A "civil contract" in photography
Frank ess
The author of that article talks about a "civil contract" in
photography.
What is he talking about?
If you understand it the way I think he means, as exemplified in the
works he mentions, do you violate it?
If not, why not?
Would you violate the "civil contract" under the right conditions?
What are those conditions?
--
Frank ess
tony cooper
wrote:
>http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/arts/design/04abroad.html?th&emc=th
>
>The author of that article talks about a "civil contract" in
>photography.
>
>What is he talking about?
This writer, on the same subject, explains it a little better:
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11563
The writer identifies the civil contract as "a particular set of
relations between individuals to the power that governs them, and, at
the same time, a form of relations among equal individuals that
constrains this power."
If you read the part of the article you cited dealing with Marc
Garanger photographing Algerian women with the above explanation in
mind, you should be able to understand the term better. The Algerian
women were forced to have their faces photographed by an agent of the
government in violation of their civil contract.
>If you understand it the way I think he means, as exemplified in the
>works he mentions, do you violate it?
It really wouldn't come up for me. I have no power to exert over
anyone.
It's essential to understand that a violation of the civil contract is
not a violation in any other way. If you photograph the mayor's wife
drunk and squatting to pee in a city park, and send that photograph to
the newspaper, you may be violating a civil contract (relations among
equal individuals) but you are not committing a legal violation. The
word "contract" in this context is not the same as a legal contract,
and the word "violation" is not used in the legal sense.
>If not, why not?
>
>Would you violate the "civil contract" under the right conditions?
>What are those conditions?
That question contains a conflict. If the conditions are "right",
then there is no civil contract. If I feel that the publication of
the photograph of the mayor's wife is the right thing to do, then I
have no civil contract issue to deal with. The civil contract is an
issue of morality.
--
Tony Cooper - Orlando, Florida
Savageduck
> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/arts/design/04abroad.html?th&emc=th
>
> The author of that article talks about a "civil contract" in photography.
>
> What is he talking about?
Censorship of the unpleasant.
>
> If you understand it the way I think he means, as exemplified in the
> works he mentions, do you violate it?
Not yet,
>
> If not, why not?
No opportunity.
>
> Would you violate the "civil contract" under the right conditions? What
> are those conditions?
Yes, if the opportunity arose, and if the publication was more
important than public sensibilities and any reputation I thought I
might have.
The withdrawal, or non-publication of photographs under the guise of
"civil contract" is nothing but censorship.
--
Regards,
Savageduck
Floyd L. Davidson
That is an interesting article, I'll grant... but
probably only for those who already understand the
subject. The point of view taken and the examples given
are all good choices and informative, but I didn't think
the text of the article glued them together well.
I would suggest reading Susan Sontag's "On Photography",
which I thought should have been mentioned in the leading
paragraphs of that article rather than being saved for the
end. (I'd have exchanged the comments/examples using
Cartier-Bresson with Sontag.)
Interestingly, that article has a link to a list of
other Times articles mentioning Sontag. At the top of
the list is a wonderful portrait of her, by
Cartier-Bresson! Listed to the left of that list are
links to other sources about Sontag, including a 1977
"review" by William Gass of Sontag's "On Photography".
I put review in quotes because it isn't. It is his own
essay, essentially saying he wished he'd written about
it before Sontag because he also thinks the same and
believes he has a way with words... :-)
"... then what of the most promiscuous and
sensually primitive of all our gadgets -- the camera
-- which copulates with the world merely by widening
its eye, and thus so simply fertilized, divided
itself as quietly as amoebas do, and with a gentle
buzz slides its newborn image into view on a coated
tongue?"
If you don't mind, I'll stick with Sontag:
"To photograph people is to violate them."
--Susan Sontag, "On Photography"
"...the very question of whether photography is or is
not an art is essentially a misleading one. Although
photography generates works that can be called art --
it requires subjectivity, it can lie, it gives
aesthetic pleasure -- photography is not, to begin
with, an art form at all. Like language, it is a
medium in which works of art (among other things) are
made. Out of language, one can make scientific
discourse, bureaucratic memoranda, love letters,
grocery lists, and Balzac's Paris. Out of
photography, one can make passport pictures, weather
photographs, pornographic pictures, X-rays, wedding
pictures, and Atget's Paris."
-- Susan Sontag , "On Photography"
I personally have learned as much about photography from
Susan Sontag as I have from Ansel Adams or Dorothea Lange.
