visual journalism.

Eubank's picture raises issues about how the public perceives the role of journalists in covering civic events. Photographers appear to be making aesthetic choices that take them further away from the realm of journalism and more into the realm of art. Maybe it's not that big of deal. Photojournalism, as a form of artistic expression, is certainly better than it has ever been and there is some great work being done today. However, many readers don't want or even expect their news to be artsy. Readers want and expect their news to be delivered with without embellishment or panache -- that what journalism should be about. Unfortunately, in today's hyper-media world the pressure is on not only to inform but to also entertain.

When a news picture is treated as art in order to distinguish it from other media, the public may actually see the effort as a gimmick, or even worse, as a disingenuous attempt to sensationalize the news.

In fact, the framing technique used in Eubank's picture is a relatively recent addition to the photojournalist's bag of aesthetic techniques. A few decades ago, a photographer turning in such an image would be given a ton of grief over the approach. Just like shooting pictures at odd angles with slanting horizons, the technique of cutting into a subject's face has emerged as convention only since the 1980s, when news moved away from its antecedent "hard" format to one that is much softer.

The stylistic conventions applied to many news pictures today are infused with artistic sensibilities that were discouraged just a few decades ago. Today, photojournalism, as an art form, has evolved, even if readers don't always appreciate the difference.

This picture is a lie

A self-portrait made with an Epson flatbed scanner
invites an existentialist's claim -- pictures confound
our attempt to define meaning, identity, and reality.

We hold the likeness of self as irrepressible and undeniable.  We look for clues to reassure ourselves that what we see is actually who we are. We hunger for authenticity and self-actualizing records to make ourselves feel whole.

In the persistent visual clutter of our day to day universe we seek images that help us define meaning and rationalize our existence. But the conscious mind may be easily misled.  Pictures can indeed lie. Images inculcate us to expect a truth, at least some fragment of it. But what happens when we can no longer count on images as mediators of truth.

The poet Robert Bly wrote, "How much sadness we feel because we have given up expecting truth. Every moment of our lives we exchange comfort or discomfort for statements we know are lies, or mostly lies..."

Bly's idea suggests that we negotiate truths, half-truths and lies -- we settle for what we know as truth because we have little capacity to dispute it. I would extend this argument to images, especially news photographs. In this hyper-mediated world of visual, where pictures increasingly play a role in shaping public perception of the "real", we want to believe that what we are exposed to will be free from the ideological self-interests of those in positions of setting the agenda of public discourse.

As a culture, is there some underlying sense that we have really given up  expecting the truth from the things we see?

Drawing leads to suspension for first-grade student.

Photo Credit: Medford Mail Tribune

A  6-year-old boy in rural Southern Oregon has been suspended for making a drawing depicting what his teachers believe to depict violence.

The boy's paper is crumbled. The two stick figures wide-eyed. Now, the boy is home from school, and the father is furious.

The incident symbolizes an escalation in tension between what children are exposed to in the media and what children are taught at home and in school. In this case, the father of the first-grader said that the drawing was inspired by an episode of The Simpsons.

Some people believe the boy's suspension is an over-the-top, knee-jerk reaction to violence in our nation's schools. Other people see the school's action as justifiable. The boy is now labeled a menace in the school's fight to maintain a healthy and safe learning environment for all students. 

Media violence in society is pervasive. However, children do not always differentiate between such adult abstract concepts as fiction and reality, right and wrong, play and work. These ideas are never clearly defined until they are learned. The line between conformity and deviance is changing in an age where violence is the norm on-screen.

We trust and hope that children learn to distinguish the constructs what our society deems as normal through learning -- at home and in the classroom.  However, when the things children see on television are recreated in a classroom drawing, it reflects a deeper, more disturbing cultural pathology. 

Whatever the case, the message is clear -- even first-graders can be terrorists.
 

Conspicuous spectacles

Photo credit: AP/Joel Page, Cheryl Senter

It's very interesting to follow the course of the presidential campaign through the pictures photojournalists submit for publication. The images above show Hillary Rodham-Clinton, D-NY, in various states of fighting off the symptoms of a cold. The question to ask is why are these images important in reporting the news. Does a candidate wiping her nose constitute news or might it be considered by some viewers as offensive or even tasteless? More importantly are the photographs made of other candidates equally as revealing -- or are we to assume that this sort of reportage is just another journalistic cheap shot?

We know that pictures help to construct our reality and shape our perception of individuals.Therefore, the notion of a conspicuous spectacle relates well to torrent of visual messages we receive daily about the candidates and their lives on the campaign trail.

Are we to assume that images of candidate Clinton, blowing her nose or holding back a cough, help to frame the individual as more human and vulnerable? Could we interpret these pictures on a deeper level -- one suggesting that she may not even be fit to be president? 

These images are "fish in the barrel" pictures in that the photographer is very much limited by access to capturing truly intimate moments. In a way, these are attempts by the photographer to either "make something out of nothing" or to put forth an honest effort showing the candidate at their most vulnerable.

