Does Photography Have a Special Role in the Mediation of Our Lives, and How Is This Role Changing - Essay Example

?‘To live is to be photographed’ (Sontag 2004). Does photography have a special role in the mediation of our lives, and how, according to Sontag, is this role changing? Photographs have been laying down the patterns of judgment and memorization of important conflicts for a long time. The oldest photograph that exists in the world today was the one taken by a retired French army officer on the summer of 1827 that was called as a Heliograph and was exposed in eight hours (The Free Library, 2013). There is a big role of photography in the conception of the history of the world. Photographs have historically provided an objective record of the events of the real world. They have served as a key in confirming the ravages of the Civil War for the public. “Roland Barthes, a preeminent theorist of photography, said that photograph is the "sovereign contingency," meaning it is dependent on something else happening” (Huds, 2013). In the earlier times, photography was considered as the domain of only the rich people in the world. The power of photography was spread to the general public’s hands after the invention of the instant camera by the Eastman Kodak company (Huds, 2013). Using this camera and the cheap 35 mm film, it was possible for any individual, rich or poor, to capture an image by clicking the camera, thus making photography evolve as the most popular art form. Photographs do play a special role in the mediation of our lives. There is an insuperable power in photographs that helps them determine what can be recalled in the events. Photography brings the memories of childhood back to us. Photographs help us recall a sad or happy moment that we can share with others. The power of picture is that it captures a single moment’s quintessence and makes it permanent so that it can be reviewed over and over again. Photographs help us keep record of our past as well as present. Photography is a medium that serves as a supreme recorder and witness of the events of the world, and the lifestyle in general. There has been immense influence of photography on the public opinion as it documents the disasters and makes all frightening aspects of wars evident to the audience. In fact, one of the prime motivations behind taking photographs of a war is to convey the actual fear and horror prevailing in the battle-field to the people in an attempt to discourage the occurrence of wars in the future. Once, a photographer said, “I thought I was going to save the world with my photographs” (The Free Library, 2013). Thousands of photographs of the Vietnam War were taken and almost all of them were viewed by people in different parts of the world within only few days of their being made. Those photographs were basically meant to be seen as soon as possible. The photographs were disturbing and affected people emotionally and psychologically. They made the audiences feel sickened. It is a fact that some photographs, particularly those of the war, are intentionally taken to shock the audience because the images recalled are the ones that are the most horrifying and compelling. Such photographs are imprinted on the minds of the audience. A memorable photograph is one that has an impact. It is a form of a visual impression that awakens the individual looking at it in a positive or a negative way. A horrifying photograph spurs anger and frustration in the audience. It evokes an emotional response that makes the audience think upon the context that reflects from the photograph. A photographer making a documentary focuses the camera at the real world to capture the drama of life, death, and all that lies in between the two. The audiences have been brought quite close to the important events of the world by the photojournalists. They have helped the audiences see the world as it is in reality rather than the way it is projected in the news. The medium of photography has even made the armchair participants completely aware citizens of this world. In the present age, the importance of photographs cannot be overestimated. Photographs serve the purpose of keeping us informed about our past so that we do not forget it. Memories are captured and saved for a lifetime in the form of photographs. People photograph themselves for a variety of purposes. One purpose is to keep track of their looks as they age. As people have become very conscious about their looks under the influence of media, they want to remain in perfect shape. Photographs help them understand how they have progressed or regressed with the passage of time as they can compare their present looks with photographs from the past. Photographs are also of immense importance in our personal lives. The influence of photographs on life has grown manifolds as the trend of sharing and exchanging photographs on social media and social networking websites has increased. People make judgments about one another by looking at one another’s photographs. Standing aside a celebrity is a memorable moment that people want to save forever, and show to the world also since they are proud to have achieved that. The people one is photographed with, what one is wearing, what gesture one is making in the photograph, where the photograph is being taken, at what time is the photograph being taken, and why it is being taken lay a detailed account not only of that particular moment that has been captured, but also of one’s complete lifestyle in general and the activities in those particular days in specific. “the dispersal of media and technology into our biological and social lives intensifies our entanglement with nonhuman entities. Mediation--all-encompassing and indivisible--becomes for them a key trope for understanding our being in the technological world” (Kember and Zylinska, 2013). Photographs also have a lot of importance in legal proceedings of cases as they are frequently used as evidences. A photograph is something that cannot be denied. While photographs are mostly taken intentionally in order to preserve memories, sometimes they are also taken without consent of the subjects inside the photograph. Objectionable