Evaluating the Photography of Fact: Document.

Evaluating the Photography of Fact: Document, freshs and Art, 1850-2000

strange York University

modern York, New York

December 7-9 2000

An ambitious endeavor for a two-day result New York University's (NYU) colloquy attempted the process of "Evaluating the Photography of Fact: Document, novels and Art, 1850-2000." Anne Hoy parley organizer, explained that the first three like events (in 1995, 1998 and 1999) severityed the artistic side of the medium, examining work from Man Ray to Alfred Stieglitz to Andres Serrano. This in the greatest degree recent conference, Hoy said, was about "the rest" and was intended "not to delight and intrigue unless to inform general connoisseurs of 'fact,' no matter in what way it is defined." She plant the tone for much of the parley by stating that while contemporary technology has undermined the authority of the eyewitness, it has liberated photography, as it is no longer bounce to a paper support.

Vicki Goldberg began the presentations with a history of images used to influence politics, social issues and international relations. She concocted an image of Abraham Lincoln taken at Mathew Brady that was the first photograph to influence an election. Without television, radio or uniform whistlestop train tours, the and nothing else means of representing candidates in the inspections of voters was pictures. Another seminal political image is the "kitchen debate" photograph of Vice President Richard Nixon and Russian President Nikita Khruschev (the latter unimpressed) looking at a standard American home. The photograph was taken by the agency of William Safire (then a member of the Nixon staff) in 1959 with a camera thrown to him by dint of a photographer who did not have the same privileged vantage point as Safire. Goldberg noted that while everything has become mediated, there was no decisive image of the 2000 presidential campaign. The public still believes, she said, that television images aren't "wrong" just as in Lincoln's day, no the same believed t hat photographs could be "wrong" In discussing the impact of photography in succession the notion of fame, Goldberg noted that the first bodily substance to become a celebrity [i]or[/i] part of to the other photographs was the American actress Adah Isaacs Menken who in the mid 1800 advertised herself using photographs. In later years, the of the present day medium of film replaced photography, and the influence of in the same state [i]or[/i] condition stars even dictated retail directions in the United States--for example, there was a 70% increase in undershirt sales after Clark Gable's representation with Claudette Colbert in Frank Capra's It Happened united Night (1934). Television has replaced the still image as the primary carrier of recently made knowns and perhaps because of this, photography has mov from being the center of of recent origins to being the center of art. uniform so, said Goldberg, photography as art continues to influence all other photographs. Looking to the what may occur hereafter Goldberg claimed that the "real pertinacious still photographs are coming from of great depth space," saying that they are "changing our ideas about our spiritual life, ou r circumstance."

Documentary photographer Eugene Richards, best known for his Kraszna-Krausz Award-winning 1994 part Cocaine True, Cocaine Blue, was a last-minute replacement for photojournalist James Nachtwey, who was upon assignment in the Middle East. by way of his own admission, Richards did not have a chance to prepare a lesson and therefore began with an impassioned off-the-cuff slide retrospective of his work. He shared not alone his better-known projects, but also his work in a Serbian hospital in Bosnia, taking pictures he explained were censored from American newspaper editors. "War is the destruction of innocence," he said, explaining that what the public papal courts is "not the power of photographers if it were not that the powers of editors." He spoke at continuance about other censorship issues he has faced in his career as a documentarian, including a father of 12 being viewed by way of editors as "too fat," teen parents being "too young" and an image of a gay father in a bathtub with his baby son as "offensive." Richards also lamented the demise of the freelance photographer, saying that nearly all photographic work is now done forward contract.

Richards also showed his short video however the day came (2000), a poignant, meditative and unsentimental story of a Nebraska farming family's decision to place their 91-year-old father/brother in a nursing family Interspersing scenes of twilight above the comfields with interviews with the family members, the narrative is thus gently propelled both visually and contextually and the incidents of the story fall as in a natural progression. This video, like all of Richards's work, attempts to speak the conformity to fact [i]or[/i] reality so important to educator, author and curator Gail Buckland, who joined Richards as common of the members of a panel moderated on journalist and editor Harold Evans entitled "Photojournalism Today." Evans began by way of noting that the still photograph has a particular attachment to the way things are remembered, pointing without that it is more difficult to recall moving images than photographs. He also introduced a question that would reappear through every part of the conference: "is there still credibility to the still image when i t can be in such a manner manipulated?" Kathy Ryan, photo editor of the strange York Times Magazine, said that it is now difficult to contend using black and white in an era of modern photographers, in particular several novel Yale graduates, who have "seized color with gusto." however she allowed, color does add to narrative storytelling. Buckland first annotateed that, as an educator, she is disquieted that contemporary students are cynical and distrustful of the medium. She stated that in regard to the issue of validity, they want the authentic story, not the iconic image. She took great issue with photographic manipulation, becoming passionate as she explained, "we already know the photographer has a viewpoint--let's finish a picture that addresses the issues." As the audience began to dialogue with similar flushs of emotion about this issue after the panel presentations closeed the most pertinent conversation of the conversation was cut short by the organizers wanting to withhold on schedule.