Friday, April 26, 2013

Transforming the Theater: Celebrity Cabinet Card Portraits & Cartes-de-visite

     As my historical interests lay in the performing arts, I was interested in investigating the relationship between performance and photography. Performance may be executed more than once, but every performance is different and disappears from the moment once it is performed. A photograph is the opposite, catching and freezing a particular moment in time. Do these mediums ever meet? The photograph has played an important part in theater history by not only helping to define theatrical representations, but influencing theater practice as well. How did these relationships originate? I was interested in learning about the earliest forms of photography that would influence and start to transform the theater: celebrity cabinet card studio portraits and cartes-de-visite.


Brief History and Conclusions

     Theatrical photography emerged in the United States in the 1860s when Gurney & Son Studio began selling cartes de visite and cabinet cards of stage performers in costume first in a studio setting with a minimal background.
Photographer: Studio, Gurney and Son
Performer: Kate Santley
Production: The Black Crook
Provenance/Credit: Harvard Theater Collection, TCS 2, Box 407
     The cartes-de-visite were mounted on 2-1/2-by-4-inch card stock and could be produced cheaply. Collectors were fond of purchasing photographs of their favorite performers. These images could also be sold in theaters as souvenirs of the play, transforming the markets of the theater. The card trade flourished as performers realized the publicity value of the collectible photographs. By the 1870s-1880s millions were sold in the United States, when the process reached its greatest popularity.

Photographer: Sarony Studios
Performer: Ada Dyas

     As more and more celebrity portraits were created, the role of the photographer started to develop - that is, to enhance the imperfect representations of a subject through the art of photography; to convey personality. In order to bring out the best qualities of a subject, photographers would use the following techniques: lighting, coaching the sitter's poses, surrounding the subject with an enhanced visual environment / scenery (something brought over from the theater arts), retouching the negative, and sometimes tinting the print. “The characters are not only caught in the moment of impersonation" writes a journalist from The World in 1875, "but are accompanied by the appropriate scene.  The photographs are thus literal pictures of the play. . . .So strong is the characterization of these photographs and so admirable do they tell the story of the play while they fix the endeavor of the player, that they may be said to constitute a new advance in dramatic photography.” In conjunction with the market and collector culture that would develop for these prints, the celebrity photo would become a unique form of art that would transform the worlds of both theater and photography.

Photographer SpotlightNAPOLEON SARONY

Napoleon Sarony, self portrait
     Napoleon Sarony was an American photographer known for his portraits of late-19th-century theater stars. Sarony established a studio on Broadway in 1866 and, for the next 30 years, photographed virtually every actor and actress working on the New York stage. 

Performer: Barrymore, Maurice
Photographer: Sarony, Napoleon
Date: ca. 1886
Collection Info: UW Special Collections. 19th Century Actors and Entertainers Cabinet Card Collection. PH Coll 59.

Photographers would pay their famous subjects to sit for them, and then retain full rights to sell the pictures. Sarony reportedly paid famed stage actress Sarah Bernhardt $1,500 to pose for him, the equivalent of more than $20,000 today.
 
French stage actress Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923) as Cleopatra, photograph by Napoleon Sarony (1821-1896)
 
His earliest images of the great tragedians in costume (Ristori, Edwin Booth, Tomasso Salvini, Mrs. Scott Siddons) eschewed backgrounds, concentrating on the facial expression and pose of the sitter.  Only when sitters did so in modern dress did Sarony include furnishings—a carved chair, an elaborate wardrobe, a modest background painting. This soon began to change, however. Beginning in 1870, he specified kinds of scenes appropriate for particular costumed characters—a seascape for Edwin Adams playing Enoch Arden, a woody copse for Sydney Cowell playing Rosalind in “As You Like It”—that did not reproduce the plays scenic design.  The art of such would soon develop. Even so, it has been noted that an encyclopedia of American scenic design could be created for the final quarter of the 19th century using cabinet cards. These portraits immediately elevated Sarony to first place among portraitists. From 1870 until Napoleon Sarony’s death in 1896 he was deemed the premier portrait photographer of the United States, and one of the greatest in the world.

