For you, is photography a form of expression or documentation?

[hoffy]

All of the above.

 

[Truzi]

For me it's mostly documentation. My photos are my memories. I am, however, trying to work some expression in (due to the effects of APUG).

 

[fotch]

Something else, such as story telling, educating, creating desire. Secondary would be documentations.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

Expression. Whatever I photograph, I am trying to convey it as I see it. Sometimes it borders on documentation, but it always expresses my own bias.

That exactly nails it for me too. It is first and foremost expressive - it's very much about my interpretation of what I see. It's documentary in that it documents the things I choose to point my lens at, and sometimes I choose to photograph things to document their existence or their change over time, or even sometimes the fact that I saw it at all - proof that " I was there " in the vacation photo. But I always try to make that " I was there " vacation photo be more than just proof of presence.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

Photography documents, it is a factive medium, and the expressive consequences of that documentation have a native intensity and authenticity not matched by fictive media like painting or drawing or electronic picture-making.

From the earliest days of photography, it has had a loose relationship with the truth. While yes, a thing must be present in front of the lens to be described by the lens, beyond that it is no more truthful than painting. The mere presence of a thing in front of the lens does not enable us to determine truth beyond that. In 1842, Hippolyte Bayard took a photograph of himself posing as if drowned, and captioned it as such to make a commentary upon a legal decision about the uniqueness of the method of photography he had invented. He was not dead, but he depicted a scene of a drowned man. Or later, the infamous "Sharpshooter, Devil's Den, Gettysburg" photo by Alexander Gardner. The image was said to show a Rebel sharpshooter, killed in action at his post. In fact, the body was not that of a sharpshooter at all, and he had not been killed at that location. Rather, Alexander Gardner and his assistant had moved the body and placed the rifle for photogenic effect. And Roger Fenton's cannonballs are another example of photography showing reality but not being factual. The cannonballs were not in the location where they fell, and not at the time of day they were alleged to have been fired. The only thing we can say for sure is that the cannonballs were in front of Fenton's lens when he made the exposures. Did they show that Fenton came under fire? We can't know. Did they show a before and after? We don't know. Did Fenton manipulate the cannonballs for photogenic effect? We don't know.

 

[Maris]

From the earliest days of photography, it has had a loose relationship with the truth. While yes, a thing must be present in front of the lens to be described by the lens, beyond that it is no more truthful than painting. The mere presence of a thing in front of the lens does not enable us to determine truth beyond that. In 1842, Hippolyte Bayard took a photograph of himself posing as if drowned, and captioned it as such to make a commentary upon a legal decision about the uniqueness of the method of photography he had invented. He was not dead, but he depicted a scene of a drowned man. Or later, the infamous "Sharpshooter, Devil's Den, Gettysburg" photo by Alexander Gardner. The image was said to show a Rebel sharpshooter, killed in action at his post. In fact, the body was not that of a sharpshooter at all, and he had not been killed at that location. Rather, Alexander Gardner and his assistant had moved the body and placed the rifle for photogenic effect. And Roger Fenton's cannonballs are another example of photography showing reality but not being factual. The cannonballs were not in the location where they fell, and not at the time of day they were alleged to have been fired. The only thing we can say for sure is that the cannonballs were in front of Fenton's lens when he made the exposures. Did they show that Fenton came under fire? We can't know. Did they show a before and after? We don't know. Did Fenton manipulate the cannonballs for photogenic effect? We don't know.

Yes! TheFlyingCamera eloquently unpacks the difference between deceptive subject matter and the inherent incapacity of the photographic process to corrupt what it depicts. I've led a relatively sheltered life but even I have been fooled by photographs of things arranged so as to deceive. I've also fooled myself by misinterpreting photographs showing things as they naturally are. I've heard lies on the telephone. But in no case do I accuse photographs or telephones of lying. Both are factive media and the agents contriving deceit are elsewhere.

 

[markbarendt]

Yes! TheFlyingCamera eloquently unpacks the difference between deceptive subject matter and the inherent incapacity of the photographic process to corrupt what it depicts. I've led a relatively sheltered life but even I have been fooled by photographs of things arranged so as to deceive. I've also fooled myself by misinterpreting photographs showing things as they naturally are. I've heard lies on the telephone. But in no case do I accuse photographs or telephones of lying. Both are factive media and the agents contriving deceit are elsewhere.

