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Coursework, Part 4 - Image and text, Project 1 - Captions and Titles, Research point - 1, Research Point -- 1

Part 4 – Research Point 1

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The research point is to look at the Barthes essay Rhetoric of the Image and reflect on looking at his definitions of anchorage and relay, thinking about examples of these and considering how you could use them in your own work.

I will start by admitting that I find Barthes a complex read. This may be partly because he wrote in French and I am reading translations. It may be because his background is in philosophy and semiotics. I find I always have to have a dictionary to hand. I looked at the essay as a whole as the parts on anchorage and relay can only be understood in context.

All quotes are from the Rhetoric of the image – initially published in 1964, republished in Image Music Text in 1977 and obtained here from The Photography Reader (2019).

In the Rhetoric of the Image Barthes starts by saying that many people, especially linguists feel that images are weak communicators in comparison with language but other think that it is ‘ineffably rich’.

Barthes then looks at levels of messages in photographs. The first linguistic – and actual words such as a caption or labels within the image. These can have both denotational and connotational meanings. He then describes a clearly coded iconic message- the details of the image and what it shows (in this case the makings of soup) – the perceptual message or the denoted image.  The third level he describes as a ‘message without a code’, a literal message that we understand because of our previous knowledge – the cultural message or the connoted, symbolic image.

He notes that linking of text and image is common. Does the image duplicate information in the words or does the text add ‘fresh information’ to a picture? He sees us (in 1964) as a civilisation of writing and speech rather than of images and notes that there is a linguistic message (length variable and irrelevant) with every image – title, caption, dialogue, accompanying article.

All images are polysemous (have multiple meanings). The reader chooses. The linguistic message is one way of fixing the message, resolving the (terror of) uncertainty. The text helps to identity the scene – what is it?

Anchorage – tells you what of all the possible denotive meanings is the one that you are supposed to understand – to focus not simply my gaze but also my understanding.  It limits what you see.  It directs you to the meaning that is desired (especially in advertising). Anchorage is a control, a selective explanation (elucidation). It acts to repress (cut down) the meaning of the image to that wished by the creator or society.

 Relay (less common than anchorage) is often seen in cartoons/comics. ‘The text and image stand in a complimentary relationship’. The unity of the message becomes important rather than the individual items. He describes the information gained by the text as more ‘costly’ as it need more formal learning to acquire and the information from the image as ‘lazier’ and ‘quick’ allowing a hurried reader to avoid the necessity of verbal descriptions. He also notes that either text or image will usually be dominant.

Barthes then goes on to talk about the denoted image. He says that although a photograph, ‘by virtue of its absolutely analogue nature’ – is a message without a code – but also that everybody automatically understands more then the liberal image because of our cultural knowledge. However, a photograph is different from a drawing as any drawing chooses what to show, as opposed to a photograph which (once the frame has been decided) shows everything. The photograph records, evoking not only being-there but also having-been-there. There is always the evidence of this is how it was. It is different from any other form of image making (a mutation of a way of passing on information).

The connoted (symbolic image) is complex because there are as many possible interpretations as there are readers. The interpretation depends on prior knowledge, a ‘body of attitudes’. The language of the image consisted both utterances emitted by the creator and the utterances received from the viewer. Therefore, they may/will include surprises. The whole set of connotations from the image Barthes calls a rhetoric.

 He ends by noting that the meaning (of an image) is torn internally between culture and nature – but the whole thing combines to tell a story.

In summary:

Barthes defines anchorage as the controlling words that direct the reader to what the creator wishes him/her to see. Relay in text is something that sits alongside the image and gives additional value, is complimentary. Anchorage directs you; relay suggests possibilities.

