"Getting the Click": Producing and Practicing Documentary Photography

"GETTING THE CLICK": PRODUCING AND PRACTICING DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY

KAILA E. SIMONEAU

A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS.

GRADUATE PROGRAM IN SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO

JUNE 2012

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While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis. Canada ABSTRACT

This thesis is an anthropological study of the production of photographing, and the various forces, variables and influences that direct and shape this process. Drawing on an ethnography based on participant observation and semi-structured interviews I conducted with four Toronto-based documentary photographers between 2009-2011, this study approaches photographing from the perspective of a group of individuals who place themselves behind—and maintain creative control of—the camera apparatus. In so doing, I attend to the ways in which photographers actively attempt to make-sense of and conceptualize their practices and work and the embodied sensations, forces and energies they feel and exert. The processual approach I take in this study serves as an explicit critique of scholarly approaches to the social-visual that often treat photographing as "freeze-framing" or capturing a moment of life by holding it still. Rather, photographing takes place through the interplay of different actions that encompass a range of bodily experiences and engage a range of human senses within a dynamic context. In sum, it is produced. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to thank various people for their contributions to this project:

First, to the numerous documentary photographers, gallery owners and curators who enthusiastically and graciously dedicated their time throughout my fieldwork, especially to Carole, Steve, Nunzio and Mitchell, whose words and stories are featured in the following pages.

To Dr. Zulfikar Hiiji, Dr. Teresa Holmes and Dr. Ken Little for their academic support and guidance, and to Karen Rumley and Dr. Daphne Winland for their unending help in navigating the entire process.

To my wonderful friends, colleagues and cohort, whose suggestions, comments and ideas not only aided in the completion of this project, but also made it a whole lot more fun along the way. A very special thanks to Robert Ferguson, Lynette Fischer, Heather Cruickshank and Maxime Levy-Tessier.

And last, but certainly not least, to my parents, Barb Ringer and Bernard Simoneau, for their endless love, support and encouragement in this and all other facets of my life.

iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ii Acknowledgments iii Table of Contents iv Table of Figures v Introduction 2 Documentary photography as a discourse 4 Analytical framework 10 Conclusion 16 Chapter One Anthropological Engagements with Photography: Methodological Considerations 19 Positionality: the Ins and Outs of the Toronto Photography Community 19 Narrative-based Interviewing as Methodology 22 Interviewing in the presence/absence of photographs 28 Chapter Two Cameras and the Technical Side Of Photographing 42 Historical sketch of the modern-day camera 43 Learning to control and manipulate the camera 46 From technical know-how to a acquired way of seeing 49 Considerations for photographing in the digital age 54 Photographing in 'real' social environments 58 Chapter Three Photographing Others 70 Objectivity and Subjectivity in the Study and Practice of Documentary Photography 71 Enacting and Disrupting Power in the Process of Photographing Others 77 Speaking Through Photographs 86 Chapter Four Becoming Attuned and Responsive to the Decisive Moment 97 Pursuing "the Decisive Moment" 98 Habit, habitus and photographing 101 Missing the moment/getting the shot 107 Filtering Intensity: Photographing by taking two steps back 114 Conclusion 120 Works Cited 125

iv TABLE OF FIGURES

Figure 1 Romania, 1975 Henri Cartier-Bresson 1 Figure 2 View from the Window at Le Gras, 1826 Nicephore Niecpe 37 Figure 3 Boulevard du Temple, Paris, 1838 Louis Daguerre 38 Figure 4 Ruins of central Grozny, Chechnya, 1996 James Nachtwey 39 Figure 5 From Brooklyn Gang, New York, United States, 1959 Bruce Davidson.... 40 Figure 6 From Democratic Republic of Congo, North Kivu, Kibati, 2008 Dominic Nahr 41 Figure 7 Migrant Mother, 1936 Dorothea Lange 65 Figure 8 Alberta Oil Sands #8,2007 Edward Burtynsky 66 Figure 9 Famine Stricken Area, State of Bihar, India, 1951 Werner Bischof 67 Figure 10 From War is Personal, 2006 Eugene Richards 68 Figure 11 Refugees in Korem Camp, Ethiopia, 1984 Sebastiao Salgado 69 Figure 12 Behind the Saint-Lazare Station, Paris, 1932 Henri Cartier Bresson 93 Figure 13 Inhlazane, Soweto South Arica, 1990 Greg Marinovich 94 Figure 14 Protestor loading sling, Bethlehem West Bank 2000 Larry Towell 95 Figure 15 From Where do we go from here? Louisiana, United States, 2008 Joseph Rodriguez 96 Figure 16 Motorcyclists at Lake Balaton, 1954 Gabor Szilasi 119 Figure 17 Portrait of Henri Cartier-Bresson Jane Brown 124

V Figure 1 Romania, 1975 Henri Cartier-Bresson

l INTRODUCTION

"Anybody can do this stuff," he says to me, sitting on a cramped cement back-step, his gaze fixed on something down by his feet. Beside him, sits a hefty, well-used, professional grade DSLR camera. "I really strongly believe that. Anybody can do it. It's just," he pauses contemplatively, looking over his shoulder to where I sit on his right, "do you want to? And I think that's what any profession boils down to. "I mean, and then you have the un-teachables," he continues, excitement building in his voice. "Those are the things that make, I don't know, an artist great or makes your bones. There's nothing more satisfying than that... Just getting that click. I mean you don't even see what happened—you don't! You loose the moment because you have the mirror come down in front of your eye. And that little black obfuscation, that little, that split little second, that 1/250th, that 17500th, that one—at the most minimal that 1/2500th of a second... you've missed the moment." A wide smile grows across his face. "You've missed the moment," he repeats as though for effect, "but you know you fucking got it."

Throughout the course of my field research with documentary photographers in the

Greater Toronto Area (GTA), I often heard comments similar to the one articulated above. As a photographer myself, with several years of informal and amateur experience,

I recognized many moments in which approaching the world with a camera in hand is paradoxical experience, shaped by the interplay of seemingly irreconcilable and competing interests, forces and social influences. In the course of this research project, I heard the stories of other photographers and recognized that my own experiences and sensations were not unique. Documentary photographers, like my informant above, frequently describe a space of photographing in which they float and shift indefinitely between irreconcilable positions; a space where photographing is a learned, technical skill and intuitive, creative aptitude; where it is a grounded, objective documentation of a

2 world already out-there and a form of subjective, artistic self-expression; where it is about being present to see a moment, only to miss it so that another may ultimately see it in a photograph. Such accounts suggest that the act of photographing is not just a matter of looking through a camera lens and pushing a button. Rather, photographing takes place through the interplay of different actions that encompass a range of bodily experiences and engage a range of human senses within a dynamic context. In sum, photographing is produced.

This thesis is an anthropological study of the production of photographing and the various forces, variables and influences that direct and shape this process. Drawing on an ethnography based on participant observation and semi-structured interviews I conducted with four Toronto-based documentary photographers between 2009-2011, this study approaches photographing from the perspective of a group of individuals who place themselves behind—and maintain technical and creative control of—the camera apparatus. In so doing, I attend to the ways in which photographers actively attempt to make-sense of and conceptualize their practices and work and the embodied sensations, forces and energies they feel and exert. Three questions emerge from this ethnographic exploration: 1) what material, social and creative forces influence, direct and shape the taking of a photograph?; 2) how do photographers affectively experience their engagements with these forces on an embodied level?; and 3) in what ways do these experiences shape their understandings of the medium and their identities as documentary photographers? These questions indicate that I have come to recognize that documentary

3 photography is produced and shaped by the apparatus and the technical demands of the

medium, the social interactions with those persons on the other side of the lens, and by

the movement and flow of the event(s) in which the photographer is situated. The

processual approach I take in this study serves as an explicit critique of scholarly

approaches to the social-visual that often treat photographing as "freeze-framing," or

capturing a moment of life by holding it still. As such, this study challenges the idea that

human-technology interfaces are processes that are essentially dehumanized and

dehumanizing. Rather, it argues that the process of photographing and the labour

associated with it exemplifies the manner and extent to which such processes are sites

burgeoning with life and movement. They are ultimately sites that continue to be

mediated and shaped by human hands.

Documentary photography as a discourse

A central concept I use in this thesis is "documentary photography", a term popularly

used to signal an image that indexes reality. For example, photographs found in

newspapers and magazines, art galleries, and picture monographs are popularly referred

to as "documentary photographs" because they employ a realistic aesthetic. As such,

these images are often regarded as unadulterated visual facts about the world (Wells

2000:90). How did this popular use of the term documentary photography develop and

what implications does its use have for contemporary photographic discourse and

practice? In what follows, I sketch out key aspects of this history so as to provide not

only a foundational understanding of the genre, but also to discuss the social and

4 discursive frameworks that have and continue shape the practices of documentary photographers.

Historically, the application of the term "documentary" to still images was borrowed from cinema. The word 'documentary' is attributed to Scottish filmmaker and

Canadian National Film Board (NFB) director John Grierson, who first coined the term in reference to Robert Flaherty's 1926 film Moana. Declaring Flaherty's work a "creative treatment of actuality" (Bruzzi 2006:8), Grierson advocated for an approach to filmmaking in which the camera apparatus was used to create a vision of the world distinct from but complementary to that which was absorbed through the human eye

(Bruzzi 2006:8). Given the shared social, cultural and technological history of moving and still images, it is not surprising that the term documentary was adopted by photography (Wells 2000: 74). It is important to note that the use of the term documentary did not signal the emergence of a new philosophical understanding of photographic images. Rather, the term was applied retroactively to established and prevailing aesthetic forms and practices.

Indeed, photography, since the early nineteenth century, was understood to be the production of exact visual documents of reality (Orvell 1989). Historian Miles Orvell writes that, "because the photograph was made by sunbeams, it was understood... to provide information of an unbiased kind; it assured the audience of the absence of a

'narrator' or agent who is directing the attention of the audience" (1989:95). But

5 photographic images were also recognized to have emotive qualities that could communicate what a situation looked like and what it felt like (1989:227).

Amongst progressive and liberal photographers in the United States of America, the emotive power of images was used to incite people to take action. Jacob Riis (1849-

1914) and Lewis Hine (1974-1940) are often cited as the first photographers to exploit the emotive potential of photographs. Originally a newspaper writer, Riis first became interested in photography while covering crime stories in some of New York's roughest immigrant neighborhoods. Particularly struck by the underlying yet oft-overlooked social conditions that contributed to the outbreak of disease, crime and immorality (Orvell

2003:71), Riis turned to photography—and its newest invention, the flash—as a way of visually introducing concerned, privileged members of New York's elite to street and slum life. Lewis Hine was also photographically drawn to document New York's poorest

(Ibid: 73). A teacher by vocation, Hine envisioned the camera as a tool that not only served as a window into another's life, but one that also, through the process of enframing, concentrated that awareness in a way more effective than witnessing first hand for oneself (Ibid: 74). While Riis aimed to frame his subjects in a separate box, illuminating their difference, Hine's work strove to emphasize a shared common humanity between subject and potential viewer. In doing so, his work "reflected a new idea in the reform movement, a shift away from the conception of individual pauperism to a broader notion of the systematic problems which required legislative intervention and professional expertise" (Ibid:105).

6 Such sentiments found further expression during the 1930s in the form of the

Farm Security Administrations' (FSA) photography division (Ohrn 1980: 36-52). Formed under the direction of economist Roy Stryker to address mass migration and farm foreclosures resulting from the Great Depression, the FSA mobilized a group of select photographers—including Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Gordon Parks and Arthur

Rothstein—to document the effects of the combined Depression and drought and gamer support for social programming among a reluctant Republican Congress. In addition to being included in administrative reports, FSA work was also circulated among the general population in newspapers and magazines. As such, FSA photographers functioned as journalists capable of communicating with a wide audience and as social scientists, whose detailed knowledge of the situation and context facilitated a greater relationship with the people they photographed (Ibid:50).

Following the Second World War, there was an incredible expansion in picture magazines such as Life Magazine, Paris Match, Picture Post and Look Magazine that specialized in documentary photography. Several prominent international cooperatives such as Magnum Photos also emerged, and there was an increasing interest and acceptance of documentary photographs amongst prominent art institutions such as

Museum of Modem Art (MoMA) in New York (Orvell 2003: 115). These developments allowed documentary photographers to be flexible about where they exhibited their work.

7 It also allowed them to experiment with new techniques, creative styles and subject matter.

The blurring of news/reportage, fine art, objective documentation and subjective self-expression, coincided with a new, critical way of thinking from within academia and the critical art world (Light 2010: 6-7). Pointing to the process of framing—in which photographers, through the viewfinder, focus their concentrations on one small fragment of a scene, thereby excluding another—scholars such as Susan Sontag (1973) began to deconstruct photography's claim that they were objectively representing reality. She states that "although there is a sense in which the camera does indeed capture reality not just interpret it, photographs are as much an interpretation of the world as paintings and drawings are" (2005 [1973]:4). Other critiques suggested that, despite their claims to the contrary, by framing and holding the world still photographers were not challenging social systems of power and control. Rather, these practices perpetuated and reinforced such systems (Tagg 1988, 2009, Sontag 1972,2003, Sekula 1991).

Today, documentary photography remains an integral part of our visual landscape. Despite the critiques leveled at such images, they are still regarded as a means of indexing reality and are a prevalent vehicle through which real world experiences and events are communicated. However, photographers producing these images are aware of the critiques of documentary photography. The comments and reflections of seasoned veterans of the genre such as the late Tim Hetherington (2011), elite war photographer

8 James Nachtwey (2001) and 'Bang-Bang Club' alumnus Greg Marinovich (2001), indicate that a significant part of practicing documentary photography means navigating such critiques as situated in a broader discursive landscape - a landscape wherein documentary photography is morally marked as a tool for good, for revealing social wrongs and creating a vision of a shared common humanity, and yet conversely and simultaneously seen as capable of (re) perpetuating repression and subjection.

Such ethical concerns with documentary photography are not reserved for photographers covering wars, famines and atrocities. Rather, as I will show in this thesis, the documentary photographers I worked with, Toronto-based Carole, Steve, Mitchell and Nunzio1, continually undertake, experience and make-sense of their own work and practices within the same critical discursive framework. Whether they are conducting long-term documentary in remote Northern communities; hanging-out with boxers at the local gym; travelling all around the world on assignment for Canada's leading newspapers; or still shaping their formative career and photographic identity, the photographers with whom I worked are also concerned about what it means to do

'documentary photography' and what it means to be a practitioner associated with this genre of photography.

1 In accordance to the ethics of this project, pseudonyms have been used for those individuals who requested that their anonymity be maintained. For further details regarding this process, see page 26.

9 Analytical framework

For Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004), the photographer and writer most recognized as

the father of modern documentary photography, the camera offered an infinite realm of

possible practices and images (1999:15). But for Cartier-Bresson there was a dividing

line in photographic practice that he often made note of: "there are those who take

photographs arranged beforehand and those who go out to discover the image and seize

it" (Ibid). Cartier-Bresson had little interest in the former. He often referred to this type of

photography as "manufactured" or "staged" (Ibid). Instead, Cartier-Bresson focused on

capturing the essence of an event, subject or moment spontaneously unfolding in the

world. He writes that:

Sometimes there is one unique picture whose composition possesses such vigor and richness ... And whose content so radiates outward from it, that this single picture is a whole story in itself. But that rarely happens. The elements which, together can strike sparks off a subject, are often scattered—either in terms of space and time—and to bring them together by force is 'stage management,' and, I feel, cheating. But if it is possible to make pictures of the 'core' as well as the struck-off sparks of the subject, this is a picture-story (1999:23).

Hence, documentary photography, by Cartier-Bresson's reasoning, is reportage not

because a photograph is innately authentic; as alluded to in the quotation above, he was

especially suspicious of the ease with which a photographer could intervene directly in

elements they are shooting. Instead, documentary photography is an approach, an ethos,

in which the photographer dedicates themselves to the pursuit and capture of an event as

it is unfolding. Such a pursuit is not without its own creativity and artistry, but it requires

a dedication to upholding the integrity of a moment.

10 Of course, Henri Cartier-Bresson's tidy line of distinction between those images that are "staged" and those that are "discovered" and "seized" is by no means as easily achieved in practice as it is laid out in writing. Issues of mediation, intervention and manipulation in photographing are rarely black and white. But in emphasizing the moment in which a photograph is taken, rather than the qualities of the resulting photograph, Cartier-Bresson gestures towards an understanding of'documentary' as a practice, rather than an aesthetic. It is a practice dedicated to approaching "things-as- they-are" for the purposes of producing an image that indexes the context from which it emerges (Cartier-Bresson 1999).

Taking my cue from Cartier-Bresson, my focus in this thesis is on documentary photography as a practice, an area of study that has received limited attention in studies of photography and in the field of visual anthropology. As anthropologist Christopher

Pinney explains, "concern for the political consequences of photographs has effectively eroded any engagement with the actual practice" (2003:14)). For me, practice is as an active process through which a particular, and recognizable type of photographic image is produced. It requires an engagement not only with academic literature on photography, but also with emerging discourses that seek to the critically resituate our bodies—and the sensual, affective experiences that move through them and work upon them—back into the realm of anthropological analysis (Stoller 1997).

11 There is a tendency in the field of visual studies to theoretically consider questions of image-reception as distinct from those of image-production, and vice-versa.

