UNIVERZA V LJUBLJANI FAKULTETA ZA DRUŽBENE VEDE FOTOGRAFIJA IN KONSTRUKCIJA KOLEKTIVNIH IDENTITET: PRIKAZOVANJE “DRUGEGA” V SLOVENSKI NOVINARSKI FOTOGRAFIJI PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF COLLECTIVE IDENTITIES: REPRESENTATION OF THE “OTHER” IN SLOVENE PHOTOJOURNALISM Ilija Tomanić Trivundža doktorska disertacija Ljubljana, 2010 UNIVERZA V LJUBLJANI FAKULTETA ZA DRUŽBENE VEDE FOTOGRAFIJA IN KONSTRUKCIJA KOLEKTIVNIH IDENTITET: PRIKAZOVANJE “DRUGEGA” V SLOVENSKI NOVINARSKI FOTOGRAFIJI PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF COLLECTIVE IDENTITIES: REPRESENTATION OF THE “OTHER” IN SLOVENE PHOTOJOURNALISM Ilija Tomanić Trivundža doktorska disertacija Mentor: red. prof. dr. Hanno Hardt Ljubljana, 2010 Acknowledgements During the course of this project, I have accumulated a long list of intangible debts, of which by far the largest is to my wife Dragana. Secondly, I would like to thank my supervisor prof. Hanno Hardt for his inspiringly different perspective and insights on society, communication, photography and culture, particularly those unrelated to this project. I would also like to kindly thank prof. Slavko Splichal for his continuous support of my academic endeavours. Furthermore, I would like to thank Nico Carpentier and Barbie Zelizer for their passing but nevertheless significant comments on the project, as well as my committee member Oto Luthar for his detailed observations. Special thanks goes to my friend Aleš Debeljak for the many engaging coffees, kind words and borrowed books, the 2007 ECREA Doctoral Summer school gang, particularly the Seymour Butts intellectual circle, and to junior colleagues at the Faculty of Social Sciences, my co-foot soldiers in the meandering intellectual trenches and shattered ivory towers of the academia. My thanks also goes to Kyrill Dissanayake for careful and responsive proofreading of the manuscript. Table of contents 1 INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................................... 11 1.1 PHOTOGRAPHY AND COLLECTIVE IDENTITIES – INTRODUCTORY NOTES .................................................. 12 1.2 PRELIMINARY MAPPING OF THE FIELD - DISCOURSES OF CRISIS ............................................................... 13 1.3 RESEARCH DESIGN – AN OUTLINE ............................................................................................................ 19 2 THEORISING PHOTOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................... 23 2.1 NOTES ON THE THEORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY – TWO TRADITIONS ............................................................... 25 2.2 CRISIS OF A NON-EXISTENT THEORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY ........................................................................... 33 2.3 PHOTOGRAPHY'S PRIVILEGED DISCURSIVE ELEMENTS ............................................................................. 39 2.3.1 Temporal and spatial dislocation .................................................................................................. 42 2.3.2 Iconicity and indexicality .............................................................................................................. 43 2.3.3 Medium-specific means of expression ........................................................................................... 47 2.3.4 Text ................................................................................................................................................ 50 2.3.5 Context .......................................................................................................................................... 55 2.3.6 Mystical power, mystification of power ......................................................................................... 56 3 DEFINING PHOTOJOURNALISM ....................................................................................................... 65 3.1 DEATH OF PHOTOGRAPHY AND ETHICAL APPROACH TO PHOTOJOURNALISM ......................................... 69 3.1.1 The end of photography as evidence of anything .......................................................................... 70 3.2 PHOTOJOURNALISM ETHICS AND QUESTION OF VERACITY ..................................................................... 74 3.2.1 Veracity of event ............................................................................................................................ 76 3.2.2 Veracity of image – ethical norms ................................................................................................. 79 3.2.3 Veracity of image – sanctioning the breaches of ethical codes ..................................................... 87 3.2.4 Veracity of image’s relationship to text and context ..................................................................... 90 3.2.5 Photojournalism ethics: debating veracity or debatable veracity ................................................. 94 3.3 DISCURSIVE RENDERING OF PHOTOJOURNALISM – TOWARDS A DEFINITION .......................................... 100 3.4 CONTRADICTIONS OF THE DOMINANT DISCURSIVE FORMATION – TEXTBOOKS AND "HOW TO" LITERATURE 102 3.4.1 Form ............................................................................................................................................ 104 3.4.2 Content ........................................................................................................................................ 105 3.4.3 Narrative ..................................................................................................................................... 106 3.4.4 Visualisation ................................................................................................................................ 107 3.5 PHOTOJOURNALISM AND THE PRIMACY OF SYMBOLISM ......................................................................... 109 3.6 QUESTIONING THE DISCURSIVE FORMATION .......................................................................................... 112 3.6.1 Critique of ocularcentrism and naturalness of perspective ......................................................... 113 3.6.2 Photography and competing realisms ......................................................................................... 116 3.6.3 Photographic relism and truth beyond appearances .................................................................. 119 3.6.4 Photographic objectivity as industrial need and an outcome of occupational struggles ............ 123 3.7 POSTMODERN CRITIQUE AND THE CHALLENGE OF NEGOTIATED REALISM ............................................. 127 4 EFFICACY OF NEWS PHOTOGRAPHS AS FRAMING DEVICES .............................................. 133 4.1 PERCEIVED EFFECTS OF NEWS PHOTOGRAPHS ........................................................................................ 136 4.1.1 Nature of communication ............................................................................................................ 137 4.1.2 Nature of visuals ......................................................................................................................... 138 4.2 IMAGES AS FRAMING DEVICES .............................................................................................................. 144 4.2.1 Mapping the field I: typologies and implied theoretical premises .............................................. 145 4.2.2 Mapping the field II: in search of a working definition of framing ............................................. 148 4.2.3 Mapping the field III: Framing and national identity ................................................................. 152 5 NATIONAL IDENTIFICATION ........................................................................................................... 155 5.1 THE NATURE OF INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE IDENTIFICATIONS ......................................................... 158 5.2 NATIONAL IDENTITY AS ETHNIC IDENTITY ............................................................................................. 161 5.2.1 National identity is a particular socio-historical allotrope of ethnic identification (ethnicity). 162 5.2.2 National identifications are internalised shared patterns of social differentiation. .................... 163 5.2.3 This community (nation) is understood as a community of destiny. ............................................ 164 5.2.4 Cogitation and concluding notes on national identity ................................................................. 166 5.3 CONCEPTUALISING THE BOUNDARY OF SLOVENE NATIONAL IDENTIFICATION AT INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETAL LEVELS ............................................................................................................................................ 169 5.4 PRIVILEGED DISCURSIVE ELEMENTS OF SLOVENE NATIONAL IDENTITY ................................................. 175 5.4.1 Language, literature, culture....................................................................................................... 176 5.4.2 The origin of a Slovene state ....................................................................................................... 179 5.4.3 The nation's thousand-year dream of independence ................................................................... 181 5.4.4 Imagined geographies of geo-cultural belonging ....................................................................... 183 5.4.5 The notion of limes and frontier .................................................................................................