Ritchin, Ribalta, and Dzenko on Analog to Digital Photography

Fred Ritchin in "Into The Digital" from After Photography, Jorge Ribalta in "Molecular Documents" from The Meaning of Photography, and Corey Dzenko in "Analog to Digital" from Afterimage all pose different view points on the shift from analog photography in to the realm of digital photography.

Fred Ritchin, I feel, gave the most straightforward breakdown of the analog to digital transition. He ultimately does not quite take a personal stance on which he feels is "better" or more relatable to photography's original indexicality (realism), but rather he lists what has changed in the movement from film to digital. What he focuses on is the fact that photography, and the way in which we view photography, has changed dramatically. As you can see in the above diagram, Ritchin broke down the distinguishable characteristics between analog and digital photography. Here is what he came up with:

          Analog:                              Digital:

          - Substance                         - Code and bytes

          - Organic                             - Geometric

          - Rottable                            - Infinite

          - Original                            - Non-original

          - Nature-based (real)          - Representation of the real (nature)

          - Linear (time)                    - Non-linear

          - Tone imprint                     - Changeable pixels

As you can see, some of these are pros, some are cons, but some points are just fact, and seem to present no argument for or against either analog or digital practices of photography. The way in which Ritchin addresses the digital real is almost a mix between how Dzenko sees the digital real (representational) and how Ribalta sees the digital real (different from analogous real, but still a level of reality). Ritchin states that we have compressed the real world into a 2D rendering of reality in a confined box (camera screen, photograph, computer screen, etc.) This "rendering of reality" is created because we still can see trees and people and objects in the digital photographs, but the linearity is removed (this may be a digital composite of objects that never existed in the same frame at the same time) and the light that was reflected off of these objects through the camera lens was not burned away on silver, but rather imprinted and changed into code and bytes to be read as an electronic rendering of "this is a tree" and "this is a human" and "this is a car". Though we still see the photograph as reality, it is quite a different reality than when we view an analog print. With the digital, we are looking at a compilation of thousands upon thousands of small, colored squares, whereas with the analog, we are looking at pieces of organic, randomly shaped grain that create the "tone imprint" Richtin previously mentioned. Ultimately, Richtin leaves it up to the reader whether they want to view this changed photography as a step up from analog, a step down, or just a change.

Jorge Ribalta is a little more opinionated in his discussion of the analog and digital, but he bases his ideas of this changed medium on the same points that Richtin makes when talking about photography's transition. Ribalta seems to be more biased toward the solidity of the analog, but won't deny the fact that photography is no longer analog and needs to then be rendered accordingly because we cannot keep looking at the digital in the same way in which we viewed the analog. One of his main arguments for the analog is that there is a direct relationship between the object and the photo and the viewer, that a viewer looks at this analogous photograph and sees that this tree exists in this spot at the exact point in time the shutter opened and closed, and now here it is, shown before them on paper in a realistic duplication of that instance in nature. However with these digital ideas, they become disposable: the photographer can take a picture of the tree, delete it, take another, delete it, take another, merge it with another photo, and present it as a realistic moment in time. In doing so, the relationship with the photo has been distanced and the linearity has been broken. This is the reality of the digital. Okay, says Ribalta, since "Documentary realism is the status power of photography" then we need to come up with a separate realism to pair with digital photography. With photoshop and the ability to edit photographs from their original form, the analogous reality disappears, and photography dies. This is where the photographic (the immortal aura of photography in its cultural and social effects of on people; photography's ghost, still floating among society) is born, in that we need realism, and we will always view photography as realistic (well, maybe we won't always view it as realistic, but as of now, we still heavily do), then we must reinvent this realism. Ribalta's idea is for a molecular realism. This molecular realism is based off of Felix Guattari's view of the changes in political revolution, going from a unified, homogeneous group, to a "molecular revolution" where these political view points scatter and each take up a separate stance. Ribalta states "A molecular realism involves overcoming the opposition between documentary and fiction and reinventing documentary methods based on the negotiation of the relationship between author [photographer] and spectator." As an example of this molecular realism in practice, Ribalta uses Jo Spence, who made the statement "If we truly want to democratize how meanings are produced in images, we need to realize that all those practices available to the professional, from the high street photographer, through to advertising photography, to avant-garde image/text art photography can all be appropriated right into the living room." Basically, Spence is saying that photographs can be created with a meaning that embodies the way the average person may see the image. In doing so, this molecular realism is put into play and the way people view the realism in photographs can be controlled in the way the photographs are taken. Again, Ribalta sees this analog-to-digital in relation to reality as a call for changing the way in which we view these photographs and their reality.

