Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Newsphotography

When it's News, What's Depicted?

   In the course of reading a major biography of the photographer Diane Arbus (about which I will write another time), a comment was made—twice, once about Arbus and the second time in a discussion of the photographer Weegee—about the nature of news photography. What was said was perfectly obvious. But even so, I had never noted it before.
   What’s news photography? It consists of photographs of the situation that has just happened. The news: Joe Smith has just been shot dead, killed by the thief whom he surprised sneaking into his house. Another example: a large tree was split, hit by lightening. A third: three-year old Jenifer fell down a six-foot deep well, fortunately dry.
   These are versions of the captions one might read in next morning’s paper, but they don’t really characterize the picture you will there see. The first of these will most likely depict poor Joe Smith ling on the floor of what is most likely his living room. The second may be a picture of a tree with one side of it hanging down at a sharp angle, while the third shows little Jenifer sitting at the bottom of the well, scared and crying.     
   What is the point of these remarks? That the pictures that are presented as the news are really pictures of a steady state, more or less, that is the result, most probably, of the event that is actually the news that, in the first place merited inclusion in the paper.
   For many years, this delayed association of news-event to reported depiction was the norm. Before modern photography, that relationship was even less immediate in various ways not to be taken up here. Infrequently, very infrequently, someone with a camera might actually get a shot of the event as it actually happens—much more likely, to be sure, of lightening striking that tree than of a thief shooting Joe Smith. Changes that have occurred when these comments were made have surely increased the occasions when the depiction is of the actual event, but even when a large fraction of the population owns photographing cell phones and at least a significant number of those fiddle with them while walking along—not an attractive habit in the view of this old-fashioned observer—not that many will either try or succeed in getting a picture of what happens just when it happens.
   I don’t believe that significant conclusions are to be drawn from this somewhat closer look at an every-day phenomenon.  But it is worth pointing out.







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