Interpreting Photographs - Hoepker and 9/11
Photographs are worth a thousand words. Those thousand words are usually used to describe various interpretations of the viewed image, each one different from the others, some very different, some correct, some not.
This week in PDN Online, a photograph by Magnum photographer Thomas Hoepker of a group of young people in Brooklyn sitting and observing the smoke rising from the twin towers has sparked a bit of debate as to its meaning.
You can see a small version of the photo at PDN Online. There are other links within the article to other stories and interpretations, including various interpretations and replies by two of the individuals in the photo.
If you type in "Thomas Hoepker 9/11 photo" in Google you will get links to more comments from various blogs and other sources about the interpretations and thoughts about the photograph. A Wall Street Journal Article by Richard Woodward an art critic, puts his own slant on the interpretation.
This example describes a partial failing with photographers, getting the interpretation wrong. When a photographer creates/captures a photograph there are two aspects of that image:
1. the story the photographer wants to tell
2. the story the subject(s) want to tell (or are telling)
In fine art, the interpretation of the artist, the meaning, is again interpreted by the viewer. When they mesh, more or less, a connection, a communication, has been made. The subject, subject matter, visual and mental dialog need not be real to be complete. Abstract imagery is treated more or less the same as realistic imagery. For photojournalistic subjects and subject matter, the image is supposed to be of reality. The elements of the photograph honestly telling a story. Generally, the assumption is that the photograph was taken honestly, with no manipulatiive trickery, no directing, it is the scene as it was. The trouble comes when the photographer mis-interprets the scene and gets it all wrong. Perhaps it is because of preconceived ideas, or maybe wishful thinking, or the need to find a counter-point amongst an ocean of similarity. In the case of the Hoepker photograph, Hoepker failed to take the additional steps of engaging the subjects to find out more.
Based on my own experience of the day, a few thousand miles away, it seems obvious to me that the people in this photograph could not be, as Hoepker describes, "totally relaxed like any normal afternoon. They were just chatting away. It's possible they lost people and cared, but they were not stirred by it....I can only speculate [but they] didn't seem to care." I immediately sense this group of young folks may or may not have been together at that spot at the time of the attacks, but may have come together over the intervening time between the impacts and the time the photo was taken. They are sitting obviously aware of the events unfolding. They are probably discussing what's going on, maybe even trying to figure out what's happening, as any person their ages would be whether it was a burning building or a sagebrush fire. This is especially apparent since they don't appear to have access to media reports (no radio or tv visible in the photo) which would lead to a lot of speculation I would think. There's nothing they can do from across the water but watch and try to make sense of it, like most of us did watching it on television.
Hoepker made a wrong assumption. I don't know him or his background. I interpret his statements to be from an older gentleman, perhaps in his late 50s or 60s, who sees young people (especially those who ride bicycles) as more carefree and unconcerned, uninvolved and uninterested in events that don't affect them directly. The twin towers burning was, as he saw it, more of a spectacle, like any burning building they might see, stop, and chat about, rather than the major life-changing and nation-changing event it was unfolding to be while Mr. Hoepker struggled to get closer to ground zero on that day. All the chaos surrounding him probably was strikingly different to this apparently idyllic-looking scene. His capture was swift. He had made his interpretation before he clicked the shutter release, got the snap and moved on. The seemingly casual poses of the people, the bright sky, landscaped vegetation, the bicycle, certainly without the smoke in the background, would give the impression of a group of friends having a great time together on a summer day.
When the circumstances are not well known, most interpretations can be gotten away with. If this had been a photograph of the same group of people in roughly the same setting, though with an apartment complex fire in the background, maybe Hoepker's interpretation would be more believable. We all have experiences with burning buildings in our neighborhoods and towns. It can be a tragic event to the victims, but callous as it may seem, to those around this very localized event it is a spectacle, a curiosity, an "at least it's not me" (at least in the back of our minds) event that we can safely watch and comment upon, even laugh about or "not seem to care". When this type of localized event occurs in another town or another state, the connection to us individually is much less and, to be honest, we hardly even think about it when we hear the reports.
9/11 was different. Nearly everyone in the country (the world for that matter) has some feeling, some experience, some sense of connection, to that event. Even though there may have been groups of people gathered to watch who didn't care, who were callously watching the spectacle merely for the grandiosity of it, most of us know what we would be doing if we were in the same situation as this group of people in Hoepker's photograph. We were doing it hundreds, thousands of miles away sitting in front of our television sets, trying to understand what was going on, trying to figure out what was happening, what it meant, what was going to happen next. So, it it difficult to believe Hoepker's interpretation of this scene as anything but his own creation, for whatever reason - just plain wrong or an opportunity to create some sensationalism.
A photographer has to be careful when he interprets his own photographs. It has to be believable, it has to at least appear to be honest, and it has to make some sense to the viewer that the photographer's story and the subject's story are both plausible and related. When that happens the connection is more likely to be made. Otherwise they walk away.