Also touching on photography's indexical role, is Corey Dzenko. His main argument is that yes, although photography has gone from a film base to a digital base, and although the tools for its creation have changed, the act of viewing the photographs has not. He says that digital photographs are still read as reality; that people don't look at a digital photograph and immediately question its legitimacy based solely on the fact that it was captured or rendered digitally. Dzenko does admit that whereas the analog is straight documentary, and it is physical and carries with it the weight of substance, that digital is merely representational, symbolic, and iconic. However, he goes on to discuss the ways in which we have moved from the analog to the digital, and that it has not been a jump, but a slow, somewhat smooth integration of the two processes into each other. He gives the example of the newspapers (ones that have no print versions now but are solely online), where people read the same stories and see the same photographs set up in the same style and the same places on their screen as they would see on the physical paper. The title is still at the top, with the date below it, and below that, columns of text with photographic integration. The process of reading the article is the exact same, albeit the fact that one is now looking at a lit screen instead of physical newsprint. Dzenko says that because we have smoothly integrated ourselves into this digital realm, we still view analog and digital photographs the same, and take each of their realities as, well, reality. His views do differ greatly from those of Ritchin and Ribalta in saying that there really is not much of a change, but he does also admit that sometimes people do not take digital as reality and that there is the potential for people to not believe digital in the future, although at this point, this has not yet widely happened (and he references the fact that even analog photography has not always been completely truthful in its representation of "reality).

 I have had somewhat similar views to all three writers here, differing at some points but agreeing in others. As for the index of photography being that it is perceived as real, I have always had a problem with this. Even in the late 19th century, photographs were being staged (people were dressed in indian costumes and told to pose with a gun behind a rock wall, or dressed as a "poor Egyptian" and posed amongst massive Egyptian sculptures, etc) and these photographs were told off as reality, that this is what the world is like because how can it not be? We have photos!! So even if the photograph shows exactly what was in front of the camera when the shutter opened and closed, I don't believe that this should be taken for a different type of reality. I am not yet sure what type of reality that would be, but I believe that there is a photographic reality (this unaltered image of what was burned into the film) and an actual reality (what is real outside of the frame; the reality that comes with the linearity of time). Because there is not just one umbrella of reality, nothing can then be taken as a perfect reproduction of an event in time (this also includes the fact that somebody is taking the photograph, and therefore chooses what to frame, what to crop out, the angle the photograph is taken at, the focal point, and later, whether it should be color or black and white). Not only can photography not be taken as a perfection of a representation of reality, but even things seen with our own eyes, without the barrier of a lens or ground glass, can be a warped sense of reality (magicians have been playing with this concept since, well, whenever perception of the eye was discovered. Maybe this is how Jesus performed "miracles"?) Anyway, in the discussion of analog versus digital not dealing with reality, I have mixed feelings. The pros and cons have been long talked about, with convenience, cost, tonality, crispness, quality, etc, but with these points, at least at the point we are at in the digital realm, it is all subjective and opinions. I do believe, however, that film will never be completely obsolete, albeit harder and harder and more expensive to find/use.

Reinhardt and Azoulay

The two readings Isn't This The Most Civil of Claims? by Ariella Azoulay, as an essay for Gillian Laub's photographs entitled "Testimony", and Mark Reinhardt's Picturing violence: Aesthetics and The Anxiety of Critique both break down how one sees a/o should see photographs that were taken to relay a message to the viewer. Though both quite different in claims, and both bringing different issues to the plate, the two readings do overlap slightly.

Reinhardt's focus is on the aesthetic of the images. Right off, he brings about questions of the possibility for the overpowering of aestheticism and what aesthetics really means. Because there was not a specific definition of "aesthetic" brought to the reading (Reinhardt states that it can be as narrow as beautification for pleasure and as open as sensory perception) and because the definition can encompass almost two complete opposite ideas, it seemed to me that the rest of his argument here seemed sort of arbitrary.

