Copying other people's work has long been an accepted pedagogical technique. Painting students spend days in the museum, sketching away. Mathematicians in training work through the (difficult) classical proofs of important or interesting theorems. Writers write "in the style of" pieces.
The digital era, by making copying so easy, would seem at first glance to be a wonderous new era. Except that it's not.
The point of copying is to, by laboriously duplicating the steps used by the master, to train oneself in the same methods. It works well for painting, by repeating the brushwork of the masters, we learn something of brushwork. It works well for analog photography, by repeating the motions of burning and dodging, we learn something of burning and dodging. It works for mathematicians, by recapitulating the thought processes of the genius, we learn something of genius.
All of these things boil down to building a foundation of specifics from which we may and do generalize. We practice writing Dickensian description, and learn something more general about descriptive writing, something we can apply without being overtly Dickensian. We generalize to a collection of ways one might insert an adjectival phrase. We tweak and twist Dickens. We do the opposite.
In the darkroom, we experience serendipity. Practicing Adams' methods, we forget to set the timer, and in the ensuing disaster, we might learn something interesting. Indeed, my experience is that we're practically certain to.
Human laziness conspires against us. We would like to skip to the good part, to encapsulate the copying process neatly away, get through it in a few minutes, and somehow still gain the knowledge, which is impossible. It is only through the struggle, the boring tedium of copying, that we actually learn. Digital technologies are wonderful at eliminating this part!
Fast forward to now, get specific about photography.
Photography writing is 99% copied. People writing how-to guides simply crib the content from elsewhere, and often don't even understand the technique they're talking about. Missy Mwac and her ilk simply copy gripes from internet forums and expand them with boilerplate "humor". Even what passes for "serious" writing is, mostly, just lifted from elsewhere and slightly tweaked. The present blog, of course, is nothing but brilliance and original thought, though. Cut&Paste, Google, the haste to write something, and the desire for clicks have pretty much sucked the thought out of writing.
The pictures are also 99% copied. One of the most common themes in internet forums is "how does so and so get this look" (hint, it's always raising the black point until the picture looks all misty, or at any rate that's the answer you're going to get even if it's wrong). This is not in and of itself a bad thing, this is, sort of, how we learn. The trouble is that as soon as you see how to do the thing with the tone curve, then you save it as a preset, or make an action, and the knowledge vanishes.
The allegedly experienced photographers (Joined in March 1887, 120812981983 posts) all too often make it clear that they cannot look at a picture and simply see, in general terms, what's been done to saturation, hue, and the tone curve. Often, they can't see where the lights were placed with any reliability. They can't really guess very well at focal lengths, and most of them still get pretty muddled when you start talking about focal lengths relative to format. This should be basic stuff. I can do it, and I'm just some jerk on the internet. These guys may have been shooting forever, but they don't know anything about photography. A lot of that, I believe, has to do with the fact that they've mostly been copying ideas and methods in this modern digital era.
And that is the basic problem with copying in the digital world. It's so easy to make that tedious drudgery vanish, so people do. But the tedious drudgery is the point. Without the tedious drudgery, you're not learning anything.
It is as if a violinist who wanted to learn a technique of Itzhak Perlman were to simply buy a CD of the man's music and simply listen to it over and over. You're never going to learn anything unless you pick up your own violin and start sawing away on it.
So the takeaway. If you want to produce a specific effect by performing a specific well-understood manipulation in a Curves Tool, go do that manipulation by hand, every time. Don't convert it to an action. Don't use a preset. Go do it, by hand, every time. That way you'll never forget what it's actually doing, and you open the door to serendipity.
Generalize and apply, judiciously, the previous paragraph as necessary.
Sunday, July 17, 2016
Saturday, July 16, 2016
Intellectual Property Rights
Here's an amusing thing.
Missy Mwac, who is a boring idiot who fancies herself terribly funny, got another snotty piece placed on PetaPixel, this one about stealing photos. The money quote, for our purposes, is:
Because I am an unpleasant person, and because I know hipster shitheads like this all too well, I peeked directly at her blog. Lookee here, posted on June 8, we find this post. Which includes this picture:
Wow. Missy Mwac, snotty hipster, shoots The Walking Dead? Or, maybe, she actually neither took that picture nor walked away. Indeed, her web site is littered with stolen pictures, but since they're all used ironically, I guess it's OK. Or maybe it's OK because someone else stole the pictures first?
