Vynn Phiri
403499
Photojournalism
26th October, 2009
Antony Kaminju
A critique on Raymond Preston photography
Abstract
The essay aims to critically examine the photography of Raymond Preston, a South African social documentarist who covered the apartheid liberation struggle. It argues from a constructionist approach to the theory of representation that there cannot be a one-to-one correlation between a photographic image and reality. The essay focuses on his use of selection, composition and captions to represent reality. The essay has analysed his lone photo exhibition of 2003 which he mounted in Rosebank, South Africa and reports of the photographic climate in the apartheid era. The essay reveals that firstly, in his selection, Preston has the discretion of what to photograph and does so with reality, capturing the scene or parts of his subject; next composition gives Preston power of his subjects and meaning is given through negotiated space but reality does not change; and thirdly reality in his pictures does not change with captions that can signify different connotations besides the connoted meaning. In all these instances he succeeds to represent reality but the correlation of his photographic images and reality cannot be one-to-one.
1.0 Introduction
The documentation in pictures of apartheid South Africa is called resistance or struggle photography and it describes a genre of photography that is political in its stance. The reality captured by the photograph is from the vantage point of the dominated people, the blacks. Important example of resistance photography is provided by the work of white photographer Raymond Preston (Phiri, 2009). His photography ranges from documenting violence and confrontations to recording everyday situations, especially as lived by South African blacks under apartheid. These photographs and others contributed to the worldwide condemnation and sanctions that ultimately led to the collapse of the apartheid government. His documentation appears in his lone exhibition of the117 black and white pictures he mounted in Rosebank, Johannesburg in 2003.The exhibition depicts the 18 years of hope and conflict before 1994.
Throughout history, documentary photography has oftentimes been attached to notions of realism and truth and, as such, has proved to be an invaluable political and ideological tool in various social, cultural and political environments. Its objective, beyond the aesthetic, is to document the conflicts between oppressors and their victims so as to alert, persuade and elicit support for the oppressed. This essay therefore argues, from a constructionist point of view through the theory of representation, that there cannot be a simple one-to-one correspondence between a photographic image and reality. Rather than taking a single image of the exhibition, the essay explores the representational role of Preston’s selected photographs and reality.
This essay, firstly, will give a brief background on the existing climate for the social documentary photographer; next, the essay will define the constructionist approach to the theory of representation on the photographic image and reality; and finally, it will engage with the theory to critically examine selection, composition and captions in Preston’s photography in its representation of reality.
2.0 Context: Photographic climate in the apartheid
The apartheid government had policies which restricted dissent by Black activists particularly those represented by the African National Congress along with a number of Whites and Coloureds. Depending on the potential threat of the dissenters, the government used such measures as fines, intimidation, harassment, censorship, incarceration, torture, exile and murder. The control of defiance even extended to invading nearby neutral countries to destroy banned resistance movements based in those countries such as Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Zambia, and Botswana.
One event that particularly epitomises the power of the photographic image as a means of representation of political opposition is of images showing the Soweto uprising of 1976. The police violence against black school children’s non-violent protest was documented and distributed worldwide. One particular struggle picture, which became iconic shows a dying 12-year old Hector Peterson being carried away from the conflict.. Spurred by the Soweto uprising, the anti-apartheid struggle became more sustained, with open confrontation and resistance. Government responded with further restrictions under a sequence of state-of-emergency decrees in the wake of attempts to make the country ungovernable by liberation movements who used sabotage, mass demonstrations and open defiance of the laws as tools of resistance. These apartheid governments draconian measures backfired and spawned international indignation and censure over the gross violation of basic human rights (Krantz 2008).
However, constructing and distributing resistance photos was problematic and dangerous. Film and cameras were often times confiscated during government operations in the townships, with film being fogged. Photographers were sometimes harassed, and their facilities raided. Photographers ran the risk of being beaten or even shot by police during conflict situations and uprisings. Sometimes they were attacked by the local communities, which mistrusted the photographers’ intentions and political affiliation. Although there was no censorship or illegality applied to photographs (except for those showing sensitive government settings), there existed a pervasive climate of fear, created by the Security Police’s surveillance and by awareness that this could easily lead to detention without trial (Krantz 2008). Despite all these difficulties, photographs were taken and attained public exposure. Some were smuggled out of the country, using a variety of inventive tricks. Some photos appeared in independent, dissident news publications. A lot of photographs were shown in galleries of community-based organisations. Resistance photographs became increasingly available in the 1980s, when censorship restrictions became more readily dodged and less consistently enforced. This apparent relaxation of restrictions was due in large part to increasing international pressure, by means of severe sanctions, towards reinstituting civil liberties. In this climate of greater openness and increasing White involvement in anti-apartheid political engagement, Omar Badsha and Paul Weinberg, two photographers, pioneered a decision to extend the availability of such images beyond the more vulnerable individual photographer’s initiatives by organising Afrapix to archive and distribute resistance photography (Krantz, 2008).
