Authenticity

Apresentação da síntese final do artigo The ‘Greatest Of War Photograhers’ de Thierry Gervais. O artigo tem como figura central o fotógrafo Jimmy Hare, e levanta algumas questões fulcrais sobre a natureza da fotografia na sua relação com a imprensa no virar do século XIX. Partilha iniciada em Halftone.

“In the 1870s and 1880s, the traditional form of the narrative was revitalized by the news report and the interview. The use of images in general, and of photographs in particular, was justified in the same way. The engravings published in the first illustrated newspapers of the 1840s were presented as pedagogical vehicles that were more effective than text because they were regarded as more immediate. Similarly, the photograph’s supposed authenticity was invoked to legitimate its massive use at the beginning of the twentieth century. While the emergence of photojournalism in the early twentieth century arose from economic, cultural, and aesthetic conditions, the justification for the use of photography followed strategies that had informed news journalism from its beginnings – the impulse to minimize any sense of mediation between the reader and the news in order to enhance credibility, while at the same time celebrating the heroic roles of the photographers involved.”