Anyways.
I've talked at some length about how screwed up the intellectual property rights around photography are. Here, for instance, and here.
Be that as it may, photographers seem to be almost universally in favor of strong intellectual property rights for photographs, rights which favor the photographer very very strongly, and that is indeed the current state of the law. These same photographers, often, will happily steal photos for meme purposes, or other "ironic" uses. Many of them probably download movies or music to which they actually have very little right under the law. Some of them probably use cracked copies of Photoshop. But steal someone's boring sunset photo, and feel my wrath! I saw this in the software industry as well, people who literally create intellectual property for a living would routinely steal other kinds of intellectual property.
People are hypocrites. Surprise!
Missy Mwac, who is a boring idiot who fancies herself terribly funny, got another snotty piece placed on PetaPixel, this one about stealing photos. The money quote, for our purposes, is:
Take a look at the image.
Ask yourself, “Did I take this?”
If the answer is yes, do whatever you’d like with it.
If the answer is no, walk away…
It doesn’t freakin’ belong to you.
Ask yourself, “Did I take this?”
If the answer is yes, do whatever you’d like with it.
If the answer is no, walk away…
It doesn’t freakin’ belong to you.
Because I am an unpleasant person, and because I know hipster shitheads like this all too well, I peeked directly at her blog. Lookee here, posted on June 8, we find this post. Which includes this picture:
Wow. Missy Mwac, snotty hipster, shoots The Walking Dead? Or, maybe, she actually neither took that picture nor walked away. Indeed, her web site is littered with stolen pictures, but since they're all used ironically, I guess it's OK. Or maybe it's OK because someone else stole the pictures first?
Anyways.
I've talked at some length about how screwed up the intellectual property rights around photography are. Here, for instance, and here.
Be that as it may, photographers seem to be almost universally in favor of strong intellectual property rights for photographs, rights which favor the photographer very very strongly, and that is indeed the current state of the law. These same photographers, often, will happily steal photos for meme purposes, or other "ironic" uses. Many of them probably download movies or music to which they actually have very little right under the law. Some of them probably use cracked copies of Photoshop. But steal someone's boring sunset photo, and feel my wrath! I saw this in the software industry as well, people who literally create intellectual property for a living would routinely steal other kinds of intellectual property.
People are hypocrites. Surprise!
Friday, July 15, 2016
The Plastic Zeitgeist
I mean here, "plastic" in the sense of easily shaped or molded, malleable.
Zeitgeist is, of course, plastic. It's baked right in to what it is. The point is that it changes, really. Still, the internet has granted us some new avenues, some new, speedier, ways that it can be changed. XKCD had a comic that's related. Anyways.
Whatever the actual position of Marc Riboud's picture in the zeitgeist of the western world was prior to about July 10th of this year, it now occupies a different one, as does Bernie Boston's picture. At least one commentator has definitely mistaken one for the other, I suspect others of the same mistake, and I certainly don't monitor the entire internet. Statistically, this is an error that is happening a substantial number of times. Boston's picture, despite its substantially greater historical impact (I've spent some time poking in to this), is being replaced in the zeitgeist by Riboud's.
Let me spin out an imaginary scenario. Some 20-something wannabee critic needs to cite "that one picture of the Japanese girl in her bath after some industrial accident" and does a google search. Due to some accident of his search some hypothetical minor picture by Eisie turns up. Perhaps our wannabee happens to be physically located close to the location Eisie shot his photo. Google moves in mysterious ways. The photographer is, in the wannabee's mind, close enough to Smith to fit, the picture is perhaps of some little boy injured in some accident with industrial machinery. It too is a bit dark. Wannabee has his citation, cites it, and maybe even appends a "heh heh, I originally misremembered this as a Japanese girl!"
Now the circle is complete. Subsequent vaguely phrased searches for Tomoko will turn up this other picture. Gradually, or perhaps quickly, Smith's photo will be eclipsed in the zeitgeist, a new zeitgeist emerges in which a formerly minor photo of Eisie's replaces the significant photo by Smith.
Since this isn't History with a capital aitch, there's nothing really concrete here to be fact-checked, it's not correctable. All these guys citing Riboud don't actually care which photo they cite, they just want something, anything, kind of appropriate in order to give a gloss of scholarship to their piece. Riboud's picture serves as well as any. It may or may not be the one they meant.
