A fotografia à porta de
casa e a propaganda
Te r e s a M e n d e s F l o r e s
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La nation est toute entière une representation.
Pierre Nora, “Le lieux de mémoire”
The artist's world is limitless. It can be The artist's world is limitless. It can be
found anywhere, far from where he lives or a few feet away.
It is always on his doorstep
Paul Strand
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Paul Strand (1890-1976), fotógrafo americano ligado ao movimento modernista da Straigth Photography, dizia
que para fazer uma boa fotografia não era preciso sair de casa nem procurar assuntos exóticos ou distantes da
realidade de cada fotógrafo. A afirmação não pretendia recusar a importância da viagem de procura da imagem,
mas relativizava a distância dessa viagem: os assuntos a fotografar não tinham de ser nem incrivelmente belos
e fora do comum, nem incrivelmente distantes e inacessíveis para se tornarem em boas fotografias. Com esta
afirmação Strand sublinhava que o mais importante numa fotografia não residia nas características do objeto
fotografado, mas no modo de o fotografar, de o ver e dar a ver, pondo em evidência o papel desempenhado
pelos aspetos formais constituintes de uma gramática visual fotográfica, e destacando a importância do olhar do
fotógrafo sobre a coisa fotografada. O que fazia uma bela fotografia, dizia, não era fotografar um objeto belo,
mas, antes, fotografar qualquer objeto (incluindo os feios!) de uma forma bela (geralmente com uma estrutura
abstrata, como também defendia). Lembro-me, por isso, de descobrir o encanto das suas fotos de taças de cozinha ou do
aspeto das ruas e dos telhados das casas, que Paul Strand conseguia fotografar sem mesmo ter de sair de casa.
De certo modo, como a frase citada demonstra, a vocação do fotógrafo (e da fotógrafa), como a de qualquer artista
desde os modernismos, é a de expandir o seu mundo limitless(ly). Este mundo, contudo, pode estar ali, mesmo ao
virar da esquina, desde que estejamos dispostos a explorar o potencial visual e significativo aberto pela relação
dinâmica entre o olhar humano, o olho ampliador da câmara e a realidade circundante. Para Strand, e para os
fotógrafos da Nova Objetividade que exploram uma panóplia de ângulos de visão, enquadramentos próximos,
pontos de vista e formas, o movimento fotográfico será de dentro – dessa relação olho/câmara – para fora. Mais
do que de fora para dentro. Isto não significa que o espanto com o mundo, que com a máquina fotográfica passou
a ser concebido como imagem ou como um desfile de imagens (lembrando Heidegger na sua ideia do mundo como
“representação do mundo”), não seja chamariz essencial para fotógrafos e fotógrafas. Não há, aliás, condição
mais próxima da do/a fotógrafo/a do que a de viajante, observador do mundo ou de mundos. E essa relação
com a viagem é uma condição que, mormente as dificuldades iniciais de portabilidade, nasce com a invenção da
fotografia, desde a sua divulgação pública, em 1839.
Um vocabulário documental emerge com a fotografia, alicerçado, sobretudo, na tradição da gravura, e contribuindo
para a potenciar, já que a divulgação da fotografia na imprensa se fez, ao longo do século XIX, através da gravura,
que vai tomar o cliché fotográfico como base, mais rigorosa, para a construção das suas matrizes, tanto em madeira
como em metal. O fervor documentalista do século XIX consubstancia-se em diversas missões fotográficas, umas
oficiais outras particulares. Por todo o lado efetuaram-se levantamentos de cidades e monumentos, de paisagens
e costumes regionais, considerados ora desconhecidos ora em perigo, face ao avanço da industrialização e, em
geral, vistos como marcas do passado, da origem ou de algo entendido como distante, como “Outro”, ou fora-de-
óptica (ex-ótico). Estas imagens elaboraram algumas das características partilhadas com o modernismo da Straight
Photography, na procura de traduzir o rigor das formas, das texturas e mesmo os detalhes, obedecendo à definição
realista e indicial que já atribuíam à fotografia.
