How Straight Is Straight Photography Actually?
Straight Photography: what is it?
When shooting candid street images and when working on a documentary project, I want to adhere to the rules of 'straight photography'.
This means that I should not manipulate the images in digital processing, other than converting to black-and-white, removing dust spots and, if necessary, adjusting exposure.
As a consequence, I do not allow myself the following:
cropping
removing anything from the image
adding anything to the image
“Pure photography or straight photography refers to photography that attempts to depict a scene or subject in sharp focus and detail, in accordance with the qualities that distinguish photography from other visual media, particularly painting.
Although taken by some to mean lack of manipulation, straight photographers in fact applied many common darkroom techniques to enhance the appearance of their prints. Rather than factual accuracy, the term came to imply a specific aesthetic typified by higher contrast and rich tonality, sharp focus, aversion to cropping, and a Modernism-inspired emphasis on the underlying abstract geometric structure of subjects.”
Why do I want to apply these rules?
For me, street and documentary photography need to provide an objective account of what I saw when creating the image. Because I want to use these two (related) types of photography to document what is happening in the world I live in, it is my objective to provide the viewer with an image that is exactly depicting what happened. Nothing less, nothing more.
Before sharing the biggest challenge this approach offers me, I want to provide a brief explanation of why I think cropping should not be allowed when following the rules of straight photography.
Whereas it is quite clear that an image will be altered when something is added to or removed (e.g. people, lamp posts, other objects that might impact the esthetics of the image), cropping too is removing something from the original image. Although cropping could be justified by saying that it helps to focus the viewer towards the main subject (or message!) of the image, this, in my opinion, should have been done when creating the image in-camera and not afterward.
Adjusting an image in post-processing is something that is really a 'no go' for documentary photography, as might become clear from quite a few controversies during the past years related to documentary photographers who actually changed the content of their images in post-processing, and the fact that the World Press Photo organization sharpened their rules a couple of years ago as a result of these controversies.
My challenge
Looking at the principles of straight photography and reviewing some of my images, however, made me realize that even adhering to these principles does not make street and documentary objective: the photographer makes the decision regarding what to include in the frame when creating the image. this in-camera cropping, so to say, and deciding where to focus the image - where to focus the viewer - is a very subjective choice.
A subjective choice that will highly impact the message the image conveys.
An example
The image below (which I created during the Women's March 2017 in Asheville, North Carolina) has two main subjects: a woman holding a sign up with the words "strong women, know them, be them, raise them" and another woman walking away with a sign pointing downwards under her arm and looking at her phone.
Whatever message you as viewer read from this image, I - the photographer - choose to capture both women in the image, creating a mood, a feeling, and influencing how you perceive what is in the frame.
Now have a look at the next image.
This obviously is the same image as the previous one, but I cropped it (in ON1) to exclude the second main subject, to exclude the woman walking away.
Does this change the impression, the message the image conveys? I think it does but it is, of course, you, the viewer, who reads this message in your own specific way.
The interesting part is that I could have done this 'crop' in-camera. Instead of creating the image as I did (the first one) I could have moved closer to the lady with the sign and create the image as I did in post process.
Even while aiming at objectivity, every street and documentary photographer makes subjective decisions when creating their images. And that brought me to question how 'straight' straight photography actually is.
Conclusion
My conclusion is, that 'straight photography' only can explain what from a technical perspective has been done with an image. 'Straight photography' never can mean 'objective photography': The moment the photographer decides what is in and out of the frame her or his subject opinion about what is being captured defines the final result.
This, in my opinion, does not disqualify straight photography as a technique but it made me realize that it should not be confused with providing an objective account of what happened.
What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments below!