ESSAYS & ANALYTICS

“Every strike of the chisel is significant. Inevitably, the artist will find himself covered in the dirt and grime of the endeavor but must not cease pouring his sweat and blood into it until he is finished. Sculpting, Michelangelo said, was the most genuinely human and natural form of art because it most closely resembles the human condition. Perhaps Michelangelo would have been a very good photojournalist: the two professions are very similar in their labors. We, as viewers of a finished image, are viewing a frozen fragment of time that results from a potentially prodigious amount of work in order to make. The sculpture, liberated from the stone, is remarkably similar.”

“What, then, is a similar thought process as the Scientific Method in such an ‘unscientific’ endeavor as journalism or photojournalism? We journalists uphold such values as verification and fact-checking in order to establish some perception of ‘journalistic truth’ (known in most circles as ‘facts in context’). Journalists the world over are measured by such terms as ‘objectivity’ or ‘fairness’ which are all rooted in a discipline of verification. If it is not verified, it is not proved and therefore should not be printed for the masses. But the scientific method as used by natural sciences fails us here: there is often no possibility of recreating an experimental procedure, there are no double-blind stories, nor can a second photographer re-photograph a scene after it has moved on. Where every human being exists in his or her own world, with all the fragility of memory and the intricacies of human nature all wrapped up into the singular quantity ‘a man,’ how can we, photojournalists, journalists, and all other documenters of reality, expect to tell anything remotely close to truth?”