Truth or lie?
Photographs never lie, or do they? Who can say that a split second of light passing through the shutter of a camera is capable of capturing the real world, the truth? A world that has three dimensions; sound, smell, touch, everything the camera strips away.
It has been widely reported that Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown has recently hired a former ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ producer, to ensure he isn't photographed in embarrassing situations, though yesterday it would appear this didn't go to plan.
Peter Macdiarmid, a photographer with Getty Images, was covering a routine photocall at a school in Lewisham and captured the prime minister with a swastika in the background. Presumably the children are studying that period in history so it's not unexpected to see it on the wall of a classroom, but it's these little gems that photographers look out for.
At the same photocall yesterday Macdiarmid captured Brown grinning beneath the words Britain's future and in happier financial times the meaning of this picture would be different to that now.
Cross the Atlantic and President Obama is enjoying a period of positive press. Obama has his own staff photographers, not to mention his own
Photographs of Obama with his family and their pet dog present him as a regular guy. During the presidential campaign we got to see him doing chin ups and of course topless on the beach, a true American icon.
But what comes first? Is it a politician's popularity or lack of it that makes photographers, on the instruction of their editors, seek a certain type of picture, or is this reality, neatly captured in two dimensions?
Political conferences are where this game is best played. I can assure you that three weeks of non-stop conference coverage can leave a photographer drained of creativity, so anything that can make a picture stand out is a blessing.
A fairly innocuous party slogan can often prove a godsend to photographers looking for that humorous touch. A photographer's main tools are the selection of viewpoint and of course when to press the shutter. The slightest change in either of these can result in a totally different picture; why else would 50 photographers shoot the same scene? Every frame will be a little bit different.
Remember Baroness Thatcher leaving Downing Street after 11 years in power? The step ladders were fit to bursting with photographers each trying to capture the defining moment, yet only one did. It was Ken Lennox of the Daily Mirror whose shutter snapped in the split second she looked back from the car window with a tear in her eye. That's the one frame that matters, the thousands of others are redundant.
So are these photographs a true depiction of reality? Well yes in many ways, but the power of a photograph lies as much in the way the viewer interprets the image, as it does the photographers standpoint, not to mention the subject itself. The image is just a starting point.
PS. You can view more politicians caught on camera in our
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