Photography

I found Colin Jacobson’s lecture on photojournalism and citizen journalism really interesting today – perhaps the most thought-provoking lecture so far.

I’ve always had an interest in photography and love taking photos.

These photos are usually of drunken nights out or family parties where I’ve been lumbered with the ‘chore’ of documenting said occasions.
It doesn’t bother me though.

I cherish these images that I have collected of my friends and family – people who mean so much to me.

I’m really keen to develop a greater flair for photography. (I’m geekishly interested in the now rather old-fashioned way of developing photos in a dark room)

I love the originality and unique qualities that many photographs have and hope that someday I can bring this to some of the pictures I take.

Last summer I saw an exhibition of my favourite photographer’s work in Edinburgh.

Henri Cartier-Bresson.

I’m always fascinated by the way he captures people in his lens. How he captures events.

(If you don’t know Cartier-Bresson’s work, find Rue Mouffetard, Paris 1954 – it hands on my bedroom wall at home!)

Back to Colin’s lecture – it still amazes me that in this day and age, so many of the images we are shown are actually controlled by the powers that be.

For example, the US staging the control of Haiti airport in 1994 for the benefit of the press.

Forceful propaganda is so often attributed to extremists such as Hitler and Stalin.

In reality however, every government controls what the public sees in order to ensure that we take their side.

In recent times, this was most famously undermined by the Abu Ghraib photographs taken by American troops.

The ‘just’ nature of the second Gulf war exploded just as suddenly as the first bombs were dropped on Baghdad.

It seems that we aren’t living in a democracy at all, even though our leaders are forcing this notion onto so-called undemocratic countries.

Are the governments of America, Britain et al any better than the various autocratic regimes around the world?

Society is Orwellian. We are constantly being watched. Constantly being fed spin. Constantly being undermined in our view of what ‘truth’ is.

“While photographs may not lie, liars may photograph. It becomes necessary then to see to it that the camera we depend on contracts no bad habits.” – Lewis Hine.