In photography, most of what we see we take as facts but this isn't always the case. When we remove any background knowledge of an image and take away any text or captions that come along with it, it can be very hard to tell exactly how staged it is. Setting up a scene to look realistic can be used in photography to deceive the public, such as in the media, and experimenting with this can be very interesting. Images can be altered very easily, and whilst the timing and layout of the image is important to creating a believable reality, images can be easily altered in post production through things such as cropping and different printing techniques. These easily accessible factors are making it very easy to create images that may not be exactly as they seem. The context in which we see an image can drastically change our view on how believable it is. If we see a photograph in a newspaper or on a news website, we will automatically view it as the truth when in reality we don't know when or how this image was made. Captions can be easily added to photographs to make them seem different to how they are and influence the audiences ideas. All of these factors are slowly making the relationship between photographs and reality bigger. We may now find it significantly harder to view images and believe what we are seeing because of how easy it is to alter or stage an image. Despite this, most of us will still believe what we are seeing and trust it has not had any major alterations and minimal staging, which does in fact make it easier for the media to influence our thoughts.
Jeff Wall
Jeff Wall takes inspiration from a variety of places including art, cinema and other photographers. He works with models and settings to create realistic images, focusing on things such as lighting and small gestures and movements. The images have a strong sense of reality, a scene you might expect to naturally see, with very little being obviously staged.
This image is one you may expect to see in a movie, with each character preoccupied with that they are doing or looking at. This could however be a scene you would have seen whilst walking down the street in the 70s. Wall focuses a lot on the characters movements and how they are shown in the photograph, with each gesture being important. In this image, each character seems to be completely in their own world, with no relationship between each other, the man in the middle especially seems very busy and concentrating on the phone, however if you look closely, there is a relationship between this man and the woman as they seem to be holding hands. This is the only thing connecting them in any way, and without it you would otherwise assume they are not related and simply strangers passing on the street. This is a detail Wall has kept small and something you would only notice whilst looking closely, but a detail which could change the context of the picture and what you think is happening within it.
Walls photographs bring to attention the close relationship between photographs and reality. They are staged scenes made to look effectively unstaged and make the audience really think about where these images came from. Something I find interesting about Walls photographs is that you could put them into multiple contexts and be told different things about them and it would all be believable. If these were displayed as screenshots from films, it would not be questioned, but also if you said the photographer was just out in the street and managed to catch a moment at the right time, again it may not be questioned.
Cindy Sherman
Sherman uses herself as a model in her work, transforming herself into lots of different characters. By 1980, Sherman had created a series of 70 photos which she called 'Untitled Film Stills' where she had created characters and taken them out into the world and photographed it. She initially started taking these images in her apartment, using it as a setting and a background for her characters. Eventually she took her camera and props outside, ready to widen the view of the images and enhance the characters and their settings. She had help from other people whilst taking these images, including friends and family, ensuring that the angles were right and she was perfectly focused in frame. The aim of the series was for each image to create a distinguished scene that could be taken from a film or show. She would have developed this knowledge of different genres by watching them on tv and taking note of how everything looked and what style we saw it in.
In this image, titled "Untitled Film Still #21", Sherman has turned herself into a character you may expect to see in an old TV show. This woman, the subject of your focus, could be seen as your main characters and is captivated by something off screen. We as the audience do not know what it is and we will never know, creating a sense of suspense and taking the focus away from what is actually in the image and drawing it onto something which is not. We want to know what happened before and after the picture, and thats what the image makes you think about.
Sherman continued to experiment with the idea of identity and shifting reality in an image. While it is always Sherman in the images, they are never really self portraits as she is always someone else. The characters are always your typical cliches, what you may expect to typically see in a film, like a schoolgirl or a society lady. She draws your attention to the typical stereotypes and creates multiple personalities, capturing them in a single shot.
These are all examples of images from the series, displaying different characters and settings. Each image depicts a different scene and they all engage us, we want to know what is happening around this character. In none of the images is she looking straight at the camera and that draws our attention to outside of the image. This adds to the sense of it being a screenshot from a movie, with other action happening around her. The characters appear distracted, unaware of the camera taking a picture of them, lending to the edge of suspense carrying the audience. We can picture something else happening after all of these images and, although they are a single snapshot, they are part of a much bigger scenario.
My Response
I find this idea of believable realities interesting and the concept of photographing something in a completely different way to how it originally is shown. You never truly know the idea, time or place behind a photograph and a lot of it relies on trust and is something I want to explore further. Taking photographs and leaving no caption or meaning behind it, and leaving the audience to decide completely what, where and when it was taken is something I definitely want to try and develop further.