Such conceptual moves allow for a definitive, contained framing of the subject at hand, but they can also overlook the ways in which the experiences of spectatorship influences and overlaps with experiences of production. Photographers not only produce photographs; they also consume photographs. Their practices as photographers are in constant dialogue with larger social understandings of and engagements with photographic images. Understanding the production of photographs through a social and cultural framework is therefore reliant on an understanding of the social role and movement of photographic images themselves.

My understanding of photography as a realm of social investigation is informed by the work of Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), who in his influential essay, "The Work of

Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1936), argued that the mechanical, physical and scientific nature of photography was distinct from that of other forms of visual arts and representation such as drawing and painting (2006b). Whereas, scholars, scientists and artists alike have pursued and debated the question of photography since its first public debut in the middle of the 1800s, it was Benjamin who first began to fully interrogate photography's emergence and mass proliferation within the context of modern fields and modes of perception (2006b: Ibid). Benjamin states that, "just as the entire mode of human collectives change over long periods of time, so too do their mode of

12 perception. The way in which human perception is organized—the medium in which it occurs—is conditioned not only by nature, but by history" (Ibid:104).

Critical of the amount of academic debate focused on photography's status as an art, Benjamin emphasized the medium's reproductive abilities, replacing a unique existence with a mass one in which images could literally go anywhere and be everywhere. Through visual materials like newspapers, magazines, photo-cards, reproduced photographic images placed copies "in situations in which the original itself cannot attain" (2006b:103). Thusly defined, photography not only further satisfies and fuels the uniquely modern desire to "get-closer" to things; it also "actualizes that which is reproduced," allowing it to affectively influence or direct a far removed situation or context to new social and political ends (Buck-Morss 1989:133). It was precisely this ability to which photography commentator Susan Sontag referred when she writes that,

"photographs do more than redefine the stuff of ordinary experience (people, things, events, whatever we see—albeit differently, often inattentively—with natural vision) and add vast amounts of material that we never see at all" (2005:122). Photography, in that sense, has forged a "tenuous relationship to knowing" (2005:89) in which our sense of reality is dialectically linked to the images we see. "Notions of image and reality are complementary," she writes, "when the notion of reality changes, so does that of the image, and vice versa" (Ibid:125). Such a perspective can draw considerable criticism against the medium; but it also opens interesting avenues through which to address the

13 relationship between image, representation and perception as experienced and understood by those who view photographs and as well as those who produce them.

For Christopher Pinney, Benjamin's approach to the study of photography is one to which the discipline of anthropology is uniquely situated to further develop (2011:11).

Breaking away from the deconstructionist moment in which photography was revealed as non-objective, anthropologists instead approach photography as a social and cultural practice in which photography's reproductive and mimetic capabilities are understood and addressed as "a prism through which to consider questions of cultural self-identity, historical consciousness and the nature of photographic affirmation and revelation"

(Pinney 1997:2). Photographs, in that sense, are not static objects of fixed meaning, but rather moving, social agents that come into being through and acquire meanings and associations through their various entanglements with other aspects of social-cultural life.

Such moments of articulation are experienced conceptually, but also in embodied and sensual ways. As Elizabeth Edwards explains, spectators do not only visually view photographs, but rather experience them in ways that are entirely cross-sensory: we touch them, move them, tell stories about and around them, and feel as though they in return touch, move and tell stories as well (2006). Sensory and material based approaches to photographs therefore allows scholars to "think about the complex and shifting relationships through which photographs are experienced and created and endowed with meaning and purpose" (Ibid:29, emphasis added). In a similar effort to rethink the body's engagement with and relationship to visual media, including photography, Brian Massumi writes that:

The body doesn't absorb pulses or discrete stimulations; it infolds contexts, it infolds volitions, and cognitions that are nothing if not situated. Intensity is asocial, but it is not presocial—it includes social elements but mixes them with elements that belong to other levels of functioning and combine them according to a different logic (2002:30).

For Massumi, this mixing of social elements with "other levels of function," such as our embodied senses and sensations does not and cannot occur in the realm of what is actualized and material; it occurs "too quickly to be perceived, too quickly, actually, to have happened" (2002:30, emphasis added). Instead, it is a coming together, a connection that occurs in the virtual, a realm of potential inaccessible to the senses, imperceptible and yet constantly felt in its effects. Affect is the point of emergence in which the two meet, in which the unending possibility of the virtual comes in contact with actual, functional limitations (Ibid:35). As Massumi explains, affect is the margin of maneuverability, the sense of "where we might be able to go and what we might be able to do" that is present in every present moment (Massumi interview). It is exactly this coalescence of actualized and virtualized forces that, in the work of Deleuze and Guattari facilitates the moment of becoming-expressive, "the emergence of expressive proper qualities, the formation of matters of expression that develop into motifs and counterpoints" (1987:322).

To date, little work has been done to combine the theoretical perspectives of sensory anthropology, materiality and affect theory in the study of practitioners of

15 documentary photography—those individuals who maintain creative and technical

control over the camera apparatus. Starting from an anthropological position, I will argue

that photographing as a practice is informed by a range of social forces, including the

discursive history of documentary photography and the various reflections on

photography as social phenomena and aesthetic form. Drawing from emerging sensory

and affective theories in anthropology, I will also argue that photographing is informed

by numerous minute and imperceptible elements that work upon and through the

photographer's body in the moment of capturing an image. By bringing the social into

contact with the body, I trouble the boundaries between photographers and photographic

practice and photographs, and suggest new ways of engaging with aesthetic forms and

practices.

Conclusion

This thesis is divided into four written chapters followed by a concluding set of

reflections. Chapter One outlines the methodological practices and considerations

through which this project took shape. It addresses the use of several anthropological

methodologies including participant-observation, interviews and photographic elicitation,

an interviewing strategy in which photographs are used as a vehicle through which to

guide conversations with informants. In doing so, I gesture to the ways in which the

practices and considerations of anthropologists and photographers overlap, and consider

what becomes revealed in moments where the distinctions between methodological

practice and ethnographic finding become blurred and inconsistent.

16 Chapter Two explores the ways in which photographers come to learn and engage with the technical aspects of photography, specifically the camera apparatus through which photography is possible. It demonstrates how an understanding of the technical parameters and limitations of the medium passes from a form of intellectualized 'know- how' into a way of seeing through which photographers are able to envision their intended subject as it can appear in photographic form. In that sense, photographers learn not only how to make use of the technical and creative functions of the camera, but acquire a new way of seeing in the process.

Chapter Three examines the ways in which photographers mediate, experience and make sense of the social relations and power dynamics enacted in the process of photographing another individual. It outlines the theoretical, post-modernist critiques of photography and demonstrates the extent to which such academic discourses inform not only photographers' understandings of their encounters with potential subjects, but also their visceral and embodied experiences during. In describing the intersection of photographic theory with photographic practice, I illustrate the ways in which discourses of ethics, accountability and bearing witness are articulated and mobilized by photographers as a means of not only intellectually countering such critiques, but of also coming to terms with their own positionality as photographers.

17 Chapter Four explores the critical photographic idea of the "decisive moment"— the minute, fraction of a second in which the elements of a scene come together not only conceptually, but visually in a way recognized on the part of the photographer as striking and communicative. Rather than attempting to create a framework through which to define what exactly constitutes a "decisive moment," I instead focus on the ways in which photographers experience and respond to this moment in affective and multi- sensory ways. In so doing, I address the ways in which photographers feel themselves pulled or caught-up in the event they are documenting, while at the same time experiencing a degree and distance from it.

The conclusion focuses on issues of identity construction within the practice of documentary photography. Emphasizing the extent to which the act of photographing has become ubiquitous in contemporary society, I argue that photographers seek to uniquely define their practices by referring to the distinct ways they perceive, know, experience and engage with the world. I also show how that it is their ability to consciously mediate the material, social and affective forces that inform their practices that distinguish their labour and process from amateurs and the more general, photographing public. Based on these and other arguments raised throughout this study, I conclude by pointing to possible new directions that could be taken by socio-cultural studies of photographing and visual media more generally.

18 CHAPTER ONE ANTHROPOLOGICAL ENGAGEMENTS WITH PHOTOGRAPHY: METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS

"All the best photographers work by intuition. In terms of their work, this lack of theory did not matter. What did matter is that the photographic possibility remained theoretically hidden. What is that possibility?" ~John Berger

This chapter examines the methodological issues I encountered throughout the course of

my field research. It provides an account of my general methodologies: whom I spoke

with, in what context, for what purpose and to what end. It also explores how the distinct

lines between what is methodology and what is ethnographic data are blurred and

disassembled. I have organized this material to mirror the stages of my field research. I

begin by describing my own positionality as a photographer as well as my involvement in

a particular segment of Toronto's photography scene. I then introduce the four

photographers whose words and practices inform the content of the following chapters,

and describe the context and strategies that shaped these conversations. Finally, I

consider the role of photographs in the context of my research, as both material forces

that directed and influenced my interviewing strategies, and as a rich part of the visual

landscape through which photographers move and carry out their practices.

Positionality: the Ins and Outs of the Toronto Photography Community

I have always had a camera in my hand. But when people ask me how and when I got

into photography, the question always catches me off guard. As many times as I have

been asked this question, usually with my camera-in-hand, I feel that I have never been

19 able to provide a succinct, satisfying answer. Reflecting here on my ideal answer, I could cite the acquisition of my first (and still current) digital single-lens reflex camera DSLR as my true initiation into the world of photography. It was then that I really became aware of the subtleties of the medium, as I supplemented my daytime work schedule with evening classes and workshops at the local school of photographic arts. But doing so overlooks the many hours I spent in high school and university darkrooms after classes, or the thousands of photographs I have taken incessantly since my early childhood. I largely regard what I do as 'dabbling,' but in so doing I have acquired a fairly comprehensive understanding of the medium and its technologies and histories, particularly in the broad context of documentary and photojournalism. Photographing the world has always been a significant part of my experiences of moving through and making-sense of it, and I am continually intrigued by the possibilities that are made visible through the introduction and presence of my camera. "I've always had a camera in my hand," one of my informants told me with a laugh and shake of his head; the only answer he could provide to my seemingly simple question "why photography?" I smiled knowingly, recognizing the irony of the moment, as I moved to make note of his response.

It was through my own experiences photographing that I became aware of the photographer's absence within a great deal of the academic literature on photography.

Yet despite this general recognition, I had not considered myself as conducting a form of

"insider ethnography." Though I was living in Toronto at the time, I was still relatively

20 new to the city, and had yet to integrate myself into the larger art and photography community. Unlike Ottawa, where I had been previously studying, I did not known any

Toronto-based photographers. In an effort to get to know some of the city's photographers, I decided to enroll as a student member at a small cooperatively run studio and gallery space, located in the heart of the downtown core; something I was able to do thanks to the more formalized training I had gained while living in Ottawa. My involvement in the cooperative, as a member of their listserv and an event volunteer, further facilitated my access to guest lectures, gallery openings and exhibitions and greatly broadened my understanding of the ways in which photography occupies spaces throughout Toronto. Additionally, my membership in the cooperative also granted me access to a darkroom, allowing me to process my own black and white photographs for the first time in several years. I took weekend classes and attended darkroom orientations and annual clean-up days, becoming integrated as an active, inside member of the larger

Toronto community.

But participating in the studio also allowed me to become re-attuned to my own embodied experiences while photographing, experiences that, over the many years, I had largely come to take for granted. Conducting ethnographic field research on a completely familiar practice required that I literally slow down and retrain myself to notice the various sensations and forces that work upon me and others when I approach a situation with a camera in hand. As Paul Stoller writes,

The full presence of the ethnographer's body in the field also demands a fuller sensual awareness of the smells, tastes, sounds and textures of life among

21 others... For ethnographers, embodiment is more than the realization that our bodily experience gives metaphorical meaning to our experiences; it is rather the realization that we too are consumed by the sensual world, that ethnographic things capture us through our bodies (1997:23).

Sensations of capture and intuition, of being peripheral and yet caught in a flow of

events, of being driven to photograph a particular subject despite the obstacles,

transformed mundane experiences into important and key sources of ethnographic insight

(Stewart 2008) that greatly informed my interactions with, and questions for, the

photographers I interviewed.

Though inspired and guided by my own embodied and sensuous experiences

photographing, the ethnographic data I collected for this thesis was gained through a

series of informal 'narrative-based semi-structured interviews' among a select group of

documentary photographers and varying degrees of participation in their photographic

excursions. The following section provides an introduction to Carole, Steve, Mitchell and

Nunzio, the four photographers whose narratives and experiences form the content of the

following chapters. It also addresses interviewing as a methodology within the context of

ethnographic field research.

Narrative-based Interviewing as Methodology

Approaching the study of documentary photography from the perspective of practitioners

poses an interesting problem within the context of anthropological field research. As a

discipline methodologically defined through its use of "participant-observation," social

anthropology often focuses specifically on shared, collective phenomenon observable to

22 the field researcher. Yet, the moment I was interested in interrogating—the moment of the click in which an image is captured—is experienced largely on a personal, solitary and embodied level. One-on-one interviews with practitioners, therefore, provided one of the few opportunities to critically explore and address the forces at play and experiences of these brief, passing moments. As Nancy Redfern-Vance writes on the incorporation of life-history narratives within ethnographic interviewing,

Narrative data often flow in streams of consciousness, cover many different topics and themes (especially if they are life stories and not simply focused interviews on highly selected topics) and do not necessarily fall into easily perceived patterns for analysis (2007:48).

While my interviews were not as open-ended as life-history interviews (Ibid), I deliberately kept the interviewing process informal and semi-structured. Moreover, I allowed participants to address a wide range of themes and topics, paying keen attention to the ways in which photographing becomes articulated with other facets of their personal and social lives. Interviews occurred in a variety of settings including coffee shops, darkrooms, pubs, and home studios and ranged from one to three hours in length.

These interviews were recorded through the use of a digital recorder, and later transcribed, coded and cross-referenced for recurring themes.

Through the various connections I made at the cooperative studio as well as through other professional connections, I had initially conducted interviews with twelve different photographers between June and August 2010. Overwhelmed with ethnographic data, I decided to narrow my attentions to four specific photographers: Carole, Steve,

23 Nunzio and Mitchell? This smaller group of informants, which I met with exclusively from the end of September to late November 2010, allowed me to spend more time with each individual, thereby engaging in a more intricate and nuanced investigation of their various approaches, styles and experiences.

I selected these four photographers based on a number of factors. With the exception of Mitchell, I had already had the opportunity to interview each informant on more than one occasion. Hence, I chose them because I had already built a strong rapport with them and they were enthusiastic about their continued participation in my project. In addition, they also represented for me the diversity the medium has to offer in terms of aesthetics, approach, shooting styles, equipment preferences and chosen subjects. By chance, they are all different ages and therefore at various phases of their careers and lives. They also share an intense and powerful drive to document the world about them through their use of camera-apparatus. They seek to provide, through the process of photographing, a vision of a particular life, group or event, so that another may be able to

2 Anonymity and confidentiality with the context of this project were tricky and often difficult issues to navigate. With the accepted norms of anthropological research, anonymity is often understood as a protective measure taken to ensure that our research participants do not suffer from any unintended backlash from their involvement. However, within the profession of photography—and especially photojournalism—ensuring that one's name is properly ascribed to one's work (and at times, words) is an important part of self-promotion. Not having your name properly cited in relation to your images is therefore not understood as a matter of ensuring confidentiality: it is plagiarism. That being said, there were many instances during my interviews in which extremely sensitive and personal matters were discussed. As a result, the decision to use an alias or not was made on a case-by-case basis with each individual. In the cases where my informants requested anonymity, I have endeavored to ensure that identifying features of their work or practices be kept minimal. All interviews and data collection was conducted in accordance with the Tri-Council Ethics standards and was subject to the approval process by the Ethics Review Board at York University.

24 see and therefore understand the world. As such, their striking differences, when presented in conversation with each other through the medium of this ethnography, begin to speak to the common experiences and issues of "photographing;" what I regard be the discursive and embodied practices, and sensory and affective dimensions associated with documentary photography.

Carole was the first photographer with whom I met based on an introduction arranged by one of my university professors who coincidentally happens to be one of her closest friends. Now retired, Carole's body of photographic work dates from the early

1970s to the mid 1990s. Identifying her approach to documentary photography as rooted in the FSA project, Carole's work is based in immersed, long-term community-focused projects, and is always supported by thorough interviewing and written accounts. To

Carole, it is this form of documentary photography that, by forcing people to stop, see one another, and understand another's situation, retains the ability to advocate for the promotion of social justice. She told me: "I think the idea that we show one another something real about the world that we're seeing—that should make us do better by another." Her work has been exhibited throughout several gallery spaces in Toronto, as a part of the National Film Board of Canada's former stills photography division, in the

California State Library, and two text-image hybrid monographs. I met with Carole on four separate occasions, ranging from a two to four hours in length, often at a local

French-styled cafe.

25 I met Steve early one morning in the cooperative darkroom, after recognizing the classic, Scorsese-like images of boxers floating in the archival baths from a show I had attended a month or so earlier. Unlike many photographers who tend to focus their lens on subjects that are beyond their immediate realm of experience, Steve focuses his lens on the very community in which he himself used to be a competing member. "It's meant so much to me being accepted in that world," explained Steve, "it's kind of my thing now to try to make an honest representation of these guys and this life that has given so much to me." Today, Steve is represented by one of the city's most prestigious photography galleries, as well has having his work included in the Wedge Curatorial Project at the

Royal Ontario Museum and the National Portrait Gallery of Canada. Currently, he is compiling his first monograph. But to Steve, the real motivation is always the photograph at the end: "Photos do something to me; they make me feel something inside. And if I see the chance of doing that myself, it's just so important to me." I met with Steve formally on five separate occasions for interviews ranging from one to four hours in length, though my involvement with the cooperative-gallery and darkroom brought me in contact with him casually on numerous occasions. Our interactions occurred in a wide range of settings including the cooperative gallery and darkroom, coffee shops, pubs, and his home.