photograph of a husband with another woman or vice versa taken and circulated somehow is a reason strong enough for a couple to consider parting ways with each other. Police officers always carry cameras with them in order to take photographs of the places they are investigating as they help them explore the elements in greater detail later. In On Photography, Sontag (1977) has discussed photography’s objectivity that, as a subject, has been strongly disputed in the community of photographers. Sontag says that when a subject is photographed, the photograph should bring the thing’s suitability and correctness out. One needs to put one’s self in a constructive link with the world that feels both like power and knowledge. Nevertheless, the decision of the object that is to be photographed is taken by the photographers. The photographers themselves decide the photography technique that they employ, the angle from which they frame the photo, and the elements that they keep out of the frame considering them unsuitable for inclusion. These factors together reflect a special socio-historical context. It is an established fact that the effect of photography on life in the contemporary age cannot be denied or ruled out. An issue that is strongly debatable is consideration of photography as representation’s subjective form. In the modern times, several concerns have been raised by the impact of photography that can be observed on the society. “The camera is presented as a supporter of voyeuristic reserves in Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window in 1954, where although the camera is an observation station, it is the act of photographing which is is more than passive observing” (knotphotogenic.com, 2010). “Peeping Tom” by Michal Powell, in 1960, presents camera as a technology that is sexually aggressive and sadistic at the same time. The influence of photography can openly be observed in the images of suffering and pain captured that reflects on the female victims’ faces. The influence of photography on life as a form of new media has changed the society’s structure as a whole. The insensitive nature of cameras and photography has caused further discomfort. Photographs of pornography and war have conventionally caused a stir. A growing concern among the parents is the increased exposure of their children to the sexually explicit images today. Another concern is transformation of people into objects of the photographs that can be possessed symbolically by anyone. The impact of photography can also be observed in tourism in which photography plays a very important role. The camera lens describes and positions the local inhabitants by crafting a special tourist gaze. Nevertheless, another point of dispute is the positioning of the tourist photographer by the local photographers as a superficial consumer. However, it is not possible to simply look away from the influence of photography on life and society at large. People today identify the war launched by the US in Iraq pre-emptively through the photographs that showed the Iraqi prisoners being tortured by the Americans in the Abu Ghraib jail. Instead of addressing the need to eliminate leadership crime and the policies that allowed the development of those photographs, the Bush administration sought to restrain the photographs’ dissemination. The Bush administration attempted to displace the reality reflected by the photographs since its initial response was that the photographs shocked the president as if the images themselves were more horrible than the face of the US they projected in front of the world. The Bush administration adopted this policy because acknowledgment of the torture inflicted upon the prisoners would contradict all the measures that the Bush administration invested so much time and resources in to make the public believe that the US was sincerely working for the establishment of peace and democracy in the world and eradication of terrorism from the societies. The photographs of the tortured prisoners were undoubtedly fear-provoking, but they were not startling alone; the fact that the torture was being captured in photographs is equally daunting as especially as they included the perpetrators gloating and posing aside the helpless prisoners. “German soldiers in the Second World War took photographs of the atrocities they were committing in Poland and Russia, but snapshots in which the executioners placed themselves among their victims are exceedingly rare, as may be seen in a book just published, ''Photographing the Holocaust,'' by Janina Struk” (arts.ucsb.edu, n.d.). During the World War II, the German soldiers took their atrocities’ photographs in Russia and Poland, though there were very rare photographs in which the executioners also appeared with the victims. Some rare photographs that were somewhat comparable to the photographs of the prisoners of the Abu Ghraib jail were those of the bodies of black victims of lynching that were captured from the 1880’s to the 1930’s. Those photographs showed the Americans grinning underneath the bruised and naked bodies of the black victims hanging from the trees behind them. Those photographs served as souvenirs of a practice whose executioners felt quite justified in their acts just like the American soldiers appearing in the Abu Ghraib’s photographs did. These photographs were considered as trophies by the executioners as they had been taken with the intention of being collected and placed in albums. The photographs of the tortured prisoners inside the Abu Ghraib jail did more than just preserving the memories of the executions; they circulated and disseminated messages about the proceedings of the American forces in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan where they had supposedly invaded with the intention to create peace in them. It is a common practice for the soldiers to carry a digital camera with them these days. This practice was limited to the journalists in the past. In the present age, all soldiers are photographers who have fun around during the war, record its events, and anything that they consider picturesque. This trend is not just limited among the