AAt the entrance, there is a wall strewn with some of the most shocking photos ever. In these images, part of the “Incitement Project” series, humanity’s capacity for evil is magnified and feels unchanging, an unfathomable sea of carnage and chaos. Tick every trigger warning box with these famous photos – Mostly taken by white, foreign photojournalists—— depicting global conflicts and crisis: Kevin Carter’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Vulture and the Little Girl” accurately depicts the famine that ravaged South Sudan in the 1990s; Malcolm Brown photographed a Buddhist monk shortly after he immolated himself. in protest against the South Vietnamese government in Saigon.
The latter was another Pulitzer Prize winner, published in newspapers, postcards and on Rage Against the Machine’s 1992 debut studio album. There’s also Richard Drew’s “The Falling Man,” a photograph of a man falling from the World Trade Center after the 9/11 attacks, a shot that represents America’s decline. This is also the picture of two-year-old Alan Kurdi who washed up on a Turkish coast. People inevitably feel the inequality, the wordless, and the senseless cruelty of the world.
The purpose of taking these photographs is to reveal some objective, irrefutable truth—evidence that transcends words and can shock the world into sanity and action. James Nachtwey saw himself as a messenger, and Don McCullin once said, “I take more than I bring. I bring hope, but I Nothing is given.
Confusing “truth” with “reality” is a long-standing problem in photojournalism. These things have happened – but as facts they can only be one-sided. This disorienting, overcrowded exhibition—which gives virtually no context to any of the images beyond some basic text—doesn’t question ethical issues or the harmful effects on subjects and photographers alike. Carter committed suicide, while the children he photographed reportedly survived. Nor does it solve the problem of pictures becoming synecdoche for historical places and periods. In the years that followed, the photographs were used for both bad and good purposes—to justify the war, support imperialist attitudes, and sustain the Western savior mentality.
I can only assume that the intention is to let the images speak for themselves and let the brutality hit you. Indeed. It’s hard to argue that we have become numb to the image when we see the burned body of an Iraqi soldier, captured up close by Kenneth Jarek during the Gulf War. Or the photo taken by Lyndsey Addario of a family slumped lifelessly on the ground, suitcases next to them. Sometimes the bodies of those who are still alive are even more painful: Nachtwey’s shocking footage of a skeleton crawling on the floor of a feeding center during the 1993 South Sudanese famine. However, since all of these photos have been published and publicly displayed before, you’ll want to gain something from this museum setting. Just watching it again feels like voyeurism.
No matter how faithfully a photographer attempts to depict reality, there are always choices involved: every image is the result of decisions about framing, how and when to look, and when to look away. The concepts of truth associated with photojournalism and the ethical issues of photographing and showing electrified scenes have been embraced by a new generation.
Starting from the violent spectacles captured by these photojournalism icons, the exhibition delves into the more ambiguous notions of truth among contemporary photographers, seeking more subjective truths, research-based research, and concept-based work on global crises. But connecting the dots is difficult.
A small selection from Laia Abril’s seminal project on sexual violence, On Rape, places the blame on institutions and their failure to protect women. Abril photographs the objects involved in the crime, not the survivors. In the summer of 2019, poet and photographer Anastasia Taylor-Lind and Ukrainian journalist Alisa Sopova documented life on the front lines of Russian aggression in Donbas ‘s Ukrainian family, an up-close look at life during the war and its impact on family life.
Matt Black’s saturated black-and-white footage of poverty in America feels ordinary. A series of works from Trevor Paglen’s ongoing project “Another Night Sky” – based on the work of amateur satellite observers tracking and photographing the world’s secret government satellites – in search of the truth The concept adds another dimension. But there’s too little space and too much content: the issues these photographers were so keen to draw attention to are downplayed, and the exhibition collapses under the weight of its own ambition.
Two photographs by Robert Capa, Max Pinckers and Sam Weerdmeester come closer to the exhibition’s attempt to explore the truth. This later image, taken at the same location 79 years apart, is Pincus and Weldmeister’s response to Capa’s mythologizing “The Fallen Soldier,” a 1936 photograph Evocative photo of a soldier shot during the Spanish Civil War. But the image is believed to have been produced by Capa. Pincus and Weldmeister visited the site identified by a Spanish scholar and took a new photo with a high-resolution camera—an attempt to recreate it accurately without romanticism or uncertainty. Yet the empty landscape betrays no hint of the bloodshed it might have once witnessed. This exhibition may confuse truth and reality, but the pairing at least gives you a lot to think about.
Jonas Bendiksen travels to the Macedonian town of Veles, the epicenter of fake news production in the 2016 US presidential election. raised millions of dollars — and contributed to Trump’s victory. But Bendixon’s images also present a truth: the figures in the documentary-style pictures are actually digitally rendered avatars. By the way, the god Veles was the pre-Christian Slavic god of deception, after whom the town was named.
The Sainsbury’s Center is probably Britain’s most radical museum. Over the past three years, a significant effort has been made to present its collections as living entities, raising existential questions through art. “Camera Never Lies,” while earnest, doesn’t fit that vision. It misses the opportunity to raise important questions about how images are consumed, how viral images reduce history, and how the roles of photographers and photo editors influence our understanding of the world. The exhibition feels more like a reaffirmation of the belief in the photojournalistic style, which, as the exhibition itself demonstrates, is no longer a viable or appropriate response. Yes, the horrific side of human nature is revealed ad nauseam. But where is the camera?
