Figure 1 – British climber George Mallory in 1915. Image from the Wikipedia. Put there by МаратД and in the public domain in the United States.

In a world dominated by photomanipulation it is remarkable how the photograph, the image, remains so important as a means of visualization. It is almost as if nothing else matters.

I was troubled this passed week by the World’s tragedies.  It seems as if we have more of these terrible events than usual lately.  Maybe, that is merely another example of a world where instantaneous media is king. Most recently, we have the ferry accident in South Korea, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370’s disappearance, and the avalanche on Mount Everest – all equally horrible. Among them Flight 370 is unique in that there is no photographic validation and as a result we my even cling to the hope that our worst fears are not realized…

Indeed, as I read the news each day, I hope for resolution, and anticipate validation.  Strangely, and in the absence of such validation, we have a preconceived, previsualized concept of what it should or will look like – an airplane shaped sonar echo, a underwater image of the plane like those of the Titanic, or of debris floating on the surface.  It is the lack of the latter that is so perplexing and incredible.

Mount Everest and its recent tragedy holds a statling comparison with Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. On June 8, 1924 two climbers from the 1924 British Mount Everest Expedition, George Mallory and his climbing partner Andrew Irvine both disappeared 800 vertical feet from the summit on the North-East ridge during their attempt to make the first successful ascent of the mountain. Mallory was a dashing roaring twenties kind of hero for that generation, and for seventy five years the mountain held its grim secret.  All that people could do, as all that we can do, was imagine Mallory lying dead somewhere forever frozen in the ice. On May 1, 1999 his mummified remains – validation is now complete- were discovered by an expedition sent by the National Geographic Society to find the remains of the climbers.

Where the story gets interesting is the question whether Mallory and Irvine actually made it to the summit.  Three pieces of evidence suggest that they may have. First there is an odd shaped hole in Mallory’s skull such as might have been caused by his axe, suggesting that he might have been perform what climbers call a “glissade” where you slide down the ice pack slowing himself with his pick axe until it hit a rock, pounced up, and killed him. Second, according to Mallory’s daughter he had planned to leave a photograph of his wife on the summit.  This was not found with his body. And third, his snow goggles were found in his pocket suggesting it was evening and that he and Irvine might well have been descending in the dark.  These questions raise more imagines pictures in our minds.  But these images are ones we will never see. Ultimately, the mountain bears silent witness and hold its secrets.

was wearing were torn off in his fall.

I was chided by a reader on Friday for posting only a link to a picture without enough words.  I had thought that the picture of Dutch tulip fields spoke for itself.  Indeed, is not a picture worth a thousand words?  We are certainly told that it is.  So then I started wondering what the origin of this phrase was.  Internet to the rescue!

First I was delighted to find that the phrase was anticipated by by a character in Ivan S. Turgenev’s novel Fathers and Sons, 1862:

“This drawing shows me at one glance what might be spread over ten pages of a book.”

I say delighted because back in college I vividly remember visiting the great wooden secretary in my parents’ bedroom and pulling down that gem of a story about inter-generational relationships from my own father’s library. It seemed so relevant to the 1960’s/1970’s.

Credit for the actual phrase is usually given to newspaper editor Arthur Brisbane who in a 1911 article describing newspapers and advertising wrote:

“Use a picture. It’s worth a thousand words.”

Figure 1 – Photo with the Easter Bunny, (c) DE Wolf 2014.

Back in February, I blogged about “The Street Photographers of Afghanistan.”  I was at the mall again yesterday and it occurred to me that that while these Afghan street photographers bear a unique national and cultural signature they share a common history and proud tradition with similar commercial photographers everywhere.  It used to be that you would find people ready to snap your photograph and sell you a copy at all of the major tourist attractions.  You can still find them on cruise ships and at amusement parks (albeit in robotic form). And of course, you find them at the malls, which to me is just a little surprising in a world, where digital cameras are ubiquitous and the selfie reigns supreme.

It seems that somehow there is still a legitimacy associated with having a “professional” take your picture – even if the “professional” has little more training than you do.  When I come up the escalator at my local mall the first thing that I see is a display of a professional photography studio.  And then the mall itself has no less than three places where you can go and have your child’s photograph taken.  It is always fun to watch the little tykes all dressed up in what used to be called “their Sunday best.”

And then there are the photos with Santa at Christmas time and the photos with the Easter Bunny this time of year.  Yesterday I went to the mall for a walk early and was amazed at how much traffic there was.  That is until I saw the line for the Easter Bunny.

If I look through the photographic paraphernalia of my own son’s childhood, I find numerous pictures taken by professionals on cruise ships, pictures with Santa including a picture with me and Santa played by a colleague Bob O’Connell dressed as Santa, and then there are several professional family portraits.  In one set my wife had us all wear blue shirts or sweaters.  The most expensive of these “professional portraits” is really no better than I could have taken myself.  But, as I said, there is a certain mystique and legitimacy associated with the term “professional” – as if it implied “good.”

I will in the end admit, that I love the mall Santas and Easter Bunnies.  I love to watch the excitement when Santa arrives and greets all the children in the line.  I find myself secretly wanting to sit in Santa’s chair, when he isn’t there – just in hopes that some of the magic will rubbed off on me.

