Diversity in Photography

Adil Shaik
 Photography as a Fact
The Horse in Motion by Eadweard Muybridge

Embarking on a task to discover whether a horse

takes flight when galloping. Photographer
Eadweard Muybridge was commissioned by
California governor Leland Stanford to prove his
theory. Muybridge developed a technique to
capture the horse using an exposure lasting just a
fraction of a second. He had 12 cameras lined up
that were triggered to photograph in rapid
succession by the galloping horse.

The series of images Muybridge captured didn’t just

prove that a horse does indeed take flight. They
also led the way for a new way of using
photography with other technology to capture the
truth. This method led the way for the development
of animation and motion pictures.
Photography as Fiction
INFINITY SEEKER BY KANOA ZIMMERMAN

This looks like a piece of artwork, an

illustration of a near future, sci-fi cyberpunk
soldier of fortune in an endless horizon –
some kind of virtual reality or deep space
environment. But it’s actually a photograph
of a free dive.
 Photography as an Idea
BLISS BY CHARLES O’ REAR

Bliss is the default computer wallpaper of Microsoft's

Windows XP operating system. It is a virtually unedited
photograph of a green hill and blue sky with clouds in the
Los Carneros American Viticultural Area of California's
Wine Country. Charles O'Rear took the photo in 1996 and
Microsoft bought the rights in 2000. It is estimated that
billions of people have seen the picture, possibly making
it the most viewed photograph in history.

It represents almost a utopian scenery with high

contrasting colours and an overall positive tone with the
bright shot of a green hillock.
Photography as an Evidence

REUTERS/Stringer

Pedestrians react to the World Trade Center

collapse, September 11, 2001.

This photo not only captures the moment in its

entirety but also serves as a hollowing evidence to
the horrific incident which took place in NYC in 2001.
Photography as an Identification

Margaret Bourke-White’s famous photograph –

Gandhi and the Spinning Wheel

In 1946 Margaret Bourke-White, LIFE magazine’s first female

photographer, was offered a rare opportunity to photograph
Mahatma Gandhi. This dream opportunity quickly turned into a
nightmare. She was made to overcome many challenges before
gaining access to India’s ideological leader. Including to spin
Gandhi’s famous homespun.

After two failed shoots, thanks to technical difficulties, it was

third time lucky for Bourke-White.

This iconic image of Gandhi at his spinning wheel was captured

less than two years before his assassination.
 Photography as an Agenda

NBC NEWS

During the infamous 2016 US Presidential

election, this photo was captured which seems
to represent the Trump Campaign aptly.

We are shown a man capturing a picture of a

billboard which bad mouths rival candidate
Hillary Clinton. The amount of social bad
mouthing done under false pretexts and fake
news campaigns across a host of social media
platforms are one of the key components which
paved the victory to Donald Trump. This photo
captures Agenda as a whole.