Works Consulted

Shields, David. "Photography and the American Stage". Broadway Photographs. http://broadway.cas.sc.edu/

Unknown Journalist. "Theatric Photographer”. The World (March 19, 1875).

UW Special Collections. 19th Century American Theater. http://content.lib.washington.edu/19thcenturyactorsweb/essay.html 

VANHAESEBROUCK, KAREL. "Theatre, performance studies and photography: a history of permanent contamination". Visual Studies 24, no. 2 (September 2009): 97-106. 

Wikipedia: Napoleon Sarony. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_Sarony 

Thursday, April 25, 2013

Albumen prints and water

Airborne moisture is an unavoidable part of our world, and water is a critical part of the paper and photograph conservator's toolkit.  But research has shown that the principal modes of deterioration of albumen prints are significantly accelerated by water.

A large percentage of albumen prints show fading and yellowing, particularly characterized by loss of detail in highlight areas.  A 1982 study (1) investigated the possibility that inadequate processing explained this fading.  They prepared their own albumen prints, varying the length of final washing and the degree to which the fixer bath was exhausted; they then subjected the prints to 60 days of accelerated aging at 50 deg. C, at varying levels of humidity.  They found that inadequate washing did lead to greater fading and yellowing, but that effect largely disappeared with even a 1-minute wash in running water.  Further, they found that, while prints using thoroughly exhausted fixer showed greater yellowing and fading than those with fresher fixer, this was accompanied by a characteristic blackening of the image tone which is visible in some historic photographs, but is not typical.  The effects of the variations in processing were dwarfed by the yellowing and fading that occurred in all their samples when exposed to higher levels of humidity during accelerated aging.  This contrasts with the behavior of silver gelatin prints, which show comparative stability if properly processed.  Because the fading is accelerated even by moderately elevated levels of humidity, the authors recommend storing albumen prints in strictly controlled conditions, between 30% and 40% relative humidity and below 18 degrees C.

Paper conservators use humidity to "relax" paper, making it temporarily more flexible in order to flatten or re-shape it.  Heat and humidity in combination are particularly effective for flattening (just like ironing clothing), and this combination is used under some circumstances in paper and even photograph conservation.  (2)  Understanding the particular vulnerability of albumen prints should inspire caution to apply humidity sparingly to them, and never in combination with heat.  Conservators also use liquid water, both locally applied and by immersion, to remove surface dirt and to release water-soluble adhesives, as well as to wash damaging and discoloring substances out of paper.  These applications of water are extended to photographs on paper supports as well. (3)  To make an informed decision about the application of aqueous treatments to albumen prints, the effects of aqueous treatments on the albumen layer must be taken into account. 

In 1994, Paul Messier and Timothy Vitale (4) investigated the effects of aqueous surface and immersion treatments on albumen prints; they found that both surface and immersion treatment decreased gloss (suggesting disruption of the albumen layer), as well as increasing number and size of cracks in the albumen layer.  Immersion treatment also caused a small but measurable and permanent shrinkage of the prints after drying, and did not decrease yellowing.  In their 1999 study (5), Valerie Baas et. al. studied the effects of repeated immersion in four different solutions on newly-made albumen prints; all exhibited some damage, measured by change in gloss.  The least damaging of the baths they tried was a 50/50 mix of water and ethanol; an alkalized (pH 9) de-ionized water bath showed less gloss reduction than the plain de-ionized water bath, while a treatment with plain de-ionized water followed by an ethanol rinse (intended to result in quicker drying) showed more gloss reduction.  Paper expands less in a water-ethanol mix than in plain water, and proteinaceous layers expand more in an alkalized solution than in plain water; as the paper absorbs water and expands more readily than the albumen layer, either of those effects would reduce the strain on the albumen-paper complex.  The potential effects of an alkalized solution on the silver image compounds would have to be further investigated to determine if the alkalized solution would be on balance safer than a plain water wash; however, the Baas study does show that if overall aqueous treatment is necessary, an ethanol-water mixture is safer than pure water, and that a slow, controlled drying process is to be preferred over very rapid drying.



