What Is There to Do
In which I reflect on what photographers and those looking at pictures can do to bring about meaningful change
I probably don’t have to tell you what my mind has been preoccupied with these past few days. I had never imagined that I would live in a country where some of its citizens would be subject to massive systemic harassment, where they could get killed by a clearly uncaring police force with more or less impunity. This is what I had heard about the country my great granparents and grandparents had lived in, the country into which my parents were born. But that used to be history, something to learn from, and something to prevent in the future — not something that would exist all around me.
In high school, I had already learned that there were different types of citizens. In high school itself, I didn’t encounter people for whom the idea of freedom and opportunity didn’t mean what it meant to me. Instead, it was at the chess club, where there were members who had come to (then West) Germany as so-called guest workers (or whose parents had). They were mostly from then Yugoslavia, and they had a different approach to life, one that was more relaxed (which I truly enjoyed), but also one that knew of discrimination, of opportunities not available to them. To hear their stories shocked me. I learned of the systemic racism in my own country (which obviously still exists and which now forms part of my own photographic work).
I shouldn’t really be surprised to see what’s happening in the US now, because I have known enough about the reasons for a while. Still, it’s one thing to know something, and it’s an entirely other thing to experience it.
This very difference sits somewhere at the core of the challenge faced by all those who lead privileged lives (as I do): it’s one thing to know something, but it’s quite another to know it from experience.
There’s no way I could attempt to tell you what to do at this moment in time, at least not on a larger scale. There are plenty of people who are a lot smarter than I am. Some of them have written books. Reading a book will only get you so far (it’s one thing to know…), but it’s better to know than not to know. Books I’d recommend are James Baldwin’s Nobody Knows My Name, Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist, or Robin Diangelo’s White Fragility.
Photography itself has not been innocent in all of this. Throughout its history, photography has served as a tool for people on all sides, whether as a tool for policing (mug shots), as a tool for incarceration, as a tool to document those in concentration camps or in killing fields, as a medical tool, as a tool to educate, as a tool to demonstrate the supposed inferiority of colonial subjects, as a tool to present the (naked) female body to male audiences (pornography etc.), as a tool to report the news, and so on, and so forth. The list is very long.
More often that not, one should note, the camera has served as a tool for those in power to assert or demonstrate their power. The reason for this is not inherent in photography itself. As we’re seeing now, those beaten down by rioting police can turn their cameras on the brutes and expose them for what they are. So photography almost always has something to do with power: I have this camera, I take this picture, so I tell the world something with my choices and my framing about whoever or whatever I take a picture of.
So I’m thinking that these times are a reminder of the fact that photographs are made and used to achieve specific purposes, and those purposes often align with the very injustices we are so concerned about. What this means is that anyone making or looking at photographs should educate themselves about the history of the medium. I cannot easily think of a situation where the taking of a photograph is not loaded in some way — loaded as in: creating or perpetuating a problem or fighting against a problem.
Even if you prefer to take pictures of still lives, let’s say flowers, there’s a politics to it: what exactly is your refusal to more explicitly make photographs around racism or Covid-19 or climate change or any of the other ills of this world telling us? Mind you, I’m not arguing that nobody should take pictures of flowers. What I am arguing is that if that’s what you feel you need to do, then you ought to be prepared to talk about why it’s what you think you need to do.
Taking photographs of something or someone can very quickly lead you into very hot water. In my most recent piece, I’m taking famed artist Oliver Chanarin to task for his male-gaze photography of his wife and its completely tone-deaf framing.
Even if you don’t take pictures, you will want to look at them more carefully than you have so far (obviously, if you’re a scholar dealing with visual literacy, this doesn’t apply to you). There just are so many examples of photographs that take on very different meanings once they’re placed into their history. Here’s an example:
This seems innocent enough, doesn’t it? (Ignoring the fact that Trump decided to stage this photo op while there were a lot more pressing issues to deal with…) On Twitter, James Fallows wrote that presidents have historically shied away from doing such photo ops because there’s the chance that something might blow up. But Trump lucked out.
But the first thing that came to mind when I saw that Trump photo op was a picture like this. North Korea’s dictator loves being photographed watching the launch of his rockets. Here’s another one:
I’ve always been fascinated by this particular picture because of the desk. He’s not just watching the launch, the way it’s photographed it looks like he has his desk right on that concrete landing strip (he doesn’t — a wider shots shows it’s inside some building with a very large window).
Now that you’ve seen these images created to showcase how a dictator is in charge of his military, the Trump photo opp doesn’t look so innocent any longer, does it? It literally telegraphs the man’s desire to present the same kind of image to the world as the North Korean dictator (whom he quite openly has admired many times).
So photographs just aren’t innocent any longer. Even if your intentions are the best, you might end up making photographs that immediately are incredibly problematic. Or your use or contextualizing of the photographs might do that. And we really need to have those kinds of discussions — instead of shying away from them.
That is why I very firmly believe that it is our collective duty as members of photoland to be mindful of the many injustices and problems that exist in the history of photography. There’s work for all of us to do. But obviously a large part of that work falls on the shoulders of those who have lived privileged lives, those, in other words, who have not been at the receiving end of what photography can do once employed by racists, fascists, murderous dictators, etc.
That is a form of privilege: to be able to control how pictures present you — instead of being at the mercy of others. This forms one of the core issues surrounding photography and race.
Reading a book like Photography: The Whole Story, edited by Julia Hacking, is not a substitute for reading up on racism, fascism, and the other ills of the world. Instead, it complements such readings. The book does a good job diving into a large variety of photographs. This then is a good starting point to dig deeper — the book coyly skirts around making stronger statements; it does mention controversies, though.
One last thought. I don’t think that the end goal of such studies can be to arrive at a point where one knows everything there is to know. It would be strange to aim for such a goal (who would define it?). Instead, the process itself, the continued looking into images and their historical uses — that ought to be the goal, so that, ideally, one might know a little bit more every day and becomes a little bit more sensitive to how photographs are used and abused all around us on a daily basis.
As always thank you for reading, and please stay safe and well!
— Jörg
I’m a freelance writer, photographer, and educator currently living and working in the US.
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