Topic 10 – Photography, Power and Others - Reflection

Reflect on the ‘triangle’ model in relation to your own current practice: do you feel that there is any kind of imbalance in terms of the relationships between the three ‘corners’?

I think photographers has always had an inappropriate amount of power. A subject, whether willing or unwilling to be photographed generally has a weaker standpoint than the person photographing.

The power imbalance is generated by the gaze and the concept that a photographer is taking a sustained look at a person or object that they are interested in capturing. This could lead to a more in-depth discussion of the male and female gaze introduced by Berger:

-        ‘according to usage and conventions which are at last being questioned but have by no means been overcome - men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at’ (Berger, 1972).

I don’t think I have treated my female subjects differently to male subjects, but there has always been a power dynamic going on. I have always controlled my subject and represented them how I wanted them to be seen rather than discussed how they would either liked to be seen or how do they not want to be seen. This is a complex question for a subject as they are aware people will look at them through the photograph that is taken but they a limited in the way they can impact the reading of this. Intuitively a subject is aware of the gaze, whether it be male, female, gender neutral, young, old, experienced, or unexperienced, and sometimes they fear it.

When discussing the gaze Sturken and Cartwright write:

-        ‘A gaze is, in one sense, a kind of look. You may turn your gaze upon objects, places, or other. Whereas a glance is quick, a gaze is sustained. In its verb form, to gaze is to look intently.’ (Sturken and Cartwright. 2018).

Potentially subjects are concerned that an image will reveal something they do not want others to know and could be judged against, for example social class or political belief. Could it be the audience is concerned they will be judge, grouped, and stereotyped so they are complied with other in a list.

More complex still, the subject could be concerned about the relationship with the photographer and how the image will be used, linked into this is the subject’s relationship with social media, a platform of diverse imagery, in which they enjoy looking and experiencing the representations of others. These representations could be negative and due to the saturation of content glanced at by views (I use the term glance as there can be a limit to the context and length of the image/video) they do not want to be put into a similar situation themselves. This leads to a restriction of the gaze through limiting content of themselves.

Think about any previous experience out shooting: have there ever been any moments when you felt that what you were doing, or had done, was unjust or inappropriate? If so, what prompted this?

I photographed on the streets of New York and had recently seen the work of Bruce Gilden. I photographed a man pushing a trolley. Despite having his permission, I didn’t consider how they wanted to be represented or how they valued their representation through my camera.

At the time I didn’t think anything of it and was proud of the image for a while. However, when looking and reflecting on the image now there is a significant power imbalance because from what I could tell the man was homeless, and I was playing on what I considered to be my power, a young traveller who felt invincible behind the camera to demand something.

I think I try to justify my taking of the image as I was looking to gaze and understand this person’s lifestyle. However, this is not the case as it was just one image and if I had cared I would have spent more time with the person to understand how we could have collaborated and created an image together that we were both comfortable with.

What did this experience teach you about your approaches, both practically and conceptually?

I learnt from this and other experiences to spend time with the people that were kind enough to give me time to talk about my ideas and projects. I now dedicate time to my subjects to consider how they feel having their photograph taken. It is more of a challenge to discuss project ideas, but this has also forced me to simplify and detail projects before discussing them.

Subjects have also helped shape projects, in my current work about Reading I am relying on the subjects to be collaborators for the work and give me locations to photograph too.

This leads to another layer of importance and connection with the subject in order for them to trust me and the way I will represent them and places they consider special.

Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London., Penguin Books, 1972.

Sturken, Marita, and Lisa Cartwright. Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture. 3rd ed., New York, Oxford University Press, 2018.