Is Photography Over?

The question of whether or not photography is over has worn out its welcome so to speak.  I never really had any interest in this question as it seems obvious to me that photography is changing, but is not over.  In fact, I'm not sure that, to date, any medium ever has just completely died off.  And surely all mediums have evolved, finding new arenas to enter and flesh out, moving through the new questions raised by these movements, but to be completely over?  Surely not.

Perhaps this is not the exact question that was being asked, but rather the more pertinent question of is photography as we know it now over?  To that I would answer, yes.  There is a transitional stage that is occurring, and has been occurring, for quite some time, maybe even beginning with the development of the first personal hand held cameras, which changed the course for photography before the digital.  I feel as though the personal camera is now, through digital, exploring its final course in development as the imagery that has been coalescing over the years into a mountain of photographs, explodes.  This explosion is what we are now living in and out through the developments of social media, and it is this explosion that has caused much anxiety for photography as pieces of it continue to be blown out further and further from the medium-specificy that once haunted the photograph.
Much like Jennifer Blessing and Philip-Lorca diCorcia, I can see how photography as we know it is nearly over, but also like them, I do not see a need to panic.  For instance, Jennifer Blessing states "...there is still something that is "photography," there is still something inherent to the medium."  While, Philip-Lorca diCorcia states "The delivery system is rapidly shifting but the content is the same."  Both statements ring true to me in the sense that although the ways in which photographs are created are different, they are still being created, even though there are a good number of artists who use photography out of its original parameters (history, definition, meaning, associations, etc.), they do so with the weight of those parameters, whether they like them or not.  This is where the distinct mark of "photography" that Blessing discussed occurs, and again this rings true for any medium.  
For me, this is where George Baker's Photography's Expanded Field feels apropos.  Baker, who is interested in photographic forms that signal the end of the medium, has discovered that photography has both dispersed and returned to and from the potentials of photography in ways that almost leave behind the original medium-specific notion of the photograph.  It is this "expanded field" that Baker attempts to map out with little success, as the medium's moves are so multitudinous and quick.  
To pretend that these changes are not important or that they are the end all be all, would be a vast oversight of all of the evidence.  Even Joel Snyder, who believes that it is the end of photography recognizes that this does not change the machine of photography- the buying, selling, collecting, organizing and teaching of photography by its institutions.  With this argument I do not understand how photography is over because clearly it is being kept alive, even if it is at the cost of something else, it is still here, if not just in an expanded form, that may be far from the original but cannot hide its own photographic beginnings.

Expanding Fields

This week's article, Photography's Expanded Field by George Baker, was an overview of how photography has been theorized and how this theorization has fallen into a sort of loop that has not allowed recent developments in photography to be thought or mapped out.
According to Baker, the photographic object is one that is in crisis mode, seeing as it has now "succumbed" to digital recordings.  To illustrate this point, Baker discusses Rosalind Krauss's ideas about the "theoretical object." This said object is one that encompasses how artistic objects, during the 1970's and 1980's, adjusted themselves within the parameters of photography,  or in other words the interpretation of the photographic developed into other mediums.  Now photography is doing the same thing as it pushes itself into the cinematic.
This is where the altered forms of photography can develop, and it is specifically these altered forms that need to be mapped out beginning with Baker's two terms "narrativity" and "stasis."  Narrativity describes the ability of an image to contain narrative movement within itself while stasis refers to the ability of a photograph to be a stopped moment of time.  These terms fall into line with how photography has always been looked at, terms of opposition.  It seems that up until this point photography has wedged itself between ontology and social usage, between art and technology, and etc.
Now though, when describing contemporary photography usage, the terms of narrativity and stasis, among others, have left the photograph in the neither/nor.  For the photograph is neither narrative, nor stasis, but rather a function of not existing as either one of these terms.  Through a structuralist lens, the photograph is both a function of not-narrative and not-stasis at the same time, which has allowed photography to move from in-between two things to the center of an ever growing web of new forms.  
While this has opened up photography to an "expanded field" of opportunity, Baker warns against some foreseeable problems.  For instance, his first fear is the return to the traditional, to the medium-specificity that was the core of modern art.  He also warns against the tying down of these new forms through new terms such as when Krauss's essay freed some work from the term "sculpture", only to find the work tied down by terms such as "architecture" and "landscape."
Finally, Baker describes the main problem with work thus far- the silent and complex nature of the effects of such work.  This is why Baker feels that a mapping of the contemporary movements is necessary.  The mapping would not only allow a greater understanding of what is occurring in contemporary photography, but it would also allow a deconstruction of these effects, thus opening more doors to more forms.
For now though, things are developing at a such a rate that the mapping of them seems nearly impossible as evidenced by the end of his essay, when artist Nancy Davenport "grabbed my pen and paper and began to swirl lines in every direction, circling around my oppositions and squares..." as an action to evoke all of the other possibilities.

Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still

James Coleman, Seeing for Oneself, film still

Jeff Wall, Picture for Women

Sharon Lockhart- Lunch Break

Social Media and Photography

This week's readings focused on how digital technology has changed the relationships and hierarchies between viewers, producers and the distribution of the image.

First we read Lev Manovich's writing The Practice of Everyday (Media) Life:  From Mass Consumption to Mass Cultural Production? He begins by discussing how user created media has allowed social media to develop into what it has become "Web 2.0."  The web 2.0 marks shifts in how the web is both produced and consumed.  For example, in web 2.0 there was a shift from users accessing content produced by a small number of professionals to nonprofessional user created content.
This user created content is the driving force behind the Web 2.0, which can better be understood through Michel de Carteau's strategies and tactics.  Strategies are the institutional power structures that are in place to set order.  Tactics are the ways in which individuals move through the strategies.  According to Manovich, strategies and tactics have developed into less distinct entities.  This is because products are now designed to be customized by users, that is nonprofessionals, which is a corporate strategy that mimics tactics.  These corporations that celebrate user created content use this strategy in order to control and develop the mass production of cultural objects by users.  This can be seen in how most user created content either follows the corporate template of "professional" content or reuses professional created content.
In oder to aid with the development of user created content, platforms to host this content were made.  Thus social media sites began to take over the internet, making user created content even more possible.  Individuals began to pour their lives out on the web making what was once private now public.  This also means that these companies developed an interest in where and how users create their content, because the more people use their sites for content, the more money they can make.
The conclusion of this article poses the question of whether or not professional art can survive through this time of extreme democratization of the web.  He states that while this question may be meaningless, in that modern art has never been so commercially successful and that in general there has never been more interest in a contemporary art scene, he also does recognize that the innovations by nonprofessionals has put a dent in the institution of art.  Still though, he suggest that the "excellent cultural work produced by students and nonprofessionals" is not the biggest challenge for art, but rather how the web 2.0 constantly and rather unpredictably changes the game.

The next article by Jason Evans was Online Photographic Thinking.  This article is a call to arms for photographers to grasp the new dynamics of the web and use them to their advantage.  He beings by explaining how underwhelmed he is by photography's presence online and that the digital versus analog debate is tired since photographs still do function on screen.  He does state that images on screen are slightly different in that they have lost their objectness, but that it was this loss that allows an engagment specifically with the image.  His overall argument is that he wants people to engage themselves with the potential of the democratization of the affordable distribution network given to them through the web.

TheDailyNice.com 11.14.11

We were also given six responses to this article, with each response, except the first, responding to the article itself as well as previous responses.  This conversational development where space and time are of no concern, is another characteristic of Manovich's web 2.0, but I digress.
There was a general agreement throughout these responses in that although they also saw that taking advantage of the internet for photography was important, it was not yet time for this to occur because as of right now there is nothing to be lost by placing images on the internet.  If someone or no one accesses a persons' work online, that person is the only one who knows or cares.  Also, when your images are online, they become impermanent since one cannot control how someone views the image.  This is not a sustained way of viewing work, unlike when it is placed in a gallery setting, where people take more time to view.

