OBJECTIVITY IN PHOTOGRAPHY

“While a photograph may not lie, liars may photograph” – Lewis Hine (The viewers photography, 2017)

Objectivity is something that is free from personal bias and shows a subject in its truest form. When photography was first developed, it was seen as the best and most objective way of presenting the world because it is a reproduction of a scene that exists. Although as it progressed, it became more clear that the practices within photography could easily affect how the photograph is interpreted by an audience; aspects such as composition, angle, framing, as well as the camera or other equipment used, can all feed into this. These elements don’t necessarily taint the truth, although they provide different ways of presenting the ‘truth’.

There is a group of Native American photographers who have united to challenge inaccurate narratives produced by others.

When Tailyr Irvine was at the Standing Rock prayer camp in South Dakota she noticed that many of the other photographers there, who had come to photograph protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline, were concentrating on people on horseback or those wearing headdresses. While many of the photographers were well meaning, she said, they relied on overly dramatic visual clichés that gave a distorted view of native people like her.

Irvine is a member of the Salish and Kootenai tribes who was born and raised on the Flathead Reservation in northwest Montana. While her family followed native traditions, she rarely saw meaningful stories on Native Americans. The photos she saw were usually based on stereotypes that she calls the four D’s; drumming, dancing, drinking and death.

Being surrounded by these visual clichés not only gives a distorted view of such cultures, but reinforces stereotypical notions of ‘the other’ instead of representing their ‘true’ culture. This is where objectivity in photography is so important; in order to present the ‘truth’ in images, there must be an element of non bias. My work for this project focusses heavily on objectivity and presenting the truth within an image; the idea that I am not hiding anything behind my images of each subject, there is no deep meaning that has been distorted behind what you see in each of the stripped back portraits.

“You have to go beyond these stories, they are not, by themselves, an accurate representation of who we are.”