Photo Journalism

Preface

Photojournalism, at the beginning of the 21st century, finds itself at the proverbial crossroads: Will image-making technologies and public cynicism lead to its demise, or will journalists rise to the challenge by practicing a new, more credible form of visual journalism? From the time of its invention in the early 19th century, photography enjoyed the unparalleled credibility assumed through a mechanistic perception of a neutral, “mirror of nature” camera. By the beginning of the 20th century, photographs were being used as irrefutable evidence of the veracity of their manifest content, a position supported by empiricism, modernism, and the scientific method. Additionally, journalism’s deliberate move towards objectivity in mid-20th-century media culture underscored the value of photographic evidence. By the the 35-mm camera 1960s, photojournalism was flourishing had made the physical challenges of picture taking easier. printing advances had made publication of photographs a simpler matter, and news publications had begun to realize the informational and economic value of photographs.

Paradoxically, however, the physical sciences had already challenged the idea of an objective world “out there.” The development of quantum physics shifted all notions of reality, zooming in on the subjective nature of our comprehension of all things. Literary, art, and communication scholars echoed physicists’ concerns through their critiques of the scientific method and modernism itself. The photograph as an evidentiary document began to lose face in light of increased understanding of the subjective nature of visual representation. Constructionism, semiotics, and then deconstructionism offered new ways to interpret visual culture and human visual behaviour.

And if those issues were not enough to shake the ground of photojournalism’s raison d’être, digital imaging a genre technology, with its ability to flawlessly manipulate that was not supposed to be manipulated, did. Ethical and Time magazine in the 1980s and 1990s contributed to a blunders by such journalistic icons as National Geographic popular misconception that digital imaging is rapidly eroding any trust viewers or readers might still hold in journalistic media. Furthermore, such events as the paparazzi’s pursuit of Princess Diana the night of her death fueled the fires of public concern about the practice of photojournalism.

Yet, human beings continue to die from war, murder, natural disasters; to be born, now in litters as large as seven or eight; to live in harmony and conflict. Newspapers and photojournalism have survived the onslaught of electronic media, continuing to report the human maelstrom of a global citizenry as if it were a vivid reality play in the midst of the nonreality of turn-of-the-millennium culture. Almost drowned within media criticism have been the voices of those professionals whose appreciation of the subjective nature of observation and reportage has led to more sensitive and sophisticated practice of visual journalism. In daily practice, digital-imaging technology has led to increased awareness of the ease of manipulating visual reportage, in turn leading to higher-not lower-ethical standards. At the same time, new technology has made visual coverage faster, easier, and more prolific via digital distribution.

As a result, photojournalism at the beginning of the 21st century finds itself maturing beyond the naive idealism of early and mid-20th-century positivism, and even beyond the dark cynicism of late-20th-century post-modernism, toward a profound sense of purpose: Good visual reportage may very well be the only credible source of reasonably true images in decades to come. The heart of photojournalism is reporting human experience accurately, honestly, and with an overriding sense of social responsibility. The key to earning and maintaining public trust is increasing awareness of the process of visual reporting and its potential to inform or misinform. Drawing on an eclectic theoretical base grounded in classical ethics, surveillance theory, social constructionism, and visual perception, this book considers the symbiotic concerns of various travelers through the visual truth labyrinth: photographers, human subjects, editors, viewers, and society at large. Using an original typology of visual ethics ranging from visual embrace to visual suicide, the book examines visual reportage as a form of human visual behavior, concluding with a proposal for an “ecology of the visual” appropriate for the 21st century.