Photos as representations of society

For Wittgenstein, a picture represents what it depicts. Often it also expresses what we cannot say in words. If we can, maybe we need a long essay to describe what the picture captures in one image. As a photographer it’s obvious that I agree with this view and therefore it is not strange that once I got the idea to illustrate these blogs with photos. At first I did it only now and then, but now you find a photo of mine at the top of each blog. Sometimes I pick one from my archives and sometimes I take one especially for a blog. However, it happens also the other way round: I have taken a photo, for instance because I like the scenery that I captured with the photo, and afterwards I give it a wider – philosophical or sociological – interpretation and write a blog about it.
Take for instance the photo at the top of this blog. To my mind, it’s not only an interesting picture, but it says also much about our society and how we interact with each other. But let me first tell a bit about what made me take it.
Once on a trip to Paris I took a photo of Les Halls (once the old fresh food market, now a shopping centre; click here for the photo.) It’s a picture of a square in the shopping centre. In the middle you see a man with a notebook or something like that. Around him, people are passing by. What makes this photo special is that the people around the man look like shadows or ghosts. This effect was brought about by using a long shutter speed, when taking the photo. I had done so only because it was quite dark then. However, when I saw the result, it appealed so much to me that I wanted to take more photos like this one. It was just because of the artistic expression, not because they had a special philosophical or sociological meaning for me.
It proved very difficult to find places where I could take such photos, so places with the right people (one person stationary plus some persons moving) and the right light conditions. In the 30 years since I took the Paris photo, I succeeded to take only a few like that. One is the photo here at the top of this blog, taken in a shopping mall in Helsinki, some 15 years ago. At first, I found the result a bit disappointing, for wasn’t there too much movement in the photo? However, when I looked at it again after a while, my view had changed, for it was precisely this strong blur of the moving people passing by, as distinct from the still figures who were in focus – a man and a woman with a pram – that seemed to me to enhance the effect even more. Just this contrast turned out not only to produce a photographically appealing image, but also to give the photo a meaning that goes beyond the purely photographic image. In fact it is the core of the philosophical or sociological expression of the photo, not in the sense that it places this photo in a certain philosophical or sociological frame, for example because it is the photo of a certain type of photographer or because such photos are characteristic of a certain era or society, because many people took such photos then or there. No, the photo is, as it were, a theory about man himself.
On the one hand, when people act, they do it in a certain social environment that functions as the background of their actions. It is the space in which they act. However, this social environment is not merely background. The acting people are not separate from it. By their actions people also make their own social environment. The social environment is background and product of their actions at the same time. But what is the relationship with the social environment, with the people around us, worth when it really comes down to it? In this respect, this photo shows a pessimistic view. The man in the photo is doing something with the pram. Does he need help? No one seems to care. In this sense, the photo gives a certain pessimistic, if not negative, picture of society, indeed: in the end, we must rely on ourselves. Or is this too pessimistic? For there is also another person who obviously is involved. Is it the partner of the man behind the pram? The photo doesn't make it clear. What is clear is that we see one or two individuals socially isolated from the environment. From this point of view, and if this interpretation is right, the photo is an expression of our present highly individualistic society.
But maybe all this is a too pessimistic view on society. On the one hand people often altruistically help each other if they see others in need – see the present flood disaster in Europe – but on the other hand, how often isn’t it so that people think only of themselves and don’t care about others when they should. – see the corona crisis – However, that’s another discussion. What I want to show here is that photos often are not simply beautiful pictures, art for art’s sake, a manner to show to others what you did during your holiday, and so on. Photos can also – and I think they do so most of the time, if not always – have a wider philosophical and/or sociological meaning. They say something about who we are and how we live. A photo is a picture of reality; it is a model of the reality as we think it is.