Olhando o imenso arquivo dos diversos levantamentos fotográficos de oitocentos, saltam à vista as composições
mais lineares, com escalas distantes mais enquadradoras dos contextos, com ângulos mais frontais e um sentido
geral mais estático - até pela duração maior das exposições - quando comparadas com as imagens de Paul Strand e
destes modernistas da Belle Époche e para além dela. Contudo, a diferença mais destacada surge na valorização do
objeto e da representação dita objetiva, feita pelo documentarismo oitocentista, face à afirmação do sujeito e da
subjetividade que encontramos no século seguinte, de maneira mais generalizada. Paul Strand contribui para esta
afirmação do sujeito-que-fotografa e do gesto de fotografar como interpretação visual do mundo. Interpretação
que não entra em contradição com o realismo, que na leitura de Strand é ontológico do fotográfico (o que também
tem muito que se lhe diga, mas adiante!). E esta é uma diferença significativa pois afirma a possibilidade de uma
arte tecnológica, que sempre tinha sido motivo de controvérsia, por se considerar que o objetivo e mecânico não
poderia ser artístico (necessariamente entendido como expressão subjetiva).
Outro aspeto contrastante entre estes dois momentos históricos, tem que ver com a ideia da fotografia feita
com o que está “no degrau da nossa porta”. No momento em que Paul Strand fotografa, não se tratava já de
trazer o distante para perto da porta, mas de tratar tudo, incluindo o distante, como se estivesse à nossa porta.
E não é apenas um jogo de linguagem. Trata-se de uma atitude critica do exotismo. O exotismo caracteriza-se por
essa imagem que fascina ao revelar algo diferente e distante, tendencialmente paradisíaco ou demoníaco, ou
uma mistura indecisa entre ambos. Mas, as pessoas ou paisagens, quando tratadas como exóticas, permanecem
estranhas e distantes (daí o seu fascínio). Quando Paul Strand publica, em 1955, Un Paese: a Portrait of an Italian
Village (Aperture), com o argumentista italiano Cesare Zavattini, escolhem a aldeia natal deste, situada no norte
de Itália, que tinha tudo para ser exótica. Mas a sua intenção de se relacionar, de igual para igual, com as pessoas
e situações fotografadas, a que aliava o seu método de passar despercebido (após as pessoas se terem habituado
à sua presença), e a sua abordagem visual formal e próxima, constroem uma descrição intimista da aldeia e dos
seus habitantes.
A abordagem do particular, do espírito de um lugar, por muito que enfeitiçada pelo fascínio do exotismo, procura
cortar com a generalização e o jogo de aproximação distante que o caracteriza. Torna-se um gesto político.
Estas suas imagens podem simbolizar a Itália do pós-guerra mas, seguramente, fazem-no através dos indícios
particulares, um tanto aleatórios, encontrados e interpretados por um olhar subjetivo. E essa é a grande diferença
face às estratégias das imagens de propaganda, seja ela propaganda oficial (encomendada ou sancionada por
algum poder, político ou económico) ou não (resultado de uma mundividência ou ideologia dominante, que se
replica em imagens inquestionadas).
As imagens de propaganda propõem-se como naturais, como reproduções de um real transparente. Circulam
e falam-nos como se não tivessem autor, nem olhar subjetivo, nem ideologia interpretativa. Como um bocado
arrancado à realidade, que depois se generaliza e se apresenta como exemplar. A fotografia “adere” ao real, como
lembrava Barthes, e esse potencial produz a crença na sua verdade.
Não quero com isto dizer que o documentarismo oitocentista é propagandístico. Contudo, a sua concepção positivista
contribuiu para potenciar esses usos. Por sua vez, o romantismo - o outro movimento importante do século XIX -
assegurou, também ao novo medium, a continuidade das imagens de cariz etnográfico, regionalista e nacionalista.
O que esteve em jogo, igualmente, no contexto colonial, onde imagens orientalistas e exóticas ajudaram a projetar
a ideia das nações europeias como salvadoras desses “mundos perdidos”. Algo cujas consequências - sobretudo as
nefastas - estamos ainda a enfrentar.
As mil e uma fotografias de paisagens e retratos de grandes regiões do mundo, concebidas como exóticas, embora
cumprissem esse desejo de viagem e de conhecimento do mundo, indispensável para uma consciência global,
foram maioritariamente eurocêntricas. Na recusa da própria ideia de que correspondem a um ponto de vista, estas
imagens propõem-se como verdades, difíceis de questionar, por uma minoria.
