Photography as a form of cultural critique

Why do we consider photography as a form of cultural critique? Is every photograph able to do so?

John Keith Hart, a former professor of anthropology from the University of London, explained in his website that cultural critique can be understood to be the examination of the foundations of culture "by having recourse to judgment" (2002). 

Photography is able to become an instrument of cultural critique because it is reliable as a method of documentation. Siegfried Kracauer argued that "photography grasps what is given as a spatial (or temporal) continuum" and that it captures too much information, too coherent and too linear in its articulation of time and space, doing so, follows the rules of non fiction. (In Batchen, 2004). In the early 20^th century, when modernism took hold, photography was used as a “spotlight of modern technology” to reveal “the evasions and concealments” of the old world, and envisioned to be able to “ pin down the changing world of appearance”(Wells, 1997, p.26).

Photography can be used to document the plight of others and bring it to people's attention. Dorothea Lange is known for her picture titled “Migrant Mother” that brought the suffering of the migrant workers, displaced farm families and sharecroppers to public attention. Her photograph wake people up, telling people what is happening in places where they have never seen. Rise and Fall of Apartheid: Photography and the Bureaucracy of Everyday Life, is a photographic exhibition held at the International Centre of Photography in New York examining the legacy of the apartheid system in South Africa. In their website. ICP said “Several photographic strategies, from documentary to reportage, social documentary to the photo essay, were each adopted to examine the effects and after-effects of apartheid's political, social, economic, and cultural legacy” (Rise and Fall). 

Although the examples given here are mostly photojournalistic, if the photograph is able to pass on clearly to the viewer what the photographer captures, then it is considered a form cultural critique. It is only because camera are not as easy to obtain in the past that most of the photograph are taken by professional. In the present day, any amateur with a camera can take a decent photograph that can be recognized. But not every photograph is a form of cultural critique. If it is taken by a child who plays with his father's camera and a blurry picture was taken, it would not be able to do so. 

But perhaps, aesthetic pictures can also be used to critque; we can ask for whom and for what purpose is the photograph taken or used, for the photo to be captured and frame in such a way. All the hands that take photographs are subjective in nature, they choose what and how the photograph is taken. And in choosing they show the values that were valued over others, and what message they wanted to convey. Therefore, to an extent, any photograph should be able to critique the culture of the subject of the photograph, and the culture of the photographer.

References:

Batchen, G. (2004). Forget me not: Photography and remembrance (pp. 6-16). New York Princeton architectural press.

Hart, J.K. (2002). Cultural critique in anthropology. The Memory Bank. Retrieved  November 17, 2012 from http://thememorybank.co.uk/papers/cultural-critique-in-anthropology/

Rise and Fall of Apartheid: Photography and the Bureaucracy of Everyday Life. International Centre of Photograph. Retrieved from http://www.icp.org/museum/exhibitions/apartheid

Wells, L. (1997). Thinking about photography. Photography: a critical introduction (pp.24-54). London: Routledge.