So what? What's lost? Well, in my imaginary scenario the photograph that actually was the tip of the spear, the photograph that did indeed change the world and save lives, gets pushed into the history books and out of the zeitgeist. The common perception is, perhaps, the vague notion that the minor picture was the one that changed the world. A little bit of truth is lost from the common knowledge. Not that the common knowledge is exactly rife with strictly accurate facts now, of course.
Add a lot of these things together, and perhaps we replace truth with error at a faster pace. Perhaps the zeitgeist becomes more and more a pastiche of made up facts, mis-remembered facts, and simple nonsense. Maybe not. Maybe it doesn't matter either way.
Mostly it just irritates me to see people botching stuff like this up, being sloppy and then enthusiastically copying one another's sloppy work.
zeitgeist, zeitgeist, zeitgeist. I love this word.
Zeitgeist is, of course, plastic. It's baked right in to what it is. The point is that it changes, really. Still, the internet has granted us some new avenues, some new, speedier, ways that it can be changed. XKCD had a comic that's related. Anyways.
Whatever the actual position of Marc Riboud's picture in the zeitgeist of the western world was prior to about July 10th of this year, it now occupies a different one, as does Bernie Boston's picture. At least one commentator has definitely mistaken one for the other, I suspect others of the same mistake, and I certainly don't monitor the entire internet. Statistically, this is an error that is happening a substantial number of times. Boston's picture, despite its substantially greater historical impact (I've spent some time poking in to this), is being replaced in the zeitgeist by Riboud's.
Let me spin out an imaginary scenario. Some 20-something wannabee critic needs to cite "that one picture of the Japanese girl in her bath after some industrial accident" and does a google search. Due to some accident of his search some hypothetical minor picture by Eisie turns up. Perhaps our wannabee happens to be physically located close to the location Eisie shot his photo. Google moves in mysterious ways. The photographer is, in the wannabee's mind, close enough to Smith to fit, the picture is perhaps of some little boy injured in some accident with industrial machinery. It too is a bit dark. Wannabee has his citation, cites it, and maybe even appends a "heh heh, I originally misremembered this as a Japanese girl!"
Now the circle is complete. Subsequent vaguely phrased searches for Tomoko will turn up this other picture. Gradually, or perhaps quickly, Smith's photo will be eclipsed in the zeitgeist, a new zeitgeist emerges in which a formerly minor photo of Eisie's replaces the significant photo by Smith.
Since this isn't History with a capital aitch, there's nothing really concrete here to be fact-checked, it's not correctable. All these guys citing Riboud don't actually care which photo they cite, they just want something, anything, kind of appropriate in order to give a gloss of scholarship to their piece. Riboud's picture serves as well as any. It may or may not be the one they meant.
So what? What's lost? Well, in my imaginary scenario the photograph that actually was the tip of the spear, the photograph that did indeed change the world and save lives, gets pushed into the history books and out of the zeitgeist. The common perception is, perhaps, the vague notion that the minor picture was the one that changed the world. A little bit of truth is lost from the common knowledge. Not that the common knowledge is exactly rife with strictly accurate facts now, of course.
Add a lot of these things together, and perhaps we replace truth with error at a faster pace. Perhaps the zeitgeist becomes more and more a pastiche of made up facts, mis-remembered facts, and simple nonsense. Maybe not. Maybe it doesn't matter either way.
Mostly it just irritates me to see people botching stuff like this up, being sloppy and then enthusiastically copying one another's sloppy work.
zeitgeist, zeitgeist, zeitgeist. I love this word.
Thursday, July 14, 2016
Heh
Another amusing item coming out of this recent picture is that people are apparently misremembering their icons. I am nearly certain that these young media guys flogging the THIS IS THE ICONIC PICTURE OF #BLM!!!11!!1!! narrative are vaguely remembering this picture by Bernie Boston:
And lazily googling around a bit until they come up with this picture from Marc Riboud:
And now that enough of them have done this, the circle is complete. The latter picture, which I have I am pretty sure never seen or heard of, and which these people most likely also never have, is supposedly the "iconic" one, rather than the first one, which is probably the one they actually sort of half recall, and which is (or at any rate was) most definitely iconic.
Lewis Bush over at Disphotic most definitely makes this error, pointing us to a youtube video of some sequence from a contemporary movie which is clearly a quote not of the Riboud picture but of the Boston picture (but he identifies it as a quote of Riboud). Even better, if you poke around you come across at least one still from the movie offered up as comparisons with the new photo from Baton Rouge. Again, I think people are half-recalling Bernie Boston's picture, lazily googling around, and coming up with another wrong picture.
