The Documentary Photographer as Creator

Henri Cartier-Bresson is among the most considered and also the most debatable artists and photographers of the modern era. Shifting from painting to photography and from photojournalism into surrealism as an artist makes his career a bit vague and his personal approach of photography ambiguous as a practical approach. Known as the ‘decisive moment’ his practical theory is based on reaching the most harmonic point possible between the form and the meaning in a single photo and that photo should necessarily be captured in an unrepeatable moment that is a unique one. The ‘decisive moment’ was proposed by Cartier Bresson through the publication of his book under the same name in 1952. The book contained a selection of Cartier Bresson’s photos and a brief introduction in which he explained some features of his artistic vision and photography approach. The book was soon titled as the ‘Bible of Photography’ by Robert Capa, his friend, his colleague and a co-founder of Magnum Photos. The decisive moment has two major components; first a complex, meaningful composition that Cartier-Bresson himself calls it ‘Geometry’ and the second, is ‘Spontaneity’ in action meaning that the photographer should skip any kind of contemplation and hesitation while capturing the moment that is due to Cartier-Bresson’s admission to surrealism as an artist. Cartier-Bresson’s emphasis on the geometrical composition as the major and fundamental component of the decisive moment roots back in his tendency toward painting However, the contradictions between Cartier-Bresson’s role as a photojournalist or documentary photographer and his artistic vision and his artistic stem caused some ambiguities in the quality and the possibility of applying the geometrical ratios used in the realm of painting as a rule for composition in photography specially in photojournalism where every second has the potential to lead into a photograph and therefore such obsession with composition might result in missing important moments in an event. In 1920, contemporary to young Cartier-Bresson, Canadian Jay Hambidge invented ‘Dynamic Symmetry’ armature as a system of geometrical composition based on the Greek Golden ratio which became popular among his contemporary visual artists. The ‘Dynamic Symmetry’ consists of two major diagonals named the ‘Baroque Diagonal’ and the ‘Sinister Diagonal’ and the rest of the armature or the grid named as the ‘Reciprocals’ are drawn, at a ninety-degree ratio toward the major diagonals. Hambidge believed that applying the Dynamic Symmetry has the benefit to promote balance, flow and rhythm in a composition and the whole idea is in contrast to static symmetry therefore it can bring more dynamicity, and in result movement and life in a frame. This article initially studies the components and the qualities of the decisive moment and its roots and then explains the dynamic symmetry as a system of composition based on the geometrical proportions and then by applying the dynamic symmetry armature or grid to some of Cartier Bresson’s photos evaluates the amount of concordance between Cartier Bresson’s arrangement of the visual elements in his composition with the order of the Dynamic symmetry armature.

Originally published in 1989, Reclaiming Reality still provides the most accessible introduction to the increasingly influential multi-disciplinary and international body of thought, known as critical realism. It is designed to underlabour both for the sciences, especially the human sciences, and for the projects of human emancipation which such sciences may come to inform; and provides an enlightening intervention in current debates about realism and relativism, positivism and poststucturalism, modernism and postmodernism, etc. Elaborating his critical realist perspective on society, nature, science and philosophy itself, Roy Bhaskar shows how this perspective can be used to undermine currently fashionable ideologies of the Right, and at the same time, to clear the ground for a reinvigorated Left. Reclaiming Reality contains powerful critiques of some of the most important schools of thought and thinkers of recent years—from Bachelard and Feyerabend to Rorty and Habermas; and it advances novel and convincing resolutions of many traditional philosophical problems. Now with a new introduction from Mervyn Hartwig, this book continues to provide a straightforward and stimulating introduction to current debates in philosophy and social theory for the interested lay reader and student alike. Reclaiming Reality will be of particular value not only for critical realists but for all those concerned with the revitalization of the socialist emancipatory project and the renaissance of the Marxist theoretical tradition. Roy Bhaskar is the originator of the philosophy of critical realism, and the author of many acclaimed and influential works including A Realist Theory of Science, The Possibility of Naturalism, Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation and Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom. He is an editor of the recently published Critical Realism: Essential Readings and is currently chair of the Centre for Critical Realism.

