Photographing the World

Out of all the forms or mediums of visual arts, which is the one that tells us the most about ourselves? Which is the most immediate, the most striking? The one that hits you between the eyes, takes hold, does not let you go. Photography.

A picture tells a thousand words, or so the cliché says, but in reality photography often manages to capture what is impossible to describe in words. It might be a feeling, a situation so fleeting that it is gone in seconds, or an event that will never be seen again. It is photography’s ability to catch a second of the mortal, fluid, ever-changing world for all of eternity that makes it so very precious. Looking at a photograph of far flung lands or wars where the dead are all but forgotten and the victor entered the hallowed halls of history, it does not matter that the subject may have ceased to exist because the photograph ensures its survival, ensures that it is still alive, and alive in the minds of men.

Nowhere is photography’s ability to preserve the past, more apparent, and more ambitiously realised than in Albert Kahn’s collection of colour photographs of the early 20th century. Kahn, a keen philanthropist, sent tens of photographers across the globe to collect images of disappearing cultures, tribes on the edge of extinction, and a world that would never be the same again. In the collection, there are rare colour images of the First World War, photographs of Prime Minister Balfour’s visit to Palestine following his decision to create a homeland for the world’s Jews, the Bedouins and their lifestyle which has all but disappeared and slaves in the French colony of Mauritania. These are photographs of a changing world, a world that will never be seen again, and it is this that makes the images so important. They give us an insight into a world destroyed by man’s obsession with progress, and his belief in the importance of homogeneity, but the images remain to celebrate those lost tribes and displaced people and their culture, and perhaps as a warning against similar mistakes.

Albert Kahn’s work also highlights the fact that a photograph shows much more than merely the day to day life of a certain period, or the personal experiences of an individual, the image has depth, and layers of meaning for the viewer to appreciate and unravel. A photograph often tells us about the political and social landscape in which it was taken. That is, a photograph is not taken in a vacuum, and it is the cultural or social background that gives it much of its meaning, and its importance. The photograph must tell us something, must reveal something about the world in which we live, about the lives we lead. This is especially true of the work of a photographer such as Philip Jones Griffiths. Griffiths’ work is synonyms with the Vietnam War, and for many his images represent that war, and all that is wrong with all wars, and war itself. But above all else, Griffiths’ work pulsates with humanity; the suffering, the hardship, the compassion, the justice and injustices of human life. The photographs are not merely to be displayed in galleries or published in newspapers; they should touch our emotions, and make us question the role we play on the world stage. Griffiths’ work is a moral compass in an apathetic, disinterested world; it makes us challenge what is right and wrong, and perhaps forces us to face some uncomfortable home truths.

This is not to claim that a photograph is merely a device for disseminating political messages, as Philip Jones Griffiths stated: too much style and a photograph is merely wallpaper, too much content it is merely propaganda.