The last article was Digital Images, Photo-Sharing and our Shifting Notions of Everyday Aesthetics by Susan Murray.  In this article Murray outlines how social media, and specifically the photo-sharing site Flickr, has changed not only the hierarchies of professional and nonprofessional photographers, but also who can and will begin a conversation about the images.
She begins by giving a brief history of amateur photography, where at the turn of the century there were those who took images for fun, also known as amateurs, and those who were engaged in art for leisure, known as serious amateurs.  This continued until the 1950's when Kodak commercialized amateur photography by defining it as the special moments in domestic life.  After that, the next change was during the 1960's and 1970's where the snapshot aesthetic became a viable choice and the mediums reliability of a vehicle for reality was challenged.  This then brings us to the development of consumer digital cameras, which forever changed the genre from the special and precious image to an everyday and fleeting one.
Through the use of these individual digital cameras a worldwide network of digital image systems began to appear. These systems, such as Flickr, have changed photography's connections to history, memory, loss, absence and death to transience and motion.  This occurs through the daily diary aspects of Flickr, where the images that are seen first are often being replaced by new images.  In this way the old images move to make way for the new, forever giving motion to an otherwise still object.  This continual movement places less importance on single images, which are now visually disposable.
For Murray, the people that use these sites are what should be taken into account when discussing digital photography.  This is because even though these people understand the ability of images to be manipulated, this does not lead them to immediately question the truth of images, as previously discussed in almost all analog versus digital debates.
Murray wraps up this discussion with how the comment function of sites like Flickr allow for a community to develop through a group understanding of norms, values and systems.  It is in the development of these communities that the line between amateur and professional is disappearing.  This erasing is because of the exclusion and marginalization of the content that can happen during the development of said communities. She concludes that sites like Flickr have forever altered our relationship to the image.

The Machine Is Us/ing Us
Mad Men- Carousel Speech

Jeff Wall's "Liquid Intelligence"

In this reading Jeff Wall outlines the two main forces at work in photography through both metaphorical and theoretical representations.  These two forces are labeled as "dry" and "wet" or more specifically in terms of the latter "liquid."
The "wet" or "liquid" force is represented in photographs through mainly natural forms.  These forms, although difficult to describe in words, can be seen in photographs and as they are seen they can bring forth other meanings within the work.  This "liquid intelligence of nature" can also be understood through the actual process of making a photographs.  The liquid, water, is used in a controlled way to bring forth the image on paper.  It is through water that photography is connected to the past and all other associations of water processes.
In opposition with the "liquid intelligence" but also in connection with it through photography, is the "dry" nature of technology.  The "dry" can be seen literally in the use of the mechanical- the opening and closing of the shutter in a camera and all of the optics and mechanics that exist within it.  The technical views natural forms in a "cool" way, without feeling, which then allows for self-reflection of the form to take place.
These two forces described show the ability of the mechanical to record the natural through the aide of "liquid" in order to preserve the latter.  This can also be understood as what was once the underlying problem with the institution of photography- the distinction between the technical and ecological in regards to nature.
These are the things that balanced out photography for a long while.  Then entered the digital and the removal or displacement of water, causing the "dry" to take over. While Jeff Wall actually does state that "...this is neither good nor bad necessarily" he does note that this will cause the "generation of electricity" to take over and the historical referencing that once occurred in photography to end.  The mechanical has entered fully with its cool gaze, and thus has reduced the natural in photography, for better or for worse.

Jeff Wall, Morning Cleaning

Jeff Wall, Milk

The Digital

This week's readings focused on the consequences of the digital revolution and within that sphere the creation and use of digital photography.  

The most negative viewpoint on digital photography was Fred Ritchin's writing titled After Photography:  Into the Digital.   He begins his discussion with the digital revolution and how it has created a space where "touch is reduced to clicking and sight to a rectangle."  This rectangle has become a world unto itself or an uberenvironment that has consumed the user in its menagerie of digital media.  