Photography was pronounced dead in the 1980s following the widespread introduction of digital cameras. At the time it was considered among photographic historians that the innovation of the digital pixel, that element that allowed for endless cloning and manipulation of the image, was the defining factor of the new photographic technology. My paper argues that digital photography, in its radical difference from the technologies of chemical-based photography, needs to be theorised within the context and the development of digital information, from where the role of the digital photograph within innovative computer-aided imagery can be critically considered. I argue that our understanding of what photography is and what it is yet to become, needs to recognize the direction of informational technologies to which photography is ever more connected. This paper considers contemporary advances in a range of computer-aided imaging. There are attendant shifts in our daily uses and practices of photography that operate on increasingly personalised and diaristic planes. But while the ‘selfie’, tagging and facial recognition are the everyday realities of social media usage and the online traffic in images proliferates and accelerates, developments in computational photography such as digital biometrics, recognition, stitching and 3D reconstruction, remain lesser known and expert fields at the forefront of informational technology destined for use in security systems, market research and intelligence. Mark Zuckerberg’s prediction that ‘the future will be social’ is also a confirmation that the future will also be networked, that the digital interaction of users and experiences, call it ‘big data’, relies on a connected online world of users. In this post-photographic moment, the photograph still exists but in series, associations, connections and archives. Also the photograph is social. The single photograph, captured in a decisive moment, is of the past. In this paper I consider recent advances in the field of image technology to analyse the directions in which the traffic in photography is flowing. Keywords : photography, photographic history, algorithm, information technology, digital, face recognition, biometrics, interconnectivity, 3D construction, computer-aided imagery.

ABSTRACTThis article explores previously undervalued aspects of Zionist and Israeli visual culture in light of the (newly recognized) significance of Jews in the history of photography. Zionism and the emergence of the State of Israel accrued a great deal of good will and benevolent publicity due to the historical confluence between Jews and the rise of photojournalism especially from the 1920s to the 1950s. The first part of the article focuses on Robert Capa, Chim (David Seymour), and Alfred Eisenstaedt, who were far more important, Berkowitz argues, than expressly Zionist photographers. The piece furthermore details little-known attempts to establish the history of photography as a discipline in Israel under the tutelage of (photographer) Arnold Newman and (photographer and photo-historian) Helmut Gernsheim. Despite the immense overrepresentation of Jews among eminent photographers, and the pioneering roles of Jews in photography, the Hebrew University and Israel Museum could have – but did not – become leading centers for the history of photography.

Is the Maxwell-Sutton episode part of the history of color photography? In what sense? What led to it? Between Victorian and digital photography, the photographic image has shifted in its manipulated nature and its ambiguous objectivity. The place of the Maxwell-Sutton projection in the history of photography goes beyond the simple claim to being the first color photograph. It hardly met the standard of photographic process and product of its time. It was hardly photographic where colored—the projection—and colored where photographic—the slides. Its nature and significance unfolded in what was then the periphery of the standard that defines the guiding problem of photography. In addition, its outcome went beyond the fixed reproduction of a visual experience. It went beyond the representation of the photographic image produced and projected, towards an exploration of the role of color in perception and optical lenses. The shifting and diverse practices that entangled their way around ideas of photography have not gone away. Digital photography today still challenges the objectivity of the images and the electronic displays project images synthesized through the trichromatic pixels of the retinal model Young and Maxwell endorsed.KeywordsVisual ExperiencePhotographic ImageColor PhotographOptical LensDisciplinary BackgroundThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Following on from Roy Bhaskar's first two books, A Realist Theory of Science and The Possibility of Naturalism, Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation, establishes the conception of social science as explanatory-and thence emancipatory-critique. Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation starts from an assessment of the impasse of contemporary accounts of science as stemming from an incomplete critique of positivism. It then proceeds to a systematic exposition of scientific realism in the form of transcendental realism, highlighting a conception of science as explanatory of a structured, differentiated and changing world. Turning to the social domain, the book argues for a view of the social order as conditioned by, and emergent from, nature. Advocating a critical naturalism, the author shows how the transformational model of social activity together with the conception of social science as explanatory critique which it entails, resolves the divisions and dualisms besetting orthodox social and normative theory: between society and the individual, structure and agency, meaning and behavior, mind and body, reason and cause, fact and value, and theory and practice. The book then goes on to discuss the emancipatory implications of social science and sketches the nature of the depth investigation characteristically entailed. In the highly innovative third part of the book Roy Bhaskar completes his critique of positivism by developing a theory of philosophical discourse and ideology, on the basis of the transcendental realism and critical naturalism already developed, showing how positivism functions as a restrictive ideology of and for science and other social practices.