Nunzio hobbled into my project one evening as I sat around the table with a group of photojournalism students I had met through a contact in York's Anthropology department—a pint of beer in one hand and a cane in the other, as he gingerly

26 maneuvered a newly broken ankle. As a recent graduate, Nunzio had been assigned to cover the events of the Toronto Summit of the G20, and was eager to describe his experiences. But his injury resulted in an early dismissal from his summer contract with a regional daily. Unemployed as a photographer, he re-evaluated his relationship to photographing—and his own sense of identity through it. "I never know what I'm going to get. And maybe that's what makes me not so good at what I do. But I hope in time it will make me really good at what I do," he told me. "I just want to be able to express myself through my medium and express the stories of other people through my medium.

That's really it." Since recovering from his injury, Nunzio continues to build a freelance career. I met with Nunzio on formally on four separate occasions for interviews ranging from two to three hours in length, though I would often encounter him casually at photography events across the city. Our interactions occurred at a wide range of venues including his place of residence, pubs and the coffee shop he managed.

Mitchell is an exception within my project. Unlike my other informants, I was able to meet with Mitchell on only one occasion; an interview we were able to fit in between his numerous responsibilities as an internationally recognized staff photographer for one of Canada's leading news publications. As a photojournalist, Mitchell has travelled throughout the world, photographically documenting some of the biggest natural and political crises of the last ten years, including the aftermath of Hurricane

Katrina, the Somali refugee crisis in, and more recently, the post-Earthquake reconstruction in Haiti. To Mitchell, it is his role to see what others do not, and to

27 document it in such a way as to make them. "The media plays a role," he told me, "we

hold people accountable." Conscientious of the way in which his presence influences the

course of an event, and of the challenges posed in providing content that is both informed

and accurate, but also visually moving, Mitchell's account provides a rich and detailed

exploration of photographic reportage; though influenced by different institutional

constraints, he speaks to many of the same concerns and experiences within the process

of photographing. Our one interview lasted for approximately two hours and was held at

a downtown Starbucks.

As the purpose of this thesis is to explore the ways in which documentary

photographers engage in the process of photographing, I have chosen to thematically and

comparatively present the ethnographic findings collected in the course of my interviews

and other engagements. Put differently, the perspectives by Carole, Steve, Nunzio and

Mitchell, are presented and discussed in relation to one another based on themes that

emerged from my engagement with each of them individually.

Interviewing in the presence/absence of photographs

Looking around Steve's apartment one Sunday afternoon, I could not help but consider the ways the space stood as a reflection of him and his love for photography. Small, simple and tidy, the most noticeable feature was the walls lined with faded, worn old photographs of friends and family. One, he points out excitedly, is an old torn boxing relic, a photograph excavated from under layers of matting during an effort to move the boxing ring at his home gym. A VHS recording of Fredrick Wiseman's 1974 documentary Welfare (one of Steve's personal favourites) played in the background. Next to the television, an overfilled bookshelf seems about ready to succumb to the weight of the large photography books that line its shelves.

28 "Wow," I exclaim, moving closer, "that's a lot of photography books!" I scan through the titles: We Skate Hardcore (Vincent Cianni, 2004), East Side Stories (Joseph Rodriguez 2000), Juvenile (Joseph Rodriguez, 2004), Rich and Poor (Jim Goldberg, 1985), Social Graces (Larry Fink, 2001) to name only a few. "Yeah," he replies a mixture of sheepishness and pride coming through his voice, "no wonder I am always so broke." It is not long before we begin pulling volumes off the shelves, surrounding ourselves in images. "Have you seen this?" Steve asks excitedly, passing me another monograph, "no? Oh Kaila, you have to see this!"

The above vignette from my engagement with Steve illustrates the extent to which photographs permeated every aspect of my field site and speaks to the idea that photographs are the result of a wide range of entangled material, social, creative and discursive forces, the traces of which are never lost (Azoulay 2008:13). In that sense, while it is the project of this thesis to explore the ways in which these forces coalesce in the moment of photographing, it would be remiss of me not to recognize the ways in which these forces linger and continue to act in and through the resulting photograph, especially given the significant role photographs played in my research. It prompted me to ask the question, "how does one account for the implicit and explicit influences of photography on an ethnographically based study of photography?"

In the classic introductory text Visual Anthropology: Photography as a Research

Methodology, photographer-turned-anthropologist Jon Collier Jr. argues that viewing photographs can spontaneously trigger memories, ideas and general reflections on the part of the participant, inviting "open expression while maintaining concrete and explicit reference points" (1986:105). This can be a benefit to both researcher and participant.

By allowing photographs to guide the conversation, the researcher is relieved from the pressure of continually directing the flow of conversation, allowing them to concentrate their efforts on what their participants are saying. Similarly, by making the photograph the topic of conversation, participants may be relieved of the "stress of being the subject of interrogation," comfortably guiding the researcher through the content and associations already embedded in the photograph (1986:106). Introducing photographs into an interview structure can therefore achieve a rapport and comfort between participant and researcher that though possible in a straight interview, is more easily accomplished with the presence of a material, third party.

During my fieldwork, the presence of photographs (as actual objects) within the interview structure occurred rather spontaneously. Influenced by the work of contemporary visual anthropologists who, like Collier, incorporate photography as a standard part of their anthropological practices (Pink 2007, Edwards 2008, Pinney 1997),

I had always intended to conduct interviews in the presence of photographic images. As

Sarah Pink explains, such exercises in "photographic elicitation" do not necessarily imply the elicitation of more information, but can provide opportunities for different types of information to emerge (2007:83-85). Thus, I had presumed that the appearance of

3 Jon Collier Jr. began his photography career as one of a group of photographers employed by the Farm Security Administration (FSA) to document the social impacts of the Great Depression. Recognition of this is provided in the acknowledgments, which begin: "The roots of this book lie in the Farm Security Administration and the photographic foresight of Roy E. Stryker" (1986:xi). Such acknowledgements point to a profoundly intimate connection between the development and history of documentary photography and visual anthropology.

30 photographs during my interviews would occur at my request, but I often found that when I arrived at interviews, my informants had assembled a small collection of images they wanted me to show me and spend time discussing. For example, Carole arrived to our first meeting with a copy of her monograph on Northern Canada; Steve always had current works he was eager to share with me; and Nunzio would inevitably pull out his iPhone to show me current projects or his new favourites. In that sense, photographs were not purely visual entities, points of reference to simply look at. Instead, photographs are also material, tactile objects, begging to be handled, touched, flipped through, shuffled, and passed between individuals, and such was often the case between me and my informants. (Edwards 2006).

Exploring the role of photography in the making and articulating of histories, anthropologist Elizabeth Edwards argues that viewing photography is a social and experiential process that is not only highly multi-sensory, but also fully enmeshed in oral story-telling practices (2006). Orality about and around photographs goes beyond the simple 'forensic' or 'tour guide' approach of verbalizing content, as Collier suggested,

"but the processes and stories woven around and through them, imprinting themselves and being played back repeatedly through different tellings" (2006:37). Memory is reinforced, Edwards explains, taking Collier's observations a step further, not only through the visual content, but through the very patterns for repetitive story-telling they facilitate (Ibid:38). Shaped by my own experiences as a student of photography, I had expected the process of interviewing with photographs to trigger memories about the context in which the photograph was taken. Such topics did surface in the conversations I had with my informants. But I also heard stories about the people in their lives who were both present and absent from the frame: lost friends and colleagues; key informants or particularly memorable subjects; family members, spouses and partners. I heard about pregnancies and child rearing, violent confrontations and fights, jetlag, and the not-so-straight forward decision of when to shoot and when not too shoot. In talking about photographs, we also talked about broad themes like religion, faith, politics, morality, ethics, love and war. As

Edwards suggests, interviewing with photographs allows for the articulation of histories, memories, ideas, senses and reflections.

For Donald Moore, the concept of 'articulation,' in which the connotations of both enunciation and connection are maintained, is an especially useful analytic when considering the complex ways in which new and emergent constellations come to be produced and take on life (2006:24). Much like Deleuze and Guattari's concept of

'assemblage,' Moore argues that the idea of articulation "brings together disparate elements and relations, giving that constellation a particular form and potential force"

(2006:24). In retaining its connotative connection to the spoken word, however, articulation considers the ways in which such assemblages inform cultural and discursive politics of place, identity and subjection/subjectivation: "articulations open up questions of how conjectural contingencies emerge in particular histories and geographies, and the

32 heterogeneity of practices and the cultural forms they foment" (Moore 2006:25).

Photographs, in providing a sort of scaffolding for the emergence of particular forms of oral narratives, trigger articulations. But they also are articulations, the visual coalescence of a wide range of disparate material and non-material elements and forces.

Recognizing the ability of photographs to bring together and encourage articulations not only emphasizes a dynamic understanding of the way in which human actors engage with photographs, but also establishes the photograph as a non-human social actor itself. To Bruno Latour, it is this ability to act upon another—not intent or lack thereof that characterizes a social actor, and in that sense, is key to any anthropological or sociological investigation (2005:71-72). This greatly opens up new questions and avenues for investigation within the social study of photography. But it also gestures towards greater methodological considerations. It is one thing for researchers to theoretically point to the active social ability of non-human material objects and images; it is another to show how this filters into our research practices and writing.

In retrospect, photographs were as strongly present and as clearly a part of that moment of articulation as me, Carole, Steve, Nunzio and Mitchell. They were as much my interlocutors as they were for my informants. For my informants, photographs allowed them to "articulate histories in interactive social ways that would not have emerged in those particular figuration if photographs had not existed" (Edwards

33 2006:39). However, it is important to recall that physical photographs are not the only means through which images pass between photographers. As individuals who are constantly surrounded by and looking at photographs, photographers are perhaps more attuned to or acquire a kind of virtual database of photographic images, housed in their memories and subjectively organized. For example, "there is this one image," Carole recalls thoughtfully during one of our interviews, "of an Indian woman with a child begging to this huge camera." As she speaks, the memory of a photograph surfaces in my own mind—a black and white still image of a frail hand reaching past the lens to the viewer on the other side; a child tucked into the folds of a sari. "Yeah," I reply with absolute certainty, "I know what image you're speaking of."

Werner Bischof s now iconic photograph of a woman and child in Bihar, India shot for Life Magazine in 1951 mentioned by Carole and recalled by me never physically passed between Carole and me as a material object; instead Carol cued it verbally to me, causing it to surface separately, and yet simultaneously in our individual memories/imaginations. Just as material photographs can trigger new verbal articulations, so too can verbal articulations that recall images, conjuring them from memory banks and allowing them to linger in one's individual mind. For practitioners who ascribe to a similar photographic tradition, such as documentary, there may be significant overlap in their visual archive. Like graduate students becoming versed in cumulative iterations of particular theoretical framework, documentary photographers are similarly exposed to groups of images over the course of their educations and careers. The recall of such

34 "phantom" photographs may be easily communicated between photographers in the form of visual citations; one need merely reference the name of the photographer, its content and/or the era it was taken (such in the exchange between Carole and me above) for the same image to be similarly recalled in the mind of the opposite individual. In that sense, photographers do not only talk about photography or photographs, but through photographs. By extension, photographing involves a constant dialogue between the subject matter at hand and the immaterial virtual images recalled through memory.

In his recent work on the relationship between Photography and Anthropology

(2011), Christopher Pinney points to the 'curious echo' that reverberates between two professions' parallel and overlapping histories. But in seeking to address the practices and experiences of a group that actively strive to observe and document 'life-as-it-is,' I found that such echoes exist not only between their histories, but also within their fundamental practices. Methodologies aimed at eliciting ethnographic data, such as the use of photographs in interviewing, came to be revealed as a form of ethnographic data in themselves, exemplifying the extent to which photographs are not only a pervasive part of the social and visual landscape of documentary photographers, but a vital part of the framework through which photographers think about and situate their own photographic practices and images.

At the time of interviewing, I remained largely unaware of the dual role photographs were playing in my project. Like my informants, I too not only spoke about

35 photographs, but also through photographs; it was only in reviewing my transcripts at a later point in time that I came to realize the extent to which I was communicating with photographers using the same visual citational methods they use between themselves.

The next three chapters look at three particular elements that photographers are continually and simultaneously engaging with in the moment of taking a photograph: the technology at hand, namely the camera apparatus itself; the person(s) on the other side of the lens; and the larger event or context in which they are situated. But it is only within the visual landscape of photographs that the practice of producing photographs finds consistency. We are no longer, as Walter Benjamin states, "photographic innocents"

(2006a:512), entering into the visual space of photography with no understanding of what the process of photographing entails. It is through photographs, and in this case, a particular genre of photography, that we have any sense of what it means to photograph.

The inclusion of photographic images at the beginning of the next three chapters is designed to be reflective of the visual landscape in which and through which photographers practice their chosen medium. Some are photographs conjured or viewed within the context of the conversation being discussed directly in the text; others are personal favourites that came to mind during the writing and completion of this project. It is my aim that these photographs not be considered illustrative of the text, but complementary to it, providing another way of knowing, seeing and understanding the various forces and influences at play.

36 View from the Window at Le Gras, 1826 Nicephore Niecpe Boulevard du Temple, Paris, 1838 Louis Daguerre Figure 4 Ruins of central Grozny, Chechnya, 1996 James Nachtwey Figure 5 From Brooklyn Gang, New York, United States, 1959 Bruce Davidson From Democratic Republic of Congo, North Kivu, Kibati, 2008 Dominic Nahr CHAPTER TWO CAMERAS AND THE TECHNICAL SIDE OF PHOTOGRAPHING

"To visualize an image (in whole or in part) is to see clearly in the mind prior to exposure a continuous projection from composing the image through the final print" ~ Ansel Adams, American Photographer, 1902-1984

"When you are the camera, and the camera is you. " ~Minolta advertisement, 1976

In this chapter I focus on camera apparatus, the technology through which photographic images become visible. To begin with, I provide a detailed description of the functioning a standard (digital) single lens reflex camera (DSLR), the camera most favoured by documentary photographers. I provide a sketch of the modern-day camera's history focusing on the technical settings photographers must learn to control and manipulate in order to produce a 'correct' photographic exposure. I then address the process through which this acquired knowledge passes from technical know-how to an unconscious, intuitive way of seeing. At such moments, photographers are able to envision their intended subject through the various technical processes of photography to how it can appear in a photographic form. Here I review the various technical and creative strategies that may be implemented in order to compensate when variables such as light levels are considered less than ideal. Such conditions can be limiting; however, as I argue in this chapter, it is this very process of navigating real-world conditions that photographers understand as characterizing the practice of documentary photography.

Furthermore, I demonstrate the ability of photographers to successfully navigate these

42 limitations, producing what is regarded as a technically and creatively sound photograph

in the process. I show how it is this ability, or the photographic evidence of this ability,

that photographers use to differentiate their work and practices from that of the 'snapshot

shooting' amateur general public. I suggest that it is through the acquisition of technical

knowledge, practice with that knowledge, and the manner and extent in which this

knowledge in practice becomes enfolded into their perception of the world about them,

that photographer's self-identity as a professional begins to emerge.

Historical sketch of the modern-day camera

With the prevalence of photographic images and the cameras today, it is difficult to

imagine a time before photography. Indeed, the idea of rendering an exact and realistic

representation of the optical world is one that was pursued around the world for centuries.

Early experimentation with the camera obscura (also known as "dark room"), a fixed

device that projects images of external objects by focusing reflected light through a tiny

pinprick opening in a dark room. The device is recognized as the modern-day camera's

direct precursor and may date back to as early as sixth century Greece when the architect

and polymath Anthemius of Tralles is said to have used the device as a part of his

scientific and mathematical investigations, though it appears to have been used by

different societies and cultures with varying results (Crombie 1990:205). In 1806, the

British scientist W.H. Wollaston invented the camera lucida ("light room") (Marien

2010:6-7). The camera lucida was transportable. It consisted of a glass prism that

reflected the scene at which it was aimed in a direction of the operator's choosing; though

43 finicky to use, artists could attach the camera lucida to their drawing table and adjust the prism until it projected the intended subject as desired upon the drawing surface. The camera lucida was deemed especially useful to travelers and landscape artists who sought to make detailed and specific records of the landscape and architecture.

But understanding how to direct and focus light was only half of the photographic puzzle. Looking back on a century of photographic history, Walter Benjamin observed,

"the time was ripe for the invention and was sensed by more than one—by men who strove independently for the same objective: to capture the images in the camera obscura"

(2006a:507). Noting that certain chemicals had photosensitive properties, causing them to react to various degrees in direct proportion to their exposure to light, scientists and artists across the globe searched for the right combination that would result in a permanent, stable image. This discovery remained elusive, however, until French inventor Joseph Nicephore Niepce (1756-1853) began his own experiments in the mechanical reproduction of printing plates through the use of photosensitive materials

(Marien 2010:11). His efforts culminated in 1826 when, after noting the way in which bitumen hardened to different consistencies depending on its exposure to light, he coated a metal plate in the thick substance, placed it in a camera obscura and directed it out his estate window. Eight hours later, Niepce removed the plate to discover a two-toned reverse negative of a scene that, though blurred, was recognizable as the view from the window.