Since I have strong opinions that contradict Reinhardt's, I'll start with laying out some of what he said. He posed the problem that it is possible that a photograph's aestheticism may lessen the response of the viewer to the actual event within the image (and these images he is talking about are images of suffering). He uses the photographs from the prisoner abuse at Abu Graib as his first example of people's reactions to what photographs may show (not so much talking about aestheticism here, but more so how people respond to images of suffering alone). When these photos of torture were taken, they were not exactly to give people an update and documentary evidence of what is going on in the war and how it's happening, but they were being used as a secondary torture device: to exploit these people being tortured by showing the world their naked bodies being dragged, tied, or electrocuted, and sometimes even showing their faces to verify their identities to the world. These are not documentary, photojournalistic wartime photographs; they are methods of torture and bring up the questions 'Does our viewing of these photographs tell us anything or make us feel anything? Or do they just prolong the suffering of the individuals in the images? Are we making ourselves more knowledgeable of their situation, or are we simply adding to their humiliation?' For me, it was more of a moral debate about if I should view them to be informed (because they are events that, no matter how horrible, did happen), even if it prolongs the suffering of those pictured. I still do not have an answer to this, but I'm not sure there is a straightforward, no strings attached way to come to a conclusion about it. What I found interesting about others' views on the matter was the media's decisions of whether to show it or not, and their reasons for doing so. Some journals and newspapers said that the photographs were indecent for public eye because of nudity, and some showed the photographs but blurred the nudity, appearing to make these images more "socially acceptable". However, the faces of those in the images were not blurred. Is it not indecent to show the faces of those tortured and to reveal their identities to the world? And is the focus on respect more heavily weighed toward the viewers' emotions and sensitivity than to the subjects' sufferings?

Another part of this discussion that caught my attention was that there have been no photographs shown of dead or dying American soldiers. Based off of what Reinhardt stated about the "exotic" status of some of the dead Iraqis, it would seem that there is a social hierarchy in media, showing viewers that the most respect is granted to those nearest to us (Americans, and probably westerner's in general), and that as we get further away from our home, and into this "exotic" land, the people there are not as important and do not deserve our respect, so we will therefore have no qualms about showing straight photographs of Middle Easterners lying dead in a ditch (at this point, it seems that it would not matter the side that the dead were fighting for, but the fact that they are part of this misunderstood, exotic place, that they can be exploited openly). In this argument, it seems that the photographs sort of become unimportant. If the media is already determining what we as the public will find horrifying or gruesome and unacceptable to show on the nightly news, then does it matter what the images show? The photographs are not the ones giving us our emotional reactions at this point, it is the stories that we are told, the words that we hear, and the mental images we concoct.

So what happens when we do focus on the photographs and specifically what they show to us? Benjamin says that aesthetics show even the worst poverty as an object of enjoyment and spectacle. I completely disagree. Maybe it's because I'm a photographer and understand the formal qualities of an image and how they work into the aesthetic (that if the formality of an image is terrible, there will be hardly any aesthetic because the two go hand in hand), but I feel that if an image is aesthetically pleasing, I will be even more focused on the subject and the action taking place within the photograph. I will not be busy worrying about how I cannot see what his happening in the shadows because of poorly thought out lighting and I will not be anxious over the fingers and toes cut off on the framing. If it is aesthetically pleasing, my senses will be at a happy subconscious equilibrium, leaving the rest of my conscious thought to analyze and break down the subject's predicament/suffering. Again, maybe this is because I am a photographer and know of these formal qualities, but this was difficult for me to read because it seems that if people can look at a photograph of a starved, dying, skeletal man crawling across a dirt ground and only think "Look at how the framing lets you see into the distance and how the diffused lighting really softens up the look of the image, and how the man's limbs create great leading lines, etc", then we have lost faith in humanity. I guess I am slightly lost in how this debate can even arise, that aesthetics can diffuse how somebody views suffering. But, this is just how I have responded to reading this article of Reinhardt's, and we'll now move forward.