 Examples:

  1. In the book Our Forbidden Land by Faye Godwin (Godwin, 1990) she uses a combination of both. The images are accompanied by a simple text such as ‘Stubble Burning, east Kent’ which, by itself, would allow you to look at the image and think ‘Oh. It must be winter’ or ‘That makes a lot of smoke’ – but she then accompanies the image with a passage of information about the context which makes it clear that she wants you to read it as an obnoxious and dangerous process.
  2. In The Ballad of Sexual Dependency by Nan Goldin she uses simple factual titles such as ‘Christie and Sandy on the beach, Provincetown, Mass.1976’ which’ while grounding the image in reality, this happened, I was then then – allows you to make up your own story.
  3. In Tal Uf Tal Ab by Robert Frank there is even less information, the name of the person or a place. You are left with your own interpretation.
  4. In a copy of the magazine Breathe (picked at random off the floor) -the images (while often very attractive) are clearly secondary to the anchoring text, for instance, a long article entitled ‘Food for the soul’ (Yates, 2016) which is accompanied by luscious looking strawberries, cherries and raspberries. This is very similar in use to the advertisement Barthes describes in Image of the Rhetoric, although here you are being sold a lifestyle rather than a specific product.

How might this help me?

In much of the work I do I want the reader/viewer to develop their own ideas. To Think. To feel. To imagine. But, equally, I do want to give some direction – I take images of people with disabilities. I do not want the viewer to be negative. I want them to go into their world not look from outside with contempt. I think I need to consider the relay type text, maybe a simple caption, a single word – but with an essay (possibly too formal) at some point.

I am thinking about a piece of memory work – maybe the words need to be totally separate. Single words in a grid? Minimal size captions on the alternate page?

 References:

Frank, R. (2010) Tal Uf Tal Ab. Gottingen, Germany: Steidl.

Godwin, F. (1990) Our forbidden land. London: J. Cape.

Goldin, N. et al. (1986) The ballad of sexual dependency. New York, N.Y.: Aperture Foundation.

Wells, L. (2019) The photography reader: history and theory. Abingdon, Oxon; New York, Ny: Routledge.

Yates, J. (2016) ‘Food for the soul’ In: Breathe 2016 pp.74–75.

Assignment 3 - Window, Learning Log, Photobooks, Photographers, Research

Research for Assignment 3

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When thinking about how to present this assignment I was aware that the brief included you can create as many pictures as you like …. the set should be concise and not include repetitive or unnecessary images. This means thinking about how to reduce a large number of images into a manageable piece of work that tells a story about the group of people I have chosen to work with.

In Short’s book Context and Narrative (summarised in Context and Narrative – Maria Short) she discusses the narrative that one might read in an image and points out that while it might be linear (beginning, middle and end) it does not have to be. The story should hang together, this might be because of use of similar tonal ranges, lighting or format – but might be because of the topic and that you need to be clear about your intention. Exploring the subject over time can end with you changing what you want to say and how you say it. The story may also depend on what order the images are shown in – so do you have control over that if it is important. (Short,2018).

With his information in mind I went and looked over my collection of photobooks to see which ones told a (fairly) concise story. Many that tell a story are long (book length) and involve many more images than I want to use, although this project could easily lengthen to a full book.  However, some of the books were shorter and told a relatively clear story.

 In this I have summarised the stories I read – concentrating on the ways the books and series were presented rather than on the whole import of each book. This is no attempt to do them justice – simply to pull out some information about how and why they were produced in a particular format, and the effect that’s those choices have had.

Julia Borissova – white blonde – is telling a story of a place and a time, using a combination of archival images and altered self portraits. On her website it is also shown as single images and a slideshow. The order of the images varies though the sites (book versus slideshow) as does the format. In this case the series depends on the totality of the images, their tones and the feeling they evoke rather than the order in which they are viewed.  (Borissova, 2018) See Julia Borissova – white blonde for more detail.

 Margaret Lansink – Borders of Nothingness-On the Mend – tells about the emotions that were linked with her loss of contact with her daughter and subsequent re-engagement. The book is physically small. The paper is rough and the images low key, black and white with occasional flashes of gold. Little is clear. The order is important as it moves from despair through nothingness to repair and hope. The feel of the book is also important as it is very tactile, rough, and evokes the feelings described (Lansink, 2020). See Borders of Nothingness – On the Mend for more detail.

