Propaganda

[Roger Hicks]

How far do you try to influence people's actions through your photography? Not just make them say, 'Wow, that's a nice picture', but actually care about something? Or even change their behaviour?

Ansel Adams was an unashamed propagandist for a certain romantic view of the American West (cf Sierra Club). Anti-war photographers are legion. These are only the most obvious examples.

I'm not brave enough to shoot wars, but I've shot propaganda for the Tibetan Government in exile, for a local cycling action group in the UK, for the village of Guadalupe in California, and for a local arts festival where I live now. What have you shot?

Finally, why are some people happier with the term 'public relations' or 'PR' than with 'propaganda'?

Cheers,

R.

 

[Sonnar Brian]

Propaganda has strong negative connotations, such as ignoring the truth and facts of a situation in order to sway people to the originators point of view. It is strongly biased.

Joseph Goebbels was a propagandist. My favorite scene in the play "Springtime for Hitler" in the "Producers", is Dick Shawn asking "Little Joe, Where's my Little Joe, I need my Little Joe". "How's the war going, Baby"... "Great! We're WINNING"

 

[Roger Hicks]

Propaganda has strong negative connotations, such as ignoring the truth and facts of a situation in order to sway people to the originators point of view. It is strongly biased.

Dear Brian,

Strongly biased, yes: I see nothing wrong with that. Ignoring truth and facts: no, I don't agree. Selective, sure, but how does that differ from PR? Amyone who tries to distinguish between the two is surely lying to himself, never mind his audience.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Benjamin Marks]

I know that there is a tendency for people to bring up the National Socialists whenever they feel they need a straw-man, but I really do think that "propaganda" as a term started to get its pejorative connotation after seeing what Goebbels and Co. did to the truth. Now they didn't invent spin, of course, and the Allies were doing it too. American Library has just released a collection of AJ Leibling's WWII writings. He was a US correspondent for the New Yorker magazine. He is quite candid in his writing about particular news stories having propaganda value for either the Allies or for the Axis powers. So that's my vote: Propaganda was so closely associated with the Nazis that folks who did this for a living had to call it something else.

Ben Marks

 

[Roger Hicks]

Dear Ben,

Hmmmm.... Another 'big lie' here. When WE do it, it's public relations, or at worst, spin. When our enemies do it, it's propaganda.

Maybe it's time 'propaganda' was reclaimed; the Second War has been over for a while, now.

This is a completely unexpected direction for the thread -- maybe I should start another called 'PR' to see how the answers differ.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Sonnar Brian]

Whether it is lying by omission, or misinterpreting the facts by design, some truth of the situation is ignored. The net effect is the same as an all-out lie to sway a population into the originator's desired point of view.

How did I do in convincing people that propaganda is a bad thing?

 

[Spider67]

In the 50's for example "Wehrmacht" was used as a synonyme in German newspapers for the contemporary armies of other armies the SPIEGE used it in á la "Die amerikanische Wehrmacht...." later it got out of use. "Luftwaffe" ist still used and "Collaboration" is getting back in use thanks to IT-"Propaganda" but Propagando got soaked to the core.
Goebbels was Propagandaminister. ....and the vatican also had or even has a group like "propaganda fide..."

 

[Roger Hicks]

Whether it is lying by omission, or misinterpreting the facts by design, some truth of the situation is ignored. The net effect is the same as an all-out lie to sway a population into the originator's desired point of view.

Dear Brian,

Are you saying that no-one is allowed to put their side of things? To present the nest of their case in a positive light? That all advocacy is immoral?

Am I obliged to say of Mussolini, "All right, he was a fascist, but he made the trains run on time"?

It is impossible to present all sides of any argument -- life isn't long enough, and no-one would read it to the end -- and besides there is often some dispute over what constitutes a 'fact', especially when a complex situation is reduced to a few paragraphs or (worse still) a headline.

Cheers,

R.

 

[sebastel]

interesting question.

now, allow me to give a straight response (instead of diving the discussion further away).

as a happy amateur, i enjoy the freedom to take pictures for myself primarily. so, these pictures may show the world as i see it, or they may show the world as i want to see it, or they may just be pictures which have no relation to the "real" world at all.

if someone likes then - fine. if not - so what?
even so, whether someone else understands them or not, or deliberately misunderstands is not my issue in the first place.

yes, this is escapistic, hedonistic, naive ... whatever you want.

but as i may consider myself as completely unimportant, i enjoy my freedom, and enjoy taking pictures that may improve in the way i want them to be.

sorry for being such an egoistic ignorant germ - but am i so different?

;-)

 

[bmattock]

I don't want to fix the world - I didn't break it in the first place.

I find that often, my photography helps to fix me. That, I may have had a hand in breaking in the first place.

 

[dan denmark]

recently, well this week, a relative of mine sent me a parcel from the US, Florida, and he used a current local newspaper as padding, uncrumpled, so i could also read it for local novelty. i found an article that turned out to be a by-line syndicated one that also appeared in our local melbourne australia newspaper, The Age. the article was written independently by an English journalist reporting on the pro-Tibetan condition in relation to the Olympic Torch running in the US. the US article, ver batim, was nearly half the length of the article which appeared in The Age. what was omitted was the context of political implications present in US communities that tended to be fence-sitting in favour of sport over underpinning the condition of human rights.

i think this is a good example of editing as propaganda.

-dd

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

Propaganda has strong negative connotations, such as ignoring the truth and facts of a situation in order to sway people to the originators point of view. It is strongly biased.