soldiers, everybody nowadays takes his/her own pictures and makes videos and then circulates them globally using the social media and the Internet. Uploading personal photos and videos is a very popular activity on such social networking websites as Facebook and Twitter. The motivation behind uploading personal videos is not always limited to fun; many people do it for the sake of earning money. People commonly upload their videos regularly on such social media websites as Youtube where they get a chance to earn money based on their following. “-- life isn't edited, why should its record be edited? -- has become a norm for countless Webcasts, in which people record their day, each in his or her own reality show. Here I am -- waking and yawning and stretching, brushing my teeth, making breakfast, getting the kids off to school” (arts.ucsb.edu n.d.). Nowadays, people have a growing tendency to record every aspect of their lives ranging from what they ate at a particular day to how was their experience of their first date. Family life is recorded even if it is going through a stage of crisis. People also have a growing tendency to photograph themselves naked. Many people consider this a way to living an erotic life. The same element of sex was incorporated in the torture inflicted upon the prisoners of the Abu Ghraib jail as they were tortured. It is obviously revealing that the photographs of torture are interleaved with the American soldiers’ pornographic images in which they are having sexual intercourse with each other. Sexual theme reflects in a vast majority of the torture photographs as the prisoners have been forced to stimulate or perform sexual acts upon each other. Many photographs appear to be components of a larger confluence of pornography e.g. the photograph in which a young woman is escorting a naked man that is a typical case of classic dominatrix imagery. “And you wonder how much of the sexual tortures inflicted on the inmates of Abu Ghraib was inspired by the vast repertory of pornographic imagery available on the Internet -- and which ordinary people, by sending out Webcasts of themselves, try to emulate” (arts.ucsb.edu n.d.). Photographs have become a medium of communication. It is a very unique medium of communication since the message is conveyed without any verbal communication and the gestures and expressions in the photograph draw a profile of the kind of life the subject is living. As people increasingly started to realize this tendency of the photographs to say all about them in just an image, over the passage of time, people have in general changed in their attitude in and approach toward a photograph. “There is the deep satisfaction of being photographed, to which one is now more inclined to respond not with a stiff, direct gaze (as in former times) but with glee” (Langer, 2011). Back in the early 20th century, when people were photographed, they used to maintain a stern and firm look whereas most people nowadays appear in the photographs carrying a large smile on their faces, if not a grin, accompanied with a sign of “V” that stands for victory, or twisting their middle two fingers of their hands while keeping their thumb and the other two fingers erect so as to make a sign that is frequently called as “Yo”. These signs depict the ideals or the lifestyle that people want to project before the audience. It is understandably an intrinsic desire in every human being to progress in life and be victorious in every matter. It is, to a certain extent, the same belief that they try to reflect through their photographs irrespective of whether they are really that successful in life. The other sign i.e. the “Yo” sign shows a very cool and funky side of their personality as people also want to impress upon others that they are very cool by attitude. Making these signs with hands has become a norm in the contemporary photography, particularly when the photographs are of casual personal or public events. Through these gestures, people tend to show that they are very happy and successful in their life. Being photographed lends an individual a feeling of satisfaction. Photography of the tortured prisoners at the Abu Ghraib jail was an expression of the very satisfaction gained in torturing the helpless prisoners. Most of the events that happened inside the jail were designed with the sole intention of photographing them. The grin carried by the American soldiers was a grin intentionally and exclusively made for the camera as if the physical, psychological, and emotional experience would be incomplete without taking photographs of the victims after they had been stacked naked. A mere look at those photographs makes one think how one could possibly be so mean and ruthless to grin while someone is being tortured right before one’s eyes. For the most part, this ruthlessness originates in the training and inculcation of this belief in the soldiers that they are superior to the prisoners and thus assume every right to torture them. “For the meaning of these pictures is not just that these acts were performed, but that their perpetrators apparently had no sense that there was anything wrong in what the pictures show” (Langer, 2011). Photography provided Sontag with words to express a whole new dimension of sensibility. Sontag’s comprehension of photography’s power as a medium as well as criticism keeps shifting while she analyzes photography of different kinds in a variety of contexts. “Despite its problematic mixture of realism and pose, classic documentary portraits like Walker Evans' Cotton Tenant Farmer's Wife, Alabama (1936) and Sharecropper's Wife, Hale County, Alabama (1936) gave rise to a critical-visual sublime, promising access to a never before explored realm of intersubjectivity defined by the mortality, the vulnerability, and the mutability of the human subject” (Mitrano, 2007). Nevertheless, it is indeed, paradoxical, that in Sontag’s first book on the subject of photography, the requirement of a realistic and truer critical language was developed by denying others’ psychic world. Although an artist desires to capture such a world, the metonymic technique of photography is considered to create an aesthetic