In the mid nineteenth century, realism became a well-known movement in the arts, in which “its aim was to give truthful, objective and impartial representation of the real world, based on meticulous observation of contemporary life” (Nochlin, 1990, p. 13). Realism originated in the late 18th century in opposition to Romanticism, in which sublimity was the essential concept. The themes of Realism were usually connected with social reality: poverty, social equality, immigration, etc. As Mitchell explains:
“The common thread of realist movements in Western painting might, in fact be identified as the employment of naturally or scientifically authorized representations for social purposes. Nineteenth century ‘social realism’ in literature and art is perhaps the most explicit example, as (in a quite different way, and with reference to a different science) is ‘socialist realism’.” (Mitchell, 1994, p. 358)
The Cubists, for example, were also concerned with reality. Their approach to reality was that of an eye in constant movement. Cubist paintings are a simultaneous look at reality from different angles, a natural process of the eye in constant movement. Yet we do not talk about it as a Realist movement. It was a reaction against the modes of representation in Impressionism, as Realism had been to Romaniticism.
Realism brought with it the development of photography in the mid 1820´s, as an apparent response to the issue of truthful representation of the real world. With its granted qualities of mirror to the world photography became a tool of confirmation and proof. Later in the century, photographers such as Jacob Riis would obtain credibility in their fight for the recognition of harsh conditions in which immigrants lived in the lower Manhattan neighbourhoods. With this technological invention, reality became subject to photographic representation:
“But the true modern primitivism is not to regard the image as a real thing; photographic images are hardly the real. Instead, reality has come to seem more and more like what we are shown by cameras. It is common now for people to insist about their experience of a violent event in which they were caught up—a plane crash, a shoot-out, a terrorist bombing—that ‘it seemed like a movie’.” (Sontag, 2002, s. 161)
Although today a part of us still believes in photographs as a truthful representation of reality, we impose ourselves limits on the extent to which we believe in photographs as a mirror to the world. Manipulation has been a part of photography since its birth, and this has made us sceptic in the veracity previously granted to photographs. Nowadays, this scepticism has increased with digital imaging. This is only partly true, because it is in our nature to believe in the illusion created by photography, just as we choose to believe a rumour, or as we choose to believe in a higher power. It is a choice we make, a choice we have been taught to choose. Putting aside this idiotic trust we give to photographs as an accurate representation of reality, we can concur, that photographs in no way can define the real.
Strangely, the real can be confirmed by photography. If it cannot be photographed then it is not real. Given this, we can infer that if it can be photographed it is real. So it is the act on photographing that confirms reality and not the result of the act, the photograph.
To consider photography as a realist medium means that we have to place it in its historical context, and consider all of the history of art and its progression in the achievement of truthful representation of reality. Not only should we look at the historical period but also at the agreed conventions of the period. By conventions I am referring mainly to those related to semiotics. In Mitchells essay about Realism, Irrealism, and Ideology which criticizes Nelson Goodman’s works he states:
“The account of realism in Languages of Art might be called ‘hyperconventional’. Realism ‘depends upon how stereotyped the mode of representation is, upon how commonplace the labels and their uses have become’ (p.36). It is not absolute, but ‘relative’
determined by the system of representation standard for a given culture or person at a given time. Newer or older or alien systems are accounted artificial or unskilled. For a Fifth-Dynasty Egyptian the straightforward way of representing something is not the same as for an eighteenth-century Japanese.(p.37)
All representations are conventional in the sense that they depend upon symbol systems that might, in principle, be replaced by some other system. It looks as if realism is simply the most conventional convention, the most customary custom. ‘We usually think of paintings as literal or realistic if they are in traditional European style representation’ (LA, p.37) but, Goodman warns, we need to realize that this judgment is ‘egocentric’ (not to say ethnocentric) and that there are other realisms, based in other styles, visions, and constructions of ‘the real’.” (Mitchell, 1994, s. 351-352)
This concept is essential to think of photography as a realist medium. Reading photograph’s as an index to reality is conscious process we have been taught since early age through a system of symbols. In the process of learning about the world we have always been shown symbols and indexes that refer to a particular object or situation. That is an ‘airplane’, an airplane has wings, those are the wings. Even the youngest know that it is an image of an object even though it is attributed the qualities of the real.
Photography is the result of the search in art for fidelity to the real, as it is the result of the movement Realism. According to Sturken and Cartwright, who oppose to technological determinism, “technologies have important and influential effects on society, but they are also themselves the product of their societies and times, and the ideologies that exist within them.”
The accuracy of a photograph’s similitude to reality attributes to photography the quality of realist. It is a realist and accurate representation of the world. Nonetheless this realist property of photographs is easily mistaken for reality. More than once we’ve said to see a place, even though we have never been there. Have I ever been to the Great Wall of China? No, but I certainly have seen it. This is a product of the realist qualities of photographs, (as it is of the conventions of our times) especially of photographs as documents and photojournalism. French writer Emil Zola argues “We cannot claim to have really seen anything before having photographed it”. Although Zola’s statement can be read with Herculean astonishment, he is sadly depreciating human trust.
In the categories just mentioned photography works as an objective medium. Or at least that’s the intention. I will not get into further discussion about the objectivity of documentation or photojournalism in this essay. Behind the photograph as a document there is the documentarian, ‘a photographer specializing in producing a factual record’ (New Oxford Dictionary, 2008).
In the various debates concerning the veracity of photographs we encounter “The Falling Soldier” by the fame-seeking photographer Robert Capa (who changed his name from Andrei Friedmann). This photograph of a falling militiaman at the moment of death has been subject of rigorous analysis to prove its veracity. The controversy has been attributed to the photograph and not to the photographer. I would like to believe that if Capa had in fact staged this photograph for illustrative purposes then, as the great and honourable war photographer he was, this would have been cleared out at the moment of publishing it. Yet today the questioning continues, for it is not the photographer’s integrity we question, but the photograph’s. It is as is the photographer has a detachment to his work.
Photography then, in the conventions of art and in its respective time and space, has become the most real of realistic mediums for the representation of the real world. It is a physiochemical process that creates an imprint of reality on a chemical emulsion, just like a fingerprint would create an imprint on a personal record sheet. It has become so real that it is independent from human intervention. “While a painting, even one that meets photographic standards of resemblance, is never more that the stating of an interpretation, a photograph is never less than the registering of an emanation (light waves reflected by objects)—a material vestige of its subject in a way that no painting can be.” (Sontag, 2002, s. 154)
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Photography as a Realist Medium. by Tomas A. Hein is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.