This article examines activism photography and how it is interlinked with documentary photography. “[A]s every man has the power to punish the crime, to prevent it being committed again, by the right he has of preserving all mankind and doing all reasonable thing he can in order to that end” Locke’s definition of a citizen truster is very similar to a citizen truster. Locke also defines a ‘crime’ as any violation of the law. An activist photographer captures the crime, freezes it and immortalises it so it becomes evidence that needs to be corrected, and this is their way of ‘punishing’ the perpetrator.
Larry Towell is an activist photographer, he documented the lives of women in Rwanda that had been raped by the Hutus and had AIDS as a result. Towell feels that “It is our responsibility to do something because we live here. It is an ethical issue of conscience”. His business cards state that he is a ‘human being’, as he cares deeply about humanity. An activist differs from everyone else as they are deeply moved by what they see, they become extremely empathetic to a situation and find it harder to look away. As a journalist, ‘the ground rule is that you don’t get involved’, unlike an activist and journalist Kirsten Ashbourne has struggled with that.
Borgre demonstrates that photographic activism is not a new idea, John Thompson’s images reported he street life in London that was accompanied by writing from activist Adolphe Smith Headingly to raise awareness of the lives of the urban poor. Smith Headingly’s photos had the purpose of showing the reality of the deprived to the rich.
Hine documented the working conditions of children from 1907 – 1918, his photography influenced congress to pass the Child Labour Law. Hine wanted his photographs to be accurate and truthful as ‘the average person believes implicitly that photographs can not falsify’ Hine did not want to deceive people. In order to make his images as truthful as possible in his work on child workers, he documents their names, the place and the time, this was done to humanise the child and create empathy towards them.
Fine art photography can also be activism, Ansel Adam’s photographs were used as evidence to secure National Park protection for Sequoia and Kings Canyon. Now Adam’s prints sell for six figures.
Some theorists suggest that documentary has been under attack for that last decade, such as Martha Rosler who suggest that images are not simple records, they are not evidence and they can not be objective. Even though documentary has been under attack, it is thriving and photographs are still faithful to the notion of truth, it is still also believed within documentary that images should not be staged or directed. Rosler also believes that photographic activism never promotes change but just transfers information of a “group of powerless people”.
It has been questioned if outsiders should be allowed to document a community as they may lack a deeper understanding of the situation and therefore not accurately represent the truth within their work. Others have argued that fresh eyes can only be a beneficial trait within documentary photography as they only have an interest of showing the truth within their work and they have nothing to gain from playing down the reality of a situation in order to make the community look better. An outsider may be better to report the situation as they will most likely have more funding and a means of distributing the work.
Photography has been influential upon war. Nick Ut’s photograph of Kim Puch helped to end the Vietnam war, at first his photograph was rejected by the publisher of Associated Press, however after he argued his case and his image featured on practically every front page in the world. W. Eugene Smith was a photographer who documented World War 2, “I wanted to use my photographs to make an indictment against war. I hoped that I could do it so well it might influence people in the future and deter other worlds”. Eugene Smith’s quote is very similar to Ut’s motives. It was important for Eugene Smith to acurity show the realities of war as prior to World War 1, artist had represented war as heroic, and due to slow shutter speeds there were not many photographs that documented the true horrors of war.
Roy Styker headed the Farm Security Administration (FSA) who produced over 270,000 images in just six years, these photographs were created as propaganda, to evidence of the good work that the FSA did. Styker wanted to “introduce Americans to Americans,” and not demonise the poor. The FSA photographs were all shot at eye level to create equality between the viewer and the subject. Dorothea Lange produced the most famous FSA photograph, Migrant Mother. Arthur Rothstein produced the second most famous, Farmer and Sons Walking in the Face of a Dust Storm. Rothstein also photographed the controversial image of a skull when documenting the drought, it was controversial as he moved the skull therefore manipulating what the viewer saw. Some photographers refuse to manipulate anything in the image, famously Eugene Richard’s said that “If I miss a moment, I miss it.”
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