gap from others’ effects maze. In this perspective, other is a shell that although is familiar and exotic, yet is without a shell that viewers fill with their projections. Sontag has given her stance against the photographic technique’s beautifying function in her second book on the subject of photography as “it tends to bleach out a moral response to what is known” (Sontag, 2004). Sontag makes a strong argument in her book Regarding the Pain of Others. Her strength of argument originates in the fact that photographs call for the answering gaze on the part of the audiences. However, the photographs of torture inflicted upon the prisoners at the Abu Ghraib jail make the answering gaze’s narrative reach a point of standstill. Those photographs present an externalized as well as claustrophobic interior vista to the audiences. The torture photographs of Iraqi prisoners have been interpreted as illustrations of the operation of power by the psychoanalytic approaches. The glee on the faces of the perpetrators is, indeed, the most daunting quality of the photographs. This trait shows the surplus enjoyment of the perpetrators that exhibit identification with two fathers; the first is the object of fantasy that has attained a privileged access to the enjoyment since the subject has to forego in terms of the price of living a civilized life, while the second is the keeper of the Law. When this matter is analyzed from the vantage point of Sontag, the psychoanalytic readings’ limit is that the torture photographs have been created to serve as evidences of a power apparatus, thus depriving the subjects of their tendency to oppose or judge them. Condemning those photographs thus becomes condemning a theory that is considered necessary. The photographs will stay forever. This is the distinguishing nature of the contemporary digital age. The photographs seem to be very important in making the leaders realize that there is a problem at hand to be addressed. “After all, the report submitted by the International Committee of the Red Cross, and other, sketchier reports by journalists and protests by humanitarian organisations about the atrocious punishments inflicted on "detainees" and "suspected terrorists" in prisons run by the American military, have been circulating for more than a year” (Sontag, 2004). It cannot be said with utmost objectivity that the Bush administration read any of these reports. The photographs were very important for getting the attention of the concerned authorities as it had already become clear that it was not possible to suppress them. Nothing but the photographs made it clear to the Bush administration that all that was happening inside the Abu Ghraib jail was real and had caught the attention of the media and the whole world. Before the release of the photographs, there were only rumors that could easily be covered up in the contemporary age of self-dissemination and digital self-reproduction. The photographs would continue to assault the Americans as long as the so-called war against terrorism continues. Many Americans have started to think that they have already seen enough, and do not want any war advancements by the US soldiers of invasion of other countries in the name of creation of peace. As long as the war continues, such photographs would continue to show up. The more they are released, the worse America’s reputation gets in the eyes of the whole world. There is no doubt that the torture photographs of the prisoners in the Abu Ghraib jail have damaged the reputation of “[firstly] the honorable men and women of the armed forces who are courageously and responsibly and professionally defending our freedoms across the globe…Second, to the president, the Congress and the American people: I wish I had been able to convey to them the gravity of this before we saw it in the media…And finally to the reputation of our country” (Rumsfeld cited in nytimes.com, 2004). It has become clear, to a considerable extent, that the war against terrorism is actually meant to protect the interests of the US alone as the US feels threatened by future terror from the furtive, implacable enemies. Concluding, photography plays a very important role in the mediation of our lives. The importance of photographs in the present age can be estimated from the fact that the present age is recognized as the digital age where people are connected with one another full time with the help of moving images. The contemporary lifestyle has been shaped, to a large extent, by photography. Photography helps us with a variety of things; from keeping track of our memories to our looks, from getting secrets to planning thing, and from spreading awareness to identifying the true face of the entities and powers. According to Sontag, there has occurred a magnanimous change in the role of photographs over the passage of time. In the past, photographs, even those taken during the wars, were taken with the intention of gaining fun and satisfaction from their taking. Nowadays, photographs are taken with the intention of circulating them and spreading awareness in the world. Photographs are images imprinted on the minds of the audiences that can never be removed or manipulated. Their tendency to be permanent and affect the perceptions of the audience forever makes the photographs a very suitable medium to convey specially designed messages with particular strategic intentions. Photography has changed the way things are remembered. This is the reason why the photographs of the prisoners that were tortured in the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq by the American soldiers came as a big threat to the reputation of the US as an establisher and creator of peace in the world through the war against terrorism that was started by the Bush administration. Those photographs have not only helped the world realize the bigger reality, but have also changed the perceptions of the American people, a vast majority of whom want an end to this war. References: arts.ucsb.edu n.d., [Online] Available at http://www.arts.ucsb.edu/faculty/budgett/classes/art19/sontag_abughraib.pdf [accessed: 14 March 2013]. 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