Assignment 2: Truth

Ever since the start of my studies with the OCA, the question of truth and photography has continued to fascinate me, both from a philosophical standpoint and a practical one.  It took me quite a while to completely discard the idea that a photograph was a mirror on reality. I intrinsically accepted the idea of photographic evidence, i.e. that a photograph presents a truth.  I was a Photoshop user and so understood that a photograph could be manipulated, but that was the extent of my mistrust. As a casual photographer and consumer of imagery I had never considered the question of what lies outside that rectangular frame and how the person holding the camera decided how much of it I would or would not see.  In a sense this is an obvious idea, photographic meaning is as much defined by omission as by inclusion, however, culturally we live with this idea of the photograph as an object that conveys truth.  

With this assignment I am stepping beyond the frame in questioning the use of photography as a mirror on society.  Here my concern is not so much the single image, but how images combine to portray the mood of an event, asking questions about the non-photos, the images  that we never see?.  When an event is considered newsworthy photographers are dispatched to cover it.  They take their photographs and then transmit the images back to the publication for inclusion or exclusion.  Editorial policy, politics in another word, kicks in and the newspaper runs the images that best conform to their view of what they want to say about the event.  

This extends beyond simple editorial bias to direct political interference, the US governments refusal to allow photographs of returning soldiers coffins being a prime example.  In my case the subject is much more prosaic, but these questions are still extremely valid for me.  The Oktoberfest is normally presented in the context of tradition or boisterous fun, I rarely see any photographs that look behind the tents and capture the vomit, the ambulance crews, the violence.  This year 45 people were arrested for using a liter beer glass as a weapon.  I have witnessed this myself, years ago, someone smashed a glass into a guys face standing near me - I have never seen so much blood before or after. More people needed medical treatment than every before this year.  However, this only appears as a foot note in news coverage and there is an absence of photographic record.  Google Oktoberfest pictures and get image after image of beer and traditional dress, add the word violence, almost nothing.  It was very noticeable for me that as soon as any violence occurred security was as interested in preventing any photographs as capturing the offenders.  Image is everything and the fest is very lucrative to the city, they need to maintain the idea of clean but drunken fun. 

In working this assignment I was very conscious of wanting to portray the good and the bad of the event, I love to drink and have had some marvelously drunken times at the fest, however, I have also witnessed extreme violence and many dangerously drunk people.  I now have a large body of photographs that span the full spectrum of the Oktoberfest experience, the question is what slant I want to put on it.  No matter how careful I am at retaining a balanced view, my own prejudice will infect the set, in fact it must, this has to be a personal response to the event.

In this post I am not trying to answer that question yet, but have gone through the process of selecting 12 images as a straw horse and then done that a further 5 times.  Each time I have adopted a bias and tried to build and sequence a set that meets that bias.  I wish to explore editorial interference in how a photographic portrayal of an event is built.  In each case my focus is still on the people attending, although some sets are less social documentary than others.

Upbeat:  Here I am trying to take a positive look at the fest, but still including the affects of the alcohol.  

Downbeat:  here I am really dwelling on the evils of drink, the violence, the sickness, the stupidity

Propaganda: Now I have taken the stance of working for the city to positively portray the event

Friendship:  The fest is a social event and with these images I have tried to portray the camaraderie of the attendees

Bleak:  With this set I am really looking under the carpet and showing how tawdry and grim the fest can be. The weather helped a lot.

Vibrance:  Finally another popular theme for photographing the fest, the colour and frenetic activity.  This is probably closest to how I experience and remember it.

Each set of photographs carries a different message.  If someone asked me to send them photographs of my experience at the fest I could send any of these and still be telling the truth, but only a piece of the truth and the piece that I choose to share.  There is nothing new here and in a sense everything that I have written about is plainly obvious, but strangely we do not really take this on board.

I finish with the observation that our view of the past is created by photographs made by people with a clear bias on how they want their subject to be seen.  Walker Evans is famous for recording the poverty of 1930's rural America, however, the view he left us has as much to do with his personal stance as the actuality of what was recorded.  The subject of his most iconic image,  Allie Mae Burroughs, stated quite publicly that he constructed these images of poverty, moving things around the house, changing how people were clothed.   These are great photographs, but they are not a realistic reportage on the events or conditions of the time.  They are not history, they are pictures.