Bettina von Zwehl – Made Up Love Song – consists of a series of portraits done of the same person over 6 months, set in the same place and with similar light. The variations are minimal, her hair and clothing show subtle changes. The images are shown against a black background opposite a simple statement of the day and time. This is a very simple presentation where you gain from the repeated images showing the gradually increasing intimacy. While a single image is effective, the story gains by the repetition (Chandler and von Zwehl, 2014). See Bettina von Zwehl for more detail.

Robin Gillanders  – A Lover’s Complaint – takes the short Fragments written by Barthes, has them translated in haiku by Henry Gough-Cooper and then interspersed these with still life images, mainly of glass and material, shown as fragments against a dense black background. The haiku are presented 12 to a page, organised alphabetically, other than a final short poem about silence and love. There is no immediate obvious connection between the haiku and the images.  The viewer/ reader needs to make their own links. However, each group of images is linked, variations on a theme. As a whole, they start minimalistically, become more complex, then fade away – following a pattern. The words and the images give equal weight to the story (Gillanders and Gough-Cooper, 2016).

Dayanita Singh – Go Away Closer – is a series of 40 images in a small book. They are all square, and all black and white, and, other than the fact that they all tell about India, those are the only linking factors. Singh says she deliberately does not try to make a narrative but puts images together intuitively. In her work she collects her images into ‘museums’ – which she them changes around for different displays, even with the same exhibition. The work is about a feeling, rather than a story Singh, 2007), See Dayanita Singh – Go Away Closer for more detail.

All these photobooks are really about emotions rather than facts.  They may be based around a story, such as the Lansink’s Borders of Nothingness – On the Mend, or actively avoid a narrative like Singh’s Go Away Closer. In spite of this they all have a clarity about the way they have been put together, an internal consistency. The tonal values are similar, the feeling derived from the images are similar. They are clearly carefully considered. In two, Go Away Closer and white blonde, the order of the images is not crucial, while it has been, inevitably, fixed within the books, it is changed in other formats (a slideshow and an exhibition). These are all fairly short books, although longer than the series I am planning, but they taught me a lot about the type of consistency required to make a book hold together, and, even more importantly, to make the reader/viewer return to it.

I then decided to look at some of my photobooks that do tell an active story, that is about groups of people and what they are doing. These all seemed to be rather longer, and often physically larger – I am not sure about the reasoning for that.

Mark Steinmetz – Summer Camp – is a collection of images taken at American summer camps between 1986 and 1997. They were collected into book format in 2019.  The book is a gentle reminiscence of a past time, although he comments there has been little change in that environment over years. The images are shown in black and white, are varying sizes and formats. However, the overall feel is remarkably consistent. There is a mixture of images that concentrate on the activities and other that concentrate on portraits of the children. See Mark Steinmetz for more detail.

J.A. Mortram –Small Town Inertia – this is a collection of images and  paired stories about people that struggle with their lives in a small town in Britain. It could be (and has been) described as poverty porn – but what makes it stand out is that Mortram lives within the community, has his own personal struggles and is clearly both sympathetic with and understanding of those he photographs, never patronising. The images are all black and white, often harshly lit with marked contrast and shadow. Some are close up portraits, some show the environment, but all concentrate on the people. The book is laid out with an almost full-page image on the right page and the corresponding information including the name and usually a short explanatory passage on the bottom of the left page. This has the effect of concentrating the eye initially on the portrait and only secondarily looking at the words (Mortram, 2017).

Nan Goldin –The Ballad of Sexual Dependency –probably the most famous of all the lifestyle stories, taken very much from an internal position. The book is a small part of the whole work which also includes film, large scale exhibition works and talks. Goldin calls it as ‘the diary I let people read’ in  the beginning essay and virtually at the end of the copy I have ‘a volume of loss, while still a ballad of love’ (Goldin, 2012). The images are harsh with often an odd colour cast. They are not all in focus and are presented with a short title, usually of who and where. Every time I look through it I notice different details. It holds the eye without any pretence at conventional beauty.