Reinhardt does bring up a few more examples of images by James Nachtwey and Sebastiao Salgado, as well as a few other photographers, and begins to sort of counteract what he had been talking about in relation to Benjamin's claim of the aesthetic. Reinhardt poses the fact that there can be an acknowledgment of the aesthetic qualities, but that they don't rid the image of its meaning. That with aestheticism in an image, the technical aspect is removed and the viewer is then focused on their sensibility toward the image. Or maybe that it's not dealing with the aesthetic at all, but the fact that it is a photograph. That it is a document of something that really happened (or according to Azoulay, is currently happening). Reinhardt then mentions Sontag's views in "On Photography" and how there may come to be a monotony in viewing so many images of pain and suffering. To this, Allan Sekula suggests that we use text to break this routine way of viewing a photograph and moving onward with our lives. Sekula believes that by adding text, we may be able to view these photographs more so as a documentation and be taken a step back from the absorption of the images, read the text, and then create a relation to what we have read with what we see. Alfredo Jaar attempts to do just that with his "The Eyes of Gutete Emerita" where he displays a minute and a half of text, and then just a flash of an image. His intentions are to get people to stand in front of the piece longer, to really let it sink in, and to be intrigued by the quick flash of the image. Potentially, this may be a way to break that "pornography" of viewing images, but this almost seems to me to be less about the image and less about photography as it is about the creation of mental imagery and a connection to a story (i.e. journalism, not photography). However, having not seen the exhibition of this piece in person, I cannot make a claim to how this piece verifies itself.

The next part that Reinhardt delves into is the aesthetic in relation to two photographs about September 11, 2001. The first photograph is from Joel Meyerowitz, depicting the clean up efforts at Ground Zero (though showing no people) and showing it in such a way with the dust and smoke rising up into the bright sky with almost a painterly effect. The second photograph is one by Thomas Ruff, who, although he did not take the photograph, appropriated an image of the burning twin towers, then blew the image up to quite a large size and increased the size of the pixels as well. Reinhardt's argument dealing with the aesthetic here is that because of the pleasing aesthetic in Meyerowitz's image, it doesn't make the viewer think. It doesn't bring about this revelation of pain and suffering that he believes one would get out of viewing Ruff's image. Here, he believes that the image demands attention and illudes to people being in the buildings currently, suffering and burning, and that as a viewer we would have a stronger response to this image that would not be considered aesthetic, with its elephant sized pixels. Though I can see where he's coming from, I would have to disagree yet again. Maybe if one is looking at these images without any prior knowledge of 9/11, they may see the images this way, unaware that Meyerowitz's photograph shows hundreds of uncovered bodies, some dead, some alive, and that Ruff's image would appear as a real-time photograph of people being burned in these smoking buildings. But in a comparison of the two photographs and with prior knowledge taken into account, I feel that Meyerowitz's photograph of the smoking Ground Zero may bring about the same, if not more, response in relation to the suffering of those people knowing that thousands of tons of metal and concrete (being shown hosed down) are burying 2500 people.

The last part of viewing photographs that Reinhardt talks about is the acknowledgment. He says that when viewing images of people, there needs to be a call for acknowledgment. This would mean that there doesn't have to be an explanation of the image and what is going on, but that the subject is showing the viewer what his happening, and through this connection between the subject and viewer, there is acknowledgment. Without this acknowledgment, without this call for relation between the subject and audience, the image has failed. If there is no connection reaching out to the viewer, there is a lack of the meaning of the image coming through in the understanding of the photograph by the viewer. This, in essence, is what Azoulay looks for in photographs.

This essay by Azoulay is a prerequisite to last week's reading on The Civil Contract of Photography, and is a more upfront, simplified "starter" to what she delves into in The Civil Contract. Azoulay starts out by saying that when a photograph is taken (and here she is talking mostly of Gillian Laub's photographs), the attention to detail and objects and framing within the image create this acknowledgment between the subject and viewer. That with these little clues of the subject's life, we can relate in some way or another, and we can get to know the subject through the interaction between these details, and through the interaction between the subject and the photographer (how the picture was taken. This can be seen in a lot of Zwelethu Mthethwa's work and Fazal Sheikh's work, shown below). With this understanding that we are all a part of the human condition, and that we all suffer and want to reach out to somebody and share with them what we are feeling, we begin to realize and relate to each other in ways different than those bounded by our social/geographical/religious rulings. When we break "sides" and show that we are all human, this connection is made even stronger and the borders of the photographs seem to dissolve until we are standing next to this person and understanding their pain. This is acknowledgment that Reinhardt was talking about, but Azoulay takes it that step further to look past the photograph as an object and to view the people just as that: people.