Por isso, a fotografia que se assume como interpretativa e particular e que se situa no limiar do degrau da nossa
porta, como fez Strand, é tão importante como contrária à dimensão propagandística que se esconde nas imagens
documentais tidas como neutras e transparentes. Toda a imagem é uma imagem de ordem (ou desordem), como
diziam Deleuze e Guattari para contestar a neutralidade da linguagem. Se virmos os signos fotográficos como
signos, politizamos a imagem e revelamos o olhar que a constitui.
Propaganda and photography
at the front door
Te r e s a M e n d e s F l o r e s
______________________________________________________________________
La nation est toute entière une representation.
Pierre Nora, “Le lieux de mémoire”
found anywhere, far from where he lives or a few feet away.
It is always on his doorstep
Paul Strand
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Paul Strand (1890-1976), American photographer linked to the modernist movement of Straight Photography, used
to say that in order to make a good photograph one did not have to leave the house, neither did one have to look for
subjects thought of as exotic or distant from each photographer’s reality. The statement was not intended to deny
the importance of a journey made in search of an image, but it relativized the voyage’s distance: the photographed
subjects did not have to be incredibly beautiful or out of the ordinary, neither did they have to be incredibly distant
and inaccessible to become good photographs. With this statement, Strand emphasized that the most important
thing in a photograph was not the characteristics of the photographed object, but the way one photographs it,
the way one sees and reveals it, thus highlighting the role played by the formal aspects of a photographic visual
grammar and highlighting the importance of the photographer's gaze on what he/she photographed. He believed
the thing that made a beautiful photograph was not to photograph a beautiful object, but rather to photograph
any object (including the ugly ones!) In a beautiful way (usually with an abstract structure, as he also defended).
Therefore, I remember discovering the appeal of his photographs of kitchen cups or of the look of the streets and
rooftops, which Paul Strand photographed without ever having to leave the house.
As the above quote demonstrates, in a way the vocation of the photographer, like that of any artist since modernisms,
is to expand his/her world limitless(ly). This world, however, may be just around the corner, as long as we’re
willing to explore the significant visual potential opened by the dynamic relationship between the human eye,
the enlarging eye of the camera, and the surrounding reality. For Strand, and for the photographers of the New
Objectivity who explore a panoply of angles, framings, points of view and shapes, the photographic movement will
Nadar, Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza, 1889. Bibliothèque nationale de France.
take place from within – from that eye/camera relationship – towards the outside. More than from the outside in.
This doesn’t mean that the amazement with the world, that which the camera helped to conceive as an image or
as a parade of images (remembering Heidegger in his idea of the world as "representation of the world"), is not an
essential lure for photographers. In fact, there is no condition closer to that of the photographer than the traveler,
observer of the world or of worlds. And this relationship with travel is a condition that, albeit the initial difficulties
of portability, arises with the invention of photography, since its public disclosure in 1839.
A documentary vocabulary emerges with photography, mostly founded in the tradition of engraving and
contributing to its promotion, since the dissemination of photography in the press throughout the 19th century
was made through engraving, which in turn would take advantage of the photographic cliché as a more rigorous
basis for the construction of its matrices, both in wood and metal. The fervor of the documentary, during the
19th century, manifests itself under several photographic missions, some official and other private. Everywhere,
photographers carried out surveys of cities and monuments, of regional landscapes and customs, considered to
be either out of knowledge or in danger, given the advance of industrialization and, in general, seen as marks of
the past, of the origin or of something understood as distant, as "Other", or out-of-optics (ex-otic). These images
elaborated some of the characteristics shared with the modernism of Straigth Photography, in an effort to translate
the rigorous nature of forms, textures and even details, conforming to the realistic and indexical definition that was
already attributed to photography.