My wife has a saying that she's used for years "The cruelest of the gods, are the ones that give you hope".

It is tough not to believe our eyes.

I don't believe that photos are "factive". Just as you describe, people do tend to see photos as facts, thinking that what it shows them is somehow "the truth".

Instead of factive, if I were to invent a word to describe a photo's role in our world it would be "transmitive".

Like a phone, or paper & pen, a photo is a form of communication.

edit

I wanted to explain that idea a bit better.

When most people show someone a photograph and say "look at this", they are not trying to show that particular someone, a piece of paper with an image on it. The photographer is trying to show the viewer the scene.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

Yes! TheFlyingCamera eloquently unpacks the difference between deceptive subject matter and the inherent incapacity of the photographic process to corrupt what it depicts. I've led a relatively sheltered life but even I have been fooled by photographs of things arranged so as to deceive. I've also fooled myself by misinterpreting photographs showing things as they naturally are. I've heard lies on the telephone. But in no case do I accuse photographs or telephones of lying. Both are factive media and the agents contriving deceit are elsewhere.

Well, the telephone is transient- it merely opens a conveyance between two points to allow communication to occur. Because it has no presence before or after the act of communication, it can't "lie". But a bad connection or a defective phone can alter meaning by distorting the audio we hear, so we hear something other than what was intended. The telephone itself is not a medium, it's a device. The medium is conversation, which is inherently unreliable.

A photograph can be manipulated during or after production to also distort. As can a painting. Paintings can be as factual as photographs if they are made with factual intent. I think the difference is that with painting, the intent and the effort to create take longer, so we see the intent, or at least intuit it. Because a photograph happens in 1/60th of a second, we believe the intent is impossible, therefore we assume there is "truth" there.

But take for example the photo postcards of a giant grasshopper eating a giant vegetable about to crush the wagon hauling it. All those things, the grasshopper, the cucumber, the wagon, the startled onlookers, all were in front of the camera individually. They were then assembled to tell a lie, and re-photographed together. So is the photograph of the assemblage the truth, or is it a lie? All those things were in front of the camera individually and collectively.

And a photograph is a lie by its existence - it may be a very precise (or not so precise) representation of the physical objects placed in front of it at the time the shutter was opened, but they are no more the objects than the words we use to represent objects are. A photograph of a rock is not the rock itself, and in that sense is even more of a lie than the words used to describe the rock, since when we use words to describe a rock, no matter how precisely we describe it, we know we are talking about the rock, representing it in absentia. The heightened verisimilitude of a photograph creates the illusion that we are looking at THE rock, when in fact we are looking at a two-dimensional manipulated representation of the rock. If I photograph the rock out of focus, or with a shallow depth of field, it will look very different than if I use precise focusing and great depth of field, or if I photograph it in black and white vs. in color.

 

[removed account4]

a photograph can not lie by itself
but the problem is that some people lie using photographs
as their non-existant truths through manipulation. from the thought
of picking up a camera to the final image and its presentation the medium
has been manipulated ... the fact the photographer is able to manipulate
the controls of the camera to manipulate a viewer to see an object through a
specific point of view is manipulation. the amount of DOF chosen, the amount of time
the shutter is open ... photographs lie all the time ...

 

[Sirius Glass]

Enough said.

 

[markbarendt]

a photograph can not lie by itself

I actually lean toward the thought that they can.

What I mean by that is that our brains give a high weight to sight in decisions about truth. Right or wrong, seeing something in a photo is almost enough by itself, even a jackalope or that giant grasshopper will get a good consideration for a second or two. The wildcard here is the environment the photo is used in, we don't live in a vacuum, stereotypes and prejudices get nearly hardwired into our brains. That's not a failing its a survival mechanism. When I lived in Colorado I needed to trust my sight to discern if there was a threat to my world, a fox hunting our chickens, or if it was just one of my dogs romping through the bushes. My dog has been mistaken for a fox even in person at first glance.

