Masters III: People and society

Learning goal

You will be able to get to know three masters who photographed people and society, Dorothea Lange, Diane Arbus and Steve McCurry, through the impact their photos made in the world and what this impact meant for the people photographed. You will see how Lange's portraits of migrant workers, taken for a government agency in the years of economic depression, entered a country's agenda; how Arbus approached people living on the margins of society with square-format, direct portraits; and how McCurry's portrait, which became a magazine cover, turned into a symbol. You will learn what the people behind these photos said about their own photos decades later, and discuss informed consent, the subject's own voice and the inviolability of a documentary photo. You will question what it can mean for the person photographed when a face, an eye color or a skin is presented as "striking" or "exotic."

The question

On the cover of one of the old magazines the older member has left on the table is a worn woman; one hand at her chin, her eyes in the distance, two small children leaning their heads on their mother's shoulders, their backs turned to the camera. On a yellow-bordered magazine cover beside it is a young girl looking straight into the camera with her green eyes. Both have appeared over decades on countless posters, in books and in exhibitions; many people recognize these faces without ever knowing their names.

Your friend from the club asks what these photos gave people and what happened to the owners of these faces. The older member explains that both women were later found and spoke about their own photos; what they said isn't what everyone expected. How can a single photograph affect a society? And where does the person in that photo stand within this impact?

Context

In the visual literacy lesson you examined Dorothea Lange's migrant mother to see how a photo is read by eliminating the background and directing the gaze (Lesson 2.1). In the masters of light and nature lesson, too, we discussed whether photos that turn suffering into an aesthetic image move viewers to act (Lesson 26.3). This lesson carries the same question to the masters who photographed people and society, and adds one more step: what happens to the person in the photo themselves?

The strongest and the most problematic side of photographing people is the same: it shows a real person. A photo can draw a society's attention to a problem, bring help, symbolize a period; but inside that symbol lives someone with a name, a life and a view of their own. This lesson puts the masters' achievements and the voices of the people they photographed side by side.

Simple explanation

What did Lange's photo do?

Social documentary is documentary photography that aims to influence public opinion and decision-makers by making a social problem, poverty, migration or working conditions, visible. Dorothea Lange worked for a government agency in the United States during the economic depression of the 1930s and photographed farm workers who had left their homes. The portrait of a migrant mother she took in March 1936 at a camp of pea pickers in California was published in newspapers within a short time and became one of the best-known symbols of the depression. It is told that help was sent to the camp after the news; the photo put the face of poverty in front of a country.

The subject's voice is the ability of the person shown in a photo to voice their own story, their name and their view of the photo, and for this view to be heard together with the photo. The migrant mother's name came out about forty years after the photo, through a journalist's research: Florence Owens Thompson. She and her family said they had never earned any money from the photo and that they felt the photo had used them; according to accounts, Lange had told her the photos wouldn't be published. The same photo both moved a society to act and made the person it showed feel used. These two truths don't erase each other.

How did Arbus approach people?

A square-format portrait is a portrait on a square negative in which the subject is usually placed in the middle of the frame and looks straight into the camera. In the 1960s Diane Arbus, working with a twin-lens camera with a square negative and often with flash, photographed people living on the margins of society or considered unusual: circus workers, people at a nudist camp, twins, people who identified with another gender, and ordinary families. Her subjects usually stand in the middle of the frame and look straight at the viewer; this directness calls the viewer to an uncomfortable confrontation.

Arbus's photos drew great interest and at the same time met harsh criticism. The writer Susan Sontag, in an essay she wrote after the large exhibition opened after Arbus's death, argued that Arbus turned the people she photographed into figures displayed for the viewer's curiosity. Those who defended Arbus, on the other hand, said she spent a long time with these people and made them visible against a society that made them invisible. The same photo can be read as respect or as exploitation depending on the viewer's gaze. This debate shows how much the meaning of a frame changes with how close a photographer gets to their subject, how much time they spend with them, and where and under what title they present the photo.

What did McCurry's cover change?

Informed consent is a person agreeing to be photographed knowing what the photo is being taken for, and where and how it will be used. In 1984 Steve McCurry took the portrait of an Afghan girl in a refugee camp in Pakistan; this portrait was published the following year on the cover of a famous magazine and became one of the best-known faces in the world. The girl's name was learned only in 2002, thanks to a team that found her again: Sharbat Gula. Describing the moment the photo was taken, she said she had felt angry. Critics discussed that a girl may have been made to show her face to a foreign man against the rules of her own culture, and that the photo circulated for years without her knowing.