(1) Reilly, James M., et. al., "Image Deterioration in Albumen Photographic Prints",  Science & Technology in the Service of Conservation. IIC Congress, Washington DC. September 1982. p.61-64.  http://albumen.conservation-us.org/library/c20/reilly1982.html
(2) See section 5.3.6.2 of the draft American Institute for Conservation Photographic Materials Group catalog, http://www.conservation-wiki.com/wiki/PMG_Humidification,_Drying_and_Flattening ; note that this document is intended as abbreviated communications among professional conservators, and should not be construed as a stand-alone manual.
(3) As an example in the recent literature,  E. Roldão, L. Pavão, "The Conservation and Preservation of a Photographic Print: The 'Panoramic View of Constantinople'", e-conservation magazine, No. 14 (2010) pp. 70-79, http://www.e-conservationline.com/content/view/898  The inclusion of this reference is not intended as a criticism of their treatment choices.
(4) Messier, Paul and Vitale, Timothy, "Effects of Aqueous Treatment on Albumen Photographs",
Journal of the American Institute for Conservation, Vol. 33. 1994. pp. 257-78
(5)  Baas, Valerie, et. al, "The Effects of Four Different Wet Treatments on Albumen Photographs", Journal of the American Institute for Conservation. Summer, 1999, Volume 38, Number 2, pp 176-185
 

Food photography

Food
The participation or criticism of food photography through phone applications such as Instagram and Facebook has been a relatively recent topic of interest to many users of social media, in which people usually participate in the discourse by taking and uploading their own images or by chastising those who do. The latter usually contextualizes it under mechanical photographic processes to highlight the ridiculousness of documenting meals one has eaten regardless of the format. Some users devote entire albums to this subject or they haphazardly photograph notable edibles before consumption of food cooked at home or purchased at a restaurant. Either way, uploading food images on these applications invites other users to participate by commenting or allows them to voyeuristically get a glimpse of another person’s daily life through what is traditionally an intimate activity shared among family and close friends.

What I want to discuss in my final blog post is how paralleling mechanical and digital photography is ridiculous in itself, and doing so to try to dismiss photographic evidence of edibles doesn’t make much sense as they are two different things. While I myself don’t photograph my meals it’s interesting to me that 1. photographing meals and food is a cultural phenomenon that happened with the commodification and widespread use of digital and mobile photography, and 2. some people vehemently hate it. My point being that using the example of documenting food during the era of mechanical photography never was ‘a thing,’ therefore it shouldn’t be a thing now in the digital era, and people who do it are idiots is not the most effective way to express discontent with it.

More food
Kenneth S. Calhoon’s article, Personal Effects: Rilke, Barthes, and the Matter of Photography, primarily discusses Rilke’s description of a photograph through Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida, but there are interesting points regarding the photograph that is appropriate in the differentiation of a photo taken by a mechanical process and one taken digitally. To Barthes, “the photograph is “never anything but an antiphon of ‘Look,’ ‘See,’ ‘Here it is,”’ meaning that as a framed and permanently capture piece of what was, in essence, temporal within the linear progress of time, it draws attention to itself by existing to document that time and space (613 Calhoon). With the advent of digital photography and being free of the constraints and necessity of having to process a roll of film, the immediacy and antiphony has condensed considerably, especially within social media. For example, one can take and show multiple people a meal immediately before consumption on Facebook, thus sharing the same anticipation and eagerness other people have right before eating something that tastes great simultaneously. Whereas through a mechanical process the immediate desire to share what a person finds appealing is gone after the first bite and cannot be shared unless there is at least one other person there.