--
Floyd L. Davidson <http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson>
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska) fl...@apaflo.com
tony cooper
Davidson) wrote:
>"Frank ess" <fr...@fshe2fs.com> wrote:
>>http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/arts/design/04abroad.html?th&emc=th
>>
>>The author of that article talks about a "civil contract" in
>>photography.
>>
>>What is he talking about?
>>
>>If you understand it the way I think he means, as exemplified in the
>>works he mentions, do you violate it?
>>
>>If not, why not?
>>
>>Would you violate the "civil contract" under the right conditions?
>>What are those conditions?
>
>That is an interesting article, I'll grant... but
>probably only for those who already understand the
>subject. The point of view taken and the examples given
>are all good choices and informative, but I didn't think
>the text of the article glued them together well.
Hey, Floyd! We agree on something. That was my exact reaction on
reading the article. The writer jumped all over the place.
C J Campbell
The contract is not to be exploitative, voyeuristic, or insensitive to
the values or humanity of the subject. This is not something limited to
photography, you understand, but it pertains to all of art.
One might argue that Serrano's photograph "Piss Christ" violates this
contract, for example. But although this photograph is certainly
offensive to many (it offends me deeply) I would not say that it
violates the civil contract between the subject and the photographer.
After all, the subject is an inanimate object. Whether it violates some
sort of civil contract between artist and audience is more open to
question.
Kevin Carter's view of a vulture stalking a starving Sudanese child may
be unbearable, but I would be hard pressed to say that it is either
exploitative of voyeuristic. Instead, it is a cry for help -- a
declaration of war on the conditions that brought about this
circumstance. More exploitative was the faux outrage generated by much
of the public, which assumed that Carter did nothing to help the child.
This was unfair to Carter and also untrue.
Contrast this with the work of Starr Ockenga, much of which was blatant
child pornography exhibited as high art.
Greg Gibson talked about this in a lecture I attended at WPPI in
February. Eddie Adams said that he greatly regretted taking his famous
photo of the execution of a Viet Cong by General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, even
though the photo won Adams a Pulitzer Prize and was instrumental in
changing public opinion about the war. Gibson talked about a similar
situation that arose during the war in Iraq -- a press photographer was
on hand, and an Iraqi called him upstairs, pointed a gun at a
prisoner's head, and told the photographer to "Get ready, because in
five seconds this man will be dead." The photographer started to raise
his camera, but then turned on his heel and walked out the door. As he
started down the stairs, he heard the shot ring out and the sickening
thud of the prisoner's head hitting the floor. There is no photograph
of the incident. The photographer was not about to let this man exploit
the death of this prisoner for whatever purpose he had in mind.
Another photographer at the end of WW II was documenting the Holocaust.
As he stood looking at the pile of skulls, he suddenly realized -- his
biggest concerns were light and composition, not the humanity of his
subjects. That, he said, was when he knew something had happened to him
as a human being. He quit photojournalism forever.
It is not merely a matter of whether a subject is pleasant or
unpleasant, or even of taste. Sometimes the public needs to know. But a
truly great photographer might also have to know when he is crossing a
line. Then it is time to put the camera away.
--
Waddling Eagle
World Famous Flight Instructor
tony cooper
Isn't it the other way around? The civil contract is the ability to
take and share photographs that detail the unpleasant. So the
censorship of these photographs is a violation of the civil contract.
The civil contract is a good thing. The violation of the civil
contract is a bad thing.
At least that's the way that I read it in
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11563
which does - in my opinion - a better job of explaining the issue than
the original cite.
Floyd L. Davidson
>>works he mentions, do you violate it?
>
>It really wouldn't come up for me. I have no power to
>exert over anyone.
Then you don't take photgraphs???
>>Would you violate the "civil contract" under the right
>> conditions?
>>What are those conditions?
>
>That question contains a conflict. If the conditions
>are "right", then there is no civil contract. If I feel
>that the publication of the photograph of the mayor's
>wife is the right thing to do, then I have no civil
>contract issue to deal with. The civil contract is an
>issue of morality.
You didn't understand the article.
Floyd L. Davidson
>
>> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/arts/design/04abroad.html?th&emc=th
>> The author of that article talks about a "civil
>> contract" in photography.
>> What is he talking about?
>
>Censorship of the unpleasant.
Not necessarily though.
Read Susan Sontag.
Savageduck
Agreed. That makes far more sense than the article in the OP.
--
Regards,
Savageduck
Savageduck
> Savageduck <savageduck@{REMOVESPAM}me.com> wrote:
>> On 2009-06-04 13:40:04 -0700, "Frank ess" <fr...@fshe2fs.com> said:
>>
>>> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/arts/design/04abroad.html?th&emc=th
>>> The author of that article talks about a "civil
>>> contract" in photography.
