Wow.
I've managed to read the entire thread, which I regard as quite an achievement since it seems to have been growing faster than I could read it (distracted, as I was, by such things as going out and taking photographs). It has also gone somewhat sideways from what I take as the OP's intent, and then gone sideways some more on a few occasions after that!
Without going into the rights and wrongs, or Rights and Lefts of all that previous discussion, I'd like to say something here about documentary photography and "social comment" photography.
Photography, "played straight", shows what was in front of the lens when the shutter was released by the photographer. What the resulting photographs show really was there (remember, we're "playing straight") but is always open to interpretation - about what was "really" shown, about the photographer's agenda (whether political or aesthetic - which might be antethical) and so on and so forth. In particular, without appropriate captioning or even an "in words" story
by the photographer intent is often very hard to read. Sontag, in "On Photography" and in some ways even more in "Regarding the Pain of Others" takes great pains to point out the use, reuse and re-purposing of photographs taken from one context and placed in another to exactly opposite effect.
It may have been the case - a long, long time ago or even in a galaxy far, far away - that a common context could be assumed. Those were the (perhaps somewhat mythical) days where the books documented in
Cultural Literacy were equally known to all and network radio then TV dominated collective discussion. Those days, to the extent they fully existed, are long gone and even then were mostly an "inside the same country" exercise.
For example, I grew up in (while being too young to serve in) the Vietnam War era, and lived in both Australia and the US (and SE Asia) while doing so. Despite the real (and sometimes not-so-real) similarities between the two countries, there were also very real differences between the reactions in the two different places, and also somewhat different reactions to identical images because of the different cultural contexts.
This extends further. My father was a military officer and so I grew up in the military - which is a land unto itself, in many ways, but also shows both cultural similarities and differences between different countries' experience, within the different militaries and within their different countries' parent societies. I subsequently served in the military, and since then have lived for substantial periods in the US and Asia (where I earlier lived as a military brat) as well as in Australia.
I can assure you, through up-close and personal knowledge, that the same events and the same images (whether moving or still) are subject to
wildly differing interpretations depending on context, and often most varying between cultures that superficially look all-too-similar to outsiders.
For example, just about all Vietnam War related, um, stuff is interpreted very differently in the institutional memory of the Australian and US military. In a completely different vein, the interpretations of HK Chinese students protesting the Tianamen Square incident in China (in the lead-up to the impending handover in 1997, which I was present for) are quite different in both subtle and not-so-subtle ways from the interpretation of students who were actually in the square at the time (one of whom I worked with, closely, for many years after she migrated to Australia).
All of which is a very long-winded way of saying that while I strongly believe in the utility of documentary photography - in a cause and/or for good or ill - I also believe that photographs alone are an insufficient medium for conveying a point of view (if that is what is wished). Interpretation is important, it is provided by an implicit or explicit context, and I believe that photographers place way too much reliance on an implicit context that just isn't there for a globaly or (these days) even nationally fragmented audience.
For example, look at these photographs I took at a demonstration organised around last year's APEC conference in Sydney:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mfunnell/sets/72157601924787455/
If you knew me and what passes for "my politics", you might understand some of what I was trying to say in some of the photos. (Some of them were just "wow, look at that".) But to even know that, you'd need to know some very local politics(Sydney and NSW, much more than Australian national, in a very specific time period). But some of those photos could be used to illustrate very different points of view, or to perceive me as holding views very different from those I actually hold. And, trust me, if you think you know you're probably mistaken.
What I'm trying to say, after expending even more wind, is that I think documentary photographers should take much more note of the importance of context, and should think carefully about using words to provide context to go along with their images, or who will if they don't or won't.
...Mike