All images are persuasive determinants  in constructing what may  eventually become normalized or accepted as reality. Can we, in this instance, consider for a moment, the determinacy of such campaign pictures -- images that do not always cast a candidate in the best of lights?  Do such images, pander toward sensationalism-- where the candidate-celeb is brought before the public specter of scrutiny as somehow weaker than her male opponents?

We cannot fault the photojournalists for honestly representing what is put before their lenses in a public forum. These images, like all the others of the candidates, have a collective impact -- a gestalt. In the torrential flood of stump speech pictures, it will be curious to track and compare just how the types of images made of the candidates differ in terms of what they explicitly and implicitly suggest about a candidate's ability to lead a democracy.   

 

Seam carving and the slippery slope of visual veracity

Technological innovative appears to be out pacing our capacity to understand and maintain some of the conventions inextricably bound to the  ethics of photography, especially photojournalism.

Researchers Ariel Shamir and Shai Avidan have figured out a way of reducing and enlarging the size of images that they describe as content-aware seam carving. The process allows the Photoshop user to extend pixels in one dimension while reducing them in another, which is much different from antecedent resizing methods.

Photo Credit: Shamir & Avidan

In other words, it is now possible to resize an image while maintaining the scale of the most important features in the picture. Shamir and Avidan call the process the "judicious" reduction or expansion of pixels along along a seam. The seam carving program repeatedly carves out and inserts seams along a path of connected pixels.

Photo Credit: Shamir & Avidan

It shouldn't come as a surprise that smart people like Shamir and Avidan are coming up with new ways of changing the content of our pictures to suit tastes and aesthetics after the fact. At the same time, technological innovation give us something to think about in terms of how fast these changes are occurring.

We are increasingly moving into an era where post-production processes such as seam carving determine our ability to discern how we come to decide what is deceptive and unethical. 

Conditions of Knowing and Pictures on the Mind

Lately, I've really been struggling with how conditions of knowing relate to the pictures we see in our day to day world.

I am curious about why some images "stick" in our memory, while others do not. I am also fascinated by how images trigger specific emotional responses -- how they shape our cognitive, cultural, social and historical sense of place and being.  How are human beings culturally and historically conditioned to interpret pictures when they often extend beyond the original occurrence? How do we understand our collective past when so many images become  embedded in our visual and emotional memory?

The redactive and over-simplifying nature of the visual appears to be an intuitive process. The visual memory that we appropriate of our experiences on earth is a mix of cognitive and socio-cultural interactions. 

When Frederick Franck went off into the jungles of Africa to work with Albert Schweitzer in the 1950s, he was hoping that the camera he had brought with him would faithfully record and document his experiences. He was hoping that the memories of his time in Africa would never fade, and that he could someday share those memories with others. However, Franck soon abandoned his "memory box" and picked up a sketch pad and pencil instead. Why? What pushed Franck away from making photographs, an art form reputed to be our mirror of reality?

What Franck perceived, even 60 years ago, was the encroaching tide of the visual in society. In a visual environment such as the one we live with today, Franck predicted a world that would overload "our switchboards with noise."  The "switchboard"  Franck is referring constitutes our capacity for memory and emotions.  "We do a lot of looking: we look through lenses, telescopes, television tubes .... Our looking is perfected every day -- but we see less and less."

Today, we are constantly in a mental state of distraction as we bounce from one visual medium to another. The switchboard is on overload with no operators on duty. W.J.T. Mitchell, in his book Picture Theory, wrestled with this issue in writing about "narrative, memory, and slavery." Memory for Mitchell, within a contemporary context, views the process as "an aspect of private consciousness." Pictures as visual narratives possess a sense of temporal sequencing that are stored in the brain and recalled with necessary. The visual snapshots we carry around in our heads (memories), are emotionally biased, because we are conditioned by our experiences.

This brings us to a blog launched last June by Robert Hariman and John Lucaites called NO CAPTION NEEDED.

Hariman and Luciates offer analysis of images as they enter the switchboard of public consciousness. The authors are regarded highly in the field of visual rhetoric and the blog serves as a tool for many of their ideas and thoughts.

A web of relentless creativity

This blog has suffered in recent months due to the fact that all the free time seems to have been sucked out of the schedule.

Recently, we have been at work designing and implementing a new series of courses at Southern Oregon University called Digital Media Foundations. The inspiration for the project came at a time when the university was wrestling with a $4 million budget deficit. People were being laid off and academic programs cut.

During this period, fortunately, opportunities to reorganize some of our programs also came up. With all the turmoil going on, a few instructors and very supportive deans decided to look into ways of optimizing learning experiences offered to students, especially in the areas of digital art, visual journalism, video production, and web design.

We started out by counting how many courses across disciplines teach pretty much the same things such as digital software applications, digital photography, and digital video. It was actually surprising to see so much overlap in content across the curriculum. The idea wasn't to replace existing courses, but to collaborate on integrative ways of teaching digital and technological skills to incoming students.

