“If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn’t need to lug a camera.” -Lewis Hine
A quote like this seems as good a place as any to start my journey into the world of photography. Well, sort of: the study of photography, to be exact. I decided to go outside my comfort zone this semester and take a class called “Photography and Public History.” Wish me luck!
One of our first assigned readings was Susan Sontag’s On Photography. In it, she includes a chapter entitled “A Short Anthology of Quotes.” Although many of the quotes were relevant to what I’ve been learning, this one really stuck out, partly because I know now where our professor, Jim Opp, got his blog title. It is interesting both for what it says (to me) and who said it. Lewis Hine, an American documentary photographer in the early nineteenth century, used this skill to advocate against child labour. This is one of his photographs, from 1908:
“Glassworks. Midnight. Location: Indiana.” From a series of photographs of child labor at glass and bottle factories in the United States by Lewis W. Hine, for the National Child Labor Committee, New York.
I like this photograph, because while it shows the poverty and difficult working conditions children, it also humanizes the nebulous concept of the “working class.” By looking directly at the camera, we are forced to address them as individuals, and account for the our part in the system that exploits them.
All this to say that Hine made an effort to use photography as a tool for social change. Like Roland Barthes believed, photography could be a democratizing force, and had the ability to challenge the status quo.
However, I’m not sure I agree with the underlying assertion that cameras tell stories without the cultural baggage of language. Semiotics is obviously an important aspect of any photograph, and photographers often include elements of their subject’s environment (in the case of the photograph above, the factory). This allows the viewer to use a mental shortcut using visual cues – what assumption the viewer arrives at about their subject is based on their cultural/social location (to paraphrase Bordieu). It is also important to remember the image’s sometimes “parasitic” relationship to text. For instance, how do I know what kind of work these children are doing? The title. In this case, the text provides valuable context for the photograph: context essential for the story.
Still, the visual nature of photographs – particularly those of other human beings – tends to elicit a stronger emotional reaction than text might. Consequently, I can see why Hine, and the National Child Labour Committee, relied on photographs to sway public opinion and advocate for change.
While I think that some photographs provide more questions than answers for the viewer, some certainly resonate at a subconscious level, beyond the realm of words. Perhaps it was this reaction that Hine is referring to.
Photography and Public History 