Documentary integrity is the principle that the content of a photo presented as documentary isn't changed by adding or removing people or objects. In 2016 editing errors were noticed in a print at one of McCurry's exhibitions; the examinations that followed showed that people and objects had been digitally removed from some of his photos. This was a reminder that the trust placed in a documentary photo depends on its content being left untouched, regardless of the photographer's fame and mastery.

McCurry's portrait is often remembered by the girl's green eyes. Presenting a face, an eye color or a skin as "striking" or "exotic" on a magazine cover can turn the person photographed into a symbol more than an individual, an object of the viewer's curiosity. As much as who appears in a photo, how they are named and who names them also matter.

Today many documentary photographers have drawn lessons from these debates. Telling the people photographed the purpose of the photo, adding their names and their own words under the photo, sharing the photos with them and, where possible, letting them see the photos before publication are increasingly common habits. In some projects the people photographed write their own stories themselves or take their own photos themselves. These habits don't reduce a photo's social impact; on the contrary, they make that impact form not against the person in the photo, but together with them.

Visual evidence

When you open the magazine you see the woman's face up close: the lines on her forehead, the worn clothes, the gaze turned outside the frame. The older member explains that this photo entered a country's agenda along with the news and that help was sent to the camp. Then they read what the woman in the photo said decades later: that she had gained nothing from the photo and felt used.

Your friend looks at the eyes of the girl on the yellow-bordered cover; they say they have seen these eyes everywhere, but have only now learned the girl's name. They put the two covers side by side. Both photos brought the world face to face with a problem; in both, the woman in the photo became the last voice heard in this story.

Common mistakes

Summary

Dorothea Lange's migrant mother, as social documentary, became the symbol of the depression and brought help, but Florence Owens Thompson, the woman in the photo, said decades later that she felt used; Diane Arbus made people on the margins of society visible with square-format, direct portraits, and this approach was read as both respect and exploitation. Steve McCurry's portrait that became a cover raised the questions of informed consent and of a face turning into an exotic symbol, and the digital removals in his photos raised the question of documentary integrity; in photographing people, a photo's impact and the subject's voice are read together.

Mini assignment

In this assignment you will weigh the impact and ethics of photographing people.

1. Choose a well-known photo by one of these three masters; research where the photo was published, what impact it made and what the person in the photo said later, and write it up with your sources.
2. If there is a person in one of your own photos, write whether that person knows where the photo is used and whether you know their name.
3. Before taking a portrait of someone you know, tell them what you are taking the photo for and where you will use it; after shooting, show them the frames and ask which one they want used.
4. Write a caption under the portrait; introduce the person not by their appearance, skin or eye color, but by their name and their own account.

Check yourself

• Can you describe a photo's social impact and the subject's experience together?
• Can you explain what informed consent is and how to get it in your own shoots?
• Were you able to introduce a person not by their appearance, but by their name and voice?

Glossary

Mini quiz

1. What is the basic aim of social documentary?

• A) Producing flawless portraits in a studio
• B) Showing nature as it is
• C) Selling products
• D) Influencing public opinion and decision-makers by making a social problem visible

2. What Florence Owens Thompson later said about her photo shows the importance of which concept?

• A) Square-format portrait
• B) The subject's voice
• C) Contact print
• D) Documentary integrity

3. What is it called to tell a person, before taking a portrait, what the photo is being taken for and where it will be used, and to get their agreement?

• A) Informed consent
• B) Documentary integrity
• C) The subject's voice
• D) Social documentary

4. Which principle was brought onto the agenda when it came out in 2016 that people and objects had been digitally removed from some of McCurry's photos?

• A) Square-format portrait
• B) Social documentary
• C) Documentary integrity
• D) Long-term project

Answers

1. D — Social documentary aims to make a problem visible and move people to act.
2. B — The experience of the person in the photo shows the unseen side of the photo's impact.
3. A — Consent is informed when the person agrees knowing the photo's purpose and use.
4. C — When the content of a frame presented as documentary is changed, documentary trust is damaged.

Summary card

• Lange: a frame that moved a society, and a subject who felt used.
• Arbus: square, direct portraits; respect or exploitation?
• McCurry: a face turned symbol, consent and documentary integrity.
• Read a photo's impact and the subject's voice together.
• Introduce a person not by skin or eye color, but by their name and account.

Bridge to the next lesson

The older member put away the magazines and set a small, old box on the table. Inside were portraits mounted on thick cardboard, their edges darkened: men in fezzes, women in heavy dresses, the courtyard of a palace, a waterside mansion on the shore of the Bosphorus. On the back of the cards the ornate stamp of an Istanbul studio could be made out: Abdullah Frères. Your friend realized they had never thought about when photography came to these lands and how it changed in whose hands. How did Türkiye's photography story from the Ottoman era to today begin? The next lesson tells the adventure of photography in Türkiye.