Baldwin on Images

When I took the preliminary exams for my Ph.D. in mass communication (visual communication emphasis), one of the questions was something like, "What is the ontogeny of the photograph?" It may have been phrased a bit more formally, something like, "Describe your perspective on the ontogeny of the photograph, grounded in the literature of visual communication." But I remember it worded in the simpler way.

As I recall, I wrote about Susan Sontag, and about framing (as chosen by the photographer) and cropping of photos, and that photographic images are not natural representations of reality. They are selected, one way or another. I don't remember what else I wrote. I don't know if I talked about the physical ontogeny of photos, how the process was developed over time, and how that has shaped what they became. (This was 1991, so digital photography was not yet part of the picture.)

All of this came to mind when I was reading Copaganda recently, because at the opening of one of the early chapters, Alec Karakatsanis quotes James Baldwin:

It is said that the camera cannot lie, but rarely do we allow it to do anything else, since the camera sees what you point it at: the camera sees what you want it to see. The language of the camera is the language of our dreams.

I wish I had known that quote, or read the piece it came from (The Devil Finds Work: Essays, 1976), but I never heard of it until now. A failing of my education, or my curiosity. No one assigned Baldwin, fiction or nonfiction, at any point in my education.