The Imagemaker's Responsibility

After seeing Dr. Masur speak on multiple occasions today, naturally I had a lot of thoughts running through my head. As a photographer, I was intrigued by his analysis of images and how deeply he examined them. As a skeptic, I was wary of the feeling of powerlessness a photographer must have being in those situations. Robert Capa, a member of Magnum Photography, a prolific group of the world's most talented photojournalists, was quoted on their website saying,

"It's not always easy to stand aside and be unable to do anything except record the sufferings around one."

This thought kept running through my head, as Dr. Masur spoke and the former Associated Press photographer spoke after him. Is it really enough to capture the moment in history? One of the most important things Dr. Masur said, I thought, was that as powerful as an image is, you have to be able to fluently read the image. That is- you need the whole story. Making sure the story is told, the entire story, is the image-maker's responsibility. Though their work may be used to communicate one message, the facts behind the photograph are often more powerful than the story constructed by what is left out.

I could stop there readers. I could, but I had a bit of a Masur-moment when I came to this conclusion. I geeked out. I started scrambling for the stories and images that came to mind. That lead me to the artist known as Banksy.

Banksy creates images, and more often than not they are without words or context- if there are words, he is brief. And while context is certainly important, he leaves a lot of the investigative work up to the viewer. The image that first came to mind when thinking of an image-maker's responsibility was this piece.



In Masur fashion, lets go right ahead and unpack this image. There's a few things that caught my eye. The lack of color, other than red- drawing your eye towards both the blood and the red cross. The impressionistic background but very detailed facial expressions. I think this image largely speaks for itself, but these are few of a multitude of moves the artist purposely makes to force us into drawing the same conclusion. That being, "how important could that shot possibly be?"

What interests me too, and I have no explanation for- is why Banksy let himself get the Pulitzer Prize winning angle. This could have been from a distance, setting the photographer up for the angle the pictures is presented from. Perhaps this even is self parody- as Banksy largely is in a similar position to the photographer, not doing any other activism than showing the world his images.

The other Banksy piece that I thought of was this.



We spoke a lot about the use of the flag, as well as parodies of powerful images (in Dr. Masur's lecture on Springsteen) and this is certainly an intentional homage to an image that is part of our "cultural DNA". What's interesting as well is that Banksy is British- perhaps these images a product of a more global society or simply something democratic nations share. Another part of this image that spoke to me. The grasp! That reach/pull dynamic that kept Dr. Masur up at night- did it have the same effect on Banksy? Especially given our class's discussion about African Americans feeling left out by white American society in Song of Solomon might this explain why the boy on the left is desperately grasping for his piece of the flag instead of triumphantly raising it?

I think I've about overstayed my blog-welcome, but please please please comment with your thoughts, I could go on for hours about Banksy's work as well as any of the Magnum photographers or anything else I brought up in this post.

Oh- almost forgot. Power of images? I'll have to blog again about what's going on with President Obama and the release of photos of abused prisoners of war.