Our default setting is essentially, seeing is believing.

That said, I use photographs to document things all the time in my business, I just call them scans. The scans show a picture of a piece of paper like a utility bill. By itself it's nearly meaningless. When it's corroborated with external data though, like meter readings, and a transfer of money from my bank to the utility company, it becomes believable by courts and other outsiders.

I think this story is a reasonable example of how the content of a photo should be considered before it is held up as some form of truth. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-history-billythekid-idUSKCN0SA19R20151016#XcFTjBvCeQ583Bb7.97

 

[Sirius Glass]

Well, the telephone is transient- it merely opens a conveyance between two points to allow communication to occur. Because it has no presence before or after the act of communication, it can't "lie". But a bad connection or a defective phone can alter meaning by distorting the audio we hear, so we hear something other than what was intended. The telephone itself is not a medium, it's a device. The medium is conversation, which is inherently unreliable.

A photograph can be manipulated during or after production to also distort. As can a painting. Paintings can be as factual as photographs if they are made with factual intent. I think the difference is that with painting, the intent and the effort to create take longer, so we see the intent, or at least intuit it. Because a photograph happens in 1/60th of a second, we believe the intent is impossible, therefore we assume there is "truth" there.

But take for example the photo postcards of a giant grasshopper eating a giant vegetable about to crush the wagon hauling it. All those things, the grasshopper, the cucumber, the wagon, the startled onlookers, all were in front of the camera individually. They were then assembled to tell a lie, and re-photographed together. So is the photograph of the assemblage the truth, or is it a lie? All those things were in front of the camera individually and collectively.

And a photograph is a lie by its existence - it may be a very precise (or not so precise) representation of the physical objects placed in front of it at the time the shutter was opened, but they are no more the objects than the words we use to represent objects are. A photograph of a rock is not the rock itself, and in that sense is even more of a lie than the words used to describe the rock, since when we use words to describe a rock, no matter how precisely we describe it, we know we are talking about the rock, representing it in absentia. The heightened verisimilitude of a photograph creates the illusion that we are looking at THE rock, when in fact we are looking at a two-dimensional manipulated representation of the rock. If I photograph the rock out of focus, or with a shallow depth of field, it will look very different than if I use precise focusing and great depth of field, or if I photograph it in black and white vs. in color.

This shows the dichotomy of good versus evil for any invention. For example atomic energy can be used for radiation treatment for cancer and it can be used to make a bomb. So this thread was rightly placed in the Ethics & Philosophy forum by markbarendt. Mark by starting this thread pointed to this dichotomy and hence my comment in post #2.

 

[markbarendt]

This shows the dichotomy of good versus evil for any invention. For example atomic energy can be used for radiation treatment for cancer and it can be used to make a bomb. So this thread was rightly placed in the Ethics & Philosophy forum by markbarendt. Mark by starting this thread pointed to this dichotomy and hence my comment in post #2.

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

I think this story is a reasonable example of how the content of a photo should be considered before it is held up as some form of truth. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-history-billythekid-idUSKCN0SA19R20151016#XcFTjBvCeQ583Bb7.97

"'I defy you to find another cowboy wearing a cardigan sweater,' he said."

Again, you are mixing what an emulsion photograph is (an objective recorder of light), with what that photograph does (records patterns of light that may be interpreted after the fact as biased subject matter). I fear this misunderstanding is just too deeply ingrained to ever be overcome.

The photograph in your link (assuming the online digitized reproduction accurately portrays the original and has not itself been manipulated*) isn't lying. Someone was standing in front of the lens in a cardigan sweater.

That it may not have been Billy The Kid would not be a failing of the camera's ability to be objective in its observations. It would be a failing by those later misinterpreting what the camera objectively depicted on that long ago afternoon.

Ken

* There's that always nagging doubt I keep referring to...

