Images, Power, and Politics

In an article entitled "Images, Power and Politics In Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture" authors Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright explore the notion of representation and perception in our visual culture. The authors discuss issues that are closely related to my thesis. First, the authors discuss the idea of representation throughout history, "debates about representation have considered whether these systems of representation reflect the world as it is, such that they mirror it back to us as a form of mimesis or imitation, or whether in fact we construct the world and its meaning through the systems of representation we deploy." Here, we can see the depth behind the debate over representation as the truth of reality. Subjectivity is always a factor when creating a representation of reality.

According to the authors, it was positivism that contributed to the acceptance of the notion of photographic truth.

Photography was developed in Europe in the early nineteenth century, when concepts of positivist science held sway. Positivism involves the belief that empirical truths can be established through visual evidence. An empirical truth is something that can be proven through experimentation, in particular through the reproduction of an experiment with identical outcomes under carefully controlled circumstances. In positivism, the individual actions of the scientist came to be viewed as a liability in the process of performing and reproducing experiments, since it was thought that the scientist's own subjectivity would influence or prejudice the objectivity of the experiment. Hence, machines were regarded as more reliable than humans. Similarly, photography is a method of producing images that involves a mechanical recording device (the camera) rather than hand recording (pencil on paper). In the context of positivism, the photographic camera was taken to be a scientific tool for registering reality and was regarded by its early advocates as a means of representing the world more accurately than
hand-rendered images.

I have quoted such a large section of this article because it effectively, and eloquently describes the origin of the myth of photographic truth. As early as the turn of the nineteenth century, technology has had an impact on public and human consciousness. In the context of photography, the idea of positivism suggests that visual representations are able to provide evidence of a true reality. However, in order for the visual representation to be evidence of truth, the process must be objective. Essentially, technological machines are a tool in which we can achieve objectivity, and thus, truth. However, this argument has holes. First, machines are fundamentally human-made objects. Second, these machines, especially the camera, are operated by humans. Therefore, technological machines are not objective tools, they are, in fact, steeped in human subjectivity from the time of their creation, to the time when they are put to use. However, I can understand how this positivist view on photography has gained so much momentum. There is a separation, or a distancing between the operator and the medium that is created by the machine. However, it is my belief that humans are so involved in the creation and manipulation of the camera, that subjectivity could never be completely removed from the photographic process.