Looking at the immense archive of the several photographic surveys of the 19th century, what stands out are the
most linear compositions, with wider scales that accentuate their contexts, with more frontal views and a more
static general sense – also determined by the exposure’s length – when compared to Paul Strand’s images, but
also to those made by the modernists of the Belle Époche and beyond. However, the most outstanding difference
arises from the valuation of the object and the so-called objective representation, made by nineteenth-century
documentary, when compared with the affirmation of the subject and subjectivity that we find in the following
century, in a more general way. Paul Strand contributes to this affirmation of the subject-as-photographer and the
gesture of photographing as a visual interpretation of the world. This Interpretation does not contradict realism,
which in Strand's reading is ontological of the photographic (which in itself is a complex statement, but ahead!).
And this is a significant difference because it affirms the possibility of a technological art, which had always
been controversial, since one considered that the objective and the mechanical could not be artistic (necessarily
understood as subjective expression).
Another contrasting aspect between these two historical moments has to do with the idea of photography made
with what was right on one’s doorstep. When Paul Strand was active, it was no longer a matter of bringing the
distant closer to home, but of treating everything, including what is distant, as if it were at our door. And this is not
just a wordplay. This is a critical attitude towards exoticism. Exoticism can be characterized by the sort of image that
fascinates by revealing something different and distant, tendentially paradisiac or demonic, or an amalgamate of
both. However, when treated as exotic, people or landscapes remain strange and distant (hence their fascination).
When Paul Strand publishes, in 1955, Un Paese: Portrait of an Italian Village (Aperture), with Italian screenwriter
Cesare Zavattini, they choose his native village, located in northern Italy, which had great potential to be exotic.
But his intention to relate, on an equal basis, to the people and situations photographed, applying his method of
going unnoticed (after people had become accustomed to his presence), and his visual approach both formal and
close, construct an intimate description of the village and its inhabitants.
However bewitched by the fascination of exoticism, the approach to the particular and to the spirit of a place
seeks to cut with the generalization and the game of approaching the distant that characterizes exoticism. It
becomes a political gesture. These images may symbolize post-war Italy, but surely they do so through particular
clues, somewhat random, found and interpreted by a subjective look. And this is the big difference from the
strategies employed in propaganda imagery, whether it be official propaganda (commissioned or sanctioned by
some political or economic power) or not (the result of a dominant worldview or ideology, which is replicated in
unquestioned images).
Propaganda images are proposed as natural, as reproductions of a transparent real. They circulate and speak
as if they had no author nor subjective gaze, no interpretive ideology. Like a slice torn from reality, which is then
trivialized and presented as exemplar. Photography "adheres" to the real, as Barthes recalled, and this potential
produces a belief in its truth.
This statement does not imply that 19th century documentary photography is propagandistic. However, its positivist
conception has enhanced such uses. In turn, Romanticism – the other important movement of the 19th century
– also ensured the new medium the continuity of ethnographic, regionalist and nationalistic images. That was
equally at stake in the colonial context, where orientalist and exotic images helped to project the idea of European
nations as saviors of these “lost worlds”. Something whose consequences – especially the nefarious ones – we are
still facing.
The hundreds of photographs of landscapes and portraits of vast regions of the world, conceived as exotic, while
fulfilling this desire for travel and knowledge of the world, indispensable for a global consciousness, were mostly
Eurocentric. In rejecting the very idea that they correspond to a point of view, these images are proposed as truths,
hard to question by a minority.
That is why photography, that which stands as interpretive and particular, located at the threshold of our front
porch (as Strand did), is so important as contrary to the propagandistic dimension that hides in documentary
images considered to be neutral and transparent. Every image is an image of order (or disorder), as Deleuze and
Guattari used to evoke, in order to dispute language’s neutrality. If we see the photographic signs as signs, we
politicize the image and reveal the gaze that realizes it.
 Looking for his/her place outside the commercial market, it can go on
to occupy the full spectrum of possibilities. For those less attentive,
photojournalism can seem a noble option, a way to consolidate a singular
perspective about the world, separated from the rules of commissioned
works and marketing strategies. This notion is not that far apart from the
idea of the adventurous photojournalist, an epic figure who, as a solitary
vigilante, searches for pictures capable of showing the inequalities and the
perversities that devastate humanity, in faraway lands.
