"Manufactured Representation of the Real"

In this week's reading of Rowe's Framed and Mounted: Sport Through the Photographic Eye, there were several aspects that he covered in which I found to extremely intriguing. In the beginning, Rowe talked about the definition of still photography, as "a form of communication that relies on the notion of 'capture', frozen for all time is a gesture, an expression, incident or landscape." With this definition, it would seem to me that still photography is capturing a real life event that couldn't possibly be altered if it is history, but Rowe begs the question of whether or not those pictures could be actually "manufactured representation of the real."

He further explains this with providing the example of a man waving a stick at a policeman, which would make for a great picture in the realm of photojournalism, but Rowe says, what if the picture was really representing something else, such as the fact that maybe it wasn't even really all that dramatic because the man may have just been waving the photographer away, something that is very plausible. With photography, I suppose you can't really make an assumption of whether or not that picture was altered a certain way without actually being there. However, with that being said, I don't know if I necessarily agree with his statement "whatever the motives of the photographer, a framed, two-dimensional image can never be 'the thing itself'"because I don't think that applies for all cases within photography.

Another aspect of this article that I found to be thought provoking was the author's comparison of sports photography and pornography. He claims that they are similar in the sense that they are "both fixated in the body, minutely examining its performative possibilities and special qualities," as well as being "concerned with arousal."

Generally, I didn't want to believe that that statement had some truth behind it, in the sense that they are both designed to provoke some sort of sexual attention, and I even went so far as to think it's almost insulting to sports photography that it can even be comparable to pornography. I decided to do some research to prove that photography and pornography were really not the same thing, that maybe it was just Sports Illustrated's Swim Suit Edition that happened to be more provocative. But then I googled ESPN's online magazine, and on google the first link lead me to the normal ESPN page with you know, pretty PG - 13 stuff, and then right below it was a link to "ESPN's Body Issue." And of course, the first thing I see on the page is that image above, which completely and utterly destroyed any and all of my argument I was going to make. Which then leads me to my next question, why on earth are humans so incredibly fixated on the human body?


Source: http://espn.go.com/espn/bodyissue

"Frozen Moments In Time"

      In light of this week's reading, I decided to explore the idea of photography ethics, as this topic was what jumped out to me the most from the reading. I found a video of The National Press Photographer Association's compilation of digital photography manipulations, and I thought it was interesting that they quoted: "As journalists we believe the guiding principle of our profession is accuracy; therefore, we believe it is wrong to alter the content of a photograph in any way that deceives the public."

    Normally, I'll admit, I love photoshop, and even the Camera Plus application on my iPhone that lets me digitally alter pictures in a way that makes it much more appealing; almost 3-D. I can even fool other people into thinking that I am a good photographer, when in reality it's photoshop and the filters that are essentially the masterminds behind the attractiveness and quality of the photograph. I do even believe that alterations of photography in some cases, aren't necessarily negative. However though, in some contexts such as war photography, I find it incredibly not only deceiving and unethical, but also a complete abuse of their job as a photojournalist. 

   As NPPA stated that their principle of profession is accuracy, I think that a photojournalists job is really to capture the story, which when done ethically and correctly can be extremely powerful. When pictures are altered such as the one below, it seems to me that they are almost in a sense manipulating history. Although that sounds incredibly dramatic for just a few differences in a photograph, I think that it is the photojournalists responsibility to report back to the rest of the world with exactly the way history presented itself in reality, because that is all the rest of us who were not at the scene of the event have to look back upon and maybe even someday use those photographs as a learning tool for other generations to come. It's also even more upsetting because the photographer who took this picture used it for his benefit to put himself higher on the photography spectrum, as the photograph ran on Page One of Times, which I would say is quite an honor. 

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/essays/vanRiper/030409.htm

     I also found another article on BBC, called "How Fake Images Change Our Memory and Behavior," about how people think of memories as a transcript - basically a compilation of everything they have experienced from when they were a child to their current experiences, but in reality our memory "is far more like a desert mirage than a transcript – as we recall the past we are really just making meaning out of the flickering patterns of sights, smells and sounds we think we remember." Science has also proved through dozens and dozens of research that our memory actually is not very reliable - when we see pictures, we remember them but not necessarily all the details so when we recall things, our imagination may be filling in the gaps of what we don't remember. In the article, there was also one study done where some people were shown photographs from their childhood, along with several pictures that were photoshopped to make it look like they were doing things that didn't actually happen (i.e family on a hot air balloon), and half of the participants said that they recalled those events happening in real life, even though they didn't.

Source: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20121213-fake-pictures-make-real-memories