Why do we take photographs?

MANILA, Philippines — Today, with the advent of digital technology, almost every aspect of our daily lives involves photography. We are now way past the stage where we need to “popularize” the medium. It is now so ubiquitous that it can easily be taken for granted.

According to an article in PetaPixel, there are an estimated 14 trillion photos in existence today, and estimated to triple by 2030. 

But there's a growing sentiment that the sheer volume of images is leading to less engagement and appreciation for individual photographs. People are scrolling through vast amounts of visual content, often without truly engaging with the images. Kept in virtual storage with less prospect of ever seeing again. Photography seems to have lost its meaning. 

There is, of course, something to celebrate with the democratization of the practice that was once heavily guarded and widely unaffordable.

I started practicing photography in a colonized country long before camera phones and digital cameras existed, with equipment prices that were inaccessible to the public and opportunities in the field so scarce. 

It was also during those times that visual literacy was regarded as a skill limited only to visual artists and those who could not draw were thought not to have to deal with anything visual.

Practitioners in the country still struggle with photography’s role and use. While there are those who see the medium as a pure technical endeavor, there are those who still believe that photography’s definition and use are limited only to how they practice it.

The birth of the digital era didn’t just give us the digital camera, but it gave us unprecedented access to information. Just like the photograph, it paved the way for us to see the world in a new light. But as we celebrate this new communications revolution, I think there is a need to look at it not through a lens similar to what we used in the last 100, 50, or even 10 years ago, and to some extent unlearning old frameworks of how we were educated.

Dismantling the old world

Photography is only 200 years old. Centuries before photography, visual representations of the world relied on hand-drawn or painted images, which were often subjective, time-consuming, and expensive — reasons why access to the practice was reserved only for the wealthy elite. 

This meant that not only were the history and memories of ordinary people left largely unrecorded, but also the ideas and perspectives in these images were controlled only by those who ruled society.

As a country colonized by Western powers, we were exposed to the imagery of Western monarchs alongside religious figures suggesting their divinely ordained role. Art served as a powerful form of propaganda for both the Church and the monarchy. Religious art reinforced Church doctrines and promoted religious devotion, while secular art, especially royal portraits and dynastic imagery, served to glorify the ruler and establish their lineage. 

But much of the old world underwent significant changes as new ideas, new perspectives, and a better understanding of our world spread with the invention of the printing press— which we see today as humanity’s second major communication revolution since the cuneiform system of writing more than 5,000 years ago.

Photographs not only fascinated people when they saw for the first time their faithful visual likeness — more lifelike than any drawing or painting — but also helped them become more informed through accurate visual information. 

Photography's ability to reproduce images with unprecedented accuracy democratized visual representation, challenged traditional norms and beliefs, and influenced how people understood time, space, and identity.

A new social order emerged that gave birth to this revolutionary tool. Though one contentious point in photography in the new order that followed is how it was later on presented and taught to us through an imperial gaze. 

Pictures or it didn’t happen

Photography fostered an age of visual proof. The mechanical and denotative nature of the photograph initially led to a widespread belief that photographs were inherently objective records of reality, a view that contributed to their persuasive power.

Even photojournalism didn't necessarily begin as a fully ethical practice. It was only later that photojournalism, influenced by evolving societal values and technological advancement, started to operate under a specific ethical framework that emphasizes honesty, impartiality, and responsible storytelling. Only then that the photograph’s role as an authentic, factual representation of truth was reinforced. 

The framework ensured that images were used to inform and enlighten, rather than manipulate or mislead, and without it, photojournalism would just be like any other practice of the medium. 

Perhaps we can say that photography’s evolution, more than the number of pixels or features manufacturers can ultimately put on a camera today, has been more dependent on the existing values and framework of society. 

Ariella Azoulay, one of the most prominent authors and theorists of photography and visual culture questions the motives of photography. She states in her essay, “Unlearning the Origins of Photography,” that “when photography emerged, it did not halt the process of plunder that made others and others’ worlds available to the few, but rather accelerated it and provided further opportunities and modalities for pursuing it.” 

She argues that photography emerged within a specific historical context of colonialism and imperialism. The ability to capture and reproduce images, initially a novelty, quickly became a means of establishing dominance and control over colonized territories and their inhabitants.

