Photography and Society Interrelations - Essay Example

Nevertheless, the real issue at hand is the motive behind taking the image. There is a voyeuristic element in the way the images are represented through the lens. It can be observed how the acts are conforming to the intended obscenity, the poor lighting, and the predating conditions before Yoshiyuki’s encounter with the couples. No one could honestly testify the real intent behind the scopophilia but judging from a critic’s point of view, there seems to be no cooperation between Yoshiyuki and the group of people. In the context of photography, while Yoshiyuki did not anticipate the happenstance, the drive that sticks him with the ongoing public demonstration could be related to personal photography, wherein he intended to seize the image for personal use (Wells, 56); “here is a person making choices, not a stationary camera recording what passes before it (“Gefter, Sex in the Park, and Its Sneaky Spectators”). The photo also suggests his nature as a photographer: a voyeur. Although, he vehemently disagreed that he is one. He asserts that “I intended to capture what happened in the parks, so I was not a real ‘voyeur’ like them” (Gefter, “Sex in the Park, and It's Sneaky Spectators”).

In the past few decades, “there had been a tendency to conflate the history of the subject with the work of the particular practitioner” (49). Nude photography had already been in existence since the 1940s and 1950s, and the concept of indulging in such kinds of photography may have been traditionally ascribed; hence, voyeuristic photography could therefore be ascribed; although, not necessarily contained within the practitioner. The “curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art, agrees that Yoshiyuki’s work falls into a photographic tradition” (Gefter, “Sex in the Park, and Its Sneaky Spectators”). In the past and maybe until today, the “aesthetic and subject matter of the photograph was considered as only of secondary importance” (49); what is more important is the image itself. Looking at the photo, it is rather conspicuous that no artistic impression was intended; considering the ephemerality of such activity, the motive behind the photo is the image alone – an idea that conforms to personal photography – in which the practitioner was more concerned with capturing the image rather than understanding its significance. Indeed, obscenity does not entail good standing; hence, this has been discounted in the process, perhaps, due to the voyeuristic purpose of the photograph.

As mentioned earlier, it can be argued that obscenity does not entail good standing. If this is so, what was the real motive of the practitioner? Voyeurism and scopophilia can be very subjective oftentimes and so Yoshiyuki, as he proclaimed himself a voyeur, points towards what he can take out of the “perfect” encounter; although, the picture expresses manifold significance in the society. The picture somehow signifies the employment of nudity as an indicator of certain types of prejudice in that body is essential to "colonial modes of power, including the processes of representation" (84). The picture relatively depicts a social stratification in the Japanese civilization, in which women are significantly controlled by men.

Photography, in history, took part in the employment of modernist thinking that criticizes “high and low cultures”, which are conveyed in early Marxist writings (51). It was mentioned earlier that nude photography is possibly ascribed to the 1940s and 1950s. But it can be postulated that it was not as common before the 1940s. While obscene photography is prevalent today, there yet have been negative connotations regarding the acts of posing in indecency and lewdness in public. But what is more significant in this contemplation is how modernistic thinking has gradually transpired into the neo-societal stage of most civilizations recently. The conservative thought of containing visual arts as some decent and moral forms of representation have slowly been neutralized by the transformational revolution.

We can see through this picture the individual phases that led to the openness of society to photographic modifications of themes and motives. Photography is now being used to understand trends or patterns in social preference, especially those which are related to the "ethnographic curiosity about the kind of clothes or tolls that were common at a particular period; while others are fascinated by the characteristic stance and gait of workers in particular (57).

Photographs are used extensively to examine the past - the life and social status quo during earlier times. Furthermore, "they have become a major source of information by which we picture, understand or imagine” (57) in earlier periods. This photographic idea is extremely significant in expressing emotional content in every image captured by a camera. Through every photographic image we create, one gets to understand the conditions of people in the past, whether stratification was of special importance in society or not, or the situations that define everything about the historical details.