Truth in photography

Please see my prezi for this session here

• What is the function of photography?
• What makes an honest photograph?
• What is the relationship between the photograph and truth?
• To what extent is photography objective?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of photography as a means to understand what is true?
• How does photography give us knowledge of historical events which is different to the kind of knowledge we get from history books?
• What is the ethical responsibility of a photojournalists when deciding to snap or act when an intervention could save a life?
• What is the function of photography in Facebook? To what extent do photographs on Facebook get us nearer to the truth about somebodies life?

Link to presentation for the session

Ethics and photography

Read an editorial on this issue here

Read some of the accounts in this riveting article in the Guardian ‘I was gutted that I’d been such a coward’: photographers who did not step in to help – what would you have done? What is the nature of the dilemma here? Is it just to do with cowardice?

Recommended viewing

‘Vision and Photography’ – BBC documentary series

Recommended reading

The Ongoing Moment – Geoff Dyer / web

Camera Lucida – Roland Barthes / Guardian review

On Photography – Susan Sonntag / web

Believing is Seeing: Observations on the mysteries of photography – Errol Morris