As a métier, we could approach photojournalism from two sides: if on the one
hand it can be referred to as a daily work towards an agenda, organized by
newspapers’ and magazines’ headboards – by its editors and other decision
makers –, oriented by the so called current affairs; on the other hand there
is a certain "elite" photojournalism in which photographers seem to play
the part of the "great reporter" and decide, with complete autonomy,
where to point their cameras at, what subjects are worth capturing and
how to approach them.
Going forward, we’ll focus on the latter approach to photojournalism, for
that is the context where photojournalists become major representatives
of their class, placing themselves as holders of a unique gaze, creating
stories that constitute themselves as historical patrimony (transformed into
a culture shared by all), winning prizes and increasing their market value
as photojournalists. This is the sort of photojournalism we encounter in
transnational projection events such as World Press Photo and Visa pour
l'image, the one we’ll be focusing on.
Both world festivals occur annually and congregate a considerable
percentage of the work done by photojournalists around the world during
the previous year. As such, they become privileged observation posts of the
photojournalistic activity, as well as of the construction of a certain world in
which photojournalism is grounded. These festivals also function as gigantic
locomotives that bring together sponsorships and marketing channels for
major brands, such as the world's largest camera manufacturer –Canon
–, or the world's largest imaging company – Adobe. They also promote a
certain type of periodical press, like Paris-Match or National Geographic,
that drives on the sort of images that find their place in these festivals. In
short, they are a successful industry.
1. Part of this success is probably due to a certain appeal that the images
made by these photojournalists exert on the public; this attraction effect
can be traced back to its origin in the writings of St. Augustine from the fifth
century, in his description of curiositas as a visual phenomenon. St Augustine
addressed this attractiveness by characterizing a visual impulse towards
the feelings of “horror” or the quality of “ugly” that impose themselves
to the observer like a magnet. This curiositas would be the counterpart
of contemplation, responsible for addressing “beauty” or “delight”. Tom
Shooting in the name
Gunning1 establishes this relation when he describes the “cinema of
attractions”, an amusement park spectacle of the first quarter of the 20th
century, where the spectator could watch an elephant being electrocuted or
an hooligan in jail. The non-narrative feature of these small movies allied
to the strangeness and uniqueness of their subject choice imposed itself
on the spectacle-spectator relationship as an exhibitionist urge. When we
of (and now you do
look at these festivals’ exhibitionist device alongside with the choices made
by editors, agents and other gatekeepers, we can easily say that the same
kind of attractiveness relation lies at the core of their success, disguised
in a way that guarantees the necessary social acceptance that will turn its
participants (images and authors) into commodities.
One could argue that this attraction is present since the birth of
what they told ya):
photojournalism in the nineteenth century, with the anthropological
expeditions. Photographers travelled abroad and brought back the kind of
exotic images that impressed the public – as representatives of this period
we could mention photographers Edward Sheriff Curtis, Adam Clarke
Vroam or John Thomson. This attraction is also present in the early reports
of War, in a more obvious manner: first, timidly, in the work of Roger
Photojournalism -
Fenton; then full-on during the American Civil War, with Mathew Brady and
those working near him fully engaging in the representation of horror and
corpses, opening the door to the sort of exhibition of atrocities in which war
imagery can be transformed.
The phenomenon of anthropological and geographical expeditions also
marks the beginning of the visual foundation of an ethnocentrism or
eurocentrism that led to the creation of ideas of race (preceded by the
keeping the status quo
foundation of national states), which in turn led to fascism and culminated
in the 1st and 2nd World Wars. Here, perhaps, begins a certain a way of
regarding photography as the guarantor of a propitious objectivity –
proof resistant to interpretation –, born out of a technical apparatus that
separates it from human subjectivity. Photography is a powerful player in
building a vision of the world that marks and reinforces a point of view. This
subjectivity, disguised as technical objectivity, will give rise to the conceptual
construction that sets the tone for the success of photojournalism, until the
R o d r i g o P e i xoto ; afte r i nte n s e d i a l o g u e wi t h Va l te r Ve nt u ra ; present day.