Joseph Goebbels was a propagandist. My favorite scene in the play "Springtime for Hitler" in the "Producers", is Dick Shawn asking "Little Joe, Where's my Little Joe, I need my Little Joe". "How's the war going, Baby"... "Great! We're WINNING"

Hear hear.

I think "influencing through photography" is not necessarily propaganda. Propaganda can make use of photography (and therefore having photography influence people), but the use of photography is not necessarily propaganda.

People drown (with water) all the time.

Is drinking water a death wish? Are people more comfortable with the term "drowning element" than with "killer of people" when it comes to water?

Pretty narrow and skewed point, dontchathink?

 

[varjag]

My photos were once part of traveling exhibition of a presidential candidate back in Belarus, the one that avoided jail. As they supported his cause guess they were PR, although "propaganda" I feel is an overstatement.

 

[benlees]

I would agree that ideas/images used, and agreed upon, by a particular group to create its own public identity in the hopes of convincing others that it is benevolent or, at the very least, benign; paving the way for the acceptance of its ideas to a greater audience and whatever benefits that may result (usual suspects: power, money...)- although the greater audience may not benefit from those ideas- is the goal of PR and propaganda.

One of my (completely amateur) gallery photos is of a picturesque field with someone riding a horse. It is an ironic image because those fields are (soon to be) surrounded by industrial tracts and the spread of housing. This image could be used by someone (gov't, tourism, etc.) to extol the virtues of rural life. It would be true and not true at the same time. Depends on who presents the image and for what purpose.

 

[kevin m]

In the U.S., propaganda and advertising go hand in hand. The business of "news" outlets, be they newspapers, radio or TV news, is to sell space to advertisers; any real reporting they do is strictly secondary to that primary function. Since the chief function of advertising is to seduce one into opening his wallet, any news item that would interfere with the process of seduction gets eliminated, or de-contented to the point of absurdity.

The "news" in this country, then, is largely propaganda, in that it's a pre-approved group of mnemonics designed to elicit the desired response in whatever target market the "news" outlet is trying to reach.

Editors pick the pictures that can be digested easily by their target audience, and photographers, if they wish to remain employed, learn to self-censor so that they frame the facts accordingly.

As Sinclair Lewis (?) said: "It's difficult to make a man see what his livelihood depends on his not seeing."

 

[Pablito]

in the Spanish language, "propaganda" can be used to mean "advertising".

Now, were the Farm Security Administration photographers producing propaganda for the U.S. Government in the 30s and 40s? What about when The FSA turned into the OWI - Office of War Information?

 

[lZr]

Roger, let us see some of your PR shots you mentioned on openning the thread. I think they will be more explanatory for the purpose

 

[Rayt]

Whenever we turn on the TV we get propaganda. These days we don't need John Wayne to make a movie to make me feel good because we now have cable news. It isn't the pictures we are seeing that make us feel we are winning but the pictures the photographers are not allowed to shoot that otherwise would make us feel quite the opposite.

These types of omissions are quite common. A few years ago there was a series of air strikes (where else) and some people were killed. And then there would be retaliatory bombings where more people are killed. I was traveling through several countries at the time and read various newspapers and of course cable news of the accounts. Depending on which country and which paper certain facts would be omitted or facts stressed, such as not challenging unsubstantiated claims, giving more airtime to one side, omitting important facts like the victims were children. None of the accounts were inaccurate but omissions were meant to steer sympathy for one side. I thought CNN to be consistently worthless.

 

[ruben]

I see no sin for a reporter, or photographer, or whatever profession you want to choose, to enroll in a cause you believe. This is THE reality, non-standing the denyials of those whose stance goes with the mainstream or the Government.

This I could say when I was already at my early 20's.

Now at my mid 50's I say the same, but with an addition for the self counsciousness of oneself: This "enrolling" must be done with care along the way, so long you walk, looking left and right. And at the slightest doubt arising from the facts, don't turn it down. On the contrary follow it to the end, with all the consequences implyied.

Cheers,
Ruben

 

[Roger Hicks]

Roger, let us see some of your PR shots you mentioned on openning the thread. I think they will be more explanatory for the purpose

Dear Lazar,

Good point. Here are some from 1984-1999. They are not necessarily my best pictures but they have a strong propaganda content; most propaganda pictures rely heavily on captions. Today I'd probably be shooting colour.

My wife (who is American) suggests that there may be a cutural difference in the American and English uses of the word 'propaganda', with the Americans seeing the word as much more negative.

Left to right:

The dormitory is for young Tibetan refugees who have walked across the Himalayas in the last few months. There are over 100,000 Tibetans in exile, and more are constantly trying to escape. If they are caught by the Chinese, they are often shot; the girls are often raped. If they are returned to Tibet by the Indian government, a photograph might identify them, so I asked them to keep moving their heads during a 1-second exposure.

Panchen Lama vigil. The 11th reincarnation of the Panchen Lama was 6 years old in 1995 when he was kidnapped by the Chinese authorities; he has not been seen since. Incredibly, the Chinese are now trying to say that only the incarnations whom they recognize are legitimate; not a bad trick for a state that denies the idea of reincarnation.

Young monks playing football. Many child monks have lost one or both parents; the monastery functions as an orphanage among other things. It is quite common and perfectly acceptable for a monk to return to lay life when he is old enough to decide for himself.

Cheers,

Roger