I really enjoy Azoulay's understanding of the human condition and the way we should look at photographs to acknowledge and watch the people within them in a neutral ground, especially in comparison to the way Reinhardt views acknowledgment in the more simple terms of a recognition, or a fleeting response. In the diagram below, I have attempted to visualize how these two analyze the ways in which viewers come to acknowledge the subject of a photograph.

Zwelethu Mthethwa:

Fazal Sheikh:

 ...with...

*I'd like to apologize for 1) how opinionated I feel this blog post was. The Reinhardt article made me quite frustrated. and 2) some of my ideas where not fully expressed. I took notes as I read and then went back to search the document for some of the key words, but the Reinhardt document didn't recognize the pdf as having text and I was not able to find some of the points in the article to help articulate my discussion. Sorry guys!

Sontag and Azoulay

 The excerpts of Susan Sontag in Regarding The Pain of Others and Ariella Azoulay in The Civil Contract of Photography both take on drastically different views that what we have just read about in regard to Fried and his views on photography. Briefly, both of these women are more focused on what Fried would call the "theatrical" quality of the images, or what the viewer is supposed to take away from the photographs. To both Sontag and Azoulay, these responses are part of what make the photographs real which shows a harsh contrast to Fried's desire for anti-theatrical, aesthetic images.

Susan Sontag had previously written a series of essays entitled On Photography which she wrote in 1977 and came forward with the issue of photography showing traumatic events and gruesome happenings. Sontag believed then that photographs such as these, that we see constantly streaming through the news, ultimately numb us to their horrors and we are unable to look at them with the same emotions and disbelief as we originally had. However, 25 years later, she publishes a book entitled Regarding The Pain of Others where she basically discredits her previous views. In the excerpt that we read, Sontag revisits how we see photographs and why we have the reactions we do.

Though she says we cannot group the entirety of humankind based on one social group, she does find that there is a problem with the way those in "cushy" lifestyles view news photographs. Here she says that these people live in a "society of spectacle [where] each situation has to be turned into a spectacle to be real (interesting) to us." The example she uses are celebrities, and how they work for an image (not reality) and that the media then represents these images as reality. Basically, Sontag tries to show us how skewed our perceptions of reality are...at least for those of us who are not worried about our houses being blown up everyday and shell casings landing in our front yards.  Now that more people have more access than ever to images that show traumatic events, it may seem that this super saturation of images would (like she previously wrote) callous us to their impact. However, to this point, Sontag says now that it's not that people are responding less, but that they just don't like the feelings that are brought up when viewing the images, and choose to look away or change the channel, or put down the paper/magazine. They choose to view the created realities of where Britney Spears went shopping yesterday and what she bought at the grocery store and what her children are wearing and if she put on makeup or not. Images like this don't make people feel uncomfortable. They don't invoke thought or response; they allow people to see this as "reality" and accept it, and move on with their day.

I believe, as does Sontag, that viewing images that show actual reality (events that I don't even have the ability to fully understand or conceptualize) are so important for everybody, especially the comfortable, cushy social classes, to view and experience. Images like this show us what human beings are capable of. They show us what we may not want to see, but what we must see. They are not there to make us feel more or to take on the suffering (although the victims will sometimes want this), they are to inform us, to make us question, to make us think, to make is realize, to make us respond (very much what Fried would consider theatricality). Once we realize the full scope of what human beings are capable of doing, we will have reached what Sontag refers to as full moral and psychological adulthood. At this point, we can no longer claim naiveness, or innocence. We are aware, and even if we choose to turn off our televisions, we still know.

