Abstract
Debates around authenticity within photographic discourse are persistent. Some have revolved around documentary photography, while other discussions focus on the ethical validity of digitally edited news photographs and indeed the photographic medium itself. This article proposes that discussions around ‘authenticity’ should be focused instead towards contextualising photography more appropriately within the creative practice of ‘making strange’. It acknowledges existing debates around photography and authenticity, before locating the discussion within creative practice. It then moves to a discussion, using Robert Capa’s ‘Falling Soldier’ (Capa, 1936) as a starting point, before drawing on examples from the author’s own creative and professional practice. In the process, the article argues that visual researchers embrace the challenges of making the familiar strange within photographic creative practices.
Highlights
Notions around authenticity and photography are considered important, both within communication design and photographic practice, as well as in contemporary scholarship on visual communication in general
I started this article by critiquing debates around the problems of authenticity within photographic discourse
Focussing on photographic examples from history and from my own practice, this exercise has shown how the photographic form can sit far more comfortably as a subjective creative process for making the familiar strange than it is does as a representation of authenticity, let alone empirical documentary
Summary
Notions around authenticity and photography are considered important, both within communication design and photographic practice, as well as in contemporary scholarship on visual communication in general. The following discussion is located within the context of the photographic image itself, as an artefact and the end result of a creative procedure which, intentionally and by default, makes the familiar strange as a result of mixing photography’s light and shadows to create a visual form In this discussion I shall draw on reflections with examples, including from my own practice, to try to contextualise the photographic form as inherently strange, rather than authentic. This practice of making the familiar strange is intentional; embracing the inauthenticity of photography (masquerading as authenticity) enabling the photographic image to be viewed in its own form, using its own language, rather than attempt to clumsily integrate it into distractive discourses, such as historical empiricism, editorial ethics, or documentary objectivity. I reflect on some of the outcomes that the refractive practice of making the familiar strange can produce
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