Pictures, Buildings, & Truth?
When I came across David Hockney’s collage-style photography in high school, I remember being struck by the creativity of the concept, while at the same time feeling somewhat confused and stupid that I liked it. Because weirdly enough, Hockney, whose imaginative approach drew me to photography, initially taught me to overlook it. When I heard his opinion that photography is artistically secondary in comparison to painting and sculpture (since cameras are too limiting, particularly in its inability to embed the element of time within an image), it immediately shaped my own opinion on photography. And let’s face it, what’s so impressive about photographers anyways? The way they press the button on the camera, or how they say cheese?
Surprisingly, I decided to take up architectural photography this semester, and as a result, have been spending more time downtown to shoot pictures of buildings. Although I’m certainly still a complete novice, I’ve learned a couple of things about photographing buildings over the past few months.
A few misconceptions about photography that I held prior to the class include: believing that all photographs are captured by chance, as opposed to being authored, that photography is boring, and that photography, at the end of the day, is easy.
Turns out, taking a picture — or literally distilling a moment in time two-dimensionally — doesn’t just happen magically (even though it seems that way), and can be complicated. Just learning how to use the equipment seems overwhelming, especially trying to figure out how to shoot images digitally and on film.
I’ve forgotten to charge my camera, only to find it dead on site; I’ve nearly destroyed my camera on several occasions (usually due to my embarrassing inability to properly handle a tripod); and I even bought the wrong film for my midterm project, causing my images to come out looking like this, once processed on the wrong machine:
Obviously I still make tons of mistakes, and often find myself laughing at situations I find myself in while taking pictures around LA, whether it’s getting kicked off properties by security for taking “professional” pictures (which I find more flattering than irritating), or lying down in under bushes in search of the right shot.
Although I’ve enjoyed many aspects of my photographic experience so far — from technical concepts, and exploring the city, to enhancing my architectural perspective — I’ve also wondered about some of the dilemmas surrounding the way in which photographs are presented, particularly considering the nature of post production editing.
In a recent paper, I wrote a little bit about how Plato’s Allegory of the Cave influenced my research in the digital literary space. For those unfamiliar, the allegory describes a scenario set in a cave, in which people are chained and forced to watch shadow projections on a wall that begin to distort their sense of reality. The allegory serves as a warning about our vulnerability with regard to mimesis.
Since editing images is such an essential part of the photo industry, this allegory seems particularly pertinent. Although many of the negative consequences of photo-editing are being discussed in society, particularly the relationship between Photoshop and the introduction of detrimental beauty standards, the issue is more complex than may seem. While it seems improbable that these photo-editing programs disappear, the set of rules and best practices associated with them continue to change and develop. Especially with regard to photojournalism, institutions, social media users, and photographers themselves seem to be regulating each other, constantly readjusting what constitutes an appropriate image for publication. Time will tell whether these standards can uphold an acceptable level of truth and reality in the photos we see moving forward.
Does modern photography tell the truth? While Plato warns that artificial projections can seriously distort the truth, Jean Luc Godard believes that, “photography is the truth and cinema is the truth twenty-four times a second.” Although both shouldn’t be able to be true simultaneously, I’m inclined to believe that both opinions are valid, and that an optimal solution should incorporate the two.
If at all interested in this subject, give the Ted Talk below a listen.
