LECTURE 07: CENSORSHIP + TRUTH

Overview

• Notions of consulships and truth
• the indexical qualities of photography in rendering truth
• photographic manipulation and the documentation of truth
• censorship in advertising
• censorship in art and photography

Ansel Adams

• Moonrise Hernandes New Mexico, c.1941-2
• Moon over Half Dome, 1960
• Aspens
• Exposed photo negatives for different amount of times to get different effects - makes the images look like they are taken at different times of year/day etc.

Pravda

• Five years before coming to power in 1917 October revolution, the soviets established the newspaper Pravda.
• One sided truth
• One side that the government wants you to see 

Digital

• Photoshop makes it easy for anyone to manipulate photos
• People making fake advertising playing on images - 9/11 images
• Kate Winslet on cover of GQ magazine - legs elongated in photoshop
• Is the representation of truth an important factor? Can you manipulate to sell?
• Iraq war - two images combined to create one image - not representing the truth - can combine different images to change the message

Robert Capa

• Robert Capa is a pseudo name - built up an identity
• Death of a Loyalist Soldier, 1936 - is this the point of moment of death or is it set up? Does it matter?

'At the time (WWII), I fervently believed just about everything I was exposed to in school and in the media. For example, I knew that all Germans were evil and that all Japanese were sneaky and treacherous, while all white Americans were clean cut'

Jean Baudrillard

• Simulacra and Simulations, 1981
• It is a reflection of a basic reality
• It masks and perverts a basic reality
• It makes the absence of a basic reality
• It bears no relation to any reality whatever
• The Gulf War Did not Take Place, 1995 - It is a masquerade of information
• Caused a lot of offence to people who had relatives who died in the Gulf War - they mistook his comments as saying the war never happened without reading the book

Peter Turnley, The Unseen Gulf War, 2002

• There was censorship in the first gulf war
• Photographers in the first war were controlled by the US forces and had restrictions on what they could photograph & represent
• 'The mile of death' - on the last day of the war - no photographs were published at the time

Ken Jareke

• Iraqi Soldier, 1991 - image was put in newspapers - one of the first truly shocking images captured in colour and put in the newspaper - british press was criticised for it - depicted a gruesome reality

Do you want an accurate gruesome truth?

• An-My Le, Small Wars
• An-My Le, 29 Palms: Mechanised Attack
• An-My Le, Small Wars

Censorship in Advertising

• To ban or cut portions (a film, letter or publication)
• Morals & Ethics
• Cadbury's Flake, 1969 - played on sexual ambiguity - a questions of other connotations to it - does it say more about the certain individuals or a universal?
• United Colors of Benetton adverts, 1992 - stereotypical uses shocking adverts - racism & religion
• Opium advertisement, Stephen Meisel, 2000 - most complained about advert in five years (2001) - sexually suggestive and likely to cause 'serious or widespread offence' thereby breaking the British codes of advertising and sales promotion.
• Agnolo Bronzino, Venus Cupid, Folly & Time, 1545 - as a mythological subject does that make it acceptable?
• Does painting make certain types of scenes more acceptable than photographs?
• Balthus, The Golden Years, 1945 & Therese Dreaming, 1938 - represents an uncomfortable ground
• Andy Earl recreated Manet's 'Dejeuner sir l'Herbe' with Bow Wow Wow record cover, 1980
• Does a piece of fine art photography change the way we view it from commercial photography?

Amy Adler

• The Folly of Defining 'Serious' Art
• Professor of Law at NY University
• 'An irreconcilable conflict between legal rules and artistic practice'
• 'The requirement that protected artworks have 'serious artistic value' is the very thing contemporary art and postmodernism itself attempt to defy'
• The Miller Test - 1973 - asks three questions to determine if a piece of work is seen as obscene

Obscenity Law

• To protect art whilst prohibiting trash
• The dividing line between speech and non-speech
• The dividing line between prison and freedom

Sally Mann

• Candy Cigarette, 1989
• Immediate Family, 1984-92

Tierney Gearon

• Untitled, 2001
• News of the world - upper crust art lovers are paying £5 a head to ogle degrading snaps of children plastered across the walls of Britain's art galleries
• Nan Goldin, Klara and Edda Belly-dancing, 1998
• Richard Prince, Spiritual American, 1983
• Richard Prince, Spiritual American IV, 2005

Final thoughts

• Just how much should we believe the truth represented in the media?
• Should we be protected from it?
• Is the manipulation of the truth fair game in a capitalist consumer society?
• Could art sit outside the censorship laws?
• Who should be protected, artist, viewer or subject?