According to Ritchin, digital media is always malleable in that it can always be rethought and reconfigured, and is more pliant to human will than perhaps any other medium before it.  It is all at once nonlinear, made up of code or data, which is constantly being manipulated, has multiple authors, circumvents nature while redefining space and time,  allows the original and the copy to be the same thus draining the original of meaning and is interactive.  All of these items are in some form of opposition with what photography used to be.  For example, analog photography was understood as capturing a specific moment in time where whatever was photographed was understood to be real.  For Ritchin, this credibility of the realness of photography is what is in jeopardy with the development of digital media.   

What has taken the place of reality is virtual reality, a created reality.  This "reality" is based on the image rather than the actual experience. We desire the image more because it is unreal.  This unreality seems to us to go beyond our finite existence and so we want it more.  

The Most Photographed Barn in America

To explore this point further, Ritchin includes an excerpt from Don DeLillo's White Noise.  In it DeLillo and another man named Murray drive out to see "The Most Photographed Barn in America."  Once there Murray declares, "No one sees the barn." and "We're not here to capture an image, we're here to maintain one."  In other words, society has decided what the barn looks like and so that is the way everyone sees it.   Everyone who goes and sees that barn is actively perpetuating the illusion or image of the barn, not the actual real barn.  They do not experience the bar, they capture it, flattening it out to be shared with others.

In the end Ritchin, almost desperately, asks "Where is the real now?"  He offers no answer here, but it almost seems hopeless that it will ever be found again.  We are looking at pictures of pictures, everything is manipulated and made into whatever whoever wants it to be.  In this time, the real seems to be only found in its always shifting form- the unreal.  

In opposition to Ritchin's writings is Corey Dzenko's Analog to Digital:  The Indexical Function of Photographic Images.  Basically Dzenko argues that the reliability of photography has not changed despite the digital revolution but rather it "enlarges" the traditional practice of it.  He cites the fact that digital photography has visually taken cues from its predecessor, analog photography, in order to maintain the belief that the photograph represents reality and because of these cues (characteristics and conventions of the real) the viewer sees the "real."  

Kerry Skarbakka, Stairs

For example, he uses the work of Kerry Skarbakka, specifically an image titled Stairs.  Here, the artist used digital technology to make it appear as though he is falling down the stairs.  He then posted this image on FailBlog.org and to not much surprise people commented on the image as though it had really happened.  This is because the photographic appearance of the image, created by Skarbakka through the study of analog photography, and the context surrounding the display of the image all led to its credibility as something that really existed.   

Dzenko also brings up the point that the believability of photography has always been something that has been in question, since its beginning.  This question of reality is not something new in photography and as such is no cause for alarm.  The question has remained and viewers have believed.  

The final point he makes is that the social uses of photography have generally been ignored as part of this discussion.  He sees the digital as just replacing the analog in social use.  For example, when looking at an image in the newspaper, he gets the same information from it as he would if he viewed it online.  Fundamentally he believes that there is no difference, socially, in viewing the image one way or another.  

The final article, Jorge Ribalta's The Meaning of Photography, rewinds the argument of digital photography's consequences to a recontextualizing of the understanding of photography in the post-modern age.  In order to get into the digital we first have to understand that photography died along with the modern utopia, during the modern age.  These deaths correspond with the shift from analog to digital and that it is precisely the digital that has allowed the reappearance, even if it is disembodied from its original form, and explosion of photography into our visual culture, or in Ribalta's words "photography dies but the photographic is born."  

Ribalta also questions, but does not directly refute, the idea that the digital photograph, with its loss of the indexical value of the sign, means that it also looses its believability.  He does recognize that, yes the digital has relaxed the relationship of the photographer to the photograph by making it easy create and dispose of but like Dzenko, she also notices that the digital uses the "codification and simulation of original photographic procedures."  She goes beyond Dzenko though in that for him realism is now an effect, something to be created, a normalization of the digital image into the photographic sign.  