I also looked at a variety of short series online, picking them from the links that regularly pop up on my tablet, including Lenscratch, Aperture, BJP, Photographic Museum of Humanity and FOAM. This exercise could actually fill an entire book – so I have just picked out four that really caught my eye!

B. Proud – Transcending Love – is the latest series by the American photographer B. (Belinda) Proud. It is about Transgender and Gender Non-conforming Couples in America, who are a mainly forgotten and mistreated group of people. The portraits she shows are of families and couples who are clearly proud to be together. The portraits are formal, in colour, deliberately chosen to represent the full spectrum of the relationships she is describing, and she says ‘This project is about the validity and fluidity of gender expression. The location for each portrait, chosen by the couple in discussion with the artist, is significant and provides the viewer with another level of understanding into the relationship’ (Smithson, 2020a). The portraits are shown with a simple title, some tell the gender/status of the people, others do not. From the website it is difficult to tell if the order is important – overall I suspect not. Each image could be first or last. The importance is in the group as a whole.

Mulugeta Ayene – Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 Crash Site – World Press Photo Story of the Year Nominee, – this is not the same as many of the series/stories talked about above as it is a very factual piece of documentary work. However, it shows many of the points I have been thinking about. It is in colour, the images are factual but varied, from wide area shots, to details of the objects collected, to harrowing images of the people involved and those who lost friends and relatives. They are shown with dates and brief explanatory notes. Oddly, the images are not shown in date order, I think this may be to concentrate on the story – but it is then distracting to know the dates. (www.worldpressphoto.org, 2020).

Bowei Yang – Soft Thorn – is a dream or an illusion that tells the story of a gay boy/man growing up in a Christian community in China. ‘A journey of nostalgia’. It contains a mixture of staged portraits of his friends and slices of the environment, together with still life images. Some are portrait, some landscape but they are all linked by the muted tones and subdued and at times sad atmosphere that pervades the series. It gives a clear feeling of how difficult his teenage years must have been.  I will watch for more work from him – or hopefully an extension of this (Yang, 2020).

Cathy Spence – Crooked Eye – shows a very personal project about a young man, Wesley, her son, who has albinism and visual problems. It consists of a series of heartbreaking portraits which mainly show him facing away from the camera or covering his eyes with his hair. They are high key, in keeping with the subject. At some points they are almost burnt out – but this just emphasises the story. Some are blurred, reflecting on Wesley’s poor vision. Several formats are used but this does not distract from the consistency of the series. The series is highly effective at showing the difficulties of growing up with an obvious difference that few people probably understand (Smithson, 2020b).

What have I learned from all this?

  • You need to know what you want to say
  • You need to be passionate about it
  • You need to be internally consistent to hold the story together, either in colour or size or format or feeling
  • There are as many formats for storytelling as there are photographers
  • The order of the images may depend on the place they are being shown (book/exhibition/slide show online)
  • Black and white is still widely used – especially when the point of the story is about emotions – but not always
  • Precise focus and lighting are not always important (but possibly less so the more famous you are) – but this does depend on what you are showing – Goldin’s Ballad versus Ayene’s work on an air disaster.

Reference list:

Borissova, J. (2018) White blonde. (s.l.): Bessard.

Chandler, D. and Von Zwehl, B. (2014). Made up love song. London: V & A Publishing.

Gillanders, R. and Gough-Cooper, H. (2016) A Lover’s Complaint. Edinburgh, Scotland: Dingle Press.

Goldin, N. (2012) The ballad of sexual dependency. New York, N.Y.: Aperture Foundation.

Lansink, M. (2020). Borders of Nothingness – On the Mend. Belgium: Ibasho

Mortram, J. (2017) Small Town Inertia. (s.l.): Bluecoat Press.

