Adriaan MonshouwerA Deceiving Image
Image is everything. The direct, sensory perception of reality as the most important source for knowledge and understanding has long been replaced by the visual representation of reality through images. Photographs and video-footage define, to a large extent, our image of the world we live in. When images rose to this present, dominant position their nature changed significantly. Many image-makers no longer seek to represent reality. Rather than presenting the facts to the best of their ability, they choose to create a reality that pleases either their subject, their client or the marketplace. They promote ideas and show us illusions; fiction instead of facts. Images to create a new image: an artificial, carefully construed perception of events, persons or products. This practice is common in the world of photojournalism today.
Images are everywhere. Never before have so many pictures been made and published. Photography is immensely popular: there are photographs on virtually every page of every newspaper and magazine, on posters and billboards and on the walls of galleries and museums. The best paid photographers demand more than $100,000 a day for commercial assignments and at auctions in Europe and the US, collectors (or are they investors?) eagerly pay the same amount of money to purchase a single photograph. The conclusion is that we have finally and irreversibly stepped into a visual era, with pictures in the lead and words in a more humble, supporting role. Although this might be true in the world of fiction and entertainment, it is not when we look at today’s press.
Just watch CNN for a few hours at any given time. What do you see? Talking heads: men and women arguing and speculating or just chatting, creating a continuous avalanche of words. And at the bottom of the screen at least two text bars with more words. Looking at the printed press we see an abundant, almost neurotic use of photographs. Quantity over quality. Our daily consumption of pictures consists of an incredible number of meaningless, useless and totally redundant images: visual diarrhoea.
Most publishers and editors today will be eager to tell you how important photography has become. They might even suggest that we are living in a picture driven world. But it only takes a quick look at their respective colophons to see that they seldom put their money where their mouth is: against dozens of writers you will find a single (or no) photographer on the payroll. And where are the picture people in the decision making ranks of publications? The printing press was invented to spread The Word. Johann Gutenberg printed the first bible in the autumn of 1456, some 425 years before the first photographs appeared in print. A novelty not applauded by all. The ‘quality press’ was quick to label photography vulgar and superficial, cheap infotainment for the masses. The printed media is still the stronghold of the word people.
The printing press has long been used to sell ideas, ideologies, dreams. People owned newspapers or magazines to voice their political or social opinions. Power and respect were more important than sales and profits. But this situation changed radically in the 1970s. Entering the digital era with word processing and page layout on the computer, and new – faster and more refined – printing techniques (in colour) forced publishers to make huge financial investments. Often not having the necessary funds themselves, they turned to another breed of entrepreneurs: the investors. The introduction of new digital techniques and foreign capital into the printed media had a vast and surprising impact on photography. The investors not only provided the money, but also introduced a new set of rules and standards and demanded a Return On Investment (ROS) of up to 25%. And how does one turn a modest profit into a 25% ROS? By cutting costs. It did not take long before photographers started feeling the heat. The word people protected their own turf and accountants and bookkeepers are not generally known for their love of the visual. Photography turned from a valuable asset, into an expense, a commodity that was to be purchased at the lowest possible price. Try to talk about pictorial quality with an accountant and you will realise why quality was no longer an issue.
The situation deteriorated further with the advent of the Macintosh computer for digital page layout. Graphic designers spend most of their time dealing with typography, so they develop a strong and natural affinity with images consisting of type. Playing with type used to be a complicated and time-consuming affair, but not so on the Mac: every possible creative brainwave was suddenly available at the click of a few buttons.
The new digital environment dramatically changed the designer’s relationship with pictures. In the pre-Mac era, photographic prints were placed under a grand- projector and transparencies put in a slide-projector. Blown up to the desired proportions, the pictures revealed to the designer at work their full visual qualities. Transferring the images to the layout paper in these often dark and quiet projection booths, the designer developed an intimate relation with the pictures he or she used. Observe the same process with the designer behind his Mac: a low resolution scan of the original print or slide – showing no definition, depth, colour or contrast – slowly fills the black rectangle that is pre-positioned and scaled to blend in with the typographical elements on the page. The designer no longer senses any photographic quality and consequently, treats the image with little or no respect. Photographs are treated as abstract elements and not as objects that have content.