Of course, now that the careless twenty-somethings running the asylum have declared the Riboud picture the "iconic" one, it actually is.
Not sure what to make of this, but this kind of sloppy visual memory coupled with modern web search seems to be doing something to our visual culture. It's making it, I suppose, somehow more plastic, more changeable. We are actually watching one photograph's position in the zeitgeist get replaced by another one, or by several. That's interesting. I may have more to say about this, anon.
And lazily googling around a bit until they come up with this picture from Marc Riboud:
And now that enough of them have done this, the circle is complete. The latter picture, which I have I am pretty sure never seen or heard of, and which these people most likely also never have, is supposedly the "iconic" one, rather than the first one, which is probably the one they actually sort of half recall, and which is (or at any rate was) most definitely iconic.
Lewis Bush over at Disphotic most definitely makes this error, pointing us to a youtube video of some sequence from a contemporary movie which is clearly a quote not of the Riboud picture but of the Boston picture (but he identifies it as a quote of Riboud). Even better, if you poke around you come across at least one still from the movie offered up as comparisons with the new photo from Baton Rouge. Again, I think people are half-recalling Bernie Boston's picture, lazily googling around, and coming up with another wrong picture.
Of course, now that the careless twenty-somethings running the asylum have declared the Riboud picture the "iconic" one, it actually is.
Not sure what to make of this, but this kind of sloppy visual memory coupled with modern web search seems to be doing something to our visual culture. It's making it, I suppose, somehow more plastic, more changeable. We are actually watching one photograph's position in the zeitgeist get replaced by another one, or by several. That's interesting. I may have more to say about this, anon.
Tuesday, July 12, 2016
That One Picture
Updated. See the ETA below, inserted in the topically proper location.
There's a photo making the rounds, you've probably seen it (hi Sis!):
It's a hell of a picture, no way around it.
But it's not Tank Man, it's not any of the various pictures from the civil rights movement. Although, I admire everyone in the picture, in a way, except for one. The photographer should be smacked. Still, Tank Man was taking a real risk (and for all we know, died as a result of his actions). Civil rights activists were actually mauled by actual dogs, and so on. This was, like Tank Man, a scene deliberately constructed by the protester, which places it in a category. It was constructed, unlike Tank Man, at very little risk to the protester, which places it in a smaller and less interesting sub-category.
Let's clear away some underbrush. As far as I have learned, the woman was engaged in a basic act of civil disobedience. Good for her. As far as I can tell, the cops did their jobs professionally and calmly, without drama or rancor. Everyone moved through their appointed roles in the approved fashion. Do those cops know they looked like assholes? Of course they did. It's part of the job. The point of civil disobedience is to force the authorities into situations in which they or their appointed servants look like assholes, until they get sick of looking like assholes all the time and enact some changes. Props all around, more or less.
Is the picture a good piece of social commentary? Yes, in a way. It juxtaposes certain things and displays a sort of allegory of the current narrative pretty well. It speaks to excessive militarization of the police, which is a pretty legit political position to be taking these days. It's not like only crazy communists are saying maybe the cops are little too SWAT and not enough Friendly Officer Bill these days, lots of sensible people are saying that. You may or may not agree, but it's not some weird fringe position.
The trouble with the picture is that the immediate narrative it suggests most strongly is outright false. The police were caught mid-motion, in perhaps some kind of weird stutter-step. Those unreadable postures (possibly perfectly natural, like Muybridge's galloping horse, a moment we normally do not perceive has been frozen for our delectation) together with the riot gear are highly suggestive of imminent violence, of an explosive situation. The photographer, we may justifiably assume, shot a bunch of frames before and after the one he chose to show us. Those frames, we might reasonably guess, depict bored cops calmly moving up on a civil disobedient and arresting her, without a drop of drama. This, however, is the frame we are shown.
ETA: There is indeed a sequence of frames which has indeed been published. They show, clearly, some cops hustling up to a woman who does not resist, and hustling her off. They are not obviously bored, the vibe is to my eye much more "gotta get this woman outta the street gotta get this woman outta the street gotta gotta get" and off they hustle, no fuss, no muss, no bother. The weird posture is "hustling cops" frozen in time. Interestingly, once you've seen the sequence, the weird posture is a lot less weird looking and the original picture seems a lot less charged. I remember distinctly the sensation of violence on the verge of explosion, but I no longer see it in the picture. The veil has been removed and the picture is much weaker, but much more true, to my eye. Neat, huh?