Since realism is the the power and status of photography, Ribalta then begs the question, "Can photography maintain social relevance in the era of crisis of photographic realism?"In response to this he outlines his idea of molecular realism, or a realism that combines documentary and fiction.  He argues that with micropolitical discussions between the author and the spectator and a radicalization of the institutional critique, this new hybrid realism is possible.  

In supporting these two branches of his plan, Ribalta discusses artist Jo Spence and the Barcelona Survey.  With Jo Spence he discusses her ideas of democratizing the meaning of imagery through the understanding that now anyone can access the same tools as professionals.  It is this democratizing that will show a resistance to the refined status of the art object.  As this refined status lies with institutions, Ribalta calls for such institutions to reconsider moving beyond cultural confinment and modernist notions.  He asks for a radicalization of the institutional critique so that we can begin to understand digital photography through the reinvention of documentary and photographed realsim, or his molecular  realism.  

In the future, Ribalata hopes that all of this is possible, so that we can move on into the new potentials that are arising out of these relationships between politics, social sciences and art.  

In synthesizing all of these readings I am more inclined to agree with Ribalta's ideas.  It seems to me that a rethinking of the way we describe and work with digital media would certainly be beneficial, specifically if we were able to move beyond the modern.
 I, along with Ribalata and Dzenko, do not really believe Ritchin's view that the credibility of the photograph is at greater risk now.  This has always been a question in photography and so now, even though digital photography is different, given all of Ritchin's reasons, people as a whole, through digital photography's appropriation of names and conventions of analog photography, still believe in the photograph as real despite numerous questionings throughout history.

Another thing is that photography has been able to be manipulated since its beginning.  I understand that now manipulation is now much easier and thus does not require a master, but manipulation such as what occurred in the Cottingley Fairy photographs.  In these photographs two young girls, Elsie Wright and Frances Griffths, convinced a good number of people that the images they had taken were of real fairies.  They later admitted that the fairies were card board cutouts, but because of the power of the photograph, people believed, even though it seemed quite impossible.  Despite this trick, and many more, people continued to believe in photographs.  This fakery in the image happened in 1917, long before the digital revolution, and would continue to occur throughout photographic history.

Perhaps the most widely known photographer who uses digital manipulation in order to normalize his digital images into appearing as analog photographs is Jeff Wall.  Everything Wall does is what he calls "near documentary" and what is meant by this is he constructs his digital images in such a way that they appear to be not constructed.
An example of how he makes it appear as though the digital is analog, and thus leads the viewer into believing the image, is in his image Morning Cleaning.  Here, if Wall had wanted to, he could have brought out detail in the dark carpet where the legs of the chairs are.  Instead, he let them drop off into it, as if he had just taken this one frame in one moment, instead of hundreds over several days.

Jeff Wall, Morning Cleaning

Overall, I do not believe there should not be such a great concern with how digital has affected belief in photography.  I believe that he digital revolution is still so very young that now is not the time to act but rather to observe.

Looking at Race in Art

In this weeks readings we were given extensive viewpoints on the role of art in understanding race and it's  subsequent meanings.  Before we could get into this though, we had to understand how race is functioning in today's society.