Along the same lines as Calhoon, Lutz P. Koepnick, in Photographs and Memories, also discusses holocaust memory and the way photography disrupts time through a framework of Walter Benjamin. He writes that “In some of the most incisive writing about emulsion-based photography, the photographic image was seen as a shock administered to the flow of time. The photographic camera, in the view of Walter Benjamin for instance, interrupts the ordinary continuum of history...and in this way [digital images] no longer allow us to conceive of history as continuous and linear and to see our present as a mere reproduction of the past,” which further solidifies my argument (98 Koepnick). Mechanically taken photographs have always adhered to time easier than digital through items such as date/time stamps, proof sheets, the physical linearness of a roll of a film, etc. Unlike the former process, it’s much easier to disrupt in digital photographs simply by editing, renaming or moving all the files to wherever and whenever you want.

Food, again
Ultimately, in the age of instant digital communication and social media photography has changed considerably and it becomes stubbornness if one refuses to acknowledge that to make an argument against something so innocuous as taking pictures of some food. Stop it, people! :(


Works Cited


Calhoon, Kenneth S. Personal Effects: Rilke, Barthes, and the Matter of Photography. MLN. Vol. 113, No. 3, German Issue (Apr., 1998), pp. 612-634. accessed http://0-www.jstor.org.library.simmons.edu/stable/3251161

Koepnick, Lutz P (2004). Photographs and Memories.  South Central review.  (ISSN: 0743-6831),  21 (1), p. 94. accessed http://0-muse.jhu.edu.library.simmons.edu/journals/south_central_review/v021/21.1koepnick.html

Print Nostalgia: Imitating Historic Processes Through Modern Techniques

    
Imitation Photography: What is it? 

      The advent of both digital photography and photographic editing software has exponentially increased the ease and versatility of photo-editing. Simultaneously, the ability to edit images to imitate prints made from historic processes has become increasingly popular. At at time when digital images increase the preservation potential of photography, both amateur and professional photographers are looking back to analog methods for inspiration. I think that much of this nostalgia comes from a comfortable familiarity with the analog prints with which we grew up. Photographer and blogger Elizabeth Graves writes, "Our history books and family albums are filled with images made with wet chemical technologies: it sometimes feels like those images are fragments of history in their own right. Digital imaging hasn’t yet had a chance to make such a deep, long-term impression on us." She adds that other factors for historic replication are the abundance of digital images (due to their ease of production) and their lack of their "own distinctive look" (Graves). Additionally, the rise of social media catalyzed the distribution of these altered photographs. Two of the most popular technologies for historic filters, Hipstamatic and Instagram, became popularized through social media. They have become so integral to the new social experience that Facebook purchased Instagram in 2012 for $1 billion. Why is it so important to incorporate these filters when sharing photos with your friends? Social media expert Nathan Jurgenson asserts that “adding these filters [to photos] is a way of simulating value and worth...because real old photos have stood the test of time and have a sense of importance as a result" (Brown). Regardless of why, imitation techniques have become hugely popular. Here's a few examples: 


Recreating Autochrome via Photoshop

     In his blog, photographer Mark S. Abeln explains his attempt to make digital images look like autochrome photographs. He began this process by identifying autochrome's three primaries, which he describes as "reddish-orange, a weak blueish violet color, and green." He designed his photo editing around those colors and even reproduced the grains of starch found in autochromes. You can find the entire step-by-step process for making autochrome imitations on his blog. Here's the results of his experiments: 


Before: 

After:





Recreating Wet Plate Photos via Photoshop

     On this website, Melody Nieves explains her methods of transforming a digital image into a wet-plate look-alike. She uses photoshop tools such as Textures, Noise, and Opacity to produce a "chemical effect" within the photographs (Nieves). Her entire step-by-step process can be found here.


Digital image before editing: 

And after editing:




Instagram & Hipstamatic 

Instagram is an enormously popular smartphone application with over 100 million users. It is available in 9 different languages. Rather than needing to upload photos to a computer and edit them using imaging software, Instagram users can snap photos with their cell phones using Instagram's filters, many of which are aimed to replicate analog prints. While Instagram photos can easily be exported to other social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, the app itself supports followers and hashtags (a la twitter) and location tagging (similar to foursquare) and comments, like most social media outlets. Instagram is a free service and there are numerous resources on the web for tweaking your Instagram skills. Here's a webpage that gives a basic usage instructions.

