Victorian Visual Culture

I don’t want my photograph taken. Who says that? I have been and the pushback is astonishing. 

Post-daguerreotype innovations, Tagg asserts in The Burden of Representation, “the development of faster dry plates and flexible film,” along with the “mass production of simple and convenient photographic equipment,” meant any member of the growing middle class could own a “Kodak” camera (Tagg 60, 66). Tagg describes the newfound “power” of the camera and the subsequent separation of photography from being a means of art to casual documentation: “Photography functioned as a means of record and evidence” (Tagg 66). Nowadays, as Frederick Douglass predicted in his “Lecture on Pictures,” “Daguerre…has converted the planet into a picture gallery” (Douglass 127). No corner of life is allowed to live in the dark; to turn Douglass’s phrase, the power of the “simple but all-abounding sunlight” illuminates all secrets and banishes privacy. Cameras have only grown more accessible, being embedded into every Smartphone; there are more steps required to call somebody–the intended purpose–than to take a photograph: photos are captured every day; nobody may remain anonymous. 

In this sense, I wonder how the commonality of photography has altered self-consciousness. I can’t help but wonder if humans were meant to regularly–or at all–witness their bodies; different modes of reflection, such as a mirror, glass, or even a body of water offered an incomplete and alterable image; one would see what they looked at, a nose or legs or an outfit; ridiculing separate parts of oneself is a far cry from the assertive objectivity of “proof,” the perspective of a person which everyone around holds and which said person was blind to. There is a sense of illumination, of the “modest distrust of our good looks” (Douglass 128). Especially in this age of Smartphones, there is a dissonance of the self from birth: there is a constant self-consciousness produced by the permanence of the camera–who is the person in photographs versus the person one perceives oneself to be?  Personally, it is always a surprise to see myself in photographs, I wonder “Who is that person?” Never the twain shall meet. Furthermore, an inward camera develops, requiring a constant imagined impression of the permanent self, and how to step away from the unalterable body. Tagg remarks that the camera, like State surveillance, “bears directly and physically upon the body” (Tagg 70). Has this just intensified self-consciousness or redefined it completely? 

I’ve requested that my friends refrain from taking pictures of me. I would never ask my mother, who would have a serious talk with me about self-image; it merits more backlash to not want to be photographed than it is to photograph without consent. Even writing it makes me cringe. It is so taboo to not want to be photographed that even when I voice this, friends continue to take photographs and just don’t show me as a way to soothe my discomfort; not taking photographs of your loved ones and having documentation is unfathomable. The language regarding photographs is reminiscent of Arthur Conan Doyle’s “A Scandal in Bohemia”: a photo is “captured,” or “taken,” just like Doyle’s main character goes about “stealing” a condemning photograph, which might be used against him (Holmes 6). There is implied violence or nonconsent in photography. Who owns the picture is also up for debate, and sparked the Nussenzweig v. DiCorcia case: Phillip Gefter of the New York Times wrote an article about the case which established the precedent for the legality of photographing people in public. The case determined that because the photo, a simple headshot of an Orthodox Jewish man, was taken in public, the “photographer’s right to artistic expression trumped the subject’s privacy rights” (Gefter). The photograph is sacred, in the name of art and not. It is protected by the government, too, for the sake of “instilling docility and practices of social obedience,” (Tagg 62). Photography emerged as an “apparatus of the new and more puncturing form of the state” which is a “regime of truth” (Tagg 61). This truth takes on two relevant modes: self-reflection and evidentiary truth, which feed into each other; when humans witness themself, they witness their wrongs. 

Work Cited

Douglass, Frederick. “Lecture on Pictures.” Picturing Frederick Douglass. 1861. 

Doyle, Arthur Conan. “A Scandal in Bohemia.” Stanford University, 2006. 

Gefter, Philip. “Street Photography: A Right or Invasion?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 17 Mar. 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/17/arts/street-photography-a-right-or-invasion.html. 

Tagg, John. The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories. The University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, 1988.