2.1 The Constructionist Approach to the Theory of Presentation
Representation is the production of meaning through various sign systems which, for include languages (Hall, 1997). In representation, constructionists argue that signs, organised into languages of different kinds are used to communicate meaningfully with others. Languages can use signs to symbolise, stand for or reference objects, people and events in the ‘real’ world (Gavard, 1999). But they can also reference imaginary things and fantasy worlds which are not in any obvious sense part of the material world. However, the theory contends that there is no simple one-to-one correlation between a photographic image, an iconic sign, and the real world (Hall, 1997). The approach advances that the world is not accurately or otherwise reflected in the mirror of language but is constructed through a combination of different aspects. Meaning is fashioned by the practice, the work, of the representation (Gavard, 1999). In other words, it is produced through signification.
The understanding of the meaning takes place in two ways through a sign, the signifier and the signified. The meaning of the sign depended on the identification of a particular signifier with a particular signified. Signified standing for the abstract concept (or the thing-in-itself and signifier the word or image that refers to the signified. These concepts are formed in the mind and they function as a system of mental representation which classifies and organises the world into meaning categories or the signifier. If there is a concept for something, its meaning can be known. But this meaning cannot be communicated without a system of representation, a language or the signified. Language consists of signs organised into various relationships. But signs can only convey meaning if one possesses codes which allow translations of concepts into language and vice versa. These codes are crucial for meaning and representation. They do not exist in nature but are as a result of social conventions. They are a crucial part of a culture—maps of meaning—which are learnt and unconsciously internalised as one becomes a member of a culture (Hall, 1997). This approach to language suggests the symbolic domain of life, where words and things function as signs, which pervades the social life itself.
However, there are also two other approaches to the theory of representation namely the reflective and the intentional. In the reflective approach, the meaning is thought to lie in the object, person or idea or event in the real world and language functions like a mirror, to reflect the true meaning as it already exists in the world. In the intentional approach, it argues the opposite. It contends that it is the speaker, the author, who decides the meaning on the world through language (Hall 1997). Words mean what the author has in mind they should mean. However, in this essay, the constructionist approach is underlined.
The constructionist approach finds that things are made to mean. It finds that we construct meaning using representational systems, concepts and signs. This approach urges us not to confuse the material world where things and people exist, and the symbolic practices and processes through representation, meaning and language operate.
3.0 Critique of Preston’s work
Against the historical background of the photographic climate, the essay will now critically assess Preston’s work using the constructionist approach to the theory of representation to assess the extent to which his photographs constructed and represented the reality of the apartheid struggle. This will be done by looking at selection, composition and captions.
3.1 Selection
Selection presupposes a photographer has the freedom to decide what should be photographed. And so, having unconsciously internalised the codes of the meanings of the struggle, Preston selects carefully the pictures subjects to produce meaning of the struggle although he is constrained by the political economy of the photographic climate. For example, he takes the picture of the white rearguard tussling with a black bystander not only to reflect his own position against the social injustice of the system, but also to reflect the position shared by his viewers. In my opinion, this picture represents reality, as it retains some of the information of a scene. Preston also selects photographs like the one of a woman carrying her belongings after her shack in a squatter camp is demolished. In black townships, where he is on sufferance, he manages to construct and represent the struggle of the blacks through a process of careful construction... Because of the rapport he has built both between the whites but more especially the blacks, Preston is more than a spectator in this historical grandstand. He constructs his pictures from a particular angle which informs us of his familiarity with his subjects.. Like all forms of photographic representation, his pictures are not simply a record of a given moment, for they cannot be innocent of the values and ethics of those who worked within the struggle (Hall, 1997). This suggests that it is consistent with the constructionist approach,. This offers him a certain vision of subjects that he can select, whose meaning of the construction rests on shared knowledge of how they are represented by his choices and the press.
However, the constructionist approach limits Preston’s ability of his photographs to capture enough information about his subjects to be considered a representation of reality for two reasons. Firstly the camera’s version of reality must always hide more than it discloses (Sontag cited by Gavard 1999), which means that what he photographs cannot be said to be all there is. He “must” select a particular angle. Selection means some parts of his subject will have to be left out. Such a picture represents reality but the correspondence between it and reality cannot be said to be one-to-one, as it leaves out parts of the subject. Secondly, the approach also limits the reality of his images as his subjects can be made less real through the process of being photographed. “Once I feel myself observed by the lens, everything changes: I constitute myself in the process of ‘posing’, I instantaneously make another body for myself, transform myself in advance into an image” (Barthes as cited by Gavard 1999). For this reason, the correlation between his pictures and reality cannot be one-to-one. This notwithstanding, Preston’s being there is important to give testimony to others.
