The response I have after reading the third chapter of “After Photography” is the same response I had after reading the first two chapters, the same response that I seem to have after contemplating any photography reading which is to question WHAT IS THE TRUTH OF PHOTOGRAPHY [to me]?
I cannot decide. Is there any truth? Is there any originality? My whole self wants to say yes, there is a pure truth in photography - there is pure documentation in that family snapshot placing a group at that one cabin that one summer. But as we have all been taught, photography itself (even if unaltered and of the correct exposure, color, etc) is only ever a part truth. We replicate what we have seen before. The sheer number of images of the Eiffel Tower (commercially, professionally, and tourist produced) depict a society that wants to produce and own that which has already been produced and owned. But that smiling family snapshot taken from no-where remarkable, is it really truth? Was everyone really happy? Were the parents hiding anger or hatred beneath their facial surfaces? Was one child sunk in a depression that everyone kept secret? What is present outside of the frame? And so we replicate even the ‘happy family’ so that others can see and believe that family.
If there is a constant lack of truth in even amateur snap-shots documenting vacation, then do we/I really care that a snapshot was taken at all in the location one claimed to have gone? Do I care that there are machines and programs that can now take a photo for one so that he/she do not have to? Ritchen makes a very interesting point that tourists could grab their image in the place they are headed before they actually head there. To get that aspect out of the way so that one can actually explore and recreate in their limited time away is intriguing. But if the taking of an image is so annoying/time consuming, and people are content with a fictional image that physically never occurred, then I wonder WHY formulate an image at all? In this case, I again think that it has to do with the desire to have what others appear to have (yet the ‘others’ appearance is made too through constructed images devoid of pure truth). I think it often depicts a laziness in our society too - we want the image without the work.
I think that the truth (or rather, more or less degrees of truth) of photography [to me personally only] is dependent upon the situation in which the image occurs/purpose for which it will be used. For example; commercialism photography, magazines, and celebrity snap-shots, are all imagery in which I believe there is no truthful image. What photo falling into the hands that shaped those industries has not been photo-shopped? On the other hand, documentary, ‘lifestyle’, and snap-shots, are all categories that I hold should have more truth, less manipulation. [even as I realize they do not always]
I have to realize that digital photography and the technology available to the masses today invites a distortion of reality. But that distortion has been present since the beginning of photography, since painting, since language. The distortion does not simply come because a person did not himself/herself take an image or was present when the image was ‘taken’. But I think that we need to be honest with ourselves and with others about the ‘truth’ we are attributing to an image.
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