One quote that caught my attention in Sontag's writing, was where she said "If we could do something about what the images show, we might not care as much about these issues." My first reaction was to wholeheartedly disagree, because I felt that by being able to help, we'd invest part of our conscience into helping and in doing so, become even more attached to the issue at hand. However, when I stopped to think about it, I realized that if they were problems that we could simply view, help, and be done with, they would be out of our mind as a situation that was once not okay, but now it's okay and we don't have to think about it anymore. It was a simple bump in life and now everything is good. Because these horrendous issues are 9 times out of 10 things that we cannot do anything about, we must then live knowing that these atrocities will continue as we eat our warm meals at night, take our hot showers, and climb under our soft, down comforters, able to sleep soundly without machine guns ringing outside our doorsteps. With these issues always at hand, we are not calloused by them, but even more so affected by their presence and semi-conscious nagging throughout the day. These are things that we cannot do anything about, and that we don't understand; things that we don't get; things that we will never know. These horrors that come to us through photographs are not part of our experience, but they do stick with us in memories. They are what is real.

One problem that Sontag brought up in dealing with the viewing of the images, is just that: how and where they are viewed. In an art gallery, where it is the norm for photographs to be shown, there is an air of a social event. People come with their families, look at the photographs, then go out to lunch and a movie, and maybe some ice cream. Sure, maybe they were struck by some of the images, maybe they were upset by some of them, maybe they questioned the events a little bit, but it was not an individual, reflective experience. They came with their children. It was an afternoon activity. They didn't sit down in front of each photograph and really let themselves get lost in the questions that it may arise. These photographs were hung in a gallery. They are art. And they will be viewed as art. Sontag offers that magazines and books may be more proper ways to view photographs, as one can sit in the privacy of their own home and spend as much time as they'd like looking at each photograph. However, there are a few problems which you would run into here:

1. There are advertisements in most every magazine, and these advertisements are sometimes using a photograph and paired up right next to one of the traumatic photographs, so as we're looking at dying children suffering from malnutrition in Africa, we also are seeing how beautiful and soft Jergens can make our skin. The photograph sort of loses its impact.
2. One always ends up closing the book/magazine. No matter how long they spend looking at the images, the book gets closed up and put away. That's not to say that the impact of viewing the events isn't still with us, but it will fade as we go back to our daily routine in which we do not experience anything even mildly close to what the people in the photographs are going through simultaneously.
3. By viewing the images, we are simply just viewing them. We are not really experiencing the events. We cannot understand what is truly going on. However, the point is also made that even if we were in the war zone, we would still be just a spectator, viewing bombs go off in front of us and people dying beside us. Though it would have greater of an impact upon us, we are always just viewing unless we are directly involved in the conflict, and at that point, photographs of the event in which we are involved become arbitrary because they cannot show fully the extent of what has been experienced.

There will always be these slight discrepancies. Regardless, Ariella Azoulay believes that we can still draw plenty of understanding from these photographs.

Azoulay does mention Sontag a few times in this excerpt, and starts out by referencing Sontag's On Photography, saying that photographs cannot become exhaustive because there will always be somewhat of a mystery between the subject and the photographer (I will go into more detail about this in a minute). Azoulay begins by telling us about her childhood and how she experienced a bombing when she was young, and how a lot of the images she has in her head are not from actual photographs, but from events which she experienced and then created these mental images, or from things that her mother would say (usually regarding Arabs), which she would create images for in her mind. She believes that there are two types of these mental images:

1. The mental image was ingrained because of an obvious traumatic event.
2. The mental image was ingrained without the person even realizing it at the time, but will later be discovered in some corner of the mind, complete with its trauma and impact.

In these ways, memories (or mental images) are the strongest form of imagery. In looking at a photograph, one is forced to see exactly what the photographer framed, and the vantage point at which they framed it. One is forced to watch (I will also explain watch vs. see further on) this person at this specific moment the photograph was snapped, and all of these factors may bias the photograph and cause it to be seen one way or another. However, with mental imagery, the images were impacted without a third party in between the event and the viewer (the one whose mind the images are impacted in). There is no dictation of framing or vantage point or lighting, etc. There is the event how it happened and that is that.