This frame, presumably, meets the laughable standards of The Press. No Photoshop! And yet it is a lie, it strongly suggests something that never happened. That suggestion of violence, of something unreadable but probably bad, is a real part of the picture's power. But that suggestion is, by the photographer's own account, completely false. There was never a sniff of such a thing. This was a peaceful protest, the police presence was professional, calm, and reasonable, the selected civil disobedients were scooped up in the approved fashion, and everyone was released the next day.
This immediate falseness damages the picture as a piece of larger social commentary. While it does indeed depict a relevant political idea, it is damaged by the facts of the case. That the woman in the picture chose, at low risk, to be arrested damages that sense of danger. The fact that there in fact was no danger certainly damages that sense of danger. Without the sense of danger, it tends to fall apart into a line of bored dudes sweating in heavy costumes, and a pretty woman in a really great dress. Pictures of this sort only really work when they both support one side's position, and stun the other side into silence, or at best incoherent blather. Sontag was right, the story that is ultimately wrapped around the picture is the important part, the picture is just the tip of the spear.
This is exactly equivalent to Diane Arbus' roll of boring pictures of some kid playing with a toy hand grenade, with one frame where he happens to be making a weird face. That's the frame she prints, because it's awesome. But it too is false.
Compare also with Gene Smith's "Tomoko in her Bath" which is "photoshopped" all to hell. Today's NYT would probably refuse to publish it. But it is far more true than the picture we're looking at here. Everything important in the frame is true. The mother's love, the child's deformity, the tragedy. The narratives that picture suggests most strongly are all precisely true, even if the rendering of the shadows is not.
That the press is, apparently, propagating this thing all over and promoting it as "iconic" and so on speaks, loudly, to the bankruptcy of that enterprise.
But you know, it's still a hell of a picture.
There's a photo making the rounds, you've probably seen it (hi Sis!):
It's a hell of a picture, no way around it.
But it's not Tank Man, it's not any of the various pictures from the civil rights movement. Although, I admire everyone in the picture, in a way, except for one. The photographer should be smacked. Still, Tank Man was taking a real risk (and for all we know, died as a result of his actions). Civil rights activists were actually mauled by actual dogs, and so on. This was, like Tank Man, a scene deliberately constructed by the protester, which places it in a category. It was constructed, unlike Tank Man, at very little risk to the protester, which places it in a smaller and less interesting sub-category.
Let's clear away some underbrush. As far as I have learned, the woman was engaged in a basic act of civil disobedience. Good for her. As far as I can tell, the cops did their jobs professionally and calmly, without drama or rancor. Everyone moved through their appointed roles in the approved fashion. Do those cops know they looked like assholes? Of course they did. It's part of the job. The point of civil disobedience is to force the authorities into situations in which they or their appointed servants look like assholes, until they get sick of looking like assholes all the time and enact some changes. Props all around, more or less.
Is the picture a good piece of social commentary? Yes, in a way. It juxtaposes certain things and displays a sort of allegory of the current narrative pretty well. It speaks to excessive militarization of the police, which is a pretty legit political position to be taking these days. It's not like only crazy communists are saying maybe the cops are little too SWAT and not enough Friendly Officer Bill these days, lots of sensible people are saying that. You may or may not agree, but it's not some weird fringe position.
The trouble with the picture is that the immediate narrative it suggests most strongly is outright false. The police were caught mid-motion, in perhaps some kind of weird stutter-step. Those unreadable postures (possibly perfectly natural, like Muybridge's galloping horse, a moment we normally do not perceive has been frozen for our delectation) together with the riot gear are highly suggestive of imminent violence, of an explosive situation. The photographer, we may justifiably assume, shot a bunch of frames before and after the one he chose to show us. Those frames, we might reasonably guess, depict bored cops calmly moving up on a civil disobedient and arresting her, without a drop of drama. This, however, is the frame we are shown.