 

[removed account4]

I actually lean toward the thought that they can.

i agree mark, its an experience-thing.
but that is an external thing, isn't it,
not the actual image on paper or film .. ?
the translation by you or me of what it is ..
the act of creating the photograph
no matter what it is, by a surveilance camera at a stop sign, a atm
or someone with a 8x10 view camera judging the light and adjusting the shutter &c ..
its all been manipulated a step from the truth, like plato's cave
the shadow isn't the object, and the photograph is a reflection of whatever might have been.
we;ve coyote in our area and i keep thinking they are my grammar school friend's sled dog

 

[OptiKen]

I picked 'Something else' because most of all, photography is therapy for me.
The solitary act of photography and the total involvement and focus on one objective - the photograph - helps me focus on what's important and gives me time for 'just me'.

 

[markbarendt]

Again, you are mixing what an emulsion photograph is (an objective recorder of light), with what that photograph does (records patterns of light that may be interpreted after the fact as biased subject matter). I fear this misunderstanding is just too deeply ingrained to ever be overcome.

I fully understand the difference Ken. I have even considered the implications of that difference. I even agree that "a photograph" like the one I linked to is a record of the light the lens collected for it; plus or minus any post shot edits or manipulations of course.

"Photography" though is a human endeavor that eventually results in a "photograph". "Photography" includes much more than just the resulting "photo". Like most human endeavors and interactions, the motivations and expectations and norms and biases and uses and tools and choices and possible manipulations within "photography" to produce a "photograph", are myriad.

Your point is worth consideration but for me it needs to be weighted properly within the context of "photography" as a whole.

 

[markbarendt]

I picked 'Something else' because most of all, photography is therapy for me.
The solitary act of photography and the total involvement and focus on one objective - the photograph - helps me focus on what's important and gives me time for 'just me'.

I should have added that to my vote.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Photography as form of documentation is a.k.a dashboard camera

 

[markbarendt]

i agree mark, its an experience-thing.
but that is an external thing, isn't it,
not the actual image on paper or film .. ?

Yep.

If photography is a form of expression we can't really complete "the equation" without considering whom we are expressing ourselves to, can we?

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

I fully understand the difference Ken. I have even considered the implications of that difference. I even agree that "a photograph" like the one I linked to is a record of the light the lens collected for it; plus or minus any post shot edits or manipulations of course.

"Photography" though is a human endeavor that eventually results in a "photograph". "Photography" includes much more than just the resulting "photo". Like most human endeavors and interactions, the motivations and expectations and norms and biases and uses and tools and choices and possible manipulations within "photography" to produce a "photograph", are myriad.

Your point is worth consideration but for me it needs to be weighted properly within the context of "photography" as a whole.

This is a subtle but welcome shift...



Ken

 

[Maris]

..."Photography" though is a human endeavor that eventually results in a "photograph". "Photography" includes much more than just the resulting "photo". Like most human endeavors and interactions, the motivations and expectations and norms and biases and uses and tools and choices and possible manipulations within "photography" to produce a "photograph", are myriad ...

No! This is wrong. It is a miscast idea that a purely technical process, namely photography, includes among its characteristics all the human anxieties, foibles, and misreadings that may plague its practitioners and consumers. A good test of a mistaken notion is that it leads to confusion, contradiction, and misunderstanding rather than clarity, understanding, and concensus. Witness this very thread as a sharp example.

 

[markbarendt]

This is a subtle but welcome shift...



Ken

Actually just better words, my position hasn't changed, just my ability to express the idea.

 

[markbarendt]

No! This is wrong. It is a miscast idea that a purely technical process, namely photography, includes among its characteristics all the human anxieties, foibles, and misreadings that may plague its practitioners and consumers. A good test of a mistaken notion is that it leads to confusion, contradiction, and misunderstanding rather than clarity, understanding, and concensus. Witness this very thread as a sharp example.

If for my RB I choose my 150SF (soft focus) lens at f/4 to hide (lie about) a subject's facial wrinkles, haven't I used photography to misrepresent the truth?

 

[Sirius Glass]

If for my RB I choose my 150SF (soft focus) lens at f/4 to hide (lie about) a subject's facial wrinkles, haven't I used photography to misrepresent the truth?

In college I printed using a stocking under the enlarger lens as a diffuser for the same reason. I had folded the stocking over several times so I was debating using a cigarette to burn a hole for the eyes.

:devil:
​

But I did not add or delete anything or anyone in the prints.