Bias in Photojournalism

"Going Home", photo by Ed Clark, April 13, 1945

 "Going Home" is an image that centers emotion in its scene. It has a very obvious main subject in the man with the accordion crying in the foreground, which in turn brings his sadness to the forefront of the focus of the image. He is relatively close to the camera compared to the other people in the background which makes him appear larger, in addition with his accordion which together have him take up around 2/3rds of the entire frame.

The focus on the man and his emotions is also elevated by the choice of background. First of all is the contrast, with the man being African-American and thus darkskinned in a dark suit, placed with a bright white pillar directly behind him. It sharpens the overall contrast which helps guide the eye to his face, where is where the focus of the scene is intended to be, because it's the darkest area in what is otherwise a large section of a solidly white strip of the background.

Second of all, continuing with the pillar, it creates a nice frame for the man with its lines. It's not quite as pointed as converging lines, but the parallels of the sides of the pillar along with the solid white of it does serve to partition the man from the rest of the image and view him as sort of sectioned off, as if him being within these parallels was intended to draw the eye like with a picture frame.

This is, of course, not to also neglect the other people when discussing the background. They serve to accent the man's emotion by reflecting it themselves while not usurping his position in the foreground. It also creates a sense of harmony in the image due to the overall theme of sadness.

When I first viewed this image, I'm afraid I immediately made a mistake with regards to the purposes of this course.

A few years ago, during my high school years, I took a psychology course. We did the expected fair of discussing major experiments that helped shape the field, but I remember the discussions we had about bias and how it affects human cognition which in turn affects the outcome of the experiment. One of the examples was the phrasing of questions to the subjects. Of course, questions that clearly framed one particular option as the "correct" one would be more likely to skew the subject's answer towards it. But even down to the specific words used could affect how the subject answered the question.

The more relevant example to my mistake with the photograph would be the practice of debriefing experimental subjects only after the experiment has concluded. This is so they act naturally to the scenario engineered by the scientists, without the knowledge of the purpose of the experiment to eliminate it consciously or subconsciously factoring into their behavior.

So I open the image. I also open the article that's attached to it as the image source. And I read some of it.

According to the Free Dictionary, "bias" is defined as "A preference or an inclination, especially one that inhibits impartial judgment." I cannot reasonably eliminate all of my biases when looking at the image, but I immediately ruined it for myself by adding the immediate bias of knowing the written context behind it. Essentially, I debriefed myself before I went through the experiment and that affected my thought process as I looked at the image.

With that being side, from what I remember of my impression of the image before I subsequently ruined that impression with the introduction of bias, I was most intrigued by the emotion in the image. There's an association in my mind with certain kinds of photographs with certain kinds of emotions, for example I associate formal portrait photographs with attempts to portray neutral or smiling emotions. Or a photograph with a less formal composition to display a wider range of emotions like sadness or disgust. "Going Home" seems to almost straddle that line in my brain, because a lot of the composition is very crisp with the man in the foreground being so nicely framed against the pillar that makes his crying face stand out due to the contrast, and the people in the background mirroring his emotion and also seemingly focusing in the same direction he is, which as I said before gives the whole image a sense of harmony. It does unambiguously appear that all of the people are grieving the same something or someone, given that their focus is in the same direction, but the photographer wanted to focus on the African-American man in the foreground in particular given he is the focus of the image.

Photo by Ruddy Roye, 4/20/21

When searching for an image that I thought represented "truth", this one in particular drew my eye and I wanted to parse out why.

Part of it is obviously that the image is aiming to elicit a feeling of triumph. Everyone in the photo is yelling or holding up their arms in what is clearly a celebratory gesture, even without the context behind the picture. But that in turn elicits the intrigue behind the image. Why are they celebrating? What happened? Don't you want to know? Which in turn would lead the viewer to look up the context behind the image and the celebration, which does feel like the image accomplished a goal because it caught the viewer's interest enough that they want to learn more behind the circumstances it captured.

Somewhat tying into the emotion of the scene is the greater depth of field. It's a wide shot that's not really close up on anyone in particular and the background is in sharp focus. While it does decentralize the focus on the image on not one person or group of people in particular, it does create a sensation of a group feeling of euphoria or that everyone is included in the celebration.

The composition of the image appears cluttered because of the large amount of people in the background, but upon closer inspection it does appear to be mostly focused on the four people at the very forefront of the image. It's not quite rule of thirds but their positioning is very roughly at the 1/4th marks of the image. This does add a sense of order to the image despite the crowd.

Regarding this image and the representation of truth, it's roughness in composition and decentralization of focus was what made me perceive it as a more truthful image. There's an association with neatly composed and posed images with artificiality and specific intention, such as posing models on magazines in order to sell the consumer something. The choices made with this image just seem to be to capture the joy of the people with neat composition considered but ultimately secondary.

It is this raw joy that naturally draws the viewer in and the nature of finding it on the internet that reminded me of Frank Luther Mott's definitions of yellow journalism, specifically "more or less ostentatious sympathy with the underdog,'s with campaigns against abuses suffered by the common people." This picture is of the friends and family of George Floyd celebrating after his murderer was successfully convicted, which is an extension of the protests against police violence against black people. It would be hard to argue that this image doesn't display sympathy for the underdog considering the circumstances, which lends to the magnitude of the celebration.