t ra n s l ate d a n d e d ite d b y S of i a S i l va 2. Visa pour l'image is a photojournalism festival held annually in
Perpignan, in the South of France, for a period of 15 days, usually between
the end of August and the second week of September. Any professional
photojournalist can participate. As a condition (in addition to the need
for a professional certification), it is required that the works submitted
have a minimum of 50 images and a maximum of 150 images. In 2018,
exhibitions that had 50 or more images were rare; the great majority had
approximately 30 photographs. This results from the fact that neither the
selection of images nor the final assembly of the exhibition is made by
the photographers themselves. That process is led by Jean-François Leroy,
General Director of the VISA Festival, which not only selects the images, but
also determines their order. This was reported by several photographers
during informal conversations throughout the festival, notably by James
Oatway, who would then go on to win the VISA d'Or for his work "Red
Ants". Alienating the authors from such processes speaks of the mercantile
nature of an event that regards photographs as products to be placed on
shelves. It also makes evident that authors are invited to the event to
promote a fetishist contact with the public, who engages in brief guided
visits in order to be entertained by the stories of the photographers, who
recount the most heroic details of their work and speak about the best
bulletproof vests or the advantages of being a woman and using a burka to
hide photographic equipment.
In addition to the official exhibitions, the festival organizes various activities,
including meetings between photojournalists and between photojournalists
and the public, screenings and portfolio readings for emerging
photojournalists. These portfolio readings take place in the Perpignan
Congress Hall, in the French National Association of Iconographers (ANI –
Association Nationale des Iconographes) room, where the main European
and world news agencies are also represented on several stands. The
portfolio reviews that take place in there can be understood as the first
contact between freelance photographers and established photographers
and editors, who promote an institutionalization of the applicants’
approach to photojournalism, criticizing them in relation to what themes
have greater impact and about the sort of compositions that fit the market,
thus imposing a vision both on content and form. These market values
are embodied in the figures of the “educators”, who structure a validation
process based on "what the public wants to see" and "what sells".
We can look at these figures as visual gatekeepers who, rather than act as
content pickers, become guardians of the well protected castle that is the
profitable business of photojournalism. We are somewhat distant from the
notion of gatekeeping as defined by Pamela Shoemaker2 and commonly
referred to, namely: "a process through which billions of messages available
around the world are selected, turning into the hundreds of messages that
come to a person during the period of one day ". In the case in question,
it would be more adequate to speak of a gatekeeper as an “educator for
profit”, someone that analyzes the qualities of the applicants and educates
them on the process of evolution necessary to enter the castle. They defend
the same status quo that is also a product of economic success (if not for the
photographers at least for the sponsors of the festival and for the organizers
that during the two weeks of the VISA pour l'image host approximately
200,000 visitors).
As we walk across the exhibitions of Visa pour l'image 2018, once again we
are confronted with the role photography plays in promoting a culture of
ethnocentrism. Along the walls of the Convent des Minimes we see images
of Kenyan protesters in political struggle, Indian women in public toilets
covering their noses due to bad smell, Bolivian miners at work, Papua New
Guineans in detention at the Bonana prison, Colombian women related to
FARC experiencing motherhood in the jungle, or a huge line of Rohyngia
refugees walking towards Bangladesh. There is no place here for the rise
of nationalism in European countries, North-American citizens’ access to
health systems, or the desertification of the Portuguese interior and the
problems that follow.
In a straightforward statistical exercise, we can observe that of the 21
exhibitions that are part of the official program, 90% of them are based
on non-Western realities and for the most cases photographers choose
to portray people of non-European ethnicities (in the most traditionalist
sense of a vision of Europe). This contrasts with the origins of the visitors:
throughout the period of festival one can easily conclude that a vast
majority of the public is either of French or Spanish nationality.
These data should be enough to make people aware of the dangers of a new
Eurocentrism or Westerncentrism. If we were to favor conspiracy theories,
in a semi-comatose state, we could imagine the entire colonial process as
a Machiavellian endeavor aimed at degrading the living conditions of the
resident populations, in order to create the best photographable scenarios
and give rise to an empire of images for the colonizing countries. If we
cannot have your raw materials for free, if we cannot use you as slaves
for the production of goods from which we can profit, then let us sell the
images of your doom and turn them into strongholds of the atonement of
Western guilt. And as we all know, the atonement of guilt is a highly valued
commodity. It is therefore the perpetuation of a dominant culture that finds
comfort in directing its gaze towards the suffering of the other. Once again,
this phenomenon reminds us of the curiosity towards the “exotic” that was
inaugurated by nineteen century photographers. That gaze manifests itself
as an ideology and turns political messages into images. The right word
is PROPAGANDA. An ideology for a civilization that is impermeable to
alternatives and that dazzles in the contemplation of the failure of other
civilizations.
