Authenticity
09:07
During my one to one with Richard we spoke about whether my photographs for my narrative were staged or not, and what it means for them to be staged or authentic.
The definition of authentic is something which is real and genuine, not copied or false.
Within my twelve images included in my narrative photobook, three were completely staged and styled, as I wanted to be able to control the location as it wasn't somewhere me and my friends would happen to find ourselves on a day to day basis on two out of the three occasions, and I also wanted to style my subject to suit the location.
The two images below I styled and staged for my narrative:
They also happen to be two of my favourite images from my photobook, in particular the second, which Richard said he wouldn't have known was staged. I like my styling and the fact that it goes well with the location. I had other images from this shoot however I felt they looked too staged, as the locations looked a lot more rough and were a much harsher comparison to the rest of my photographs.
Walter Benjamin wrote “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” in 1935, in which he discusses authenticity in art.
Benjamin felt that authority was at stake with the emergence of photography; that with its capability of manual reproduction, commonly labelled as forgery, however the origianal preserved all its authority, not regarding technical reproduction.
Benjamin presented two possibilities for this potential lack of authenticity;
'photographs might capture something “unattainable to the naked eye,”and reproducibility “can put the copy of the original into situations which would be out of reach for the original itself” resulting in the depreciation of the quality of an original’s presence.'
Walter Benjamin's take on the authenticity of photographs is definitely the oldest publishing I have looked into, but his opinions are still very relevant.David Bate in his book Photography: The Key Concepts touches upon realism and the position of the photographer
The realism of an image corresponds to a preconception of reality; As viewers, we base our interpretations of an image on what we know already and apply this to what we see in a photograph. An example of this would be when images were released of the 9/11 tragedy, no one could really believe what they were seeing as they had never seen anything like it before. In this sense, my images are far from 'unbelievable' and have every potential of being 'authentic'.
"Photographers often need to think of themselves as having a special point of view, a privileged position, in order to function, and viewers feel they share in that privilege." This is relevant to my work in terms of Solomon Godeau's inside/outside argument, and my position as a photographer. I wanted to show a privileged insiders viewpoint which others wouldn't necessarily be exposed to, and photographing from this perspective gives viewers of my images that intimate feel also, as though they could be there.
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