>>> What is he talking about?
>>
>> Censorship of the unpleasant.
>
> Not necessarily though.
>
> Read Susan Sontag.
I haven't read Sontag, so I cannot comment.
Time to expand my library.
--
Regards,
Savageduck
tony cooper
Davidson) wrote:
>tony cooper <tony_co...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>>>works he mentions, do you violate it?
>>
>>It really wouldn't come up for me. I have no power to
>>exert over anyone.
>
>Then you don't take photgraphs???
I'd settle for the power to get a more interesting mandate for the SI
than "Filters".
>
>>>Would you violate the "civil contract" under the right
>>> conditions?
>>>What are those conditions?
>>
>>That question contains a conflict. If the conditions
>>are "right", then there is no civil contract. If I feel
>>that the publication of the photograph of the mayor's
>>wife is the right thing to do, then I have no civil
>>contract issue to deal with. The civil contract is an
>>issue of morality.
>
>You didn't understand the article.
That could very well be possible.
However, as I understand the civil contract, it is the ability to take
and share photographs of unpleasant things without feeling or being
morally abhorrent. Using that understanding, if I don't feel that the
photograph of the mayor's wife portrays a significantly unpleasant
event, then I have no civil contract issue to deal with.
I'm sure you have what you consider to be a better understanding of
the article.
Floyd L. Davidson
>On 2009-06-04 17:12:04 -0700, fl...@apaflo.com (Floyd L. Davidson) said:
>
>> Savageduck <savageduck@{REMOVESPAM}me.com> wrote:
>>> On 2009-06-04 13:40:04 -0700, "Frank ess" <fr...@fshe2fs.com> said:
>>>
>>>> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/arts/design/04abroad.html?th&emc=th
>>>> The author of that article talks about a "civil
>>>> contract" in photography.
>>>> What is he talking about?
>>> Censorship of the unpleasant.
>> Not necessarily though.
>> Read Susan Sontag.
>
>I haven't read Sontag, so I cannot comment.
>
>Time to expand my library.
Poke around on the Internet. She wrote it decades ago
of course, so references and discussion abound.
She makes a lot more sense than the author of the
article cited above.
Frank ess
C J Campbell wrote:
> On 2009-06-04 13:40:04 -0700, "Frank ess" <fr...@fshe2fs.com> said:
>
>> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/arts/design/04abroad.html?th&emc=th
>>
>> The author of that article talks about a "civil contract" in
>> photography. What is he talking about?
>>
>> If you understand it the way I think he means, as exemplified in
>> the works he mentions, do you violate it?
>>
>> If not, why not?
>>
>> Would you violate the "civil contract" under the right conditions?
>> What are those conditions?
>
> The contract is not to be exploitative, voyeuristic, or insensitive
> to the values or humanity of the subject. This is not something
> limited to photography, you understand, but it pertains to all of
> art.
[ ... ]
>
> It is not merely a matter of whether a subject is pleasant or
> unpleasant, or even of taste. Sometimes the public needs to know.
> But a truly great photographer might also have to know when he is
> crossing a line. Then it is time to put the camera away.
The cited article from MIT is followed by Endorsements, one of which
includes:
"Azoulay situates photography within the context of political theory,
challenging Susan Sontag's important work on photography and war. For
Azoulay, the photograph of politically induced suffering makes an
appeal to rights and constitutes an emergency demand."
My original thinking after reading the Times piece, was that the power
of the photographer comes with a responsibility to wield it in
circumstances where the society's health and progress would be
enhanced by its use, that failure to do so would be a violation of the
"civil contract".
Your truly great photographer must be confident of his definition of
any lines.
To not publish an inappropriate photograph, and to publish an
inappropriate photograph are both violations? Can appropriateness be
established before non-publication? After publication, surely. I'm
afraid those Gaussian tails are rare enough in common experience to
make nearly any decision coin-tossable.
Bob Larter
> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/arts/design/04abroad.html?th&emc=th
You have to create an account to view the site.
Wanna post the text here?
--
W
. | ,. w , "Some people are alive only because
\|/ \|/ it is illegal to kill them." Perna condita delenda est
---^----^---------------------------------------------------------------
Bob Larter
> On Thu, 4 Jun 2009 13:40:04 -0700, "Frank ess" <fr...@fshe2fs.com>
> wrote:
>
>> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/arts/design/04abroad.html?th&emc=th
>>
>> The author of that article talks about a "civil contract" in
>> photography.
