{"id":43095,"date":"2012-01-06T12:50:08","date_gmt":"2012-01-06T17:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=43095"},"modified":"2012-01-06T16:10:39","modified_gmt":"2012-01-06T21:10:39","slug":"taking-pictures-or-making-pictures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2012\/01\/06\/taking-pictures-or-making-pictures\/","title":{"rendered":"Taking Pictures or Making Pictures"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Montclair SocioBlog<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Ethnographers worry that their mere presence on the scene may be influencing what people do and thus compromising the truth of their studies.\u00a0 They try to minimize that impact, and most of their reports give detailed descriptions of their methods so that readers can assess whether the data might be corrupted.<\/p>\n

Photojournalists also claim to be showing us the truth — \u201cpictures don\u2019t lie\u201d — but they compunctions about influencing the people in their photos.\u00a0 Here for example is a photo taken in Israel by Italian photographer Ruben Salvadori.\u00a0 (This is a screen grab of a video, hence the subtitles.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n

The defiant Palestinian youth, the flames of the roadblock — it\u2019s all very dramatic.\u00a0 But it is far from spontaneous. \u00a0Here’s the photo from another point of view:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n

Salvadori studied anthropology, and he is well aware that observers influence what they observe.\u00a0 But editors want \u201cgood\u201d photos, not good ethnography.\u00a0 So observer influence is an asset, not a problem.<\/p>\n

If you point a tiny camera at somebody, what is he going to do?\u00a0 Most likely, he\u2019s going to smile or do something.\u00a0 Now imagine this enlarged with a group of photographers. That show up with helmets, gas masks, and at least two large cameras each, and they come there to take photos of what you do.\u00a0 So you\u2019re not going to sit there twiddling your thumbs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No, the youths don\u2019t twiddle their thumbs, not with the photogs on the scene.\u00a0 Instead, they burn a flag.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n

Their relationship is symbiotic.\u00a0 The photogs want dramatic images, the insurgent youths want publicity.\u00a0 Of course, even with the Palestinians youths and the Israeli soldiers, when the action gets real, nobody is thinking about how they\u2019ll look in a photo.<\/p>\n

—————————<\/p>\n

(The full 8-minute video of Salvadori talking about photography in the combat zone was posted at\u00a0PetaPixel<\/a>\u00a0back in October, though I didn’t hear about it until recently.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Montclair SocioBlog. Ethnographers worry that their mere presence on the scene may be influencing what people do and thus compromising the truth of their studies.\u00a0 They try to minimize that impact, and most of their reports give detailed descriptions of their methods so that readers can assess whether the data might be corrupted. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":258,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[129,274],"class_list":["post-43095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-media","tag-methodsuse-of-data"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/258"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43095"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43095\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43485,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43095\/revisions\/43485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}