My friend and fellow GSLIS student Elizabeth Mc Gorty visited Fenway Park this past weekend. Here are her photos of the park, using four different Instagram "retro" filters. 


Filter: Nashville

Filter: Willow

Filter: Sierra

Filter: Early Bird



     Like Instagram, Hipstamatic is a social-media oriented app which encourages filtered photography. With the motto of "Digital Photography never looked so analog," Hipstamatic offers its users various "films" and "lenses," many reminiscent of the latter half of the 20th century (Hipstamatic). Here's an introduction to using Hipstamatic. 


Bibliography:

Instagram photos courtesy of Elizabeth Mc Gorty. 

Abeln, Mark S. "An Imitation of the Autochrome Lumière Process." The Refracted Light. Web. 24 Apr. 2013. <http://therefractedlight.blogspot.com/2012/03/imitation-of-autochrome-lumiere-process.html>.

Brown, Ryan Lenora. "Faux Filters Wash out History." The Christian Science Monitor. The Christian Science Monitor, 19 Mar. 2013. Web. 24 Apr. 2013. <http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Arts/2013/0319/Faux-filters-wash-out-history>.

Geron, Tomio. "Facebook Officially Closes Instagram Deal." Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 06 Sept. 2012. Web. 24 Apr. 2013. <http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2012/09/06/facebook-officially-closes-instagram-deal/>.

Graves, Elizabeth. "Imitation Is the Sincerest Form of Flattery: Thoughts on Faux-Alt-Process Digital Images." Alternative Photography. Web. 24 Apr. 2013. <http://www.alternativephotography.com/wp/open-blog/imitation-is-the-sincerest-form-of-flattery-thoughts-on-faux-alt-process-digital-images>.

"Hipstamatic."  Web. 25 Apr. 2013. <http://hipstamatic.com/>.

Messieh, Nancy. "The Ultimate Beginners Guide to Hipstamatic." MakeUseOf. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Apr. 2013. <http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/ultimate-beginners-guide-hipstamatic/>.

Nieves, Melody. "Quick Tip: Create a Wet Plate Photo Effect in Photoshop." Psd Tuts+. Web. 24 Apr. 2013. <http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/photo-effects-tutorials/wet-plate-photo-effect/>.

"Press Center." Instagram. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Apr. 2013. <http://instagram.com/press/>.

Waters, Sue. "The Educator’s Guide to Instagram and Other Photo Apps." The Edublogger.  Web. 24 Apr. 2013. <http://theedublogger.com/2012/05/28/the-educators-guide-to-instagram-and-other-photo-apps/>.

Photography and Deception


Photography and Deception

My favorite photoshop from the Iranian missile photoshop controversy.  This image was submitted to Boing Boing photoshop entry (boingboing.net)

In the binaries of truth and fiction, real and imagined, and valid and false the photograph is often initially placed on the side of the true, the real, and the valid. Perhaps because a photograph is the actual expression of light during an instance in time and because visually it represents the world in a way that mirrors the way in which we physically see or even perhaps because we view the camera as an objective machine.  The photograph is so easily seen as a depiction of reality, an accurate window into history, the truth of an event, when in fact photographs can be staged, doctored, and the content of the image chosen or content disregarded. The camera is just a machine but the intentions of the photographer both physically behind the camera and as the manipulator behind the scenes, who through choices made in the moments before the shutter is opened has chosen the content for the photograph. There is also a second opportunity for manipulation occurring before the image is developed on a print by means of doctoring the negative or shopping the digital image. Finally there is a third opportunity for manipulation that occurs post-production and occurs when differing explanations of images are given, captions are added, or albums are created.

