The Truth and Untruths about Photography

If one were to write a great novel such as, The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien, and be able to establish a sense of verisimilitude, who is to say that they cannot achieve the same appearance of truth in a simple photo?  

Thousands of photographers capture images every day, but only a few are able to capture the truth. Out of a thousand photos taken, give or take a few, only a meager amount can expose the uncomfortable embarrassments of society. 

Few have been successful at such a tedious feat. Those who have succeeded do not flaunt, for what they have discovered is not something commendable about the world. The photos they have taken do not just uncover society's cryptic secrets, they delve into the lives of those who are burdened with the ills of life. 

In America, many faults are yet to be found, but those that have prove to be shocking. Julius Krausz snapped the photo below in the 1900's, showing that although this era may have been fruitful and luxurious at times, all was not well in any area other than the 1st percentile of the population. What much literature struggles to write about, Krausz manages to ensnare in one breathtakingly terrifying shot. 

In addition to taking the photo itself, the artist must face an arduous journey to both overcome their own boundaries as well as those set by authorities. In such repressive countries, capturing a photo that reveals an injustice gets them jailed, or killed. In the most recent news, Azerbaijan's photographers fight against threats to find out that many citizens are being kept quiet on their judgement against an upcoming election in the country. 

(To find out more information check out this article! http://www.indexoncensorship.org/2013/10/from-the-magazine-azerbaijan/)

However, although the photo of American children huddled together in an abandoned street shows undeniable truth about the poverty of the 1900's, there is also something polemical about taking a photo. 

Photos can also be quite deceiving. In reality, the photo above may look quite disturbing, but the actual truth could be something quite different. I, as well as many others, have come to discover that all truths are based on a type of fiction and all fiction is based on some sort of truth. Sound paradoxical? It is. The fiction itself varies in both situations, where the former refers to perspectives and the latter refers to a figment of imagination. 

As a pioneer of modern photography, Alfred Stieglitz once said, "“In photography there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.”

Take the life of a normal photographer, per say. In his memoir, Voices In The Mirror, Gordon Sparks talks about his encounter with his first job in Washington D.C , through which he learnt that " a good documentary photographer's work has as much to do with his heart as it does with the eye" (Sparks 106). 

So in the end, a truth uncovering a country's sins may be captured but almost all of it is based on the perspective of the photographer, or that "of the beholder".