ETA: There is indeed a sequence of frames which has indeed been published. They show, clearly, some cops hustling up to a woman who does not resist, and hustling her off. They are not obviously bored, the vibe is to my eye much more "gotta get this woman outta the street gotta get this woman outta the street gotta gotta get" and off they hustle, no fuss, no muss, no bother. The weird posture is "hustling cops" frozen in time. Interestingly, once you've seen the sequence, the weird posture is a lot less weird looking and the original picture seems a lot less charged. I remember distinctly the sensation of violence on the verge of explosion, but I no longer see it in the picture. The veil has been removed and the picture is much weaker, but much more true, to my eye. Neat, huh?
This frame, presumably, meets the laughable standards of The Press. No Photoshop! And yet it is a lie, it strongly suggests something that never happened. That suggestion of violence, of something unreadable but probably bad, is a real part of the picture's power. But that suggestion is, by the photographer's own account, completely false. There was never a sniff of such a thing. This was a peaceful protest, the police presence was professional, calm, and reasonable, the selected civil disobedients were scooped up in the approved fashion, and everyone was released the next day.
This immediate falseness damages the picture as a piece of larger social commentary. While it does indeed depict a relevant political idea, it is damaged by the facts of the case. That the woman in the picture chose, at low risk, to be arrested damages that sense of danger. The fact that there in fact was no danger certainly damages that sense of danger. Without the sense of danger, it tends to fall apart into a line of bored dudes sweating in heavy costumes, and a pretty woman in a really great dress. Pictures of this sort only really work when they both support one side's position, and stun the other side into silence, or at best incoherent blather. Sontag was right, the story that is ultimately wrapped around the picture is the important part, the picture is just the tip of the spear.
This is exactly equivalent to Diane Arbus' roll of boring pictures of some kid playing with a toy hand grenade, with one frame where he happens to be making a weird face. That's the frame she prints, because it's awesome. But it too is false.
Compare also with Gene Smith's "Tomoko in her Bath" which is "photoshopped" all to hell. Today's NYT would probably refuse to publish it. But it is far more true than the picture we're looking at here. Everything important in the frame is true. The mother's love, the child's deformity, the tragedy. The narratives that picture suggests most strongly are all precisely true, even if the rendering of the shadows is not.
That the press is, apparently, propagating this thing all over and promoting it as "iconic" and so on speaks, loudly, to the bankruptcy of that enterprise.
But you know, it's still a hell of a picture.
Marketing Photos
My wife's colleagues in the financial planning biz have generously expressed positive things about the pictures I am taking for her blog, and wondered how it might be done. So, I proposed a few ideas and here are a few more. 100% of the photography, editing, etc, was done with my phone. This is a tutorial, my regular readers may elect to skip this.
Monday, July 11, 2016
Poh-lice Video
This is a highly charged issue. I will do my very best to be neutral. Comments which are not, in my opinion, neutral will be ruthlessly moderated away.
Allen Murabayashi over at the photoshelter blog has a piece up, and there's a previous piece of some worth as well. While Allen himself seems to be trying to maintain distance, he's quoting a lot of people who are trotting out the same tired business about how "this is all new, and so much worse, and it's numbing us all" which has been something of a drumbeat, well, forever.
Images of extreme violence have been with us forever. I don't think there's any actual evidence that they numb us particularly, we're already numb. Things that happen to us are simply of a wildly different order than things that we see in pictures and videos. Also, the degree of sheer nastiness that was committed to the photograph in days of yore was vastly higher than now. Seriously. People were gleefully shooting shit that is now the material of nightmares, because in 1890 or whatever, it was pretty ordinary stuff. Susan Sontag went on at some length on these topics in Regarding the Pain of Others and it's a little surprising that Allen doesn't cite her.
Anyways, Sontag is definitely present, notably in the way that the various chunks of video, the various stills, are interpreted, presented, and discussed. Probably the only really new thing that's appeared recently is the cell phone video, which is different from what came before largely in that it leaves essentially everything open to interpretation. It's a moving set of indistinct blobs, and an inscrutable soundtrack. This leaves the field more open than ever for applying whatever narrative you like to it, and people do. They always did, but they spent a lot more time imagining what was outside the frame. With a cell phone video, you can imagine what's in the frame as well.
As always, though, the "photograph" (or video) lends a beautiful sense of certainty to it all. You can see it all so clearly, it's obvious. The people who disagree with you either have not seen the video or are insane partisans.
