Photo by cinemafia
As street photographers, photojournalists or documentarians, we are under the assumption of, and at times actively identify as being, dispassionate observers. Detached messengers of an uncolored truth. However, the truth is relative, and as human beings the concept of dispassionate observation, while considered an ideal, is an impossible fallacy. We expect to straddle the roles of man and machine, and seem to ignore the idea that one created the other.
The persistence of this myth is tied to the progressive, democratic aversion to a controlled news media. We demand a dissemination of the facts as they are, without agendas, often expecting the breadth and accessibility of the internet to be the causeway that lets that information stream run. We look at bias as a detriment to the story and to prejudice as the corrupter of its information. Is it only because our culture has raised these as buzzwords as evil? We are not only kidding ourselves, we are overlooking the fundamental nature and legacy of humanity.
Photo by cinemafia
When a photographer points his lens at a subject and records an image, there is a basic human process taking place. The choice of what matters is a form of prejudice. Not everything has importance, and in fleeting moments it takes instinct to find what is. When that photographer then selects the best representatives from those images to distribute to the public, there is again bias. But, to strive for the cold, clinical characteristics of the presumed un-slanted documentary is to remove this process, and leave a trail of data where intention and feeling once was.
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