After months of meetings, the first of the DMF sequence of courses got off the ground.  With four instructors lecturing and working in labs, students are being exposed to thinking through the language of our increasingly digitally-based visual world. In other words, the course explores some of the fundamentals of visual narrative, design, and critical thinking about the creation and consumption of visuals in a digital age.

A digital doodle by Miles Inada introduces students to hues,
values, and saturation.

Interestingly, the biggest challenges have not been in designing curriculum or working with students, but in helping the administration and other faculty to realize the value of an interdisciplinary approach to teaching digital and technological literacy. Despite the perception that learning institutions are often called progressive places, the speed at which change can occur seems to frustrate a lot of people. Fortunately, when momentum and timing is on your side opportunities present themselves in surprising ways.

The first digital photography assignment, called Alphabet Soup,
helps students understand composition as well as resolution
and compression issues in a digital environment.

The "Eye Phone": Changing the way we see?

We've have come a long way in photography since the days of hauling around several clunky Nikon bodies and a gazillion lenses. Everything about using the iPhone indicates that designers are figuring out ways to tap into the experience of seeing. Designers know that we are all children at heart and the closer technology plays into our senses and experiences, the more effective the design will be.

The iPhone, or in this case the "eye phone", allows those of us who are serious about photography to lighten up a bit. Sure there are issues with the technology, but there is something else at work here beyond the limitations of focal length and white balance.

In a sense, the camera phone is changing the way people see and experience seeing the world in new and exciting ways. Seeing is becoming an experience now -- the results are so immediate, and for the most part pleasing -- that we can not escape how the capturing of images has morphed into an extension of ourselves. We no longer just make pictures to capture a moment that is personally important for us to remember, we are making pictures because the camera makes it so much more enjoyable and easier to do so.

Revolutionary?

In some ways, yes, because the way we see is being driven by the way in which we interact with the technology.

Sarkozy's spare tire: French President gets digital makeover in Paris Match

There's a great deal of concern in the media these days about the power to deceive readers through the manipulation of news images. Sherry Ricchiarrdi writes in a recent American Journalism Review article, "Thanks to Photoshop, it’s awfully easy to manipulate photographs, as a number of recent scandals make painfully clear. Misuse of the technology poses a serious threat to photojournalism’s credibility."

We tend to think of the problem as one that has mostly occurred in the U.S., but that just doesn't make sense. Media has gone global, and with it so too do all the problems of a digital age. 

Recently, France has been dealing with a media scandal involving the retouching of French President Nicolas Sarkozy's picture showing him on vacation in the United States. The scandal has set off a debate about the president's close ties to the publisher of one of the country's most influential newspapers, Paris Match.

What would make a newspaper manipulate a picture like this? Can it be that the editors decided that the people of France weren't quite ready to see their new president hauling around a few extra pounds? Or, did the editors decide that it was easier to remove a little excess flab than it would be to deal with falling out of favor with the most powerful people in the country? Did the editors get a call from their owner telling them not to make Sarkozy look bad -- that there was an image to uphold and that it was important to show the president looking healthy and active?

The truth may actually be much more complicated than simply removing elements from a picture.

Like its U.S. counterparts, French media is taking a hit these days in terms of public confidence over its responsibility to reporting what they see and hear -- not what they think people want to see and hear.

Thomas Seymat, a former student from France, explains that the newspaper has been defending itself against charges of photo digital manipulation by claiming that they had done no wrong. Editors claim that the picture made the president look heavier than he actually is because of the camera angle, cast shadows, and poor printing technique.

Thomas notes:

"The thing that makes the story more scandalous is that it is not the first time that something like this has happened with this newspaper. Last year, Paris Match put in front page a photo of Cecilia Sarkozy (Not yet France's first lady) with her lover, in the street of NYC. The editor in chief of Paris Match was fired shortly after, the unofficial reason being that the owner of the newspaper is a very intimate friend of Nicolas Sarkozy. Arnaud Lagardere, a major share-holder of Paris Match, even publicly called him [Sarkozy] "my brother").... which only illustrates once again that collusion between politicians and the press is threatening its freedom and reliability."

The Paris Match controversy demonstrates once again the power of images in the construction and shaping of public perception. However, when the truth is finally discovered what we are left with is a feeling that pictures aren't the only things being manipulated here. Over all, there is a heightened public awareness of the media's power over us. The silver lining to all of this, is that with all of the scandals over digital manipulation in the press these days, people are become better consumers of information. We are learning not to trust everything we see, which may seem unfortunate on the surface. However, in the long run, understanding the relationship between what we see and what we know benefits everyone.

In a recent survey respondents were asked if "it's okay for the media to digitally alter pictures of celebrities to make them look healthier, younger, or thinner. More than 85 percent disagree or strongly disagree that it is wrong.

Even if this all seems to be a matter of common sense,  the nagging reality is that the number of incidents related to digital photo manipulation doesn't seem to be on the decline. Therefore, in order to survive in a digital age, we must become more sophisticated visual communicators -- more digitally literate. We must learn to call upon the media to never violate the social contract it builds with its public, as a force outside the reach of self-interests and party politics.