Lecture Six: Censorship and The 'Truth'

Today's lecture reminded me a lot of a lecture I attended last year titled "photography as a document", but today had slightly different undertones. Today we explored the notions of censorship and 'truth' and how indexical qualities of photography can obscure this 'truth'. 

Lecture Notes

A good example of when a photograph's authenticity has been questioned is Robert Capa's Death of a Loyalist Soldier. It was questioned whether this was the actual point of the soldier's death or whether it was staged. Here I can refer to the lecture I sat in my first year, where there were many cases of photographers staging scenes to emphasise a deeper meaning or message, either because the actual scene wasn't a strong representation of the message they were wanting to portray or due to limitations imposed upon photojournalists' freedom of movement and not being able to go to active fronts.

Robert Capa - Death of a Loyalist Soldier (1936)

The photo had said to have been staged due to the location in which the photograph was taken. Many critics claim that they were miles away from battle lines due to the examination of the background scenery, there were also contradictions in the accepted account of the photograph; It was noted that in an interview Capa mentioned that the soldier was killed by a burst of machine-gun fire rather than a sniper riffle which is what the photograph actually suggests. It was then argued that the soldier was killed whilst staging for a photograph, and the later uncover of "The Mexican Suitcase" (boxes of negatives containing hundreds of negatives taken by Capa, Gerda Taro and David Seymour) could confirm that this was in fact the point of his death, but other stills still suggest he was killed during a staging.

Even though this is supposedly the point in which he died, it's still not a truthful depiction of the war that was occurring at the time, and we have to be careful when it comes to what we perceive as truth as it can often be obscured by a number of different factors. The following are examples that I have gathered from the lecture:

- Staging photographs and not knowing for sure what was happening at the time in which the photo was taken (example as shown above)
- The addition or the accompany of text. The title of the work or what people have to say about the piece can obscure our views of it.
- The media that has been used.

Ken Jarecke - Death of an Iraqi Soldier

This last example brings me to a good point regarding Censorship, and that the media that has been used to create a piece can change whether we feel is it acceptable or not. For example, Ken Jarecke photographed a burned-beyond-recognition Iraqi soldier in a destroyed truck. The photograph was up for being published in a newspaper which caused debate as to whether it was acceptable to use. The photograph was in colour which made it even more graphic and disturbing as the horror wasn't 'obscured by using black and white'. The photograph was deemed too sensitive and graphic for even the editors to see, and so went unseen in the US but was actually published in the UK by the London Observe which caused controversy due to the nature of the photograph. But that was what the photograph intended to do, it was to raise awareness of the horror that was occurring around us, and to get us asking "is this something we want to be involved in?". By looking at images like this we can have a more informed decision of whether we want to go to war, as a lot of information such as this is often hidden from the public, so in this case the truth is being obscured by censoring what we see and this withheld of information.

Censorship in Terms of Animation: 
Towards the end of the lecture we started to consider whether art should sit outside censorship laws and whether it is acceptable to use this media as a way to approach more controversial topics. To be in the possession or making/distribution of decent pictures of children is an offence and can get you up to ten years in jail, which is why there was a debate with Tierney Gearon's work. She often photographed her nude children and considered it the "diary of my soul". Her work was exhibited in the Saatchi Gallery in 2001 which caused a great deal of media coverage considering her children we underage and the police had to get involved on a number of occasions. It raises the question whether it should be deemed acceptable because it is art. This leads me to Michele Cournoyer's The Hat.

Le Chapeau de Michele Cournoyer

The Hat is about a young woman that works as an exotic dancer who recalls incidents from her past where she was abused by a male. The animation is very disturbing as Cournoyer is wanting you to share the pain of the woman in the story. To my understanding the animation is totally fictional but it is still tough to watch and explores themes that make most very uncomfortable, which again refers back to the question does it make it acceptable because of the way it has been addressed?