Week 8: Photography: Reconceptualising culture, memory and space.

2.      Why do we consider photography as a form of cultural critique? Is every photograph able to do so?

Photography was introduced by Joseph Nicephore Niepce in 1827, during the industrial revolution era, replacing the painting's role. Today, photography has become a powerful tool of communication and a mode of visual expression that touches human life in many ways. It has become well known for documenting or capturing memories. Most of the times photographs taken now are snapshots- casual records to document events such as graduation, birthdays, and weddings. Wright (1999, p. 146) supported this, "...use of the photography with the aim of changing views and opinions- sometimes with the ultimate intention of changing the world in which we live." A photographer’s ability is to use a medium to present people what they do not usually see.

Photography can be consider as a form of cultural critique because with the combination of culture and photographic representation, it provides a new way of record and seeing things, hence develop new perception (Moholy-Nagy, 1924, cited in Wright, 1999, p. 146). Photography is a powerful media tool that can produce representation, change the perception of audiences when they see it.

figure 1

Anyone can repeatedly tell the event and audiences may choose to believe what is being said as true or false. For example, Figure 1 shows an image of a soldier who point out his gun to a child. Some might think that the soldier is mean in a way that he point out the gun to a harmless boy, but the soldier is might not have an intention to harm the boy, it is just the boy is suddenly afraid and cries. As Time (1985) said that words recorded can be mislaid or lost, then therefore was recreated and duplicated depending on the memory it can summoned up. Baker (2012) supported that statement, "Image is more important than words, our brains will retain the impressions more than what is said, so image control is paramount." A photographer has the ability to use a medium to present people what they do not usually see. They placed themselves to a privileged position and also location to promote their personal causes and to challenge the concepts as well as stereotypes of visual imagery (Wright, 1999).

References:

Baker, F.W. (2012). Media Literacy in the K-12 Classroom. USA.

Time (1985). Life At War. Hong Kong: Time-Life Books Inc.

Wright, T. (1999). Photography Handbook. London, GBR:Routledge.