44 Niepce's success in producing the first photograph was quickly repeated and capitalized upon by others. This was achieved most notably by Louis-Jacques-Mande

Daguerre (1787-1851), who patented his own daguerreotype process in 1839. Requiring only three to thirty minutes of exposure, which produced a latent image made visible through further out-of-camera processing, Daguerre boasted that his invention would introduce photography to the "leisured classes" (Marien 2010:15). Advancements in the medium, of course, did not end there. George Eastman, founder of Kodak Inc, licensed the first box camera that used roll film in 1888, marketing it to general public under the slogan, "You press the button, we do the rest."

Such innovations coincided with the introduction of faster shutters, and smaller, lighter, more compact camera bodies, allowing the camera to leave the tripod and sit comfortably in the photographer's own hands—a move that had particularly significant ramifications within the context of documentary photography, as it allowed the photographer not only greater mobility, but also a less obtrusive presence. More recently, developments in computer and digital technologies have moved to replace the entire chemical process, from the film inside the camera, to darkroom processing and production. But in all this change in technology, the camera operator still remains behind the elusive click.

45 Learning to control and manipulate the camera

Indeed, despite changes in technology, the camera can be described as a simple

apparatus. When a button is pressed, the camera's shutter is opened and light, reflected

off the surfaces of material objects in the environment, streams through a pinprick-size

opening known as the aperture and is focused through a glass lens. Once inside the light-

sealed chamber, the light-carrying image reacts with the photosensitive material upon

which it is directed, either chemically in the case of film (or electronically in the case of a

digital sensor), inscribing an image onto the surface of the film in the process. One of my

informants, Mitchell, reiterated this process in similar terms, stating that, "photography is

a very basic medium... you have an aperture, you have shutter speed, you have a lens.

That's basically all it is."

On a (digital) single lens reflex, control over the lens, aperture and shutter not

only remain fully within the photographer's control, in the form of easily adjustable

switches, dials or rings, depending on the model. In fact, it is for this reason—along with

its compact, hearty design, and accurate mirror-based viewfinder system— that the SLR

still remains, favoured among documentary photographers. Learning how to manipulate

each of these so-called 'tools,' and how each of these manipulations is rendered in the

resulting image, is usually first task of any aspiring photographer.

Every feature of a camera functions on two levels: technical and creative. On a

technical level, the aperture and the shutter each play a significant role in controlling the

46 volume of light that enters through the lens and into the body of the camera. Shutter speed regulates the amount of time the shutter is allowed to remain opened, thereby controlling how long the photosensitive materials inside the camera are exposed to light.

Alternatively, the aperture controls the size of the opening through which light is allowed to enter: the smaller the opening, the less light permitted. Shutter speed and aperture, however, are not the only features that influence exposure. Film, for example, though largely standardized, comes in a wide range of sensitivities, a marker referred to as the

International Standards Organization, or more commonly known as ISO. Shooting in low light situations such as inside without a flash requires film with a higher sensitivity to light and therefore a higher ISO value. On a digital SLR, ISO is now a setting that can be conveniently manipulated and controlled with a few quick clicks of a button or cursor.

Achieving proper exposure is therefore largely dependent upon finding the proper balance between these three settings: 1) the amount of light permitted to enter 2) per unit of time the shutter is allowed to remain open in relation to 3) the sensitivity of the material upon which the exposure is being made.

Controlling the lightness or darkness of the resulting image is not the only function of the aperture and shutter, however; they are also tools that can be used to achieve particular visual qualities and aesthetics. In the case of the aperture, a small aperture opening focuses light through the lens, producing sharp, clear lines from the front to back of the image—in other words, the smaller the aperture, the greater the depth of field. Such an aesthetic can provide a sense of vastness and context within an image,

47 its never-ending detail stretching as far into the horizon to show the enormity of a situation. On the other hand, a wide aperture creates a hazy, shallow backdrop, making the subject stand in stark contrast from the rest of the image. Both aesthetics have their place within documentary traditions and may even be used side-by-side to cover a particular issue. For example, in the coverage of natural disasters, such as the earthquakes that struck Haiti in January 2010 and Japan in March 2011, wide-angle, landscape shots with a long depth of field are often used to depict the enormous far reaching impacts of the disaster, while close-up, focused shots of individuals with a shallow depth of field are frequently used to evoke a sense of intimacy which are meant to connect audiences to personal tragedy and human loss.

If the aperture is responsible for controlling the sense of space in an image, than it is the shutter that is responsible for controlling the sense of time. As mentioned earlier, a slow shutter allows light to enter for a longer period of time; however, should the subject move within that period of time, a blur or ghosting effect may occur, in which light refracting off the subject triggers the same reaction of multiple points of the photosensitive surface. Such blurs can distract from the given subject, but they can also preserve a sense of movement and action within a still image: for example, the blur of car lights on a highway is understood as eliciting a sense of fast-paced motion, rather than stationary gridlock, while the blur of a baton directed towards a protestor eludes to the force, speed and violence of the impending impact.

48 Producing compelling, successful photographs on a consistent basis is therefore

not a matter of chance or luck. Rather it is the deliberate, exacting application of a

photographer's technical knowledge of the camera that increases the chances for success.

Photographers must therefore not only be aware of what may or may not make a good

subject for photographic representation, but they also need to know and have the

technical ability to go about transforming their choice into a compelling image. As the

next section illustrates, this process is not so much one of careful, thoughtful

consideration, but rather the enfolding of the camera's way of seeing into the

photographer's very perception of the world about them.

From technical know-how to a acquired way of seeing

Steve was always telling me stories about the particularly crazy things he would do to get

a photograph; the moments where he would stalk a tough looking boxer down to his

locker room, or stop two men from fighting in the street, just so he can take a picture. "I

do things I wouldn't normally do," he explained one afternoon, sitting in a small sports

pub, sipping on pints of beer and admiring the photographs of sports icons and boxers

that lined the walls.

Like I'll go and approach people I wouldn't normally approach because I really want the picture. I really think that they will make a great picture, and again, at all odds, they may seem like the most unapproachable person or even dangerous right, but most of the times I do it.

Later he added, "I don't know why it is so important to me, the picture. When I see it in

my head, it's just so important to me." It was a concept to which he continually returned

throughout our interviews, even going so far as to speak of photographs that I knew he

49 had yet to process with as much enthusiasm and detail as though the print was lying in front of him. "It's how I'm hoping they'll be," he explained thoughtfully one afternoon:

how I see them. Like what I see, you know, and then I take the picture. How I'm imagining it will turn out, which is hopefully exactly what I am seeing, you know? That's the hope. That's what I'm excited about—that I'll have captured what I saw... And I hope that I get that—because I feel it and see it, right? And maybe it won't, that's—of course, if I get it every time I take a picture, I—I would probably go crazy too because I would never be able to print them all.

"Although," he finishes with a laugh, "I wouldn't mind. I'd figure it out."

In photographing a chosen subject, documentary photographers make use of the tools available to them. They carefully and deliberately make decisions about the visual aesthetic and form they would like to achieve and then adjusting the corresponding settings of their aperture and shutter in order to properly achieve it. For Mitchell, the ability to effectively do so for the purposes of communicating a story or event lies at the heart of his task as a photojournalist and documentarian. "Photography is a very basic medium," he said,

But it is also a very powerful tool that you can manipulate and control to—to photograph, or create an image of something that might make it visible to the naked eye—you know what I mean? Those are powerful tools. And with those tools come the same liberties that a writer would use—repetition, alliteration. Basic writing techniques. Writers embellish—well, they don't necessarily embellish, but they write in a way that helps establish a point. Photographers use what tools they have to make that point as well.

But being able to function with such a level of deliberation goes beyond the process of simply looking through a camera.

50 In his work on the philosophy of the natural sciences, Ian Hacking has argued that optical devices such as microscopes are not "black boxes, with a light source on one end and a hole to peer through at the other" (1985:189) that reveal a visual world that is already there, merely out of view. Rather, he suggests, using a microscope requires a great deal of hands-on learning through which the microscope technicians must learn to differentiate between the visible artifacts of the instrument and the microbial world made visible through its use (Ibid:191). In that sense, technicians actively learn to acquire a new way of seeing with a microscope through doing, rather than simply through it.

Similarly, photographing is not achieved by simply looking through a viewfinder of a camera to see an image of the subject as it will appear in the resulting photograph. It is not possible to see the blur of motion caused by a slowed shutter, or the coloured world transposed to black and white, or the movement frozen still through the viewfinder. "It is another nature," writes Benjamin, "that speaks to the camera rather than the human eye"

(2006a:510). Even those elements that seem clearly revealed by looking through the camera are often revealed to not be quite as they appeared upon first glance. The viewfinder, for example, which provides the photographer with the spatial parameters within which to compose a photograph, rarely matches the field of view of the actual lens. As such, objects may appear closer or further away through the viewfinder than they do in the resulting photograph. Student photographers must therefore learn to account for such subtle differences in the moment of photographing; a skill and knowledge only achieved through a constant trial and error. Through practice, student photographers

51 come to possess an intimate understanding of all the materials and tools they encounter throughout the photographic process: from their general choice of lens and film, to their choices in aperture and shutter settings for each unique frame, to their choices in chemicals, papers and digital programs used in processing and post-production. In doing so, student photographers begin to assemble an understanding of how the various choices they make influence the final image; and it is here where photographers differ greatly from the technicians that are the focus of Hacking's analysis. According to his account, learning to see with a microscope is largely about learning to distinguish between the visible elements of the slide and microscope from the microbial world one seeks to observe; it is as, as Hacking describes, a process of seeing past the process. But for photographers, it is not a process of seeing past the process; rather, it is about envisioning the additional layers to it, extrapolating beyond what is seen with the human eye to envision through the camera's technical intervention (Benjamin 2006b). This observation suggests that all seeing is not the same.

In that sense, Steve's claim that he sees the picture even before he has raised the camera to his eye is not an exaggeration or even a metaphor. After many years of photographing, Steve has acquired a deep understanding of the technical processes through which image-production occurs. It is a process that for him because he also develops and prints his own film, extends beyond the moment of clicking the shutter to the darkroom as well. His awareness of the effect each stage of the process has on transposing a fragment of the material, tangible world into a two-dimensional, black and

52 white photographic image, is so intimate, so innate, that it has literally become enfolded into his visual perception of the world about him. Through the constant and concentrated practice of taking and viewing photographs, student photographers gradually acquire the ability to see the world as it can appear in photographic form to such an unconscious level that it seems as simple and natural as seeing through one's own biological eyes.

Photographing requires an intricate and detailed knowledge of and familiarity with the camera apparatus. In learning the technical specifics of the medium, photographers are able to not only produce a proper photographic exposure, but also learn how subtle adjustments in settings such as aperture and shutter speed visually alter the aesthetic of the resulting photograph. The results of these adjustments are not visible to the photographer in the moment of photographing, however. Instead, photographers must learn to envision the result of their numerous technical decisions. Through consistent practice, this ability gradually passes from one of conscious thought to an unconscious

"way of seeing" the world around them. The technical facets and demands of the camera apparatus are enfolded into the photographer's perception. The camera, in that sense, is not only technologically necessary to produce photography; as I address later in this chapter, it is the frame through which the photographic process emerges.

53 Considerations for photographing in the digital age

Having discussed the ways in which photographers engage with the technical aspects of

the camera itself, it would be remiss of me not to address the impact of digital

photography on contemporary photographing.

Digital cameras were introduced in the late 1980s. Unlike their analog

counterparts, digital cameras possess a digital image sensor, capable of reading the

intensity and frequency of light and recording that information on a removable flash drive

that can be read by and viewed on any computer system. Digital technology has severed

photography's dependence upon the chemical processes upon which it was initially

founded. Hence, learning to understand the relationship between the controls of the

camera and the resulting photographic image has perhaps at no time been easier than it is

today. Unlike film, which requires processing in a carefully controlled environment,

digital cameras come equipped with illuminating LCD monitors and image playback,

making it possible to view an image immediately after it is taken. This ability facilitates a

new degree of instantaneous, trial-and-error experimentation, through which the

photographer is able to quickly, expediently, and inexpensively learn and test the

relationship between the technical adjustments of certain settings and the resulting visual

aesthetic. By seeing the image immediately, photographers are able to see instantly 'what

works' and 'what doesn't.'

54 "There's no good reason to shoot film," Mitchell told me with a laugh, when I asked him about his own camera preferences. "You know? It's expensive, it's—yeah.

There's limitations. Digital cameras are so good in low light, you don't get the high ISO ratings. And you're limited to thirty-six exposures before you have to change. Digital you can shoot a thousand photographs on one card. It makes things really easy." With such benefits, it seems that digital photography has not only won the 'film vs. digital' debate' but thoroughly revolutionized the field. And, yet, as Mitchell added, with a small nostalgic smile, "I'll always appreciate film."

All four of the photographers I worked with have experience with film and digital photography, although their level of experience and their personal preferences varied greatly in relation to the nature of their work. Working within the context of news media and reportage, both Mitchell and Nunzio shoot primarily in digital. They use film only for select and often 'personal' projects. Steve, on the other hand, whose current work is exhibited primarily in art galleries, still prefers to work exclusively in film: "It's old school," he explained one day with a shrug, "and boxing is kind of old school. You know, they kind of fit." Film, despite its apparent disadvantages, generates nostalgia.

The switch from film to digital generated other responses from my informants. It was often explained to me that the instantaneous nature of digital photography, in which a photographer can immediately see their photographs after their taking, changed the way

55 in which photographers approach the moment of taking a picture. Steve explained to me that:

There's something about not being able to look at your images right away... I think it really changes it, you know? I'm much more haphazard with the digital because I can just delete it and whatever, it's no cost to me, right? So of course, that's going to change how often you pull that shutter and how much you're concentrating on it. And in all the years I've had the digital camera, which is maybe... four years? Three of four years, I've taken maybe a half dozen pictures that I like. So I know that I'm not trying as hard with it. I know that I'm not taking it as seriously.

Steve's acknowledgment that he photographs differently when using a digital camera, particularly that he relies too heavily on the tools offered by digital technology with a detriment to his work, is a concern voiced by other seasoned professions. "Despite the rapid pace of digital photography," writes photographer Bryan Peterson,

Almost since day one, 99 percent of all successful photographic images have relied on the photographer's knowledge, skill and talent 1) in setting a creatively correct exposure and 2) in creating a well-balanced and compelling composition. These things apply regardless of whether you shoot film or digital (2005:10).

In making the results of photographing more immediate, unlimited and easily discarded, digital cameras make it easier and less expensive to practice photographing. The implication, it is argued, is an opening-up or democratization of photography allowing more people to acquire the ability to envision the world photographically. But it also, by those same traits, threatens this very ability. Digital photography's "rapid pace" makes it possible for young photographers now to skip the deliberation of carefully envisioning an image in favour of a more haphazard approach.

56 There is no denying that digital technology provides new tools to aid the photographer in the process of photographing such as the now-standard built-in light meters or the pentaprism mirrors of the SLR. But to what extent do these new technologies change a person's engagement with the camera and by extension the practice of photographing?

It is interesting to note that many professionals and instructors empathetically discourage dependence upon any additional tool within the moment of photographing. As

Bryan Peterson suggests in the quotation above, the production of compelling photographic images is not about the best and latest in equipment and gear, but rather a deep and intimate understanding of the most essential to the camera. This requires a level of dedication and diligence on the part of the photographer to approach digital photography with the same level expertise and concentration they would bring to its analog cousin (Peterson 2005). After all, the time it takes to check a light meter or the back LCD screen for the exposure can mark the difference between a missed shot and a

Pulitzer Prize award-winning image. In that sense, it is important to practitioners such as

Steve and Mitchell that the incorporation of new digital tools not be mistaken as major departures from what they regard to be the fundamentals of photographing.

In that sense, it is important to practitioners that the incorporation of new digital tools not be mistaken as major departures from the fundamentals of photographing.

Digitization is a process of codification: a sensor that stores similar information about

57 light in a dematerialized series of zeros and ones replaces the tangible, chemical filmstrip.

It is, as Brian Massumi writes, "a numeric way of arraying alternate states so that they

can be sequenced into a set of alternative routines" (2002:137). But photographers do not

think of digital photography within this codified form. Rather, they access and make

sense of that coding through its material counterpart. As Massumi might put it, they think

about digital "through the analog" of celluloid film. (2002:138). Hence, digital

engagements with photographing remain bound up to the analog form. There is no

denying that digital technologies continue to enfold new information and experiences;

however, when it comes to the production of'good' and 'compelling' documentary

images the production of a digital exposure is conceptualized and experienced by

photographers in ways fundamentally similar to that of film photography. Maintaining

this connection, in the face of film photography's decline, is understood as vital in

maintaining the integrity of the craft and profession.

Photographing in 'real' social environments

The interplay between photographer and medium occurs in a context. This is especially

true for documentary photography, where, in choosing to photograph in everyday social

contexts, practitioners relinquish a degree of control over their environmental and

material conditions. Documentary photographers, in that sense, are not at the liberty of

producing just any photographic vision of their intended subject; rather, they must

acknowledge the technical limitations of the camera within the context of their

environment in order to produce a successful image. What factors direct and shape a

58 photographer's technical and creative choices at the moment of photographing? Are these regarded as obstacles or opportunities? Do they hinder or enhance creativity? The following section seeks to answer these questions.