Mulugeta Ayene SOY-DJ | World Press Photo (2020) At: https://www.worldpressphoto.org/collection/photo/2020/39610/4/Mulugeta-Ayene-SOY-DJ (Accessed on 29 April 2020)

Short, M. (2018) Context and narrative. London ; New York: Bloomsbury Visual Arts.

Singh, D. (2007). Go Away Closer. Göttingen, Germany: Steidl.

Smithson, A. (2020a) B. Proud: Transcending Love: Portraits of Transgender and Gender Non-conforming Couples. At: http://lenscratch.com/2020/04/b-proud-transcending-love/ (Accessed on 28 April 2020)

Smithson, A. (2020b) Cathy Spence: Crooked Eye. At: http://lenscratch.com/2020/04/cathy-spence/ (Accessed on 2 May 2020)

Steinmetz, M. (2019) Summer Camp. China: Nazraeli Press.

Yang, B. (20AD) SOFT THORN. At: https://phmuseum.com/Boway_Yang/story/soft-thorn-ecea0f8693 (Accessed on 2 May 2020)

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Coursework, Exercise 3.3, Part 3 - Mirrors and Windows

Exercise 3.3

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The exercise is to consider how marginalised or under-represented groups could be badly or unhelpful portrayed and how being an insider could help combat this.

Polly Braden - from Out of the Shadows
© Polly Braden – from Out of the Shadows

People who are marginalised include people with mental health difficulties, people with learning difficulties, people of races that are not the prevalent one in the area/country/context that the information is read in, drug users, the poor, the whole LGBTQ+ population, the Jews in Nazi Germany, the Palestinians in Israel and the Mexicans in the USA – and this list could continue. It is well recognised that information about these groups could help decrease marginalisation and there have been many attempts in popular culture to say that these groups should be included. There is a song by Dory Previn (Previn, 1971) which contains the words:

Give me your poor

Your tired your pimps

You carhops your cowboys

Your midgets your chimps

Give me your freaks

Your whores your harlots

Your flunkies your junkies

Give me your starlets

……..

Give me your poor

Your maladjusted

Your sick and your beat

And your sad and your busted

Give me your has-beens

Give me your twisted

Your loners your losers

Give me your black-listed

And, of course, there is the sonnet by Emma Lazarus – “The New Colossus” (Lazarus, 1883) that is inscribed on the Statue of Liberty which contains the words:

‘With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.’

Much of the time these groups of people are negatively shown simply by the poor choice of words that are used about them and therefore leading to assumptions being made by the majority of people that have no insight into the reality of the people involved or the life they live. A topic I know a reasonable amount about is autism. A quick internet search netted me an article about the myths of ASD such as autistic people can’t make friends, autistic people can’t show empathy, only boys are autistic and autistic children are naughty. Luckily this was an article saying that all these are wrong – but equally I have heard all of them expounded to me at length as incontrovertible truths usually along with the statement ‘but everybody knows that’.

Reasons for unhelpful portrayal include (in no particular order):

  • Oversimplification of the issues
  • Lack of understanding and research by the writer, speaker or photographer
  • Real bigotry, racism, homophobia and similar problems
  • Overuse of stereotypes in TV, film and novels – such as the psychotic person who kills someone or lies in storylines – this is particularly common in crime novels, which are widely read. This also occurs in sitcoms “She’s painted as ‘the other’ or ‘mad, bad and dangerous’” – although to a large extent this is being minimised by the involvement of organisations such as Mind (see https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/your-stories/improving-representations-of-mental-health-on-tv/ – for more information on the work they do).
  • Over-glamourising of mental health problems such as a a focus on suicide or anorexia
  • Compassion fatigue – and overuse of violence -as described by Susan Sontag in ‘On Photography’ (Sontag, 1978) although she later changed her mind about how much this is true.
  • Showing negative aspects makes for more exciting (and often simpler) reading about a topic and is not always (or often) balanced by the positive (bad news sells)
  • Much information is written (photographed) by an outsider, a ‘normal’ ‘average’ person (often a white male) and is read by people of the same group.
  • People often write information to ‘raise awareness’ for a cause and therefore may well use the extremes (worst and best).
  • Deliberate misinformation -possibly the scariest reason of all
  • Sound bites, snippets of information reduced down to what fits in a Twitter message