I didn't count. Are there a 1000 words in this essay?
This week in PDN Online, a photograph by Magnum photographer Thomas Hoepker of a group of young people in Brooklyn sitting and observing the smoke rising from the twin towers has sparked a bit of debate as to its meaning.
You can see a small version of the photo at PDN Online. There are other links within the article to other stories and interpretations, including various interpretations and replies by two of the individuals in the photo.
If you type in "Thomas Hoepker 9/11 photo" in Google you will get links to more comments from various blogs and other sources about the interpretations and thoughts about the photograph. A Wall Street Journal Article by Richard Woodward an art critic, puts his own slant on the interpretation.
This example describes a partial failing with photographers, getting the interpretation wrong. When a photographer creates/captures a photograph there are two aspects of that image:
1. the story the photographer wants to tell
2. the story the subject(s) want to tell (or are telling)
In fine art, the interpretation of the artist, the meaning, is again interpreted by the viewer. When they mesh, more or less, a connection, a communication, has been made. The subject, subject matter, visual and mental dialog need not be real to be complete. Abstract imagery is treated more or less the same as realistic imagery. For photojournalistic subjects and subject matter, the image is supposed to be of reality. The elements of the photograph honestly telling a story. Generally, the assumption is that the photograph was taken honestly, with no manipulatiive trickery, no directing, it is the scene as it was. The trouble comes when the photographer mis-interprets the scene and gets it all wrong. Perhaps it is because of preconceived ideas, or maybe wishful thinking, or the need to find a counter-point amongst an ocean of similarity. In the case of the Hoepker photograph, Hoepker failed to take the additional steps of engaging the subjects to find out more.
Based on my own experience of the day, a few thousand miles away, it seems obvious to me that the people in this photograph could not be, as Hoepker describes, "totally relaxed like any normal afternoon. They were just chatting away. It's possible they lost people and cared, but they were not stirred by it....I can only speculate [but they] didn't seem to care." I immediately sense this group of young folks may or may not have been together at that spot at the time of the attacks, but may have come together over the intervening time between the impacts and the time the photo was taken. They are sitting obviously aware of the events unfolding. They are probably discussing what's going on, maybe even trying to figure out what's happening, as any person their ages would be whether it was a burning building or a sagebrush fire. This is especially apparent since they don't appear to have access to media reports (no radio or tv visible in the photo) which would lead to a lot of speculation I would think. There's nothing they can do from across the water but watch and try to make sense of it, like most of us did watching it on television.
Hoepker made a wrong assumption. I don't know him or his background. I interpret his statements to be from an older gentleman, perhaps in his late 50s or 60s, who sees young people (especially those who ride bicycles) as more carefree and unconcerned, uninvolved and uninterested in events that don't affect them directly. The twin towers burning was, as he saw it, more of a spectacle, like any burning building they might see, stop, and chat about, rather than the major life-changing and nation-changing event it was unfolding to be while Mr. Hoepker struggled to get closer to ground zero on that day. All the chaos surrounding him probably was strikingly different to this apparently idyllic-looking scene. His capture was swift. He had made his interpretation before he clicked the shutter release, got the snap and moved on. The seemingly casual poses of the people, the bright sky, landscaped vegetation, the bicycle, certainly without the smoke in the background, would give the impression of a group of friends having a great time together on a summer day.
When the circumstances are not well known, most interpretations can be gotten away with. If this had been a photograph of the same group of people in roughly the same setting, though with an apartment complex fire in the background, maybe Hoepker's interpretation would be more believable. We all have experiences with burning buildings in our neighborhoods and towns. It can be a tragic event to the victims, but callous as it may seem, to those around this very localized event it is a spectacle, a curiosity, an "at least it's not me" (at least in the back of our minds) event that we can safely watch and comment upon, even laugh about or "not seem to care". When this type of localized event occurs in another town or another state, the connection to us individually is much less and, to be honest, we hardly even think about it when we hear the reports.
9/11 was different. Nearly everyone in the country (the world for that matter) has some feeling, some experience, some sense of connection, to that event. Even though there may have been groups of people gathered to watch who didn't care, who were callously watching the spectacle merely for the grandiosity of it, most of us know what we would be doing if we were in the same situation as this group of people in Hoepker's photograph. We were doing it hundreds, thousands of miles away sitting in front of our television sets, trying to understand what was going on, trying to figure out what was happening, what it meant, what was going to happen next. So, it it difficult to believe Hoepker's interpretation of this scene as anything but his own creation, for whatever reason - just plain wrong or an opportunity to create some sensationalism.
A photographer has to be careful when he interprets his own photographs. It has to be believable, it has to at least appear to be honest, and it has to make some sense to the viewer that the photographer's story and the subject's story are both plausible and related. When that happens the connection is more likely to be made. Otherwise they walk away.
I didn't count. Are there a 1000 words in this essay?
posted by Mike Shipman | 11:55:00 PM
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