ABSTRACT
The difficulty with the received model, particularly as it relates to photojournalism and various modes of documentary photography, is that it represents a desire for agency and simplicity that is unrealistic with respect to intricate and multifaceted systems of meaning production. The public character of a photograph highlights omnipresent features of the medium that culminate in something that can be difficult to recognize: how photography provides a way of being in the world; that is, a primary way of seeing and being seen in association with others. The received framework for understanding photography and photojournalism is grounded in a hard contrast between image and truth, a distinction reinforced by holding the image in contempt as the inferior medium for achieving the promises of modernity – critical reason, freedom and moral progress least among them. A culture is a distinctively coherent set of social practices shaping experience and conduct.