It is also in sharp contrast to more dour images of common people still suffering. In Shahidul Alam's photo essay, he captioned some of his photographs of the common people with "Neither the government, nor the opposition parties, cared much about the problems of the person in the street." This photograph is in almost every way a stark contrast to that, with the heightened joy of the scene to the common people actually getting justice. It feeds into the Way of Knowing of Emotion and Intuition, because inherently most people know injustice is not right, and to see justice would naturally also elicit a sense of euphoria in the viewer as well.

Photo by Stepan Rudik, 3/3/10

This image by Stepan Rudik was submitted to the World Press Photo competition.

The choice to have it in black-and-white as opposed to color helps focus in on the central part of the image, the hands. Despite the grass in the background being fairly bright because of the lighting, the black-and-white quality allows the contrast of the darker wraps to outline the hands and highlight the paler fingers in the darker area of the grass where the light is less prevalent. It also allows a better view of the grouping of values in the photograph, where it can be seen that most of the paler values are gathered near the center of the photograph where the area of focus is and the darker values are mostly at the edges.

There's a few textures in this image that feed into the contrast of the image and how it helps the areas of focus in the image in a cascade effect. First is the grass in the background, the light being diffused from all the different blades and the slightly unfocused quality give it the effect not unlike that of white noise or static. Second is the wraps on the subject's hand, which are more in focus and similarly allow the lighting to showcase their texture made by the weave of the fabric to compose it also diffusing the light. However it does appear less "rough" relative to the grass as a result of the sharper quality and also the tighter weave of the fabric which is less visible to the camera compared to the chaos of the grass. And finally, the fingers which are the lightest part of the photograph. Skin of course still has texture, but it is even less obvious to the camera than the wraps which makes it appear like the smoothest section of the photograph. Together, these contrasts create a natural progression of textures as it appears to get progressively smoother and more orderly as the eye is drawn from the grass to the wraps to the fingers.

The shutter speed on this image was likely one on the faster side, but not quite fast enough to eliminate all the blur. While the argument against this could be made that the photographer caught the subjects doing the wraps slowly enough that shutter speed didn't matter, or that the pose allows it such that the photographer could've requested the subjects to pause so he could take the picture, there is a detail that begs to differ which is the trailing end of the wrap in the hand of the person wrapping the other one's hand. It's clearly in motion in such a way that would be impossible if either scenario I outlined above was true. This effect does add to the impression that the photo was taken as it was happening and not overly posed.

Photo by Stepan Rudik, 3/3/10

This was the original photo that the crop above it is derived from. There are a number of obvious key differences between the original photo and the one submitted to the World Press Photo, but the one specifically cited as the reason for Rudik's disqualification is not as obvious.

Between the thumb and index finger of the young man whose hand is being wrapped, there is the hint of the foot of the person standing behind him. Comparing it to the official submission to the World Press Photo above, it can be seen that this hint of a foot is no longer present. The reason why is because Rudik manipulated the original image such that the foot was no longer there, and that was why he was disqualified, because the World Press Photo's rules state that "The content of the image must not be altered. Only retouching which conforms to the currently accepted standards in the industry is allowed."

In a statement to Petapixel, Rudik argues in defense of his action that "...it is clear that I haven’t made any significant alternation nor removed any important informative detail." This is something I actually agree with him on, but that begs the question of why I chose his image as an example of untruth. The reasoning is more behind the implications than what Rudik actually did.

The problem is conforming the image to fit more conventionally aesthetic standards. In Donald Weber's article "The Rules of Photojournalism Are Keeping Us From the Truth", he states that, "Commodified imagery threatens photographers’ primary role as storytellers. Amplified technique threatens to dominate the image... These days, the most in-demand news photo is that of happenstance... with “extraneous” details within the frame excised. The photographer’s good intentions of authenticity surrender to economic facility in the clamor for — and shrill claims on — wavering public attention." Rudik's manipulation of his image is exactly what Weber is talking about. The erasing of the extraneous detail of the foot, while not technically significant to the overall image, does show a prioritization of the aesthetic of the image over the authenticity of it which is an inherently untruthful attitude to approach parsing out the best image to use in the case of photojournalism.

I said before that my reasoning for picking this image as an example of untruth was more due to implication than what Rudik literally did, and that is why. Using the Way of Knowing of Logic and Reason, I know that while it does seem harsh that the World Press Photo disqualified Rudik over something so small, it is important to uphold the standard so the integrity of photojournalism is not compromised. I think this has only increased in importance, especially since the Wired article "How Photos Fuel the Spread of Fake News" has shown how unedited images are already used to spread fake news with a quote from Mark Makela stating "'We’re always attuned to photographic manipulation, but what was more sinister in this situation was the misappropriation of a photo.'" It's not ethical nor is it in line with the values of a photojournalist to contribute to this by compromising the integrity of an image by manipulating it.