Through The Theoretical Status of the Concept of Race by Howard Winant, the ways people have of discussing race were outlined and then debunked.  Firstly, Winant explored what he calls "Race as an Ideological Contruct" outlined by its supporter Barbara Fields.  In this view, the concept of race fulfilled a need in society-the need for an explanation for the distinct social inequity of slavery.  Fields believes that society continues to reinvent race in order to fit itself, or in other words, race exists because people continue to make it a priority.  Winant argues that this viewpoint has become common sense (a person is just a person) but that it does not allow for a response to the sociocultural differences that have developed overtime and that it really only explains the origins of thinking about race.  He also contests that it fails to recognize the "deeply embedded social construct" of race in a society that uses it as a major part of identity.
Next, Winant looks at "Race as an Objective Condition." Here, he states that the proponents of this are committed to looking at race socially, but that they also fall into a sort of objectivism when it comes to racial identity and meaning.  In this viewpoint, race is part of group statuses that are ascribed to society, wherein then roles are performed accordingly.  Here race is treated as an object fact, one that eventually configures into rules of racial classification.  Winant again finds fault in that this view ignores the development of racial identity, denies historical and social comprehension of race and does give explanation for how people manage to navigate conflicting meanings of racial identity (one acting a race).
Once Winant puts these viewpoints down, he begins to call for a  "Critical Theory on the Concept of Race," or as he would coin it "racial formation." He contends that this new racial formation must recognize the history of the social construction experiences of race and race categories, as well as three other main defining factors all dealing with race in a contemporary setting, such as in the globalization of race.  He concludes his writing with hope for moving beyond the idea of race as an illusion and towards it being just another "marker of the infinity of variations" in humanity.

Carrie Mae Weems, From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried

From there we moved onto a review and an essay from The New York Times writer Holland Cotter.  The review was about a show titled Only Skin Deep:  Changing Visions of the American Self.  This show addressed American identity which then encompasses ethnicity, sexuality and race.  Cotter focuses mainly on how race was portrayed as a social fact that is used by a group of people to control another group of people through both physical and mental force.  He writes that this show more specifically looked into how photography has been used to record, reference and enforce the hierarchal rankings in the history of race.  He goes onto explain about some of the singular works within the exhibit and how they function there, always coming back to the "problem of the color line" or rather how the show reasserts how much of an issue race still is.

In Cotter's second writing, we begin to get a better overview of his viewpoint on race and ethnicity in art.  He begins with how multiculturalism moved art visually and conceptually beyond the Western hemisphere and allowed the social and ethical construct of the art world to be seen.  In this way multiculturalism tried to be rid of the exclusion that was occurring, and in some ways it did.  For instance, minority artists began to be recognized, but with that more issues began to develop such as art careers based on ethno-racial identity.
At the end of this article, Cotter explains that he has seen a shift in how the world is dealing with ethnicity in art.  He claims that there is a developing movement called post-ethnicity and that it can give a path out of ethno-racial art being defined as a category while still keeping identity, as a whole, viable.  Ideally this would mean that minority artists are at the center of the art world, along with everyone else.
By far the most interesting article we read this week was The Sound of Light:  Reflctions on Art History in the Visual Culture of Hip-Hop by Krista Thompson.  This article deals mainly with two artists, Kehinde Wiley and Luis Gispert, and how they combine art history and hip hop to comment on contemporary culture.

First, Thompson takes us through the short history of hip hop and its culture.  She reflects on the main criteria of hip hop culture, which is "being seen being seen", and how some people within the culture go about this through there use of bling.  Bling takes on a whole new meaning in this article, with its definition varying from the "sound of light off of a diamond," to a "flashy accouterment that glorifies conspicuous consumption" and any commodity that can show its opulence in the visual field.  In other words, bling is usually shiny, allowing light to bounce off of it and literally, physically blind the viewer.

From here Thompson draws a connection from the shininess of bling to the surface treatment that developed out of 17th century Dutch oil paintings.  What the discovery of oil painting allowed artists to do was render objects with meticulous detail of the "tangibility, texture, luster and solidarity" of real life.  This led the artists to look solely at the surface of things, or rather, the canvas became a mirror instead of a window.  The use of shine on the objects within the canvas gave them a pictorial value to match their commercial value, thus shine become an intrinsic value of an object.  The only thing that was not rendered with shine in mind was the skin of the subject within the frame, because this would dictate them as an object.  Having said that, it was black skin that was depicted as a commodity through the use of surficism and shine.  Here is where Thompson states that perhaps bling, which is between hypervisibility and disappearance(so conspicuous the wearer is defiantly noticed, but not completely seen because of the blinding ability of bling), is what black subjects use to make their subjectivity real.