Sadly last Saturday (March 29th) veteran war photographer and Pulitzer Prize winner Anja Niedringhaus of the Associated Press was murdered in Afghanistan.  She and news reporter, and Kathy Gannon, were shot in the back seat of their car by an Afghan Police Commander with an AK-47 assault rifle. Ms. Niedringhaus was killed instantly, Ms. Gannon gravely wounded.  They were covering the Afghan elections.  It can truly be said that this is only the latest incident in a war where the boundaries between friend and foe have become inexorably blurred.

We have spoken often of the important role that press photographers have played not only in covering the events of the day, but also in bringing personal reality to gruesome realities.  And it is ultimately this reality that comes to shape world opinion.  Before photography war was a detailed story written in a newspaper.  With photography, with video the world was transformed.

And it is not just war correspondents.  According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, CPJ, 1054 journalists have been killed worldwide since 1992, fourteen already in 2014.  They cover not only war but: corruption, crime, human rights, and politics.  One has to marvel at the bravery of these correspondents, as we watch them reporting in their flack jackets from darkened balconies.  One has to wonder about their motivation and bravado. Why not jut stay home in secure comfort?  But without doubt they enlighten us in ways not otherwise possible and the world is indebted to them all..

Yesterday’s discussion about gravity waves and the Big Bang raises a significant point or question.  Where in the electromagnetic spectrum is the image?  Indeed, do you have to use light?  We can easily argue that a sound images, like a sonogram of a fetus en utero is an image, even a beautiful one at that. And the  X-ray image of the Hand of God nebula that we spoke about a while back is certainly beautiful and has a photographic image quality about it.

I think that the gravity wave images hold an important answer.  There are two of them.  With this first one, you might argue that I am stretching the envelope to ascribe a photographic image quality to it. Arguably it looks more like a graph or even a watercolor. But how about this one. And we don’t need to worry about the technicalities of what these are. This certainly possesses a photographic quality.

I believe that these two images illustrate the important dividing line. It does not matter what form or wavelength of energy was used.  Rather there is an aesthetic quality of pictureness, being like a photographic, that our mind uses to make the judgment: Ich bin eine Fotografie! And remember, to say that the distinction is an aesthetic one is really to say that because of a combination of wiring and training our mind associates a certain set of image qualities as being photographic.

My discussion about science and the baby picture yesterday got me thinking not only about accountability, but about ethics – and in particular the ethics of photography.  In science there is a fundamental ethics against, misleading people and this translates to a very precise set of rules about how, indeed mostly how not, to manipulate images.   The essential tenet of this is the preservation of quantitative information both in terms of intensities or grey values and spatial distributions.  Actions like burning and dodging are big no-no’s. So scientists don’t want to fake data, and you don’t want your scientists to fake data.  All scientists, even the frauds, understand this ethic.

The key to all of this is not to mislead.  But as soon as we leave the realm of science, do we leave behind this taboo?  In general many people would say that faking pictures or altering pictures for political gain is bad, that altering press photographs is bad.  But when we hit the realm of advertising, as we have seen, do all limitations collapse in the quest for financial gain.  Why does this become acceptable?  And don’t hide behind the coattails of art.  Anything goes in art; and advertising is an extension of art.

Where I think that ethics in photography, outside of science, really comes ultimately  into play relates to photographs that are mean, demeaning, or vulgar – faked or not.  I’ve seen a lot of images on popular photo-sites on the web, which I would characterize as vulgar.  They’re not truly pornographic just vulgar in that demean and therefore marginalize a particular group, most often women.

Again you cannot hide behind a smokescreen of political freedom and artistry. The problem, of course, is that we want to protect artistic freedom, and this opens the door.  The ethics to photography has to lie in the basic recognition of human dignity, a fundamental right of privacy, and of protection of the vulnerable, like children.  As always, there is the question of personal taste and sensibility.  One person’s pornography is another’s art. Yes, but the reality is that most of us, just like scientists, share an intrinsic and common understanding of when the line has been crossed, and while we cannot preach and absolute ethic, we can aspire to one.

Sigh! On Wednesday, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled that so-called “Peeping Tom” laws that protect people from being photographed in dressing rooms and bathrooms, when nude or partially nude, do not apply to the infamous practice of up-skirting.  Up-skirting is the taking of pictures up a woman’s skirt and is usually performed with an innocuous cell phone – as opposed to a digital SLR with a 500 mm zoom lens.

It’s not really funny. Actually, it’s downright creepy.  It only goes to prove that whatever freedoms people are given, like the freedom to take pictures in public areas, some people are always ready to abuse these freedoms.  Still, the way that the law is written, it doesn’t apply to  protect fully clothed people in public areas, like the Boston Subway or MBTA, and as a result a man accused of doing this was exonerated by the SJC.

As I write, Massachusetts lawmakers on Beacon Hill are rushing to pass a law and have it on the Governor’s desk by yesterday.  Until then, all you perverts out there, be prepared for a good swift kick in the teeth! Probably any woman who does that will be prosecuted for assault.  What a world!