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Theory #100ASA: The Camera Doesn't Lie but If It Does, I Don't Care
By Carrie E.A. Scott
Truth is tricky. Or as Hollywood film producer Robert Evans perfectly said, "There are three sides to every story: Your side, my side, and the truth. And no one is lying."
In other words, truth is more like editorialized fiction than cold, hard fact and our knowledge of the world—of war, of local news, even of lover's lives—is entirely mediated and handed to us seeping with opinions.
All that being said nowhere is truth more elusive than in photography. Though capable of faithfully capturing the world around us, photographs are also full of artful embellishment. As Roland Barthes' so wonderfully concluded, photography is not able to neutrally report on reality.
And yet the debate ensues. Scholars and audiences alike endlessly (and precariously) balance photography between documentation and highly manipulated fictions.
To this I say, to hell with it. Objectivity is over: sets are created, poses staged, and digital manipulations are so seamless that computerized additions to images go undetected.
So, in taking a page out of Evan's book, and swallowing what we know to be true (there is no such thing as an unbiased truth!) why not start looking at the photograph as a document of subjectivity rather than an image that is attempting to present something that is unobtainable?
Hence Theory #100ASA which proposes that photographs have become akin to good short stories. No longer concerned with objectivity, photographers are able to offer up small fictions, little personal truths, and, within the image, at least two sides of the story—the photographer's and the subject's. And it's up to the audience to decide whatever their salient truth is, to give the third side to the story.
Make no mistake, however. These are not the staged fantasies of Gregory Crewdson. This is a crop of photographers who are using the camera to tell their truth, not construct an imaginative story. And to tell their own version of the world, they need and use reality as much as possible.
Take for instance, Chris Jordan's affecting landscapes or Steve Davis' heartbreaking portraits. Both photographers have imbued their images with a human narrative—one that belongs to the subjects of the photographs and another that belongs to the photographer himself. Their images tell the story of the photographed object as well as the story of the photographer's relationship to that object.
Jordan for instance, whose work consistently records the consequences of American consumer society, most recently turned his camera upon the effects of last year's Hurricane Katrina. The book that results, In Katrina's Wake, vividly—and beautifully—captures Louisiana landscapes rife with scars.
In one photo, a blue swing-set has been thrown precariously upside down. A tangled forest serves as its playground. In another, pieces of porcelain cover the dirt with a white dust: a bathtub sinks into the earth; an oven lays punished on its side; cups, plates and other kitchen paraphernalia become useless confetti across the yard, not household utility.
Though devoid of people, the collection of photographs painfully captures humanity. In the majority of the images, life looks frozen as if Jordan made models of what he saw, picked them up, shook them, and took a snap shot while the dust was settling—purses hang from trees, canned tomatoes pepper the ground, a colorful rack of women's pants hang exhaustedly.
And, in these fine details, it becomes impossible not to see your own home, or your purse, or your own tenderly potted jam jars. It's impossible not to relate, not to wonder whose house it was, or where the woman who owns the purse is, or how the people to which these objects belong possibly cleaned up this mess. It's impossible to remain objective.
The same holds true for Davis' work. In contrast to Jordan's people-less scenes, Davis' centers his work on portraiture. For years he has been empathetically documenting incarcerated juveniles. As a series, Captured Youth is epic. We read sorrow, pain, and sometimes, even regret across these children's faces. Just as often pride, arrogance and a playfully heartbreaking naiveté come across. While Adam's head hangs softly, his eyes avoiding our gaze, Earnest (appropriately) stares sincerely into the camera.
While we've no idea what these boys did to deserve their sentence, what is most effective about Davis' series is that he has captured both sides of the story. We know they have likely done bad things, but that truth is separate from their character. Adam seems sweet, Earnest honest. Neither looks like they should be in a maximum-security prison. And yet, they are and probably should be.
Davis' images show us, if even for a split second, the child not the criminal. That is, until we see anger across a boy's face and then every face in the series becomes grounded by their imprisoned reality.
In moving away from trying to maintain an air of the unbiased, these photographers let their audiences, quite simply, be human when looking. We're allowed and invited to get tangled up in the complicated fabric of life, not some fairy tale version of "The Truth."
Which means, as these two photographers fearlessly build truthfully exaggerated pictures of the world, their photos become all the more full of our contemporary condition. In other words, we are getting a lot more than a simple, single shot. We're getting the whole picture.