Following on from Roy Bhaskar's first two books, A Realist Theory of Science and The Possibility of Naturalism, Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation, establishes the conception of social science as explanatory-and thence emancipatory-critique. Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation starts from an assessment of the impasse of contemporary accounts of science as stemming from an incomplete critique of positivism. It then proceeds to a systematic exposition of scientific realism in the form of transcendental realism, highlighting a conception of science as explanatory of a structured, differentiated and changing world. Turning to the social domain, the book argues for a view of the social order as conditioned by, and emergent from, nature. Advocating a critical naturalism, the author shows how the transformational model of social activity together with the conception of social science as explanatory critique which it entails, resolves the divisions and dualisms besetting orthodox social and normative theory: between society and the individual, structure and agency, meaning and behavior, mind and body, reason and cause, fact and value, and theory and practice. The book then goes on to discuss the emancipatory implications of social science and sketches the nature of the depth investigation characteristically entailed. In the highly innovative third part of the book Roy Bhaskar completes his critique of positivism by developing a theory of philosophical discourse and ideology, on the basis of the transcendental realism and critical naturalism already developed, showing how positivism functions as a restrictive ideology of and for science and other social practices.

Henri Cartier‐Bresson (born Paris, 1908) is arguably the best‐known photographer of the Twentieth Century. He, along with Robert Capa and David Seymour, pioneered the medium of photo‐reportage using the 35mm camera. Cartier‐Bresson's theory of photography requires that the photographer be as inconspicuous as possible in order to capture the subject more‐or‐less unawares in a series of “decisive moments”. His idea that the camera is an “extension of the eye”, used to evoke a certain “truth”, is reminiscent of the Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov's theory of kinoki, the cine‐eye. In 1947 Cartier‐Bresson helped found the famed Magnum agency in Paris, with a view to freeing creative photographers from the exploitation of agents. Although he rarely grants an interview, recently Cartier‐Bresson gave the following interview to the French journalist Michel Guerrin.1

The digital condition of photography: cameras, computers and display

Since its founding in 1952, Aperture has grown from a small journal to a cultural phenomenon that reaches the largest and most diverse audience for significant photography worldwide. By examining its own history, Photography Past/Forward demonstrates how Aperture has incontrovertibly shaped photography. Over 175 images by master photographers, including Ansel Adams, Robert Capa, William Eggleston, Duane Michals, Cindy Sherman and Sebastiao Salgado, trace the evolution of both the magazine and the photographers whose work became an important part of it. The volume is supplemented by texts excerpted from the first issue right up to the present day in which a range of voices expound theories, manifestos and musings on a wide selection of photography-related subjects. R.H. Cravens, a long-time contributor to Aperture, provides an in-depth chronicle of the magazine's history, and also interviews Michael E. Hoffman, Publisher and Executive Director from 1964-2001, whose comprehensive vision and voice unearths a history as rife with innovation as the history of photography itself.

Is Radical Phenomenology Too Radical? Paradoxes of Michel Henry's Phenomenology of Life

This article describes a parallax experiment performed by undergraduate physics students at Queensland University of Technology. The experiment is analogous to the parallax method used in astronomy to measure distances to the local stars. The result of one of these experiments is presented in this paper. A target was photographed using a digital camera at five distances between 3 and 8 metres from two vantage points spaced 0.6 m apart. The parallax distances were compared with the actual distance measured using a tape measure and the average error was 0.5 ± 0.9%.

Technological developments make it easier for historical reviewers to approach historical sources. But there is a trend in Indonesian digital society to change historical sources such as historical photos as information consumption. Along with the development of the times, analog photos turned into historical photos that were present in the millennial era appeared in two ways; first coloring photo history, the second "meme" set in historical photos. In order to track digital footage of this phenomenon, historical methodology and photo analysis of Roland Barthes are used to show the birth of historical photo coloring trends and memes in the digital world. The coloring of historical photos causes a change in time awareness of historical sources and memes on historical photographs cause a change and multiplication of meanings in digital photos as historical sources.

(1998). Digital photography in print: A select bibliography. History of Photography: Vol. 22, No. 1, pp. 27-30.

The aim of this article is to understand how students at schools for photojournalism and documentary photography understand photography’s relation to reality. Theoretical discussions on the digitalisation of photography and related technological developments over the last 30 years have often highlighted that the relationship of photography to reality has fundamentally changed and with it the role of the photographer. To investigate this, this study uses focus group interviews, conducted between 2018 and 2020, with young adults (‘digital natives’) at schools for photojournalism and documentary photography from two countries – Russia and Sweden – with very different historical traditions of practising photography. Photo schools are interesting as sites because they may provide a freer space to discuss and challenge conventions around how to practice photography, outside of professional constrains. However, when the students reflect upon photography, technology, and the role of the photographer, it is not centred around the digital photograph. Understood as a remediation process, the photo students invest the ‘new’ medium (the digital photograph) with certain assumed qualities of the ‘old’ one (analogue photograph). The dominant understanding of photography is rooted in the history of photography and, despite the two distinct national contexts, has more similarities than differences.