Police-worn body cameras are not going to change this. The may provide a better quality of video (it is inconceivable that it be worse), but I predict that we'll see the same incomprehensible videos. A mass of bodies, a frequently obstructed view, shouting, an occasional instant of clarity. A sound that is either a gunshot, a car door slamming, a someone tapping the camera, or any number of other things. Onto this mess will be projected whatever narrative the viewer favors, and the video will, again, constitute "proof."
Pictures of cops going about their business are, I believe, tremendously worthwhile, nonetheless. They have real evidentiary value, in reconstructing timelines and corroborating or refuting testimony. They do not, by themselves, provide any sort of useful narrative, but that's quite a different thing. Secondarily, but perhaps of greater long term importance, they present the police with the useful sensation of being observed.
Policing is the sort of job where, to be blunt, it's simply done better when it's being observed. Observation of the worker stifles creativity and damages morale, but for some jobs, it makes the quality of the work go up. And I want my policing to be done at the highest possible quality. Frankly, if it damages the morale of the police force, so be it. Media backlash and getting shot also damage morale, I expect, so maybe it'll be a wash in the long run.
So, while I approve of videoing the police at their business, I do not think, and neither should you, that we can expect to "learn what went down" from any such videos. The court system works vastly harder at this problem than the layperson, has far more machinery to apply to that problem, and does a fairly rotten job of it themselves. It is ludicrous to suppose that we can look at a video on youtube and "know" in any meaningful sense what happened. But gosh, it sure feels like we do!
Allen Murabayashi over at the photoshelter blog has a piece up, and there's a previous piece of some worth as well. While Allen himself seems to be trying to maintain distance, he's quoting a lot of people who are trotting out the same tired business about how "this is all new, and so much worse, and it's numbing us all" which has been something of a drumbeat, well, forever.
Images of extreme violence have been with us forever. I don't think there's any actual evidence that they numb us particularly, we're already numb. Things that happen to us are simply of a wildly different order than things that we see in pictures and videos. Also, the degree of sheer nastiness that was committed to the photograph in days of yore was vastly higher than now. Seriously. People were gleefully shooting shit that is now the material of nightmares, because in 1890 or whatever, it was pretty ordinary stuff. Susan Sontag went on at some length on these topics in Regarding the Pain of Others and it's a little surprising that Allen doesn't cite her.
Anyways, Sontag is definitely present, notably in the way that the various chunks of video, the various stills, are interpreted, presented, and discussed. Probably the only really new thing that's appeared recently is the cell phone video, which is different from what came before largely in that it leaves essentially everything open to interpretation. It's a moving set of indistinct blobs, and an inscrutable soundtrack. This leaves the field more open than ever for applying whatever narrative you like to it, and people do. They always did, but they spent a lot more time imagining what was outside the frame. With a cell phone video, you can imagine what's in the frame as well.
As always, though, the "photograph" (or video) lends a beautiful sense of certainty to it all. You can see it all so clearly, it's obvious. The people who disagree with you either have not seen the video or are insane partisans.
Police-worn body cameras are not going to change this. The may provide a better quality of video (it is inconceivable that it be worse), but I predict that we'll see the same incomprehensible videos. A mass of bodies, a frequently obstructed view, shouting, an occasional instant of clarity. A sound that is either a gunshot, a car door slamming, a someone tapping the camera, or any number of other things. Onto this mess will be projected whatever narrative the viewer favors, and the video will, again, constitute "proof."
Pictures of cops going about their business are, I believe, tremendously worthwhile, nonetheless. They have real evidentiary value, in reconstructing timelines and corroborating or refuting testimony. They do not, by themselves, provide any sort of useful narrative, but that's quite a different thing. Secondarily, but perhaps of greater long term importance, they present the police with the useful sensation of being observed.
Policing is the sort of job where, to be blunt, it's simply done better when it's being observed. Observation of the worker stifles creativity and damages morale, but for some jobs, it makes the quality of the work go up. And I want my policing to be done at the highest possible quality. Frankly, if it damages the morale of the police force, so be it. Media backlash and getting shot also damage morale, I expect, so maybe it'll be a wash in the long run.
So, while I approve of videoing the police at their business, I do not think, and neither should you, that we can expect to "learn what went down" from any such videos. The court system works vastly harder at this problem than the layperson, has far more machinery to apply to that problem, and does a fairly rotten job of it themselves. It is ludicrous to suppose that we can look at a video on youtube and "know" in any meaningful sense what happened. But gosh, it sure feels like we do!
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