The Power of Photography and Memory

In the study Changing History: Doctored Photographs Affect Memory for Past Public Events by Dario L.M. Sacchi, Franca Agnoli, and Elizabeth F. Loftus found that if their participants were shown digitally doctored images depicting the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest and a 2003 protest in Rome against the War in Iraq these participants’ memory of these events were significantly altered from what actually occurred at these events.
            For the Tiananmen Square protest the famous Tank Man image was doctored to include large groups of protesters gathered on both sides of the street. For the Rome protest rally photograph aggressive-looking demonstrators and police officers were added to the peaceful protest. The participants were split into groups in which some viewed the original images and others viewed the manipulated images. After viewing the images they were then asked a series of questions about the events (1010).
            A significant finding from these experiments was, “that viewing modified images affected not only the way people remember past public events, but also their attitudes and behavioral intentions” (1019). The study also found the effect similar for younger and older adults, regardless of whether the events were recent enough to be remembered first hand.
This study indicates the fragility of our memory and the power that photographs have in manipulating how we see and understand history and the ease with which it can be, unbeknownst to us, manipulated.

Before the Shutter is Opened

There are several ways a photograph can be deceptive from the actual events and these are either created by what is photographed—through framing, staging, or other narrative means—or by what is not photographed.
            Of all of Gardner’s Civil War photographs how many acknowledge that the Union forces included former slaves, and yet in “A Burial Party, Cold Harbor, Va. April, 1865,” they are presented in the menial role of collecting the forgotten dead (Trachtenberg 130).
Gardner, Alexander What Do I Want, John Henry? GEH
A war fought over slavery and yet the photographic documentation of the war leaves out arguably the most important images of the war. Or in the case of “What Do I Want, John Henry? Warrenton, Va., November, 1862,” posed a black youth as a servant to the white soldiers. The lack of photographic evidence deceptively proffers a notion that perhaps the war was not about slavery.(expand)
            In William Frassanito’s book Gettysburg: A Journey in Time, Frassanito examines Alexander Gardner’s images of Gettysburg and notices that in, “The Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter” not only was the soldier probably an infantryman killed while advancing up the hillside but also the weapon seen is not that of a sharpshooter and further more is likely a prop owned and used by Gardner (186-192). In Gardner’s Photographic Sketch Book of the Civil War, he mentions how he visited the same nest months later to find the musket rusted by storm and the skeleton undisturbed, that none of those who searched the battlefield for the fallen had found him (plate 41).  He then goes on to proffer that some poor mother is missing her son—how creditable is Gardner and oh how we have been deceived.
Gardner Alexander The Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter 


After the Shutter but Before the Print

There are multiple ways a photograph can be manipulated prior to being printed. They can be retouched with brushes, cut to remove figures or simply re-centered. These processes have been expanded and the loss of fidelity has been almost entirely eliminated by experts when working with digital images. These methods are used to manipulate, cause deception, and alter the meaning of a photograph.
            Studies have shown that images can influence attitudes on social issues (Zillmann, Gibson, & Sargent, 1999) and photographs are important retrieval cues for the recollection of past events (Schacter, Koutstaal, Johnson, Gross, & Angell, 1997), so one can imagine the power an image like the photo-shopped Iranian missile test had on the collective memory of everyone who viewed it on the front page of all the national newspapers.  (Morris, Photography as a Weapon). In these doctored images an addition missil is added and a failed missil launch is removed. The shopped image was then the front page of many major newspapers.
from the NY Times

from the NY Times

from the NY Times

The scariest aspect of our memory as pointed out by Hany Farid in Morris’ article is that we, “remember the picture. And there are psychology studies, when you tell people that information is incorrect, they forget that it is incorrect. They only remember the misinformation”



Images aren’t only used to create a false narrative of the present but also to rewrite the narrative of the past. This image of Trotsky, Kamenev, and Lenin as they took turns addressing the troops was often used because of the iconic pose of Lenin, but problems arose when Trotsky was exiled in the 1930s (Jaubert 31).  In the second photograph Trotsky was exiled not only from the country but also from the collective memory of the event. In the doctored version of these photographs Trotsky has been painted out along with other individuals who were later deemed enemies of the state.