If we equate photographs with truthful documents at a time when around 90% of the world’s population are holding a camera in their hands, wouldn’t it follow that we should now be in a utopian society?

But we are instead at this point where photographs and videos are now the most potent medium being used in disinformation, according to studies. 

Duterte’s drug war that started in 2016  where we saw more than 30,000 extrajudicial killings in a span of just a few years was the most visually documented atrocity in the country. Followers of the former president called them fake or staged, and believed in this idea with conviction. 

The dominant powers’ need for control of information depended largely on how they supplant ideas through necessary ideological and cultural frameworks such as education, mass media, and control over algorithms. Do we start to question photography’s power as visual proof or do we use photographs to question and challenge existing frameworks? 

Photography as art?

I used to be a painter. But for me, the prospect of painting on a canvas, exhibiting in a gallery, selling to a collector or buyer who puts the piece in a private place where only a few can see, was the end of an expressed idea. 

Photography on the other hand, through publishing, can potentially be seen by millions of people around the world. It did not take a whole lot of contemplation on my end to make the jump.

Painting, as a form of human expression, has existed for at least 40,000 years and its evolution took a really slow turn. Photography on the other hand is only two centuries old, but happened and practiced when human civilization was at its most technologically advanced and progressive stage — a product of the modern world and is evolving at a rapid pace. In this new light, looking at photography the same way we did with painting would be a step backwards. 

Azoulay argues that focusing solely on the aesthetic or artistic qualities of an image can obscure the social, political, and ethical dimensions of the photographic event. This can lead to a situation where the photographer's viewers are disconnected from the reality of the depicted situation and the experiences of the photographed individuals — defeating its primary purpose.

This was the very reason why I made the jump to photojournalism, in pursuit of showing those contexts without the censorship prevalent in the art market. And practiced art with respect,  separately and distinctively in its own merit.

Social contract 

Scrolling through posts on Instagram this morning, I saw a video of a young girl carrying a water bottle across a street filled with rubble to a rundown building that evidently looked like a place where catastrophe happened. After a few seconds, an explosion and a thick cloud of white smoke covered the frame. The video shows a now lifeless girl lying face down on the ground.

Another photograph shows an emaciated child clutched by her mother. Another is that of a man carrying a lifeless person wrapped in a few sacks of flour, through debris-filled sand. The next one was a video of thousands of people running toward something while being shot at by uniformed armed men. These were in Gaza, and my eyes have been exposed to these kinds of images as far as I can remember.

Susan Sontag, in her book The Pain of Others, said the impact of constant exposure to these images of pain, sufferings, and violence might lead to “image fatigue.” She said while these images can evoke empathy, they might also lead to less compassion, desensitisation, and even a sense of apathy or the normalization of suffering. Especially in the context of post-colonial countries.

But Ariella Azoulay, born an Arab Jew in the Occupied Territories of Israel and claims to have lived in close proximity to the sufferings, conflicts, and injustices around her, contends that more than what emotions it evokes from its surface. 

In her book "The Civil Contract of Photography," she rejects the idea that it is a neutral tool for recording reality and proposes that every photograph creates a relationship between the photographer, the photographed, and the viewer, imposing a shared ethical obligation to engage with the image and its context. She argues that photography is not just a medium for documenting the world, but a space where a "citizenry of photography" can emerge, demanding political responsibility in this age when photography is a distinct language of human communications. 

When we engage with photographs, especially those depicting suffering or injustice, it suggests that we should not be just passive observers but become obligated to consider everything inside the frame of the photograph, including the context, the people involved, and the potential consequences of the image. 

This obligation means addressing what is being shown in the image, challenging its narrative, and working towards a more just world. 

———

Jes Aznar is a Filipino photographer and photojournalist. He has been publishing visual stories through international publications like The New York Times for nearly two decades. His visual works gravitate towards the effects of feudalism, colonialism and hegemony. He teaches visual and media literacy to journalism students, civic organizations, and the general public across the country. He initiated visual journalism programs like the Romeo Gacad Visual Journalism lectures and curates @everydayimpunity. He left painting for photography.