Consider a photograph of two Inuit men step-dancing in the middle of a large hut, surrounded by community onlookers seated in chairs. This is one of many images in

Carole's monograph of Spence Bay. "This is another one I like," she tells me, sitting outside on a restaurant patio, plates and utensils shoved out of the way as we flip through her book page by page, photograph by photograph. "Soft focus," she adds. "Because of the lighting..." I observe. "Soft focus because it's in a hut with one bulb," she confirms with a nod. "So here, they're dancing. Next they would put on the Beatles and we would all get up and dance. And he was a drum dancer." With that she flips the page, moving us along to the next image.

There are small details I note as I read this image, a black and white, book-bound copy of an original silver gelatin print carefully exposed and developed in a darkroom by

Carole herself. The lighting, as Carole mentioned, is soft, emanating from a single source from within the picture, rather than obtrusively imposing itself from the outside. She shoots without a flash, relying instead on the light already present. But in doing so, there are limitations and the conditions for shooting are far from ideal. It is dark in this hut with only one bulb, and to make the exposure, she opens the aperture wide and slows the shutter. Details become softened with the shallow depth of field. Motion, that of the

59 men's hands and feet moving to a tempo faster than the click of the shutter, becomes blurred.

In his User's Guide to Deleuze and Guattari, Brian Massumi recounts the example of a woodworker, embarking on the task of making a table (1992:10-15). The woodworker does not randomly pick any piece of wood for the task, nor does she indiscriminately begin plowing into it with her tools. Rather, she chooses the best piece for the intended outcome, considering its properties, recognizing its qualities and allowing them to guide the application of her tools. She notes the direction of the grain, the ease in which the chisel slices into it. These qualities, explains Massumi, "are more than simply logical properties or sense perceptions. They envelop potential—the capacity to be affected, or to release a force" (1992:10).

Like the woodworker, Carole does not enter into a situation and blindly start snapping the shutter. Instead, she carefully enters into the space, reading the qualities of the situation around her, interpreting them through her understanding of the camera apparatus in her hand; after all, reading the level and quality of light only becomes a concern when trying to ascertain if one can photograph in it. Entering the hut, she knows that the available light is pushing the operational limits of the camera. Such limits at times feel like obstacles, restrictions to the processes of image-production. However, as

Massumi and fellow Deleuzian scholar Elizabeth Grosz (2008) argue, limits such as these

60 do not hinder creativity, but instead frame the realm in which its emergence becomes possible:

the virtual, or conditions of emergence, can neither be separated from nor reduced to the actual, or the conditions of empirical functioning... Without its passage into the empirical, the virtual would be nothing lurking. Without the passing of the virtual into it, the empirical would functionally die. It would coincide so even-temperedly with its own unity and constancy that it would have no ontological room to maneuver: entropic death by excess of success (Massumi 2002:159).

Confined by the actual conditions within which she is restricted, and the technical limitations of the camera in her hand, Carole could decide not to photograph, to put the camera away and wait for more favourable conditions. In the production of photographic images, not photographing is always a lingering possibility. But in choosing to continue to photograph, Carole must do so with these actual constraints in mind, or risk producing a faulty exposure. There are aesthetic qualities she cannot render in this environment: attempting to produce the crispness of a full depth of field or quick moving shutter will only result in a underexposed negative that, for her intended purposes, will prove useless later in the darkroom. As such, Carole must instead focus on what is possible when the aperture must remain open, longer and wider.

It is not only the material or environmental influences of the present moment—

Massumi's actual or empirical—that shape this process, however. As Grosz explains, gesturing to the work of Henri Bergson, living beings are capable of bringing their past into the present, facilitating new possibility: "this incipient memory endows life with creativity, the capacity to elaborate an innovative and unpredictable response to stimuli, to react, or simply act, to enfold matter into itself, to transform matter and life in

61 unpredictable ways" (2008:6). As a practicing and established documentary photographer by this point in her career, Carole carries with her the memory of her own past experiences engaging with the medium. Through her own experimentations and practice,

Carole has gained an understanding of what works and what does not with a wide range of available resources in a wide range of contexts. Operating the camera in her hand has become an embodied technique with little conscious thought; indeed, much of which has been described in detail here occurs within less time than it takes to read these pages. She has, as the previous section suggests, come to see with her camera, but in doing so, she is shaped not only by the apparatus in her hand, but also by the institutionalized training of her field. Carole has looked at other photography, has come to see how others before her have responded to different situations, and how their responses have become rendered in a visual form. This series of "shared and differentiating techniques, methods and resources" combine to produce what Grosz refers to as the "plane of composition"

(2008:8-9), and no art, claims Grosz, is possible without it: "art is only is possible insofar as a plane proceeds any particular work; and each particular work of art finds its place, even the place of disruption, within this plane" (2008:9).

With all these material and institutional forces imposing themselves in the moment of photographing, it is easy to conceptualize the photographer, in this case

Carole, as a sort conduit through which such forces find expression. In Alfred Gell's rubric for the social network of art, entities engaged within the production and reception of art are conceptualized as active "agents" or passive "patients." It is an either/or

62 scenario; the possibility for an entity to exist as simultaneously both active and passive is limited only to a brief acknowledgment that patienthood can at times function as a sort of derivative agency (1998:23). Scholars such as Massumi and Grosz, however, recognize that being acted upon by a force does not preclude the ability of simultaneously enacting forces oneself (Massumi 2002, Grosz 2008). Every process, whether actual or potential/virtual, has lines of force flowing out indefinitely in every direction; as social scientists, the question is not which way is a force being directed, but rather, which one are we interested in addressing and from which perspective (Massumi 1992:12). Taking up the perspective of the photographer, we can see that Carole is being acted upon by a myriad of material, historical and institutional forces. But she does not simply passively allow them to act upon her; rather, she allows herself to become immersed in them, filtering, ordering and making-sense of them as she does so. She interprets the qualities about her, and in this act finds a means of expression. That interpretation, writes

Massumi, "is force, and an application of force is the outcome of endless interplay of processes natural and historical, individual and institutional" (1992:11). Embracing the potential of an image with soft, light detailing and the lingering traces of movement,

Carole raises the camera to her eye, frames a shot, and clicks the shutter.

During my fieldwork, I often heard photographers joke that they are always photographing in their minds, even when there is no camera in hand. But seeing the world photographically, to the point where a photographer is constantly envisioning the possibilities around him or her, is not the same as actually photographing with a camera,

63 and no photographer would confuse one with the other. Creating compelling photographic images is not simply a matter of envisioning a potential subject photographically, but also being able to confront, negotiate and make-sense of what it means to transform another into the subject of photographic representation. It is this process that the next chapter considers. Figure 7 Migrant Mother, 1936 Dorothea Lange

65 Figure 8 Alberta Oil Sands #8,2007 Edward Burtynsky

66 Figure 9 Famine Stricken Area, State of Bihar, India, 1951 Werner Bischof

67 Figure 10 From War is Personal, 2006 Eugene Richards Figure 11 Refugees in Korem Camp, Ethiopia, 1984 Sebastiao Salgado

69 CHAPTER 3 PHOTOGRAPHING OTHERS

"The worst thing is to feel as a photographer that I am benefitingfrom someone else's tragedy. This idea haunts me. It's something I have to reconcile with everyday because I know that if I ever let genuine compassion to be overtaken by personal ambition, I will have sold my soul. The only way I can justify my role is to have respect for the other person's predicament. The extent to which I do is the extent to which lam accepted by the other, and to that extent, I can accept myself " ~ James Nachtwey, American Photographer, 1948—

"Photography is a small voice, at best, but sometimes one photograph, or a group of them, can lure our sense of awareness." ~ W. Eugene Smith, American Photographer, 1918-1978

This chapter is about the act of photographing another person. I ask, 'what does it mean, from the perspective of the photographer, to focus the lens of a camera upon another person to make them the subject of a photograph?' As such, I consider how questions of representation intersect with issues of power, responsibility and bearing witness within the practice of documentary photography. First, I explore how notions of objectivity and subjectivity within photographic representation have changed over time. By providing a brief overview of the structuralist and post-modernist critiques of documentary photography, I demonstrate the means by which such academic discourses have influenced and shaped its very practice. Theories of representation do not stay relegated to the realm of academia. Rather, as this chapter will show, these theories blend into popular discourse, critically and affectively informing the choices photographers make of whom, when and for what purposes they photograph. As my case studies demonstrated, such decisions are often enacted to very different ends. What they share in common, I

70 argue, is a rationale rooted in a common discourse of'bearing witness,' social

accountability and responsibility. In tracing this discourse, I suggest that practitioners

frame issues of photographic ethics not only through and by their encounters with

photographic subjects, but also through their perceived ability to reach out to and engage

with specific, intended audiences. This is not to suggest that the agentive power of a

photograph remains in the control of the photographer once in circulation. Rather, it is to

argue that for photographers, the process of producing documentary images is an

intentional, communicative act, an "image act" (Bakewell 1998), produced with the

intention of effecting change in tangible forms beyond the visual landscape.

Objectivity and Subjectivity in the Study and Practice of Documentary Photography

In choosing to engage with everyday, lived social contexts, documentary photographers

temporarily position themselves in the lives of their subjects, directing their camera upon

these individuals and groups for the purpose of transforming their likeness into a visual

representation. As discussed in the previous chapter, photographers , in producing their

images, must remain receptive to the environmental conditions and material variables in

which they are photographing. In that sense, the resulting photograph is always indexical

and materially linked to the its subject in ways distinct from other forms of visual artistic

representation, such as drawing or painting. As Roland Barthes writes, "the photographic

referent is not the optionally real thing to which an image or sign refers, but the

necessarily real thing which has been placed before the lens, without which there would

be no photograph" (1981:76).

71 It is for this reason that photography, as discussed in the introductory chapter, was positioned early in its history as a pure, unbiased mode of visual documentation. Whereas other processes of representation, such as writing or drawing, were recognized as requiring the direct mediation of an author or artist, the chemical and mechanized nature of photography fit nicely into modernist understandings of scientific and objective documentation and recording. This remained largely the case until the 1970s, when structuralist critique emerged within the realm of academic discourse and study.

Following the philosophical work of Michel Foucault, scholars, as discussed in the introductory chapter, began to critically address the ways in which photographic practices reinscribed larger social power dynamics. Such critiques later gave way to the post modernist shift, in which the pursuit of large, unifying grand narratives in favour of more fragmented discourses.

Academic studies and critiques of documentary photography do not always take place in the form of a dialogue with practitioners, but this does not mean that photographers are not aware of the trends and developments of such discourses. Many of the photographers with whom I interacted during my fieldwork have post-secondary undergraduate or graduate degrees in the humanities, social sciences and/or fine arts and are therefore often times well versed in the theoretical nuances upon which such discourses are founded. On the other hand, I often found that photographers who do not possess such institutionalized training and background were still quite familiar with the

72 main concerns and key arguments. As I discovered, photographers enjoy reading about photography and are often encouraged to do so by their colleagues and mentors. Shared photographic spaces, such as the halls of the cooperative darkroom I frequented during my fieldwork, or the school where I previously trained, are often lined with bookshelves filled not only with books of images, but also key theoretical texts, such as Susan

Sontag's On Photography (1973), or Roland Barthes' Camera Lucida (1981). Reference to these names was often made throughout the interviewing process.

With this in mind, it is perhaps not surprising the extent to which the post modernist turn within academia, and the crisis of representation it brought about, had such an impact on the practice of documentary photography (Light 2010:9). Just as anthropologists were forced to reconsider their ethnographic work and practices, so too were photographers made suddenly aware of the subjective and socially constructed nature of their images, whether they were produced in the 'real' world or not. Staged studio photography, which predates documentary mediums, acquired new prominence within the institutionalized art world; its ability to challenge the once entrenched line between reality and construction, truth and manipulation by presenting constructed or staged scenes through a medium often associated with objective documentary, spoke directly to and engaged with the theoretical concerns of post-modernism. Photography, it seemed to many, was increasingly polarized. While proponents of staged photography accused documentarians of "promulgating a lie that photographs were true," thereby re- inscribing the hegemonic power of Western media (Light 2010:9), proponents of

73 documentary photography argued that the abandonment of all documentary practices would lead to a dangerous disengagement from the social, political and economic realities that impacted people's lives in tangible ways the world over. It is perhaps for this reason why Carole, who remembered this shift well, was adamant that she was a photographer, not an artist. To Carole, the appeal of photography lay in its ability to engage with and show the lives and circumstances of everyday people the world-over.

"I'm jumping around here, but one of the things that I think was wonderful in the sixties was that people didn't think photography was art and I think that gave you beautiful freedom."

Debates about staged "art" photography and captured "documentary" photography still linger today, though to different ends. Both continue to flourish as recognized photographic genres; however, the line of distinction separating the two extremes has become increasingly blurred. The work of Edward Burtynsky (Figure 8), for example, which depicts the devastating impact of industry on the planet through massive, large- format prints, is often displayed and circulated as art pieces within galleries and museums, yet his approach can be, and often is, understood as documentary in both practice and intention. Similarly, Steve displays, circulates and sells his work on the life- world of boxers almost exclusively within the domain of private and public art galleries.

As will be further discussed in this chapter, decisions over where and where not to exhibit work can dramatically affect photographers' decisions over who, what and when to photograph. What is important to address here is that while debates over the validity of

74 documentary practices still continue, postmodernism's lasting legacy in photography has not been to reinforce the division between art and documentary, but rather to gesture towards the ways in which they continually blur into one another.

The indistinct zone that occupies the space between an idealized, pure and objective form of documentation, and artistic, subjective self-expression is one widely experienced by documentary photographers of all different backgrounds. As a staff photojournalist employed at a local newspaper, Mitchell is held to the same standard of journalistic integrity as his writer-colleagues; his work must be recognized by editors and news- consumers alike as truthfully fulfilling claims about reality and the world-that-is. Outside of his role as a photojournalist, Mitchell does produce more artistically driven and inspired work, including large-format prints and short films that often explore environmental issues. But, as he explained, questions about what constitutes collectively recognized truth and what is individualized expression surface just as often in his journalistic endeavors as they do in his more artistically-minded ones. "It is documentation," he explained,

But for as subjective as photography can be, it is also very objective as well. You choose what you point your lens at; you choose how you expose the film. I think a lot of photographers have just relied on the fact that you know, 'I saw it, I shot it, it exists, that's the way that it existed' and its not necessarily true—you can control and manipulate the inner flow.

Shortly later he added,

I think it is impossible to come in without any bias, like it's hard to be completely objective... I have a choice of when I push the button. I mean one of those frames is going to be the news tomorrow, that's going to be the visual document of what

75 happened. So it is up to me to decide what that is. It's my responsibility to try to deliver something that is subjective.

He pauses with a cringe: "sorry, something that is objective." After another moment, he adds, "but it is impossible to be that without bias. You try to be an informed person and informed journalist. You try to know what is going on, you try to know the history of somebody or the history of the event. And in doing so you're producing informed content."

Mitchell's comments raise a number of interesting issues. For one thing, his confusion regarding terminology, though momentary and accidental, demonstrates the extent to which ideas about objectivity and subjectivity can be slippery, even in conversation. This confusion becomes even more important in light of his observation that the medium of photography itself is not innately objective. To Mitchell, photography, much like writing, is an instrument through which individuals can make claims about the world-as-it-is. But the accuracy and validity of these claims, he argues, can only be judged by the work and integrity of the person behind the camera: the photographer themselves. As Mitchell goes on to further explain, while photography as a medium is always indexical to the material subject(s) and environment it depicts, the photographer maintains a great deal of technical and aesthetic control over the final representation. In privileging one moment over another, and imposing a particular framing and aesthetics upon that moment, photographers maintain a great deal of control over the way in which a photographed subject is represented to, and therefore understood

76 by, a removed third party. As photography commentator David Levi Strauss writes, "to

represent is to aesthesticize; that is to transform. It presents a vast field of choices, but it

does not include the choice not to transform, not to change or alter whatever is

represented. It cannot be a pure process in practice" (2003:9). But it is not the medium or

apparatus that transforms the subject. Rather, as Mitchell explains, it is the photographer

him or herself who retains the ability to shape and direct the resulting photograph. In this,

photographing others is always a site in which power and authority come to be exercised

and enacted. The next sections explore the ways in which photographers recognize and

experience their subject-position within this power dynamic and the means by which they

seek to disrupt and account for the "power relationships" (Foucault 1982) they form with

their subjects.

Enacting and Disrupting Power in the Process of Photographing Others

According to Michel Foucault, power is not a reified object capable of being held and

wielded by some against and over others (1982:137). Instead, it is a complex social

dynamic, created, exercised and enacted between individuals and groups. For Foucault,

becoming a "subject" is a state of being in which one individual is made vulnerable to the

control of, or is made dependent on another (Ibid:130). These "power relationships" in

which "the one over whom power is exercised is recognized and maintained to the very

end as a subject" (Ibid: 138) is characteristic of many photographic encounters; it may in

fact be unavoidable (Azoulay 2008:99). As discussed in the preceding section,

photographers retain a vast degree of control over the technical and aesthetic qualities of

77 their images. In so doing, they not only finesse and control the resulting image; they shape and direct the ways and means by which the subject(s) of their photographs are seen and perceived by future spectators. In that sense, photography, as Ariella Azoulay writes, "is an encounter that always and inescapably involves a measure of violence, even when the situation is one of full and explicit consent between participant parties. The violence is inherent in the instrumentalization of the photographed person in order to produce an image of him" (2008:99).