In sum, in tandem with the constructionist approach, Preston has the discretion of what to photograph and does so with realism under some imperatives but the correlation between his pictures and reality cannot be one-to-one as his subjects can pose and only portions of subjects are taken to represent the whole.
3.2 Composition
In the creation of a photographic image, the camera frames the world. Camera angle, range of lens, type of film and the chosen moment of exposure dictate and shape the moment (Hall, 1997). Composition involves the arrangement of the subject of the photo, in contrast to its surroundings, and point of view. Lighting, centering, and artistic balance also come into play. Composition entails the power of a photographer over his subject. Preston, therefore, can be said to wield this power over his subjects with his camera placement and lens angle, but his cultural socialisation creeps into his compositions to enact the reality. However, from a constructionist approach to the theory of representation, the power he has suggests that the elements he uses to frame and to represent reality depends on the status of the objects, people and events within the overall classification of knowledge and the representation of those subjects in a way which is understood as real by the viewer (Hal, 1997). Thus significant structures of a culture are observed, the fragments of the object, people and events recorded and the final work borne of synthesis and the generalisation; the fragments become moulded to a unifying account of the culture (Hall, 1997). And so, in his photography, a specific moment becomes representative of the whole struggle.
Preston’s photographs are powerful; they expose the many aspects and face of an immeasurable apartheid South Africa: people, small crowded townships, obscene opulence and repressed joy. He hunts for revelations, essences of his country’s injustices, extraordinarily clear, typical details. His pictures, for example, about Afrikaaner beehive hairstyles that have achieved Art Deco status; the Vaudeville trio: President PW Botha, Eliza Botha and General Magnus Malan at the Pretoria city hall in early 1980s are remarkable precisely because they grasp the reality of whites’ opulence and complacency in leaders and henchmen. Preston uses techniques from straight documentary photography to address the politics of representation in an exploration of his space of a polarised South Africa. Thus he positions himself as a witness who brings to his images social awareness, formal refinement, and social aesthetic complication. In fact, Preston’s photographs are the unseen common threads, the familiar contexts, and the shared experiences of the blacks in the townships of South Africa, through art, sharing their reality. None of his pictures can be said contrived narrative or clichéd. They are reality from his artistic camera eye. And so, have given a record of some point of reflection on the vanished moments, with motivations behind the making of individual photographs.
However, in his composition, his role of a photographer comes out clearly in determining the exposure, light, texture and geometry of a photograph and so the reality associated with photographs is “as much an interpretation of the world as paintings and drawings are” (Sontag 1966 as cited by Gavard 1999). And so the camera as a mediator between the photograph and reality, the use of a lens, film, a particular exposure, kind of shutter, and developing process become “magically whisked away” when one considers the photograph as a direct representation of reality. As a referent, any one of his photographs involves the perception of a presence on a flat surface. Yet the photograph in a reality documents the absence of the subject represented. Questions can be raised of what is often seen as photographic truth and the notion of photographic image as a truthful representation.
. For photographs to have any meaning beyond their functions as memento and as instruments of evidence and record there is a need to acknowledge the notion of the “negotiated space of viewing” (Hall 1997). Therefore, in considering Preston’s photography as one who documents the apartheid era, there is a need to explore the critical issues that underpin his practices, identities and experiences as well as those of his subjects and viewers.
In sum, Preston’s work, as seen through his compositions, speak from a particular angle or position. This allows one today to explore his various cultural and artistic imperatives, while opening up avenues to examine the dynamic relationships of his images and reality. However, what is truly enriching is the diversity of approaches to his composition, as the artist, who brings to photographic practice some reality.
3.3 Captions
In the constructionist theory to representation, photographs have two levels of meaning: the denotative and the connotative, an important distinction in semiotics (Gavard, 1999). While denotation relates to that which is “objectively” present in a sign, connotation is the meaning beyond the denotated, literal sign. For example a Reuter’s copy of Preston’s picture he takes on September 29, 1989 in Church Square, Pretoria goes with a caption: A supporter of South African neo-Nazi Afrikaaner Resistance Movement (AWB) tussles with a Black bystander. This caption gives a meaning beyond what is objectively in the picture, which depicts a white man punching as a black man attempts to block him at a gathering. The Reuters caption is connotative.. This meaning is “the manner in which the society, to a certain extent, communicates what it thinks of it” (Barthes, 1961: 17 as cited by Gavard 1999). In other words, connotation relates to the cultural meaning which influences the reading of a photograph. In addition, connotation implies interpretation, and the interpretation depends on the context in which the denoted signs appear. For instance, the caption Preston writes in the exhibition identifying the puncher as a rearguard (and evening belonging to the right wing movement) and the victim as a bystander has also some connotation influenced by his own culture. The tussle stops being one and changes meaning to rouse viewers of the anti-apartheid struggle to sympathise with the oppressed blacks. Juggling with captions, therefore, changes the connotative aspect of a photograph. This is so because the photographic message alters the meaning of a photograph and has to do with the use of captions. Captions come to “sublimate, patheticize, or rationalise the image” and the caption “loads the image” (Barthes 1977: 25-6 as cited by Gavard 1999). The photographic image is the reality but the correspondence between the two cannot be one-to-one because the caption has brought in another meaning. A caption, however, is an important component of a photograph since it is what gives the image most of their meanings, helping the viewer comprehend what it depicts (Hall, 1997).
