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SOME PHOTOGRAPHIC MYTHS " 93
include the photographers images which were instrumental in turning the tide of public
opinion against the Vietnam war.
But even if all these social benefits of reportage photography did not exist or could be explained
away, there remains a fundamental flaw in the myth: photographers never claim to tell the
truth. Period.
The best photographers have an intense interest in and enthusiasm for their subjects (which
precludes deliberate exploitation) and they have researched and read and talked until they are
mini-experts in the area. All they claim is: This is what I saw. This is what I felt about what I
saw at the time I was taking the pictures. This is my point of view. This is an individual truth,
to the best of my ability. It will never be everyone else s truth.
David: I was the one who discovered my mother after her death. She had died of natural causes
and had a smile on her face. I wanted to remember that smile and so took a picture just one.
The picture has no relevance to anyone but me and consequently would not be shown to others
outside the immediate family. However, for me, it is the most important picture I have ever taken.
Over the years I had amassed a large number of photographs of this remarkable woman and
decided to print up a coherent set, which I showed to the rest of the family. I was amazed to fi
nd
that each in turn would remark, as they looked at different images, that this one or that one really
captured her, was just like her. But the choices of the family members were never the same,
each viewer had a personal preconceived notion of what was the truth. At this point I clearly
realized that there is no universal answer, or agreed truth, even with a subject on which all
the viewers were extremely knowledgeable. Each viewer brought to the photograph his/her
own truth.
Our advice to photographers is: do your homework, examine motives, be clear about the purpose
of the pictures, make no exaggerated claims towards omniscience and ignore the myth.
Myth No. 9:
Documentary photography is not art
Don t panic this will not be a treatise on the various defi
nitions of art in an effort to force
photographs into an odd-shaped pigeonhole. Instead, we want to offer a few words of consolation
to photographers, perhaps struggling in an art-academic environment, who are feeling a sense
of inadequacy in their straight photography when surrounded by the transformations of the
medium practiced by artists. It is our contention that much of the confusion surrounding art and
photography would dissipate by bearing in mind two simple statements:
Art is not the medium or style but the agreed merit of a body of work created over a life-time of
achievement by a dedicated individual.
94 " ON BEING A PHOTOGRAPHER: BILL JAY & DAVID HURN
This body of work is likely to center around the unique characteristics of the chosen medium.
Both statements could be expanded, amended, reconfi gured and analyzed ad infinitum, ad nauseam,
but they do serve to clarify certain problems and dispel the myth under discussion.
Today, especially in art environments, the photographer is urged/expected to emphasize
individuality. Can reportage photography reveal such personal idiosyncrasies? The clear
answer is that it is impossible to keep them out of the images. You select a subject for which
you have interest and enthusiasm; you choose how best this subject is revealed by camera
viewpoint; you decide on the precise moment when it is most significant all these are very
subjective, personal decisions.
Indeed, it is our contention that the self is more emphatically expressed by ignoring it and
concentrating on the thing itself. Personal knowledge is gained by objectification, looking outward
not inward. Life itself is the mirror in which the personal image is reflected.
Is there any evidence for these assertions? Look at large bodies of work by the fi
nest reportage
photographers and you quickly discover that it is easy to distinguish the individual styles
and concerns. That should come as something of a shock if reportage photography is only an
impersonal, objective reflection of reality.
Another experiment (hypothetical, this time): let us suppose you could ask 100 of the best critics,
curators, historians, museum directors and photographers to each select the 50 greatest images
in the history of the medium. Our guess is that the vast majority of these 5,000 images would fall
under the general category of straight, documentary or reportage photography.
These remarks are not intended to disparage the work or ideas of the painters, sculptors and print-
makers who utilize photographic images. That is a legitimate and sometimes fascinating process
for producing visually stimulating works of mixed-media. But it is not photography.
We believe that photographers of all personality types, using the whole panoply of camera
formats, would become better photographers at a faster rate by employing the common
denominators gleaned from the images, ideas and lives of the best photographers throughout
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