The risk of multiple negative images in the media is well recognised. It is even included in a popular song by The Black Eyed Peas – ‘Where is the Love?’ (Black Eyed Peas, 2003)

What’s wrong with the world, mama

People livin’ like they ain’t got no mamas

I think the whole world addicted to the drama

Only attracted to things that’ll bring you trauma

………

Wrong information always shown by the media

Negative images is the main criteria

Infecting the young minds faster than bacteria

Kids wanna act like what they see in the cinema

Yo’, whatever happened to the values of humanity

Whatever happened to the fairness and equality

Instead of spreading love we’re spreading animosity

Lack of understanding, leading us away from unity

But the problem is wider than just the proliferation of negative images. Incorrect positive images can be equally harmful. A suggestion that all people of colour are be as suave, intelligent and successful as Barak Obama might lead to the lack of any additional resources needed to support the group that fall at the opposite end of the educational spectrum in the USA!  There needs to be understanding that all groups that consist of more than one person are going to to have a range of problems, along with a range of positive aspects.

The most likely way to be able to spread accurate information is to know as much as possible about the situation and then to be able to describe it accurately and without bias. There are two ways of gaining that information. One is to research the situation as an outsider, being careful to take cognisance of all the viewpoints. An example of this would be if I decided to research the issues facing Jewish people in Fife. I am not a Jew and am therefore looking at it from the outside. I can never become a Jew. However, I could spend considerable time meeting with people, listening to their individual stories and trying to portray them accurately. The other way is to be an insider. In the above example, a Jewish person, even if they came from somewhere outside Fife, or even outside the United Kingdom would start from a place well ahead of me. They would understand the basic culture, know the religious rules and have a much greater chance of getting an accurate story.

However, there are ways of becoming an insider in a group. They involve time and patience and a willingness to listen and do careful research. Being an insider should combat most of the concerns listed above such as lack of understanding, overuse of stereotypes and over-glamorisation of the issues. Someone who is a member of the group, and therefore invested in their needs is less likely to give deliberate misinformation and more likely to show and accurate and balanced picture.

True Insiders (an invented term) are those that are living with the issues on a daily basis. They know and understand the situation from the ground up. These people can tell the story accurately and with emotion. They do, however, risk a bias of being over involved. The story is theirs. There is no neutrality. They story is told in depth and with heart-breaking detail.

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© Nan Goldin – from the Ballad of Sexual Dependancy
  • Nan Goldin in the Ballad of Sexual Dependency tells about a group of people who are marginalised, a combination of drug users, people with AIDS and people who are involved with domestic violence. Goldin says, “Real memory, which these pictures trigger, is an invocation of the color, smell, sound, and physical presence, the density and flavor of life.” (Goldin, 1986). She is completely an insider.
  • Graham McIndoe in his exhibition Coming Clean and the associated book Chancers: Addiction, Prison, Recovery, Love talks about his drug addiction and its consequences to him and his family (Stellin and MacIndoe, 2016).
  • Sian Davey in Looking for Alice shows graphic (and endearing) images of what it is like to be the mother of a person with Down Syndrome, (Davey,2015) while Louis Quail in Big Brother describes the haunting life of someone with schizophrenia, the ups and downs, the disasters and the laughs (Quail, 2018).
  • Jim Mortram in Small Town Inertia shows people in his local community that struggle on a daily basis with debt, poor living situations and problems with mental health. He takes pictures of the people that are local to him while struggling himself as a Carer to his mother. The people are not quite as closely linked to him as the families of Davey and Quail – but he lives so closely within the community that he shows a real awareness of the difficulties involved (Mortram, 2017).
  • Timothy Archibald in Echolalia (Archibald and Levin, 2010) took a series of pictures of his autistic son to act as a a way of increasing his understanding and their joint communication. He says ‘Parents sent me snapshots of their kids that could have easily fit into the pages of my project: the notes, the body language, the in-door nudity, the hyper focus on an everyday object…parents around the world were snapping photographs of their autistic kid’s obsessions and behaviors. This was part of the process of trying to figure their kids out. It occurred to me then that I really had done nothing new with this project. I simply was doing what any parent would do, but I had an eye for good light and possibly a better camera’ (Smithson, 2013).