Throughout my fieldwork, it became apparent that each of my informants was critically aware of the privileged and potentially extremely empowered position they held within the act of photographing others. Talking to Mitchell one afternoon in a downtown

Toronto coffee shop, he explained how the act of photographing another can feel exploitive. "I mean you have to have some sort of philosophical approach to any of this," said Mitchell.

Any thoughtful human being would have issue with—would take issue with pointing a camera in somebody's face that doesn't want to be photographed. That's an ethical question: how do I justify photographing anybody and everybody? I don't select who I photograph. Nobody is exempt. Like the media, as a photojournalist, I take the liberty of documenting life. All life and I won't censor what I do and do not document.

As will be explored in further detail later in this chapter, Mitchell's personal

"philosophical approach" to photographing others was at times quite distinct from that of my other informants. But his observation that the act and positionality of photographing others is one in which formulating such a personal "philosophical approach" is necessary,

78 is one that I saw consistently throughout my fieldwork. In fact, I found that in the interview process, conversation often circled back onto issues and reflections regarding documentary ethics and the extreme, sometimes debilitating discomfort that comes from being positioned behind the camera lens. By facilitating a space in which my informants could actively address and negotiate their own power and subject-position, I had the opportunity to witness first-hand the "philosophical" tools and discourses photographers mobilize to not only explain their practices to others, but also come to terms with them in such a way that they themselves are able to continue photographing.

Steve, in particular, was often especially troubled by his position behind the lens.

For him, photographing others was often a "love-hate" experience in which he would feel himself drawn to a subject while at the same time anxious over the potentially negative impact his presence may have. "I've been to a couple of photographer talks at the gallery," he explained to me one afternoon.

And there was this one guy—one of those photo-documentary guys that I really like. But he said something that really bothered me... He said, 'anything for the picture.' Like he lied to people to get a good picture, he lied to people who were having a hard time and stuff and he said 'anything for the picture.' I don't agree with that, I just don't. As important as it is to me, and I've told you how important it is—it drives me, it fuels me to do it—but there are lines I won't cross.

It is a decision he has personally had to face within the context of his own work.

During our interviews, Steve told me about one particular, short-lived project in which he photographed a small group of women who were staying at a shelter located next to the boxing gym where he was training and photographing. The project offered a departure

79 from the male-dominated world of boxers that his photographs usually depict. But the extent to which he was drawn to the women and their life-stories was always countered by a strong sense of disjuncture between his life experiences as a middle class, white male and theirs. Many of the women he came in contact with were deeply impoverished, victims of physical and sexual abuse and struggled with mental health problems and drug addiction. The more he photographed them, the more uncomfortable he became with the process. "I didn't think I was really doing them any favours," he told me. Unable to shake the sense that he was using them solely for artistic purposes, Steve stopped the project and filed the photographs away without showing them to anyone.

In describing this particular story, Steve made it explicitly clear that he would never suggest that photographers should stick only to photographing subjects with whom they can personally relate and understand. But in this situation his own subject-position, as a white male with a camera, afforded him a degree of social power that he felt incredibly uncomfortable enacting. In photographing a moment Steve recognizes that he is creating a representation that will outlast and extend beyond that moment and context.

In choosing to photograph a moment of trauma or sorrow, photographers hold that experience still in such a way that the subject is forever tied to it. As Florence Owens

Thompson, the women depicted in Dorothea Lange's iconic depression-era photograph

Migrant Mother (Figure 7) once stated, "I wish she had never taken my picture. I am tired of being a symbol of human misery" (Azoulay 2008:125).

80 Steve extends this reflection to his work on boxers as well, explaining how he often refrains from photographing moments of extreme negative emotion, even if he thinks it would make a great photograph. "I don't agree you should do anything for the picture. Because some pictures—maybe it's going to make him feel worse. Maybe it's going to make me feel worse, even if it turns out. It's not the way you should be living your life, when somebody is having a hard time," Steve explained to me at a later interview.

Even though, if I were to see a photo that I would be moved by... I don't know. It's kind of a hard situation. I mean I understand why if someone's house is burning someone needs to take a picture of this person crying. I understand that in some way its important for people to see. But it's not a job I could do. It's not.

It would be incorrect to claim that all photographers experience the same sense of discomfort with the position of power that is afforded to them by virtue of the camera as

Steve expresses above; indeed, as I found within the context of my own research, every photographer makes sense of this dynamic in their own unique ways. But it does demonstrate the extent to which a photographer's ability to bring themselves to photograph is contingent upon their ability to make sense of, and come to terms with, the social power dynamic they are enacting in the process.

Photographing others does not only bring to light the power dynamics inherent to photography, however. Instead, as Steve's example photographing the women at the shelter demonstrates, the process of photographing others can in fact amplify other social power dynamics that are already present in the encounter between photographer and subject. Steve's discomfort photographing the women at the shelter was partly founded in

81 the degree of control he had as a photographer over their visual representations, but it was also as equally founded in the gendered dynamics that shaped his interaction with these women throughout the process. Similarly, Carole, as a white, middle-class, post- secondary educated American woman living in Canada, was often strikingly aware of her socio-economic standing in relation to the people she was photographing. "To look into that picture, and see someone who looks as alive as they did to you in person and where you find the image to be beautiful, that's wonderful," explained Carole, "but what does that do for the people you are photographing? Particularly if you're photographing, as I often was, very poor people. So the question for me was always, how do I connect what

I'm doing back to the people I am photographing."

For Carole, the answer lies at least partially in her ability to directly involve members of the community in as much of the photographic process as possible. At its most basic level, this revolves around presenting copies of all resulting photographs back to the individuals depicted in them; a process Carole referred to as "feeding the images back to the community." But much of Carole's work practices include an attempt to involve the input, perspective and control of the subject in further and more collaborative ways. While photographing the migrant farm labour movement in California during the late 1970s, Carole sought direct input and feedback from union members both during and after the documenting process, developing photographs as she went so that she could receive more immediate feedback and constantly asking union members what they themselves would like photographed. The result was the production of a complete visual

82 and textual document that met the union's own fundraising and advocacy purposes. "It was fantastic!" she explained, "to get people to have the experience of together making a documentation archive and giving it to the people that could then be used as a fundraiser document. That was all really interesting."

Including community input in the creation of a photographic archive, as well as granting them access to it, can go far in disrupting the authoritative control photographers often maintain over resulting images. But it does not challenge who has access to the medium, and the power to represent, itself. "When I was in the Arctic," Carole explained, referencing another of her major past documentary projects,

I wanted to go back, and I thought, 'I have to have something to offer other than 'can I take your picture or look at your pictures?' And because they had shown me their photographs when I would go up and they would take my picture I thought, 'well, they have photography, but its so alienated. They send out negatives and six months later they get them back, whereas other people are coming to photograph them. So I thought, well, if they have a sense that they did the media themselves, that's power. That's why when I went back, I set up a darkroom and taught photography to the Inuit craftswomen.

Anthropologists have similarly considered, addressed and advocated for the incorporation of collaboration within our own research and representational practices.

Emerging from the same feminist, post-colonial and post-modernist critiques outlined earlier, which challenged the very notion of objective representation, such collaborative models seek to disrupt the authority of the sole anthropological researcher. Instead, collaboration encourages an understanding of the production of anthropological knowledge as dialogical, cooperative, multi-vocal and entangled process. Similarly, for

83 Carole, collaboration within documentary photography is about facilitating people's access to the medium in its entirety, from the representations and images produced by others, to the capability of producing such representation for oneself. By facilitating greater access to the medium, traditional practices in which outside photographers maintain full control and authority are challenged and disrupted. In so doing, photography as a medium is understood as being opened up as a multi-vocal and multivalent site of representation and expression.

Collaborative practices like those advocated for by Carole work well in long-term, community-based documentary projects, but there are many situations and contexts in which such practices are logistically impossible to implement. News photography, for example, such as that practiced by Mitchell and at times Nunzio, occurs in far too short a span of time to facilitate that level of involvement with one's subjects; a point for critique addressed by many of my informants, including Mitchell himself. Even in contexts where collaboration is logistically possible the extent to which it is implemented is largely dependent upon the individual photographer's own personality and shooting preferences.

Some photographers simply prefer to shoot alone, enjoying the individual and introverted qualities of the medium and its form. Others turn to their fellow photographers and colleagues when pursuing collaborative projects. Photo cooperatives, such as the

Toronto-based Photo Sensitive (www.photosensitive.com), in which Nunzio was particularly interested, encourage participating documentarians to pursue shared and agreed upon subject and themes for a specified length of time. Collaboration occurs

84 therefore not in the process of photographing, but rather in the design of the project

leading up to and the compilation of the final exhibition following. As with the

- community-based projects described above, cooperative work between documentarians is

meant to challenge the tradition of objective authority within documentary practices by

visually illustrating the multiple perspectives and voices that can be brought to and

emerge from the act of photographic documentation.

Even at its most collaborative, however, photographing is always in some way an

individual and solitary act. While photographing does require a dynamic sense of

engagement by which photographers interact with and respond to their surrounding

environment and potential subjects, technical and creative control of the apparatus itself

resides solely in the hands of the single photographer. This is perhaps especially true in

documentary practices where, as will be explored further in the next chapter, decisions

about exposure and composition are made habitually and reflexively in incredibly minute

periods of time. Though photographing can be shared socially with others, the decisions

made in the moment of exposure are incredibly personal. In that sense, while

collaboration with one's subjects or other photographers can serve to re-negotiate some

of the power dynamics embedded within the act of representation, it cannot address or

undermine the control and power photographers retain over the production and

composition of each unique frame. It is a fact that does not go overlooked by

photographers themselves. As Mitchell asked earlier, "you have to have some sort of

philosophical approach to any of this... how do I justify photographing anybody and

85 everybody?" Coming to terms with and making-sense of their representational acts

therefore extends beyond the choice or ability to incorporate collaborative or cooperative

practices. Rather, as the next section explores, photographers rely on a particular

understanding of the material qualities, capabilities and potentials of the resulting

photograph itself to help explain and make-sense of their actions as photographers.

Speaking Through Photographs

Throughout this thesis, I have attempted to emphasize the importance of understanding

documentary photography not only as a visual medium or form of representation, but also

as an act or practice in and through which photographers come to mediate a wide range of

material, creative and social forces. It is important at this point, however, to reiterate that

while there is more to the anthropological study of documentary photography than the

images subsumed under that banner, the act of photographing itself cannot be considered

in isolation from the images it produces in the process. Rather, it is only through a

collective understanding and recognition of the resulting photograph that photographing

as a process is made socially intelligible, not only to subjects and spectators, but to the

photographers themselves.

It was Walter Benjamin who first articulated the ways in which photography, with

its inextricable ties to mechanical (re) production, was distinct from other modes of visual

art (2006b). As discussed briefly in the introductory chapter, the photograph's ability to

be endlessly and perfectly reproduced substitutes an image's unique existence for a mass

86 one (Ibid:104)). Rather than achieving a sense of authenticity and authority through its connection to a particular tradition, time and place, photographic images are capable of instead being widely disseminated, reaching recipients in geographic and temporal contexts far removed from that which it represents.

To Carole, the ability of a photograph to transcend the context from which it originates and reach out to a recipient removed either by time or in space, is what makes photography a potential tool for social advocacy and justice. Recall for a moment her reference to Werner Bischof s 1951 photograph of an Indian woman extending her hand towards the camera, taken in Bihar during the Indian Famine (Figure 11)—the same photograph I was able to imagine through a simple verbal cue, as discussed in Chapter 1.

"[When Werner Bischof] saw that," she explains,

that wasn't 'oh what is he doing there, exploiting her.' No! That was someone saying 'this is happening!' and people were appalled. There was impact from photography. Just like now—if people are dismissive of the Farm Security Administration and what happened with those photographs its because they have forgotten history.

In a latter conversation, she added,

I guess what attracted me personally to photography was just the idea that you could make a record of what you saw that you could hold on to and show a person something you found very human and strong and real and a moment of true connection. And you could change that into a beautiful silver image. For me, black and white is where it is at.

It was a sentiment commonly reflected among my four participants. To them, photographing others in a documentary style was not only about producing a particular

87 form of image. Photographing was about visually representing the experiences and lives of their subjects so that another individual could view these representations in a different place and at a later time. As Nunzio explained one evening, "I need to go out there and fight for the images that I want to bring back home. I need for people to see things they can't see because if they can't see they can't understand."

According to John Durham Peters, "witnessing is a distinct mode of perception:

'we cannot say that we do not know' is the motto. To witness an event is to be responsible in some way to it" (2001:708). But it is also a discursive act by which one states their experience "for the benefit of an audience who was not present at the event and yet must make some kind of judgment about it" (Ibid:709). Serving as or becoming a witness, Peters argues, is therefore founded in the articulation of three points of communication: the agent who bears witness, the utterance or text through which one's experience is shared, and the audience themselves (Ibid). In that way, witnesses are able serve as the "surrogate sense-organ of the absent" (Ibid), situating themselves physically and temporally from those to whom something is happening or has happened and a removed third party who is understood as otherwise unaware of the situation.

As demonstrated through Carole and Nunzio's reflections above, documentary photographers often understand and align their practices with that of witnessing through very similar articulations. For one thing, photographing, especially documentary modes, requires the photographer to be physically present in a situation in order to photograph.

88 By literally "putting one's body on the line" (Peters 2001:173), photographers possess an experiential claim to the event, a claim which they can later further uphold through the resulting photograph itself. But an individual does not automatically become a witness simply by having experienced an event first-hand. Rather, as Peters argues, that individual must possess the intention and ability to communicate that experience to another individual.

For Sol Worth, communication is socially embedded in the assumption of intentionality. In his words it is, "a process in which one produces a set of symbolic forms or signs in some mode as well as in some code" (1981:167). It is also a process in which one individual carefully draws from a wide assortment of signs understood as conventional and collectively shared so as to produce a particular idea, thought or sensation in a form intelligible to another individual. Successful communication, therefore, has less to do with the content one is attempting to share with another, and more to do with that individual's ability to successfully draw upon, articulate and mobilize conventional and shared modes of communication in a way understandable to their intended audiences. In that sense, attempting to communicate is largely about effectively forming and acting upon presumptions about another's communicative abilities and literacy.

Following the work of scholars such as Erving Goffman (1995) and J.L. Austin

(1962), both of whom understood speech utterances as capable of effecting real, social impacts and consequences, communication has been widely understood as a form of

89 social action on par with more physical and direct modes within the study of social linguistics. Austin writes, "it seems clear that to utter the sentence in, of course, the appropriate circumstances is not to describe my doing of what I should be said in so uttering to be doing, or to state that I am doing it: it is to do it" (1962:6). It has only been recently, however, that scholars in the area of visual culture have considered similar approaches to the study of images in their production and circulation. For Liza Bakewell, a linguistic approach to the study of images would allow scholars to consider the ways in which humans intentionally and similarly manipulate our visual worlds in ways to satisfy particular needs and goals, through what she terms 'image acts' (1998).

For my research informants, photographing others is not always something that just happens. There are of course instances in which photographers are so struck by a potential subject in that moment that they feel obliged to take an image immediately, with little time for careful deliberation. But they also all spoke of an intentionality they attempt to bring their work on a regular basis, in which the process of producing a photograph is considered within the context of how the resulting image may be put to work, received and understood to communicate something particular to a removed third party. As Mitchell stated, describing the criteria by which he chooses and designs his projects: "what are people thinking about? What are people not thinking about that they should be thinking about? Where as a society are we failing? Where are we succeeding?"

Photographing, in that sense, is not only about holding a moment still for future posterity.

For documentary photographers, it can also be a process similar to that of producing an

90 utterance, in which a particular sentiment, thought or description is specifically designed and shaped within their medium to communicate to another. This is not to conflate the means and forms through and by which speech, text and images are able to communicate; indeed, speech, text and images employ distinct forms and modes that allow for different forms of communicative expression (Worth 1991). As it was often explained to me, the best documentary photographic work is that which seeks not to simply emulate or illustrate a written text, but rather compliment it in informed and informative ways. In that sense, engaging in the process of documentary photography is one of active witnessing, in which events are viewed through the lens of the camera with the clear intention of communicating an event, context or situation for a removed other.

Photographing others is therefore an extremely ambiguous space in which to position the self. While documentary photography as a visual medium can no longer be understood and approached as a solely objective, unbiased form of representation, it is still a mode of representation through which real-world events are circulated, shared and therefore communicated. For documentary photographers such as Carole, Steve, Mitchell and Nvinzio, the extent to which their images are subjective reflections of themselves can be a source of creative pride: it is the attribute of their work that distinguishes it visually and artistically from the photographic work of others. And yet, by recognizing this subjective, self-expressive element of their work, documentary photographers are also forced to face the position of power they inevitably hold over their photographic subjects, simply by virtue of being on the other side of the lens. Combating the anxiety that

91 sometimes arises from this subject-position often leads photographers to articulate and make sense of their practices through the ability of their medium to communicate real- world events, continually oscillating between these seemingly two extreme, polar understandings. Rather than debilitating their work, however, it is in the active process of articulating this relationship that photographers become able to continue photographing.

As the next chapter will discuss, this process becomes especially important in contexts where events unfold at a rapid pace and photographers embodied responses and habits take on an ascendant role in their photographing labour.