However, the capacity to understand a photograph's connotative value is based on “the reader's ‘knowledge’ just as though it were a matter of a real language”; and it will be “intelligible only if one has learned the signs” (Barthes, 1977: 28 as cited by Gavard, 1999). Furthermore, given their purely denotative value, photographs’ content can be drastically “rewritten.” For instance, whether Preston intended it or not, the first impression the picture creates in a viewer is one of sympathy triggered by the cruelty of the rearguard on a seemingly innocent onlooker. However, the onlooker could have been a spiteful heckler who might have provoked the rearguard to justifiable anger by some mischief and therefore not worthy of the sympathy which Preston wants the viewer to have. Even though there is emphasis of the assertion that a photograph is an encoded message, it can be understood how connotative value is inescapable (Hall, 1997). Therefore, photographic images are not as removed from captions as is often thought. A caption is essential to understand the content and the message of photographs.
In sum, the caption can signify different connotations besides the denotative meaning. The correlation between reality and the picture remains the same but it cannot be one one-to-one because a caption tends to restrict meaning.
All in all, Preston’s photographs succeed constructing and representing social reality as they retain some of the information of the scenes. One still sees in a photograph almost all the information one would be able to gather if one were actually there at the place the photograph was made. All that is ever seen in a photograph is a closer approximation to the scene. And the mind extracts the reality from the picture. His discretion of what to photograph, the power he has over his camera through his composition and the captions constructed come to shape the reality of the struggle but then the reality cannot be said to be one-to-one. This relationship resonates with the constructionist approach. His pictures stand for the “real” world (objects, people and events) but they also reference the system itself, which is not really part of the “real” world. The world is not accurately or otherwise reflected in his photographs. Meaning is shaped by the practice, the work, of the representation, by combination and selection of various factors. (Hall, 1997). To understand Preston’s photographs, concepts of the resistance are formed in the mind and function as a system of mental representation which classifies and organises the world into meaningful categories, that is, brutality, riots and the like (Dyer, 1993). But these meanings cannot be communicated without a second system of representation, a language, iconic signs which are his pictures. However his pictures as language convey meaning because there are codes which have allowed translations of concepts into language and vice versa (Hall, 1997).
4.0 Conclusion
This essay has shown, firstly, in selection, Preston has the discretion of what to photograph and does so with realism under some imperatives but the correlation between his pictures and reality cannot be one-to-one as his subjects are apt pose and also parts of them (the subjects) are left out; secondly, Preston’s work, as seen through his compositions speak from his position where meaning is through negotiated space, allowing one to explore his various cultural and artistic imperatives, while opening up avenues to examine the dynamic relationships of his images and reality, and finally; while the caption can signify different connotations besides the denotative meaning, the correlation between reality and the picture remains the same but it cannot be one one-to-one because a caption tends to restrict meaning. There cannot be one-to-one correlation between a photographic image and reality but Preston’s documentation gives the world today some reasonable representation of the social ills as he makes visible the unseen, the unknown and the forgotten of everyday life under the apartheid.
Reference
Dyer, R (1993), Essays on Representation. Routledge: London.
Enwezor (O.) et. al. (1996), In/sight: African Photographers, 1940 to the Present, “Colonial Imaginary, Tropes of Disruption: History, Culture, and Representation in the Works of African Photographers”, Enwezor, O and Zaya, O (1996). Guggenheim Museum: New York.
Hall, S (1997), Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: Sage.
Gavard, S, (1999), A photo-graft: A Critical Analysis of Image Manipulation, McGill University: Montreal, Quebec.
Krantz, D,L (2008), Politics and Photography in Apartheid South Africa History of Photography, Volume 32, Issue 4 December 2008 , pages 290 – 300. Retrieved on October 12, 2009 from: http://www.sahistory.org.za/pages/artsmediaculture/protest_art/pdf/Krantz_revised.pdf
Phiri, V, (2009), A PowerPoint Class Presentation on Raymond Preston, Wits Journalism: Johannesburg.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Raymond Preston Class Presentation
Check out this SlideShare Presentation:
Raymond Preston Class Presentation
View more presentations from vynnphiri.
Monday, October 5, 2009
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)