Post-Production

Fenton The Valley of the Shadow of Death [ON]
Fenton The Valley of the Shadow of Death [OFF]

For this example let’s look at two photographs by Roger Fenton from the Crimean War.  These photographs have been titled Valley of the Shadow of Death but additional titles have been adding to distinguish between the two [ON] with the cannonballs on the road and [OFF] with the cannonballs removed from the road. The great debate revolves around the order in which the photographs were taken.  Songtag writes, in Regarding the Pain of Others,
After reaching the much-shelled valley approaching Sebastopol in his horse-drawn darkroom, Fenton made two exposures from the same tripod position: in the first version of the celebrated photo he was to call “The Valley of the Shadow of Death” (despite the title, it was not across this landscape that the Light Brigade made its doomed charge), the cannonballs are thick on the ground to the left of the road, but before taking the second picture—the one that is always reproduced—he oversaw the scattering of the cannonballs on the road itself.
Sontag’s claim is that Fenton staged the second photograph or more explicitly oversaw the staging of the cannonballs and then photographed it because it is presumably more aesthetically captivating. One would think that before writing something so scathing about someone she had never met Sontag would of course have some evidence. It turns out that she doesn’t, but has instead:
She overstated what [Mark Haworth-Booth] said, which is very characteristic of her writing. It became much more black and white and strident than it was when I said it. I was raising doubts, but she assumed my doubts were a matter of fact rather than speculation” (Morris, 10-11).
           
Morris sets out to determine the order in which the photographs were taken. At first he interviews several different curators with differing points of view on which photograph came first and an interesting pattern emerges from the interviews. Those who believe the order was [OFF] then [ON] have a tendency to believe Fenton to be a coward. They also suspect that the image of the hillside is facing toward the allies, in essence Fenton came down the road and turned around, shot the image, and called it a day. Those that believe the order to be [ON] then [OFF] tend to show some admiration for Fenton and note that there is little evidence but they do have some facts like the valley was actually called the Valley of the Shadow of Death by British soldiers and they note that Fenton mentioned the scattering of cannon fire in a previous visit to the site.
Morris attempts to gather some empirical evidence and visits the scene in Crimea and discovers that the view is actually pointing north and toward the enemy encampment. Eventually by examining small differences in the shifting of small rocks between the two pictures—in [OFF] the rocks are higher on the hillside than they are in [ON]—Morris concludes that the order is [OFF] then [ON]. 
While this does affirm Sontag’s and several others’ theory their conclusions were not based on facts but based on their psychological assessment of a man none of them had ever met. They were reading from the photographs what they wanted to see and not what was actually present.
The ease with which assumptions can be made is evident by a simple changing of captions by Daniel Mooney’s reinterpretation of some of the evidence Colin Powell presented to the United Nations in 2003 as evidence for the invasion of Iraq. Reading what you want to see in images as opposed to what is actually there swayed public opinion and eventually lead to the invasion of a country.



Conclusions

The power and the ease with which photographs can be used as deceptive tools abound and are ever expanding. It has been and will continue to be critical for the viewers of images to obtain a level of visual literacy that encourages a critical eye when viewing any image. Asking questions about the function of an image, what happened right after and before the image was taken, and what is beyond the frame of the image are all essential questions. We must not end there when reading photographs, we must be aware of what we bring to the table when we are reading an image and be aware of our own biases and attempt to not add them to a reading. It is essential to understand that the power of photography to represent reality is as equal to its power to distort reality.


Works Cited

Frassanito, William. Gettysburg: A Journey in Time. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1975.
Jaubert, Alain. Making People Disappear. New York: Pergmon-Brassey's International Defense Publishers, 1989.
Morris, Errol. Believing is Seeing. New York: Penguin Press, 2011.
—. "Photography as a Weapon." The New York Times 11 August 2008.
Nizza, Mike and Patrick J Lyons. "In an Iranian Image, A Missile Too Many." The New York Times 10 July 2008.
Trachtenberg, Alan. "Through a Glass, Darkly: Photography and Cultural Memory." Social Research 75.1 (2008): 111-132.