92 Figure 12 Behind the Saint-Lazare Station, Paris, 1932 Henri Cartier Bresson Figure 13 Inhlazane, Soweto South Arica, 1990 Greg Marinovich

94 Figure 14 Protestor loading sling, Bethlehem West Bank 2000 Larry Towell Figure 15 From Where do we go from here? Louisiana, United States, 2008 Joseph Rodriguez CHAPTER 4 BECOMING ATTUNED AND RESPONSIVE TO THE DECISIVE MOMENT

"Watch him—it's all about reading the moment. Watch him at his best. He always works from the outside in. And when it peaks—you 're there. It's a thing of beauty my friend... Let's go find one ourselves " ~ Taylor Kitsch as Kevin Carter to Ryan Phillipe as Greg Marinovich, in The Bang-Bang Club (2010)

"It's a quick thing and there's a whole world in it. " ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson, French Photographer, Magnum Co-founder, 1908- 2004

This chapter focuses on that critical "decisive moment" (Cartier-Bresson 1999) in which a photograph is taken: that split second in which an image comes together technically and conceptually to become a photograph. How do photographers recognize that moment?

How do they respond to that knowing? I begin to consider these questions by considering the concepts of habit and habitus, and by looking at the ways in which photographing becomes a shared and habitual form of bodily movement and comportment, through which operating a camera becomes second nature. Then, drawing on an affective approach, I address the ways in which photographers become attuned and responsive to the flow and movement of the event surrounding them. I consider the ways in which other ways of embodied knowing compliment and become entangled with vision, alerting photographers to that critical peak at which all the elements of a potential image come together. In so doing, I address the ways in which photographers feel themselves pulled in by or caught-up in the event they are photographing, but ultimately outside the events unfolding before their camera lens.

97 Pursuing "the Decisive Moment"

It was a blistering hot summer day as I sat next to Nunzio awkwardly on a narrow cement step, peering over his shoulder at the images he had pulled up on his laptop screen: photographs documenting the past few schizophrenic months in which the city oscillated between intense protest and riots to jubilation and summer festivities. "That day," says Nunzio, gesturing towards an image from Toronto's G20 weekend, "I probably shot at maybe a seven to one ratio. Seven sheit for something happy." "That's not bad," I reply. "Hmm. Not bad. But damn it, those moments, when I got those moments," he lets out a low whistle, "they were great. They were really, really something. Like I got this one of this kid throwing a brick through a CIBC window," he continues, scrolling at a faster pace in search of it, "and you could see the amount of force the kid has put into it... he's got this square shaped brick like this and he lunges into it—his right leg and his arms are like this," I duck reflexively to avoid being clunked as Nunzio swings his arms out dramatically. "And you can see—you look closely and you can see the brick and you see the glass cracking around it and the blinds moving from it." It takes a bit more searching before he finds it. It is as he describes: the youth teeters precariously in the follow-through of the throw, while the brick hovers at the moment of initial contact. Fracture marks radiate from the point of impact, but still the glass holds, frozen in its last moments before shattering. "That's the shot," he says proudly, with an emphasis that implies something beyond his previous reference to it. "That's the shot," I affirm.

The moment framed and suspended in Nunzio's photograph is not one that lingered for

spectators to consciously observe; in real-time, it was nothing more than a flash, a

fraction of a second that passed by with such force and intensity that it most likely went

unperceived by those there to witness it with their own eyes. To them, the window was

whole, and then it was not, the brief flash of contact between brick and glass lost in a

chaotic swirl of events, noises and sensations. Such is the nature of the photographic

medium. Photography fixes and frames a moment both spatially through the viewfinder

and temporally through the shutter, holding it still so that it may be seen, experienced,

98 circulated and shared. It makes permanent and static that which is dynamic and in so doing, reveals a visual dimension of the world that would otherwise go unregistered to our conscious minds (Benjamin 2006b). In that sense, while photographs present an image of the world as fixed, photographing—especially documentary photographing— occurs in a space that is always fluid and dynamic. The world that the documentary photographer seeks to depict does not stand still: it moves, shifts, and becomes, assembling, disassembling and reassembling itself with every passing moment (Grosz

2008, Cartier-Bresson 2007). "We photographers," writes Henri Cartier-Bresson, "deal in things that are continually vanishing, and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth that can make them come back again" (1999:27).

For Cartier-Bresson it is not enough to simply or haphazardly catch an event at any stage of its unfolding; such will produce a photograph, but it does not necessarily imply that the resulting image will be one that is good or compelling to a future audience.

Instead, he argues, photographers must be aware of the moment in which the elements of the scene before them organize themselves in such a way that it's meaning and greater essence is rendered visible:

To take photographs means to recognize—simultaneously and within a fraction of a second—both the fact itself and the rigorous organization of visually perceived forms that give it meaning. It is putting one's head, one's eye and one's heart on the same axis (1999:16).

This is what photographers following in Cartier-Bresson's legacy have come to recognize as the "decisive moment," a moment in which a photographic rendering is elevated from that of mere "visual fact" to a form of visual communication in which the essence,

99 meaning and beauty of a moment, context and/or photographic subject can be established and shared. It is a subtle difference. According to Cartier-Bresson, the difference between a good, compelling photograph and a mediocre photograph is one of "millimeters and fractions of a second" (2007). Achieving the decisive moment therefore requires that the photographer be present and ready to photograph in the exact right place, at the exact right moment in time. Haphazardly shooting, or 'over-shooting'—a process of repeatedly snapping the shutter without discrimination—may at times produce an interesting photograph. But it may also, warns Cartier-Bresson, result in a missed opportunity: "it is essential to cut from the raw material of life, to cut and cut but to cut with discrimination.

While working, a photographer must reach a precise awareness of what he is trying to do" (1999:24). Successfully and repeatedly capturing the decisive moment therefore requires a deep sense of focus and concentration on the part of the photographer; it is rarely a matter of luck.

There is no formula or standardized means by which the photographer can calculate at which instant the decisive moment will emerge. But the belief that there is a peak to the action that when photographed is particularly communicative of the greater context is one firmly and widely embraced among documentary photographers. It is the moment that they are always keenly on the look-out for, tracking the unfolding of the event before them in order to be ready to cut across time when it arises (Berger

1982:119).

100 The photograph Nunzio showed me of the youth throwing the brick is not the only

frame he took of that sequence of events—there are frames proceeding and frames that

follow, and Nunzio was happy to show me the progression. But each frame was taken

with careful consideration and the recognition that there would be instance—a brief

fraction of a second—in which the brick would make contact with the window. At the

moment of photographing, Nunzio was aware of this impending moment, and understood

it as the potential, elusive "decisive moment" he was pursuing. Such an awareness was

learned and fine-tuned as he acquired the ability to envision and conceptualize worldly

events as they appear in photographic form. As discussed in Chapter 2, he sees the

potential moment in his mind because in learning the tools of his camera and the

limitations of the medium, he has learned to see the world photographically.

But the ability and skill to envision the actualized world as photograph, though

linked, does not automatically imply the ability to act upon and capture that image.

Documentary photographers must not only learn how to envision an intended photograph,

but be able to transfer that intention into action. The next two sections explore the means

through which photographers understand this ability to respond, repeatedly and

successfully.

Habit, habitus and photographing

Photographing, from a technical perspective, is a fairly logical and rational practice. As

was described in greater detail in the second chapter, the camera is an apparatus of cause

101 and effect. Thus, in theory, once the basic mechanics are understood achieving the desired result is a fairly straightforward. In practice, this may not be so straightforward, as rationalizing each step of the process of photographing may rarely be possible within the time-frame in which documentary photographing often occurs. If one paused to consider the best course of action then the desired or ideal moment of 'capture' may have already passed: "when replaced in the flux of time, [the body] is always situated at the very point where my past expires in a deed" (Bergson 1991:78). This does not, however, mean that the past has no bearing on the present; rather, as nineteenth century philosopher Henri Bergson explains, past experience is continually utilized in the present in the form of individual recollection and motor mechanism (habit) (1991:79). To

Bergson, though functioning as distinct and separate processes, these two forms of memory are not mutually exclusive; one can form both an individual recollection—a memory-image not that unlike a photographic snapshot—and a motor mechanism, from the same experience. To demonstrate this, Bergson draws on the process of memorizing a school lesson (1991:79-81). Taking the time to read and re-read the lesson line-by-line, word-for-word, students form a recollection of having engaged in that process; they recall the act of memorization itself. But it also bears the mark of what Bergson refers to as habit:

Like habit, it is acquired by the repetition of the same effort. Like a habit, it demands first a decomposition and then a re-composition of the whole action. Lastly, like every habitual bodily exercise, it is stored up in a mechanism which is set in motion as a whole by an initial impulse, in a closed system of automatic movements which succeeded each other in the same order and together, take the same length of time (1991:80).

102 Memory-images, as discussed previously, become active in their ability to spur new imaginings, and in so doing, modify the behaviours of the individual in question

(1991:81). Habit, on the other hand, persists.

Similar to the nineteenth century child learning their lessons, photographers acquire the mechanical skills necessary to operate a camera through repetition, practice and hands-on doing. In fact, the operation of a camera can and should become so habitual, so naturalized, that the photographer is not even aware of the process. It is often not until they are presented with the task of using an unfamiliar apparatus that they become aware of the physical process of operating the camera. For example, raising

Nunzio's professional grade Canon 5D to my eye, I was very aware of its tremendous weight and stature; it felt large, heavy and awkward in my hands compared to my slighter

EOS XSI. Whereas my camera retains the compactness favoured by "photography enthusiasts" such as myself, Nunzio's was a "tank," a "work-horse" that could withstand the environmental stressors one may face in professional reportage.

"I actually recently upgraded to the Mark II of the 5D," Nunzio admitted sheepishly, watching as I attempted to figure out the main controls and made note of the black electrical tape he had secured over others. "It's been interesting... But this thing operates beautifully and the 5D II operates just as beautifully, if not better. It's just a different feel. I have to get used to it."

103 The camera to which Nunzio had recently upgraded was not that dissimilar to the one with which he was already accustomed. As a technical upgrade, the Canon 5D Mark

II retains may of the same features as its predecessor; its design is not that different save a few minor adjustments due to added features. But the differences are significant enough that Nunzio's physical engagement with the camera "feels different." In addressing touch as a way of knowing, experiencing and engaging with the world around us, Brian

Massumi argues for a way of thinking that extends beyond the tactility of the skin's surface, to the ligaments and muscles that reside below. Such proprioception, "folds tactility into the body, enveloping the skin's contact with the external world in a dimension of medium depth... It translates the exertions and ease of the body's encounters with objects into a muscular memory of relationality" (2002:59). For Nunzio, the enfolded muscular memory of his old camera does not match that of the newer device; a sensation that can only be overcome through further hands-on practice and use.

It is through practice and repetition that photographers not only learn what each control and setting does (and how their manipulation is rendered in the resulting image), but a more subtle and tactile knowledge: they learn how to position their bodies to hold and stabilize the apparatus; they learn to the location of each control and the direction and amount of force to apply to the various switches, dials and digital computer menus; they learn how to discipline their bodies' movements, tremors and breathing patterns so as not to disrupt the resulting exposure; they learn how to move through a crowd, and how to situate themselves so that they may gain access to their intended shot. Such a process is

104 only possible through hands-on engagement with a particular camera. Some photographers even promote a form of play with the camera in which they sit with the camera-in-hand and adjust the various settings while performing other activities such as watching television. They practice each bodily movement until it becomes an act without conscious thought, to the point where it is no longer a conscious recollection, but automatic and habitual.

It was Marcel Mauss who first suggested that not all bodily habits are unique to the individual whose possesses them. Reflecting on his observations of swimming techniques across generations, Mauss argued that the techniques through which we regulate our bodily movements and functions—both consciously and unconsciously—are socially influenced and "vary especially between societies, educations, properties and fashions, prestiges" (1979:101). Building on this, sociologist Pierre Bourdieu adds, "the structures constitutive of a particular type of environment produce habitus, systems of durable, transposable dispositions," "structured structures... which operate to achieve particular forms of behaviour without any one individual consciously aiming to do so"

(1996:72). Habitus therefore extends beyond that of individual habit or acquired ability. It is the very embodiment of shared culture, what feels natural within a situation, not because of some biological, natural determinism, but because it is rooted in a historical and cultural behaviour that over time has become unconscious to the actors (1995:78).

105 There is no denying that there are several significant, shared and common bodily comportments exercised by photographers in the operation of camera apparatuses.

General socialization, formal training and the standardization of the camera body itself all contribute to a generally shared way in which the camera is held, operated and moved with. Professionals achieve a bodily technique commonly recognized as distinct from amateur snap-shooters. In that sense, the bodily techniques of the photographer are experienced simultaneously as both socially common to the profession, and unique and individual to their particular relationship to a specific apparatus.

In acquiring the ability to photograph in a way that is habitual bodily technique, photographers are liberated from having to pay conscious thought to the operation, handling and movement with the camera. As a result, photographers are able to respond at a much faster rate to the events occurring around them. But ideas around habit and habitus do not go far enough in explaining how photographers become able to capture their decisive moments. It takes on average 0.2 seconds for the human brain to respond to external stimuli (Massumi 2002:29). It takes another 0.009 to 0.25 seconds for the camera shutter to actually respond to being triggered, a phenomenon commonly referred to as

'shutter lag' (http://www.impulseadventure.com/photo/shutter-lag.htmn. Even as a reflex, by the time a photographer recognizes a moment as the moment, triggered their brain to trigger their finger to trigger the shutter, the moment would have passed. It would be too late. Photography is after all, as Cartier-Bresson explained, a craft of millimeters and mere fractions of a second. Photographers, in that sense, cannot be

106 following the unfolding of events in real-time. Instead, as the next section explores,

photographers are continually anticipating and sensing movement not only as it appears

in the now but also as it will be in the moments that immediately follow.

Missing the moment/getting the shot

I would like to return to ethnographic snapshot with which I began this thesis, Nunzio's

reflection about the nature of the medium in which he is trained:

You don't even see what happened—you don't! You loose the moment because you have the mirror come down in front of your eyes. And that little black of obfuscation, that little, that little split second, that 1/250th, that 1/500th, that one—at the most minimal—that 1/2500th of a second, you've missed the moment.

Nunzio told me this the same hot summer afternoon as we sat in his backyard scrolling

through photographs on his laptop. He describes here a phenomenon that results

specifically only in the context of shooting with a single lens reflex (SLR). More

importantly, it raises the question do photographers actually see what they photograph?

Since its invention in the 1950s, the single lens 35 mm camera has been largely

favoured within the practice of both amateur and professional photography. Like the

standard 35 mm predecessors, SLRs are compact, lightweight and hearty camera

apparatuses. They are easy to pack, perfect for hand shooting and convenient for travel.

What makes SLRs distinct is the presence of a penta-prism mirror that bounces the light

streaming through the lens up towards the viewfinder and the operator's own eye. Unlike

the previous viewfinders, which were little more than holes positioned off the camera

107 body to guide the photographer's gaze, the penta-prism "reflex" mirror made it possible for photographers to see exactly what was in front of the lens and therefore what would appear in the resulting photograph. However, in residing directly behind the lens, the mirror blocks the flow of light towards the photosensitive surface at the back of the camera and therefore must be moved in order to produce a proper exposure. Depressing the shutter on a SLR therefore not only opens the shutter, allowing light to enter, but also slides the mirror upwards and out of the way, directly in front of the viewfinder. For the fraction of a second that the shutter is open, the viewfinder is obstructed; the photographer is temporally blind.

I am, and was, well aware of the basic SLR mechanics from my own personal experiences photographing. Yet, in replaying what Nunzio had said on my audio recorder, I was shocked by the realization. Through all the many occasions in which I photographed with an SLR, it had never occurred to me that in choosing to capture that particular moment, I was simultaneously relinquishing the opportunity to witness that moment with my own biological eyes. I had taken for granted that I had the seen these fragments of time myself and, on a more personal level, I felt certain that I had. There is a common lament among documentary photographers that the images they take of a particular event, situation or even individual often replace their own memories of it; that in later years they often find that they cannot visually conjure up any recollections that are not based in the photographs they produced of it. "Memory freeze-frames; its basic unit is the single image," writes Susan Sontag, "in an era of information overload, the

108 photograph provides a quick way of apprehending something and a compact form for memorizing it" (2003:22). For Sontag, photographs are not simply memory recall devices; they are instruments of memory and replacements for it (2003:128). In that sense, my certainty that I had seen these moments may simply be a result of having seen the photograph at a latter point in time; in forming a memory of the entire event, my brain uses the information offered in the photograph to fill-in the missing details.

I am not convinced, however, that the certainty I feel in that moment only emerges at a latter point in time, and I do not that think Nunzio would agree either. As he went on to say, "you missed the moment, but you know you fucking got it." Sight is temporarily hindered, but the photographer still has a sense of knowing whether or not they were successfully able to capture the moment as intended. But, how do you know?

This was a question I asked Nunzio during an interview a few months after we first met.

He paused and said, "I know what you mean... it's just vocalizing it is the difficult part, right?

Like, think about it this way: you have the camera up in front of your face, everything and its mother is going on around you... but you're shooting, left eye open, right eye on the shutter or whatever the case may be—you see what is going on. You're following it, and you know that something is about to happen and you know that you're going to get the crack, you're going to get the crack, the moment. The second you click that shutter, when you get that moment, when you see that exact critical moment, that peak action, you do not see it. But there's this feeling .I get when I have it, like what it feels like in my stomach... And the second you get that shot, the second you feel that click and that you know that you've got it, you don't even have to look at the back of the monitor... It's really hard to say exactly how you know, because you've seen the proceeding action, and you see the following action and you know where your eye is following in that capacity. It's just—you've got it. You have it.