Kehinde Wiley, Portrait of Andries Stile

With all of this background in mind, Thompson moves into Kehinde Wiley's paintings.  Here she claims that his paintings, particularly those of the black urban youth, show literally, through his process, how painters have used surfacism and light to construct opulence and power, not just on canvas, but also into real life.  For instance, Wiley uses a "super-rapturous light" to envelop his subjects, but he does so in such a way that the subject disappears through competition with that light.  This is because Wiley interprets that light into a super ornate surface decor, allowing it to out subject, as it were, the person that one would originally think is the subject.

Luis Gispert, Untitled from Cheerleader series

From Wiley, Thompson moves into Luis Gispert's Cheerleader series.  Again we first begin to see themes of hip hop through the lens of oil paintings, but in a much different way than Wiley.  Gispert is more interested in how the visual expressions of hip hop and bling are able to show a commodity's status as being a part of "blackness."  He does this through totally removing the illusion that surface aesthetics give to ground-figure relations.  For instance, in this series, he photographed girls of all different ethnicities in cheerleader outfits and the accoutrements of bling (grills, expensive, shiny jewelry, etc.), jumping into the air.  Behind them is nothing but a green screen, drawing attention to the fact that the illusion of gravity is created only by the use of perspective, scale and light.
Overall, all four of the articles were interesting and each gave me something else to think about.  There are so many issues facing minority artists and it seems as though things are only getting slightly better over time.  I do think it is frustrating that many artists who are actually able to support themselves as artists are white men, but I have also seen a lot of other types of people do great things, so that gives me hope.  As society is become more and more complex, so are peoples' identities, and hopefully in the future this will mean that there will be actual equality, and rightful subjectivity, between all people.

Photography and/as Ethics

While reading Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag, I cannot shake the feeling that although she contradicts her old writings' truthfulness, that it is done out of hope that the previous writings are not true rather than belief that they are not.  Rather, I think she makes a weak argument for her change of ideas and so I am not totally convinced.

Bearing in mind that I only received three chapters of the book (chapters seven, eight and nine) these chapters would appear to be the ones in which she address her old thoughts presented in On Photography.  It is in this previous book that the theme of "hyper-saturation," in regards to the massive amount of images seen on a day to day basis, is fleshed out through the understanding that the hyper-saturation is what, according to her, caused people not to care about images of horror.  In other words, we had seen so much horror, that we had become neutral to it.
It is in her rethinking of this idea that makes up what becomes the meat of Regarding the Pain of Others.  Sontag, rather than dismissing the gluttony of images, begins to think directly about how and when we see images of war and horror, specifically beginning with photographs that are presented to use through the television news.  Here, just looking at the function of television, Sontag draws out characteristics such as its instability of attention (channels can be turned) and its being made for entertainment.  This recognition of entertainment value makes her realize that the news must continually "stimulate" the viewer in such a way that things remain interesting.  In this way, according to others' views, not Sontag's, the news causes war to become a spectacle in which people can distance themselves so far from the reality that they believe that there is no real suffering in the world.  According to Sontag, this belief only covers a  "small, educated population living in the rich part of the world..."This is a vast generalization to her, because she understands, as many of us do, that there are millions of television viewers who do not have the "luxury" of forgoing reality.

In chapter eight, she goes on to discuss what she believes a photograph can and cannot do.  For Sontag, a photograph cannot give us the historical information on the suffering it ensnares, which is logical, for we cannot learn more than what is pictured in an image, it cannot "repair our ignorance."  What a photograph can do however is invite.  Invite us, the viewer, to pay attention, reflect and learn about what is happening in our world, and for me, it is this invitation that would possibly lead someone to doing something about the suffering.
With that being said though, Sontag continues with her belief that the viewer is frustrated about the inability to actively fix the problems represented in these images, and that is why there is a debate around the meaning of viewing such images.  She writes "If we could do something about what the images show, we might not care as much about these issues." Which to me means we should stop debating about photographs and start figuring out how to help people, but perhaps, as Sontag later suggests, once I am removed from these images I will forget my indignation.

