Issue: Origins

Several of the issues discussed here--neutrality, visual narrative, and commercial interests--intersect with the notion of provenance, the question of an image's origin. Mitchell describes the recent case of a 1991 photograph allegedly depicting "three lost Vietnam War fliers" (47) in a state of imprisionment. As soon as the image reached publication, it met with a violent reaction, leading to a call for further investigation. Defense Department officials soon discovered a 1923 picture of three Soviet farmers, and determined that the more recent effort was in fact a fabrication. As digital technology increases the ease (and likelihood) of manipulation, we need to consider a picture's source, asking whether the circumstances under which it was taken (e.g., the photographer's position with respect to the event, the narrative content) appear plausible. This is increasingly true of images produced on behalf of large interests (commercial or political), offered as evidence of some claim.

Authority also becomes a central issue here. State and commercial concerns often hope to disguise their interest in producing the image (this is also true of reformers such as Riis), and perhaps this is one of the reasons why private individuals (Frank, Meyer) have increasingly begun to take the opposite approach, placing themselves clearly within the photo. Meyer, for example, hides the seams in his images, but the content is arresting, drawing attention to its artificiality / photographer's presence.