109 He provides an example:

Like what happened, okay—there was a cop between the OPP and the protestors at Queen and Spadina, one of the first times that a cop car got caught on fire. One of the shots that I got, like I'm following and I see this cop's arm move and his arm just comes up, out of nowhere, seemingly, to the guy whose getting hit, but the guy knows he's going to get hit. In the shot, his eyes are closed, he's wincing, he's waiting for the blow. I have the action coming down, but I have it like not even a half inch away from his brow. And I knew, like I was so nervous for this guy getting hit, and then once I hit the shot, I saw him reel back and his head went back... like all the nerves, all that nervous energy I had going into that situation dissipated.

Recounting moments such as these, Nunzio describes himself as following the events. But he is not really following them; he is not a step behind, trailing along after their completion. More accurately, he is anticipating them, and it is through this act of anticipation that he is able to stay with them. Watching the cop raise his arm to strike the man, Nunzio is not just watching the movement as it unfolds. Movement, after all, is relational: "its specificity is compromised if any aspects of the relation are lost to generality—even if it is the generality of the terms in the relation, their self-sameness across time or in the different coordinates in space" (Massumi 2002:50). In my view,

Nunzio is not just seeing only the flow of the police baton or the man's head, but both in relation to one another. He watches the police's arm and baton and the trajectory it takes in relation to its target. Just like the man squinting in the knowledge that he is about to be struck, Nunzio too anticipates the blow. But it has not yet actually occurred. Rather, it is still potential, "pure relationality, the interval of change, the in-itself of transformation"

(2002:58). Time, at least to Nunzio, is no longer perceived linearly towards the future, but forwards and backwards, from both an actualized moment in the immediate past to an

110 abstracted projected point in the future, overlapping relationally in-between in both time and space. What Nunzio is describing above is what Brian Massumi refers to as movement-vision, "a vision that passes into the body and through it to another space"

(2002:57). It is the ability to not only envision the body in its static form—an image not that unlike the photograph one seeks to produce—but rather as an "accumulation of relative perspectives and the passages between them, an additive space of utter receptivity retaining and combining past movements, in intensity, extracted from their actual terms" (2002:57). It is a way of seeing the body beyond the normal unfolding of time, a movement that is not being, but rather a becoming.

In these terms, movement-vision appears to re-entrench the moment of 'getting the click' back in the domain of sight. Nunzio does not see the moment that is captured itself, but in seeing what has already happened, the direction of its force, and what follows, he is able to envision that brief fraction of a second. It is as he said earlier:

"you're seen the proceeding action, and you see the following action and you know where your eye is following in that capacity." Vision, however, is as Massumi explains,

"a mixed mode of perception, registering both form and movement" (2002:60). It registers relationality through time and space, but it also draws upon other sense-based memories, allowing us to register numerous other qualities throughout our surroundings.

As discussed previously, sensations such as touch, sight and sound becomes enfolded and stored as visceral, cellular memory, entangling all five sense perceptions that can later become actualized through excitation: "the translation of the sight or sound or touch

111 perception into recognizable associated with an identifiable object" (2002:60-61). We see texture, feel with our eyes (Massumi 2002).

For Elizabeth Grosz, the anticipation of this translation is the sensing of vibration.

Vibrations, according to Grosz,

are oscillations, differences, movements of back and forth, contraction and dilation: they are becoming temporal of spatial movements and spatial processes, the promise of a future modeled in some way on the rhythm and regularity of the present. Vibrations are the vectors of movement radiating outward, vibrating through and around all objects being dampened by them (2008:55).

In his anticipation of the resulting strike of the police baton against the man's head,

Nunzio is relying on a number of factors to remain consistent: that the force, speed and intensity behind the blow neither increases nor decreases, that it is not interrupted or halted by another individual or force; that the man remains in the line of strike. Nunzio's ability to capture an image therefore is, as Grosz suggests above, dependent upon the promise that what is to pass is modeled on the same regularity and rhythm that he is experiencing. But this is not only seen; it is also felt in the expression of tiny cellular memories. It is the embodied anticipation that precedes the actual translation of sensation into clear, registered thought. It is an attunement, as Grosz suggests, to the oscillations and movements in which one is surrounded, and through which one experiences those surroundings. In that sense, capturing a moment photographically does not result from an experience or sight or touch or sound alone but rather the various ways in they mingle, co-constituting and reinforcing each other, until pressing the shutter passes from a matter of thought to a matter of intuition.

112 For some photographers, becoming attuned to the flow and pacing of an event is the key to producing a proper, good and compelling documentary photographic representation of it. "Kind of like you feel like your inside there," Steve explained thoughtfully, "You feel like you're there... I don't know it's hard to put into words, but some feeling I get from it. The best I can figure is that you feel like you're part of it, or you're there, you're inside, you know? Something like that?" Documentary photographers deploy words like "feel" and "vibe" often in an effort to explain the reasons for how or why they perceive a photograph as successful or effective. In many instances, establishing good vibe in a photograph is as important, if not more so, than clearly documenting visual details or "facts." As Steve would later add in reference to the blur of motion that characterizes the work of photographer Eugene Richards, "you don't have to know exactly what's going on to get the vibe of it." Without a strong vibe or feeling, documentary photographs are little more than objective, visual records of facts.

As Henri Cartier-Bresson claimed, facts alone are of little interest (2007).

Nunzio's assertion that the moment of exposure is a moment of temporary blindness on the part of the photographer is not meant to negate the importance of sight in photographing. Indeed, vision retains a privileged position within the act of producing or viewing a photograph. In making this observation, however, Nunzio gestures towards the ways in which other senses such as tactility become entangled, caught-up in and facilitate the pursuit of the decisive moment. Photographing, though founded in vision and sight, cannot merely be a process of seeing. If it were, split second events like the brick

113 impacting the bank window, or the police baton about to strike a man's head, would be

impossible to photograph with any intentionality. Instead, rhythm, pacing and the ability

to anticipate what is becoming allows photographers to respond and capture flashes of

events that would remain largely unrecognized or unperceived by our so-called 'naked

eyes.' Sight and sensation become enfolded into one another in such a way that they are

impossible to differentiate or separate. Becoming attuned to the pacing, rhythm and flow

of an event for the purpose of photographing it is not experienced as a sense of being

incorporated or involved in it. While photographers continually feel themselves drawn

into and caught-up in the events unfolding before their camera, they are also aware of the

extent to which that process places them on the sidelines and out of context. In the

following section I demonstrate the ways in which photographers experience, move

through and make sense of this disjuncture.

Filtering Intensity: Photographing by taking two steps back

In taking up the camera apparatus as a tool for documenting and producing images of the

world, documentary photographers and photojournalists situate themselves on the

sidelines of the very events, situations and social groups that they are photographing. As

journalists on assignment, photographers can be the quintessential "wanderer" who

"comes today to leave tomorrow" (Simmel 1971). Others, such as Carole who centers her

photographing around long-term, immersion into a community, are what Simmel referred

to as the stranger, marked not by the haste with which they arrive and depart, but rather

as individuals who "[have] not quite [gotten] over the freedom of coming and going"

114 (1971:143). The experience of standing outside or separate to the events or social groups one is photographing was common throughout Carole, Steve, Nunzio and Mitchell's interviews. As Susan Sontag observes, there is the sense that photographers are simply incapable of actively intervening in the events occurring about them; the mannerisms, movements and focus required of photographing is found to be incompatible with other forms of social interaction: "photographing is essentially an act of non-intervention...

The person who intervenes cannot record; the person who is recording cannot intervene"

(1973:8).

As discussed in my third chapter, photographers are well aware of the ways in which their status as photographers is marked in relation to the people they are photographing. This awareness extends beyond a rationalized thought or recognition.

As I discussed previously, there is a deep, embedded sense of discomfort that comes from continually embracing this positionality. For Steve, it was a nervousness, a cause for anxiety, which fully permeated his narrative on photographing; an anxiety founded not only in his genuine concern for imposing upon another, but also because of the continually conflicting desires in which he finds himself present: between that of wanting to put the camera away, and always seeking the next photograph. "I don't enjoy fights when I go see them, because I'm always taking pictures," he explains,

I think it might be nice to go sometime to just go and watch fights but I could never do it. Because I would see something that I would want to take a picture of. So in that way, I'm ring-side all the time, which is amazing, but I'm not really enjoying them because I am so focused on what I'm doing. I still feel the passion of everything that is going on, and I still get the mood of being ring side at something like that—the excitement. But I don't enjoy the fights in that way.

115 For Steve, photographing facilitates a level of access and involvement within a community that he feels very much at home in and enjoys being a part of; it grants him license to continue being an active participant at a time when his own fighting career has reached its conclusion. But it is also the obstacle to his full inclusion, and not only a social level, but on an embodied, emotional one as well. He is attuned to the highs and lows in intensity, as the fight unfolds before his lens, and the crowd responds. Following the patterns and rhythms, the ebbs and flows, after all, is how he becomes able to capture them. Yet, he is never able to lose himself to them entirely; dutifully, diligently, he maintains enough careful distance and focus that he is able to perform the task at hand: that of photographing.

The camera's ability to filter out the flow of intensities can be protective, secure and safe, however. Consider this reflection on the part of Nunzio regarding one particularly violent clash between protestors and police at Queen's Park during the

Toronto 2010 meeting of the G20. "Who would have figured," he explained, anger obvious in his voice, even months later,

A bunch of kids singing 'O Canada'—the cops have the common courtesy to let them finish before they started rushing them with batons and shields. And I had to sit through every fucking moment in the pouring rain watching and shooting. And when my cameras failed, that was when I started to loose it. My buddies started getting arrested, I took maybe six photos at that point, and then both of my cameras failed. And that safety net, that filter I look through the world with: gone. Taken out of my hands.

116 Nunzio returned to this the moment several times throughout the interviewing process.

Each of his re-tellings builds upon the others, constructing an image of that day and event in which the violence being inflicted upon the protestors is layered with an account of the ways in which young student and professional photojournalists felt specifically targeted and persecuted by law enforcement officers. He is aware and attuned to events unfolding around him, to the gravity of the situation, and to the risk of physical, bodily harm. Such details are important to the context of his narrative, but they are not the point of its telling. Rather, the story Nunzio constructs is about coming to face the extreme circumstance in which he finds himself, as one by one, his digital cameras fails; about how he desperately borrows his colleagues operational cameras not for the purpose of witnessing or documenting, but simply to keep shooting. "I don't think I'm really scared to go into any sort of 'extreme circumstance,"' he said, in response to my question about how his experiences at the G20 had impacted his desire to photograph in other zones of conflict or crisis, "I mean, there is a fear that goes along with it. But as long as my camera is working, it doesn't affect me. That's really it. That's probably one of the most important lessons I learnt during the G20 is that, you know what, as long as my cameras work, my head is screwed on straight." In such instances, photographing is not only a means by which an ethical responsibility to bear witness is enacted. Rather, it is way to stay protectively removed from the emotional impact of what one is witnessing.

Movement-vision and the ability to stay one-step ahead simultaneously becomes a way of distancing oneself by taking two-steps back.

117 Photographing is a practice and a medium predicated on sight. But relying on this sense alone, especially in fast-paced moments where life seems to fly by at break neck pace, means that the photographer would consistently miss the crucial decisive moment they seek. Building a bodily habitus, in which photographing becomes a physical technique that requires little to no conscious thought on the part of the photographer is an important first step to being able to photographically respond reflexively to the world around you. But it is not enough if the photographer is unaware and un-attuned to the flow of events and circumstances unfolding around them. In such instances, photographers rely on all their senses—especially that of tactility—to trace the movement of an event not only through space, but also in time. As a result, documentary photographers do not just follow the events; they anticipate them, meeting them with their camera ready at the crucial decisive moment.

To documentary photographers, especially those following in the legacy and tradition of Cartier-Bresson, learning to respond effectively and intentionally to the

"decisive moment" is paramount to consistently producing compelling and informative photographs. Attuning oneself to the camera and honing a particular form of bodily technique in which the basic facets of operating a camera are made habitual and reflexive is crucial to the process of photographing. This process is also what appears to distinguish and mark their identity as photographers, distinguishing them from those people who make casual use of a camera. Figure 16 Motorcyclists at Lake Balaton, 1954 Gabor Szilasi

119 CONCLUSION

"I've never not been sure that I was a photographer any more than you would not be sure you were yourself. I was a photographer, or wanting to be a photographer, or beginning—but some phase of photographer I've always been" ~ Dorothea Lange, American Photographer, 1895-1965

"Photography to the amateur is recreation, to the professional it is work, and hard work too, no matter how pleasurable it may be " ~Edward Weston, American Photographer, 1886-1958

The advent of digital technologies has made it possible to circulate and receive photographs with unprecedented ease and frequency. But it has also made the act of photographing ubiquitous. The mass proliferation of camera-phones, for example, conveniently makes it possible for anyone to photographically document their lives and worlds, a possibility that acquires new significance in the wake of the 2005 London bombings, the 2010 Toronto G20 Summit protests, and the more recent events of the

Arab Spring. As these events demonstrate, news images no longer need to be produced by trained, authoritative staff reporters and photographers in order to be understood and read as credible sources of information. Additionally, (D)SLR photography on the whole seems to be experiencing a resurgence in popularity among hobbyists and amateur enthusiasts, a trend most noticeable not only through the quick expansion of products, equipment, and classes designed to specifically target non-professionalized audiences, but also through the proliferation of free online sharing sites such as Flickr, Tumblr or

Picasa. Everyday individuals, it seems, no longer simply face the potential of being the subject of a mass circulated and consumed photographic image; a possibility Walter

120 Benjamin first noted with the popularization of the pre-movie newsreel (2006b: 114).

They can also be their producers.

It is perhaps for this reason that Nunzio experiences a slight, initial twinge of suspicion towards other individuals when he spots them carrying expensive, high-grade digital cameras. As Nunzio further explained, he cannot help but wonder, "what they are in it for." It is a sentiment to which I can relate. In a society where we are not only continually surrounded by photographs, but also by people producing them, the very term

"photographer," as an identity category can feel broad and precarious. After all, if a

"photographer" is most generally an individual who has taken a photograph, than most people today can claim that they are or have been "a photographer." Some such as

Mitchell can find consistency in the title through the monthly salaries and recognition they garner through their affiliation to recognized news media outlets. They are

"photographers" because they are recognized as, and financially compensated for, providing a very particular skill set and service. But for many others, such as Nunzio,

Steve and Carole, the border between being a professional and an amateur is not quite as clearly defined by financial compensation for services rendered. In a society where everyone is capable of "taking pictures," what makes one a "photographer"?

In speaking with each of my interlocutors, it became apparent to me that being a photographer was not a matter of employment or financial compensation. To these individuals, being a photographer is not something one does', instead it is something one

121 is. Though photographing is on one hand recognized as a technical skill that anyone is capable of learning, my ethnographic field research showed that photographers understand their own practices as distinct by means of specific ways of perceiving, knowing, experiencing and engaging with the world around them through, with and by means of a camera apparatus. Much of this can be learned, practiced and acquired, but it is often understood as being rooted in an already present, innate aptitude.

In that sense, photographing is not simply a matter of directing a camera towards a potential subject and pressing the shutter. Instead, my informants understand their practices as a continual mediation between: 1) the technical demands and limitations of the medium within the context of a specific environment; 2) the institutional and discursive frameworks of ethics and bearing witness in relation to the people they are potentially photographing; and 3) the flow and direction of people and objects through time and space, sometimes all while attempting to keep themselves out of bodily harm.

Photographing, in that sense, is not static, but rather an active, dynamic and engaged process characterized by the intense interplay of technical requirements, environmental factors, institutional and discursive frameworks, and affective sensory and embodied experiences. The extent to which photographers understand their ability to fully and successfully mediate such influences is the extent to which they understand themselves as capable of consistently producing compelling, evocative, ethical and authentic documentary photographs. It is the extent to which they become able to identify themselves as photographers.

122 This thesis is more than just an anthropological look at documentary photography; it is an ethnographic study of visual cultural production. In focusing specifically on the act of photographing itself, as well as the individuals engaged in it, I have deliberately evaded questions of content, reception and circulation. By excluding the perspectives of spectators and subjects, I have also avoided engaging directly with structural critiques around the politics of representation and spectatorship. Such critical perspectives have been vital in expanding our understanding of images as active social entities through which and by which particular structures are produced and reinscribed, but they are only half of the story. What they overlook are the various social, material and affective forces that shape and direct the production of these images, as experienced and understood by the individuals engaged and implicated in that process. By taking-up such an approach, I have sought to demonstrate what a study of visual culture may look like when media is approached not as the object for circulation and consumption, but rather as sites of articulation and mediation. This approach opens media of all forms to be examined as a site of analysis and not as objects of analysis. In so doing, anthropologists and others who may consider such an anthropologically informed engagement with visual media, may be able to provide critical new insights into long-standing questions regarding the complex, entangled relationship between human sensory capacity and perception, popular media and modern society. Such avenues of research, by which we become increasingly attuned to processes of production, may also allow us the necessary reflexivity to further explore the various social, material and affective forces that shape our own practices as the producers of social and cultural knowledge.

123 Figure 17 Portrait of Henri Cartier-Bresson Jane Brown

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