Images that claim to show what was there, yet are framed, selected and edited.
Ways in
Semiotics, archival research, audience experiments, ethnography.
The longer story
Photography raises questions no other medium poses quite so sharply. Is it transparent—a window onto what was there? Or constructed—selected, framed, edited? Barthes' punctum and studium distinguish personal affect from cultural meaning. Sontag worried about images aestheticising suffering. Documentary photography claims truth; art photography claims art; the boundary keeps shifting. What happens when everyone has a camera? How does the photograph differ from what it depicts?