Involved observers are those who make a real personal investment of learning as much about the community as possible. They know the detail. They understand the issues. But they have a degree of neutrality. They are telling about others. They make an excellent case as there can be no assumption that they are biased. As they are more trusted by the community the story and images they obtain are more based in a real understanding, more truthful and more explanatory to others.

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© Sara Davidmann – from Crossing the Line
  • Polly Braden, who, as far as I am aware, has no personal connection with autism or learning disabilities (I am happy to be corrected if I am wrong) has produced two books on this difficult topic Great Interactions (Braden, 2016) where things are mainly going well and the people are supported appropriately and Out of the Shadows (Williams and Braden, 2018) where much is not right. In spite of not being personally involved she has become emotionally involved and tells the stories from an inside viewpoint.
  • Sara Davidmann in Crossing the Line (Davidmann, 2003) tells the story of a cross-dressing community in London. She says ‘As I continued to work in the studio my role shifted. As these sessions were usually one to one more was required of me. I soon understood I had as much to give as take from the sessions’ (my italics). This sentence sums up much of what I’d important in becoming an involved observer and is crucial to telling the story with integrity.

 Summary:

Information about marginalised people is often poorly portrayed because of lack of real understanding and personal/social bias leading to over-simplification, repeating of inaccuracies that are widely accepted and attempting to glamourise the situation to make for a good ‘sound bite’. An insider (or a involved observer) can combat this by giving accurate and nuanced information, that tells a story in a way that people will understand, therefore benefiting the community. Their involvement allows them access to information that a stranger would either not obtain or that they might misinterpret. An involved photographer is more likely to be able to put the people at ease and therefore obtain more meaningful photographs.

 References:

Archibald, T. and Levin, A. (2010). Echolilia: sometimes I wonder. San Francisco: Echo Press.

Black Eyed Peas (2003). Where is the Love? Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpYeekQkAdc [Accessed 18 Feb. 2020].

Braden, P. (2016). Great Interactions: life with learning disabilities and autism. Stockport, England: Dewi Lewis Publishing.

Davidmann, S. (2003). Crossing the Line. Stockport: Dawi Lewis.

Goldin, N., Heiferman, M., Holborn, M. and Fletcher, S. (1986). The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. New York, N.Y.: Aperture Foundation.

Lazarus, E. (1883). The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus – Poems | Academy of American Poets. [online] Poets.org. Available at: https://poets.org/poem/new-colossus.

Mortram, J. (2017). Small Town Inertia. Liverpool: Bluecoat Press.

Previn, D. (1971). Mary C Brown and the Hollywood Sign. [Vinyl] Nik Venet. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5orWydsNts [Accessed 18 Feb. 2020].

Quail, L. (2018). Big Brother. Stockport: Dewi Lewis Publishing.

Siân Davey (2015). Looking for Alice. Great Britain: Trolley Ltd.

Smithson, A. (2013). Timothy Archibald: ECHOLILIA and Stereoscopy Photographs. [online] LENSCRATCH. Available at: http://lenscratch.com/2013/05/timothy-archibald-echolilia-and/ [Accessed 18 Feb. 2020].

Sontag, S. (1978). Susan Sontag On Photography. London, Great Britain: Allen Lane.

Stellin, S. and MacIndoe, G. (2016). Chancers: addiction, prison, recovery, love: one couple’s memoir. New York: Ballantine Books.

Williams, S. and Braden, P. (2018). Out of the Shadows. Stockport: Dewi Lewis Publishing