>>
>> What is he talking about?
>
> This writer, on the same subject, explains it a little better:
> http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11563
The book sounds like a steaming load of Post-Modernist bullshit to me:
---
But the crucial arguments of the book concern two groups whose
vulnerability and flawed citizenship have been rendered invisible due to
their state of exception: the Palestinian noncitizens of Israel and
women in Western societies. What they share is an exposure to injuries
of various kinds and the impossibility of photographic statements of
their plight from ever becoming claims of emergency and calls for
protection. Thus one of her leading questions is the following: Under
what legal, political or cultural conditions does it become possible to
see and to show disaster that befalls those flawed citizens in states of
exception?
---
The author is trying to equate the condition of women in Western society
with that of the Palestinians?!? WTF? I'm pretty sure that there isn't
any Western country where women are specially targeted by armed
soldiers, tanks & mortars.
---
About the Author
Ariella Azoulay teaches visual culture and contemporary philosophy at
the Program for Culture and Interpretation, Bar Ilan University.
---
Of *course* she does...
Bob Larter
> On Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:11:03 -0800, fl...@apaflo.com (Floyd L.
> Davidson) wrote:
>> You didn't understand the article.
>
> That could very well be possible.
If so, don't be ashamed. It's classic Post-Modernism, which redefines
large chunks of the English language for no good reason.
ASAAR
> Eddie Adams said that he greatly regretted taking his famous photo
> of the execution of a Viet Cong by General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, even
> though the photo won Adams a Pulitzer Prize and was instrumental in
> changing public opinion about the war.
Sure, and Eddie Adams said that the reason was that Nguyen Ngoc
Loan's relatives had suffered due to the actions of that particular
Viet Cong. There's a good reason for the existence of recusal. Not
many people can get away with being judge, jury and executioner,
whether they're personally involved or not. Occasionally they'll
luck out and find a sympathetic judge or jury. But the members of a
crazed lynch mob probably feel just as innocent. Ah, lynch mobs.
The purest form of American democracy in action.
C J Campbell
> C J Campbell <christophercam...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Another photographer at the end of WW II was documenting the Holocaust.
>> As he stood looking at the pile of skulls, he suddenly realized -- his
>> biggest concerns were light and composition, not the humanity of his
>> subjects. That, he said, was when he knew something had happened to him
>> as a human being. He quit photojournalism forever.
>
>
> I presume you are talking about George Rodger. But he didn't quit
> photojournalism, just being a war correspondent.
Thanks! I was trying to remember his name. I appreciate that immensely.
C J Campbell
If there is anything we have learned, it is that lynch mobs are not
unique to America or even characteristic of it, nor do they have
anything to do with democracy.
After all, Loan was neither American, nor was he serving a democracy.
Yet he executed that man. Perhaps understandably so. Perhaps not.
ASAAR
>> Sure, and Eddie Adams said that the reason was that Nguyen Ngoc
>> Loan's relatives had suffered due to the actions of that particular
>> Viet Cong. There's a good reason for the existence of recusal. Not
>> many people can get away with being judge, jury and executioner,
>> whether they're personally involved or not. Occasionally they'll
>> luck out and find a sympathetic judge or jury. But the members of a
>> crazed lynch mob probably feel just as innocent. Ah, lynch mobs.
>> The purest form of American democracy in action.
>
> If there is anything we have learned, it is that lynch mobs are not
> unique to America or even characteristic of it, nor do they have
> anything to do with democracy.
>
> After all, Loan was neither American, nor was he serving a democracy.
> Yet he executed that man. Perhaps understandably so. Perhaps not.
He was serving his own puppet government. We had a hand in
replacing Viet Nam's elected leader. That's what happens when
leaders are too moderate and try to do what's best for their own
country, not the ones that are truly running the show. Same thing
happened to the popular (and as far as I can tell) truly decent King
Norodom Sihanouk, who tried mightily but was ultimately unable to
keep Cambodia neutral. Some buddy traffic analysts in Viet Nam
seemed to like him and called him "Snookie". I was told but haven't
been able to verify it, that like another well known politician, he
played the saxophone.
> Sihanouk's leisure interests include music (he has composed songs
> in Khmer, French, and English) and film. He has become a
> prodigious filmmaker over the years, directing many movies and
> orchestrating musical compositions. He became one of the first
> heads of state in the region to have a personal website, which has
> proven a cult hit. It draws more than a thousand visitors a day,
> which constitutes a substantial portion of his nation's Internet users.
> Royal statements are posted there daily.