Photojournalism nowadays inaugurates a new type of ethnocentrism based
on the primacy of the eye where the suffering of the other sets the pace for
a successful economic model. "To Look" becomes the verb that activates
the entire system. We can choose to understand that "the public has a right
to know", and this “right to know” is in itself an ethical task, but it also
implicates the responsibility of knowing and what better way “to know”
than "to see for yourself"? In the impossibility of being able to look at
everything, photography becomes the natural substitute, offering the
necessary and reliable proof. Of course, this act of looking will only allow
us to know what we already recognize.
In the context of photojournalism, the institutionalization of the
“sympathetic gaze” – a look that justifies itself by the need to know
more about the other – is restricted to the space of the exhibition of the
photographs, with little consequences beyond that arena. This “sympathetic
gaze” is equated to action, as if to know was the same as to act ethically
towards a better world, as if to see was to help. This is the paradox that
fuels the photojournalism industry: a transnational capitalist organization,
dispersed and without its own brand, which is structured around the goal
of generating profit, with a preferred exponential growth throughout the
years. As an industrial structure, we can identify its raw materials (non-
Western humans, preferably non-Caucasian, subject to precarious living
conditions for reasons of political nature, etc.), workers (photographers),
headboards (editors, agents, etc.) and the CEO’s (festival presidents and
newsgroup directors or agencies). As a capitalist organization, it also
contributes to the camera sales market (Canon sponsors both VISA pour
l'image and World Press Photo) and the success of periodicals (Paris-Match
and National Geographic are official sponsors of VISA pour L'image,), thus
building a lucrative system dispersed all over the Western world.
3. Comparing the phenomenon of the photojournalism industry with
another case-study may help shine a light on it success. Volunturism,3
commonly understood as ethical tourism, is a twenty-first century paradox.
In this context, holidays are regarded as an opportunity to carry out
humanitarian aid, previously scheduled by travel agencies that provide the
desired experiences near “ethnically different populations”, where tourists
can connect with the other, boosting their daily ethical performance.
Integrated in such programs, tourists travel "responsibly" and leave a
"positive footprint". Transformed into volunteers, these tourists come home
with a pack full of stories about how the other half lives.
In order to practice volunturism, a certain economic welfare is needed that
is not available to all. Thus, photojournalism becomes a more affordable
version of this phenomenon, a sort of "travel abroad without leaving home”
that satisfies those with social awareness but without means, therefore
democratizing the experience of indignation about the living conditions of
the other. Curiously enough, on the official page of Visa pour l’image 2018
we can find profile pictures from the photographers who participated in
the event and we verify that if some of those images where to appear as
social networking image profiles, they would surely originate an avalanche
of likes.
Photojournalism configures a capitalist ecosystem in which all its elements
unconsciously understand what tasks are there to be played in order to
keep the regime functioning, sharing a common gain that serves all. As an
ecosystem, its life is close to that of any natural organism: each organ is only
aware of the the inputs and outputs necessary for its functioning; the body
stirs and walks unaware of its parts. The power of photojournalism as an
industry is intimately linked to questions of a political nature, such as access
to goods and services or the distribution of wealth and resources needed to
ward off poverty from the populations on which the lens is pointed at. To
keep this industry afloat, the preservation of precariousness, inequalities
and poverty is paramount. That is what keeps photojournalism alive and
guarantees the vitality of the public, every new year excited to be able to
return to VISA pour l'image or World Press Photo.
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Gunning, T. (1990); Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde in Early cinema: space-frame-narrative;
BFI Publishing, London, 56-63.
Shoemaker, P.J. (1991). Gatekeeping. Communication Concept Series, volume 3. Newbury Park CA: Sage.
About volunturism see: Baião, Pedro e Marques, António Pedro; As minhas fotos das férias com os pretinhos, ou: o volunturismo
como performance ética. Revista ELECTRA (3) September 2018. Ed. Fundação EDP, 60-67.
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