In On Photography, Susan Sontag analogized photographs to shadows on the walls of Plato’s cave, through which we develop a partial and skewed understanding of reality. Nearly 50 years later, digitalization enables new forms of distortion. Colors and compositions can be adjusted through Photoshop. AI helps generate fake photographs. Such practices are even more morally questionable among photographers who “claim” to facilitate social advocacy and empowerment with their cameras. In this way, it’s indispensable for us to continue discussing Sontag’s concerns even today. How are the limitations mentioned by Sontag manifested in modern photography? How to navigate a more ethical methodology for the medium? By analyzing one key scene from Faces Places, Agnes Varda’s self-reflexive documentary, as a sample, I want to grapple with the illuminations that Varda brings about the making of photographs and modes of seeing since Sontag.
Traditional photography, according to Sontag, constitutes an act of “objectification” and “appropriation” . The photographers are extracting “discontinuous” moments from the flow of time. By taking photos, they are isolating what should be seen and how something should be seen based on their “taste and conscience”. This is evidenced by Sontag’s example of how Walker Avans are manipulating exposure and composition to reduce farmers into the concept of poverty. In this regard, the farmers are objectified into still vessels in which the photographers instill their ideological expressions. The farmers are not empowered to speak; they are spoken for. We know little about what they eat, how they live or what they do when they are free. Instead, we are simply told to accept that they are “poor”.
But the deeper problem of traditional photography lies in its mode of address, as outlined by Sontag. The principles of “invisible camerawork” and “candid photography” turn spectators into voyeurs. We are used to imagining the absence of cameras or any of the aforementioned creative manipulations. They guide us to suspend our disbelief and accept that we are peeping out a “window”. We forget the ruptures and take these fabricated illusions as the whole and only reality. In this way, the cameras in hands give photographers hegemonic discourse. They have the power to shape “knowledge” about the silenced subjects. Expanding on the aforementioned example, they come to label the farmers as being “poor”.
Agnès Varda, being a self-reflexive photographer and leftist, would clearly be dissatisfied with such exploitative photographic practices. Faces Places is thus her declaration of war against such bourgeois representation and silencing of the working class.
In her works, she toned down subjectivity and manipulation. This is reflected in her decision to shoot portraits, as demonstrated in the scene. Such a form defies voyeurism and balances the dynamic between the photographer and the photographed. Apprently this is about the obtaining of consent. Moreover, when the woman looks into the camera, the fourth wall, or the so-called “window” in Sontag’s analogy, is broken. We are no longer the peeping toms, the subjects who gain “knowledge” of photographed objects without their awareness. Instead, our gaze is returned by a powerful “backgaze” that declares both of us as equal agents. It’s as if we are invited to empathize and have a conversation with the woman. Varda’s aesthetics also demonstrates her intention to instill instead of draining agency in the photographed subjects. The woman’s pose was devised after extensive discussions, giving her opportunities to decide on the best way of presenting herself. It’s also an eye-level shot with the focus on the woman’s face, ensuring authenticity. The background is also cut out to focalize the protagonist. This is further checked by the fact that the documentary exposes the whole process of its own making, inviting the viewers to critically examine Varda’s presence in her artworks.
Moreover, Varda is also combating the tendency of photographs to reduce realities into decontextualized particles, as discussed above. She accomplishes this by incorporating photography into a multi-media framework, also encompassing public installations (plastering photographs into walls) and semi-documentary capturing development of the entire concept. Such complexities all serve to contextualize. According to Varda, her intention is to celebrate the ordinary, diligent and interesting individuals in French villages who are often ignored. Imagine if Faces Places is merely a traditional photo series, what we are confronting is the abstract concepts or labels of “ordinariness” and “diligence”. What they generate is simply a sense of “pseudo-presence”. However, when the woman’s giant portrait is plastered onto the walls of her soon-to-be demolished house in the declining mining town, it indicates and celebrates her concrete existence. On one hand, she is known as a remarkable woman with a legendary life intertwined with labor history; the locals gain the knowledge through acquaintances, while we learn from recorded interviews. On the other hand, her individuality enables her image to evoke collective memories about the fading age of industrialization and invaluable working class values. Her capitalized presence (the public installation) nearly becomes a totem, a proud representation that anchors shared identities while bonding the community, Varda and us, who gradually develop an admiration, together. What Varda demonstrates is her genuine empathy and curiosity about people instead of the desire to “appropriate” them for personal expressions. In this way, Varda’s artwork immortalizes the woman, the community and its spirit. Such emotional richness and wholeness are simply not what can be achieved by a series of photos.
In On Plato’s Cave, Sontag criticizes the violent nature of “seeing” in traditional photography. She forces us to reflect on how images have led to a reductionist and fragmented understanding of social reality. 40 years later, Agnès Varda made Faces Places to show how a more empathetic mode of seeing can be possible. The documentary not only proposes an ideal that an ethical and responsible photographer could aspire for, but also prompts us to reflect on our relations with images— a discussion started by Sontag. Are we truly entitled to “speak for” the marginalized using our cameras? Or is it simply a sugarcoated form of bullying and condescension? While we are sitting in comfortable air-conditioned rooms, eloquently presenting our opinions on the sufferings of Middle Eastern Children (after viewing all the photos by Western photographers), are we truly demonstrating our social responsibility? Are these photos making it more convenient to access “the truth”, or do they simply make it more convenient not to personally learn or engage with these communities and more convenient for apathy? Varda’s creative endeavors echo with a generation of photographers like Nan Goldin and LaToya Ruby, who also attempt to transcend such ethical limitations and danger of photography through forms like photo essays, self-portraits etc. Not seeing photography as a quick pathway to fame or social recognition, they are excavating the medium’s potential of empowerment instead of sliding into its pitfalls. Their explorations affirm the modern relevance of Sontag’s thinkings today that still caution the artists.