Deigned by Oliveiero Toscani 

Moving onto chapter nine, Sontag begins to question the reader about where images in need of a serious space of contemplation should be presented and wether or not it even exists.  There are so many places we see photographs these days:  art galleries, books, newspapers, the internet, television, ads, etc., and to make it more complicated, most photographs intermingle and avoid the categories we once gave them (art, journalism, advertising).  For instance, Sontag cites the use of a dead Croatian soldier's clothes as an ad for the Benetton clothing company.  Here, an image that could have only ever been photojournalism previously has become advertising, which once again raises issues of viewing images of horror, or post-horror for its' shock and entertainment value.
In the end, Sontag does not give us an answer as far as what a contemplative space might be in our contemporary society.  She does however say that art might have the best attempt thus far in invoking thoughtful discussion on photographs that include the pain of others.  Her example of this is Jeff Wall's Dead Troops Talk.

Once I moved through Sontag's work, I was able to dive into Arielle Azoulay's introduction to The Civil Contract of Photography.  In this, Azoulay outlines what she calls the "civic political space" that occurs in photography through the assumptions and actions of the photographer, the photographed subject and the spectator.  It is Azoulay's belief that through this civic space, citizenship is both returned (in a sense through the contract of photography) and demanded by those with a non or impaired civic status, which in her writings here is the Palestinians and women respectively.
It is interesting to note that photography does cross many boundaries such as class, nationality, etc. or rather, a photograph can be understood by almost any person regardless of background.  It is this idea for Azoulay that begins to allow photographs to move beyond the influence of the ruling power, or a political power that denies citizenship of some peoples.   This idea and the fact that for Azoulay, an image never belongs to one person because it's meaning can always be negotiated and renegotiated, means that no one entity can have power over, even the ruling power.
Azoulay and Sontag have very different ideas about what photography is capable of, specifically photography surrounding the horror and pain of others and the duty(Azoulay) or ability(Sontag) of the viewers' response.  As I wrote earlier, Sontag does not believe that a photograph has the ability to do anything more than "invite" a viewer into thinking about why and how this happened (that is, whatever is pictured in the photograph) and perhaps incite someone to learn more.  In the end, for Sontag, we are just frustrated viewers.  Azoulay takes a different stance.  She sees viewing images of pain and violence as part of our civic duty necessary for citizenship.  People that do have citizenship should then be using it as a tool for gaining citizenship for those without.  She asks that we take action and stand up for those who do not have the ability because they are not recognized by ruling powers.  It is, for her, our duty.

Gillian Laub, from Tesitmony

To bring some of Azoulay's ideas into context, the article on Gillian Laub's photographic series titled Testimony includes images of survivors on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is what Azoulay's entire book focuses on.  In these portraits, Azoulay places importance on their identity, which she claims is given to us through their accessories and objects, how the theme of the "two sides" is developed, and how Laub photographs the people in such a way as to allow the viewer to first be lulled by the normalcy of the image and then struck by the distinction of it.  For example, Azoulay examines an image where a young man sits on some rocks with his girlfriend.  She claims that it is not until a moment later that you realize that the man is missing both of his legs from the knee down.   This delay in reaction is one element that makes Laub's photographs interesting.
For Azoulay though, what makes these photographs most interesting is that Laub asked each person to write down how the place in which they live is perceived, which for Azoulay negates the political context within which these images exist because they are presented to the viewer in a "nonmilitant civil language."
Although in the introduction Azoulay never makes claims about whether or not these her ideas could be applied to other photographs, I think the ideas would function really well for any other images of suffering.   When it comes to anything not dealing with pain and suffering the civil contract could still apply, just in a more generalized sense.  More than anything, at the basis of her argument she has outlined the three players in photography and how each functions, each assuming the others' existence and each one quite aware of its' role within the paradigm.


More photographs for musing upon as we ponder these ideas-War Photographers in Afghanistan