Briefly, Azoulay touches on advertisement in slight contrast to Sontag. Where Sontag says that advertisements show a comparison of both the image of the advertisement and the images showing reality, Azoulay says that there is not even a comparison. That the advertisement photograph is nothing but a picture. It does not invite the viewer to think about it or study it. It is not even close to the same "medium" as an actual photograph. Azoulay's view of photographs is that one needs to view the image and understand what it is, to question its details and to become immersed in its mystery. She sees no point in looking at a photograph's aesthetic. In this point, I am almost tempted to agree, which came as quite a surprise for me. Previously, I had the idea that if you were to take two photographs of the same object/person, one photograph being aesthetically pleasing and the other more of the snapshot variety, that I would lose complete interest in the non aesthetic image because there would be small missing pieces of the aesthetic qualities that have been pushed on me for 2 years now going to school as a photographer. I felt that maybe the inattention to cropping and framing would keep catching my eye more so than the actual subject matter of the image. Azoulay has called on me to rethink this. Although I still think that photographs need to be taken with some sort of knowledge of what is aesthetically pleasing, I feel that now I will look at photographs more in the realm of "what is actually going on in this image" versus how good of a photographer the person was who took the image. This changed way of viewing photographs will obviously be determinate on the subject matter of the image. If it is an image of flowers or food or some unimportant moment in time, like a fountain going off, I will still be looking for the aesthetics first because I know that in taking photographs like this, the aesthetic is really all there is. If the image is of some sort of important event or a portrait or something not so flat (like flowers), I will probably now look at it with different eyes. And these eyes, Azoulay believes, need to look at these photographs (she talks of photographs of people only from this point on) and not just see the people in them, but watch these people.

One should not see these photographs as documentation of the person having been there, but watching them as they are still standing there. In seeing the photographs in the latter way, there is less of a chance of immoral views. We cannot then break down the photograph as a historical documentation, but as a real time happening, and therefore must apply our immediate morals to the image because it is, in a way, happening right now.

Azoulay calls on the viewer to look at the issues in the photographs through the looks, gazes, and actions of those in the photographs, and to see the subjects as people, as human beings, not as a designated "enemy" or race, class, gender, or religion. She states that we are all citizens of the world of photography, and deems this "The Civil Contract of Photography." The Civil Contract of Photography is meant to break nations' boundaries which threaten to break apart the citizens, and to place all the aspects of photography and the creation of the photograph (the camera, the photographer, the subject, and the viewer) into a neutrally "governed" area: photography. When viewing a photograph, we become part of this community. It is common knowledge that nothing here is written in stone, and that we all know what to expect and what we need to do in viewing the photographs. It is not a place of prejudices and separating subjects into what is right and wrong, good and bad, but to view them as people and to try to better understand their situations. We need to approach the photograph and its meaning as an unintentional effect of the encounter between the camera, photographer, subject, and viewer. In doing so, one will be able to continuously break apart a photograph, finding new things that add meaning and depth to the image and the humanity of the person in the image (this goes back to how Azoulay said there is no way a photograph can become exhaustive because there is always more to discover).

Focusing greatly on the actual subject of the images, Azoulay sets up a discussion of the intentions of the photographed. The subject has agreed to be photographed as they were, and in doing so, they are sending a message to all viewers about their situation. This brings up a slur of questions. Is the subject looking through the photograph to me? Is the subject looking through the photograph to anybody willing to view it? Is the subject aware that anybody will even see this photograph? Does the subject want me to understand their situation, or just experience it through the watching of the photograph? Is the subject calling on me/the viewer to respond and take action? Though the answers may never be quite clear, there are some images that are more straightforward. Azoulay describes the image of the rioter holding the broken lock of his store after paratroopers broke in to stop the protesting (Photo 1). He has chosen to be photographed. He is "posing" for the photograph in holding out the broken lock. In his choosing to be photographed, he has taken control of the situation. He is voicing his situation and not just accepting defeat of what happened. The immediacy of this man's gaze is calling on the viewer to take action and to respond, which contrasts Sontag's idea that we cannot do anything to help this situation. However, maybe it is not that we are called on to help, but that we are called on to understand that this has happened, that this is happening, and that this will happen again. In The Civil Contract of Photography, its citizens call forth the viewers to see them as they are and to gain some understanding of what they are going through. These photographic citizens are governed only by the viewer and the photographic community (not their native government), and they do not bring with them status, ownership, practices, or their institutions. They come as equals and call out to be seen as the individuals that they are.

Photo 1 - Anat Saragusti, Hebron 1982