Meantime..... A Comment on the Journalistic Image as Visual Sociology

Whilst I am sorting out which pictures to put into which discourse heading, I thought I would post the comments I have made on the journalistic image as visual sociology, which is the second half of part B of our tasks. I know I picked quite a controversial subject but it is one that came immediately to mind whilst I was reading Becker, and I thought it threw up a lot of questions regarding sociological analysis. Regards, Kim.

A comment on the journalistic image as Visual Sociology

Howard S. Becker in “Image-based Research”, said that in the proper context, news photographs of continuing interest became documentary citing the example of Erich Salomon’s photographs of the Versailles Peace Conference (Becker, 1998, p94).

On considering this point, I thought about the photograph of the tunnel and the smashed car which was the scene of Princess Diana’s death in 1997. In the preceding years the press had followed Diana through the dissolution of her marriage, the aftermath of her divorce and the constant speculation over her affair with Dodi al Fayed, increasing in intensity and intrusion over the summer preceding their deaths. The photograph of the crash site was the culmination of this story and readers who looked at that picture furnished the image with the context, knowing instantly what they were looking at.

Fourteen years later this image does not have the same connotations; it is no longer news but is a record of an event, a documentary. It could be part of a sociological analysis: it could raise questions, perhaps, concerning the intrusion of the press in the lives of public figures, and at the time there was much debate on this subject and the role of the paparazzi in causing the accident. It could also question the appropriateness of photographs in certain circumstances which, again, was raised regarding the distastefulness of photographing the car whilst Diana was still inside, dying. It could be part of a series of photographs in a sociological analysis on the subject, perhaps including pictures taken at other crash sites such as the Lockerbie aeroplane crash in 1989, analysing at what point does news cease to be news and become a macabre spectacle for voyeurs?