Uses of Photography, an essay by John Berger

This post is my note on Berger’s essay titled: “Uses of Photography”

The essay is a record of Berger’s responses to Susan Sontag’s book titled On Photography. Here, Berger talks about the role of photography in industrial capitalism and personal life. The discourse is undeniably political, however, in the process Berger offers some important insights into how a photographic culture affects the way we see and experience the world. Berger’s first observation is that the proliferation of small cameras turned the act of photographing from a ritual into a reflex. Sontag is quoted here.

“Through photographs the world becomes a series of unrelated , free standing particles; and history, past and present, a set of anecdotes and faits divers. The camera makes reality atomic, manageable and opaque. It is a view of the world which denies interconnectedness, continuity, but which confers on each moment the character of a mystery”

This quote is the seed of all thoughts that are within the essay.

It is pointed out that photography has become in our age the replacement or even a reinvention of memory.

“What served in place of the photograph; before the camera’s invention? The expected answer is the engraving, the drawing, the painting. The more revealing answer might be: memory. What photographs do out there in space was previously done within reflection.”

The photograph severs the moment from its context and presents it naked, vulnerable to misguided interpretation. Thus, when an image makes use of the various visual methods of connotation (in the sense of Barthes) it runs into the risk of obscuring the flow  of events which the photograph was a member of and becoming a mere spectacle.  The camera can turn nature, history, suffering, other people, catastrophes into spectacles. What is worse, in a society that bears this spectacular photographic culture, the mind trains itself to spectacularize  events and history without a camera.

“The spectacle an eternal present of immediate expectation: memory ceases to be necessary or desirable. With the loss of memory the continuities of meaning and judgement are also lost to us. The camera relieves us of the burden of memory.”

With the above preparation we can introduce the central idea of the essay: There are two distinct uses of photography, the private and the public. The private photograph, the family photo, photographs of uncles, mothers, fathers are read in the context that they were taken. They are still a part of the stream of events from which they were photographically severed. In contrast the public photograph, the images in the newspaper or on television have been deeply affected by the violence of de-contextualization. They present us with information but it is free of a lived experience.

“It (the public photograph) records an instant sight about which this stranger has shouted: Look!”

This renders the photograph ready for any use. This, Berger believes, has been consumerism’s sustenance in the 20th century. He goes on to suggest an alternative photography. And here it should be noted that the alternative is not to use the public photograph against capitalism for socialist causes.

“For the photographer this means thinking of her or himself not so much as a reporter to the rest of the world but, rather, as a recorder for those involved in the events photographed. This distinction is crucial.”

It should be noted here that the experience of a photograph as private or public depends as much on the way it is shot as on the audience it receives. This fact makes Berger’s proposal of an alternate photographic culture plausible.

Reading this essay, Berger’s notes on the photography of Paul Strand come to mind. I am also reminded of the American images of Vivian Maier.

A portrait by Vivian Maier.

Paul Strand

Tags: barthes, consumerism, culture, industrial capitalism, john berger, media, philosophy, photography, susan sontag

• June 14, 2013
• capitalism, consumerism, culture, john berger, philosophy, photography, socialism, susan sontag
• 2 Comments