Art and Truth
This is a “Reflect and Respond” Application Assignment. For these assignments I ask you to think deeply about something I’ve covered in the module and to share your thoughts or opinions on the subject. These assignments are designed to help create a depth of understanding and engagement with the material that we’re looking at, often by creating a space for you to dialog with your classmates.
Overview
In this module, we looked at a couple of photographs that documented the horrors of war (O’Sullivan’s Harvest of Death, and Ut’s Vietnamese Girl). As photographs, they carry with them a certain claim to accuracy and truth that we as viewers have come to expect from journalists. And yet, they are also artworks that reflect the perspectives of their makers. For this assignment, I would like us to use those artworks (and the two additional photos I have included below) as a platform for a bigger conversation about art, truth and fiction. What do we expect when we look at photographs of war? Do we expect an unmediated image, or one that has been altered and composed to communicate the feelings of being there? Is one type of artwork true, and the other false? Is it possible to be true and false at the same time? To help us answer those questions, I want to focus our attention on two of the very first war photographs ever taken: Roger Fenton’s “The Valley of the Shadow of Death,” 1855. Instead of reading something about the artworks, I want you to listen to the RadioLab podcast episode “In the Valley of the Shadow of Doubt,” which aired Sept. 24, 2012. It’s a wonderful exploration of how images fit into our pursuit of truth, and what our expectations are regarding the role of art in the documentation of war. You can stream the audio below, or visit the https://radiolab.org/podcast for more information. After you listen, you should post your thoughts on the subject of art, truth, and fictions below.
Instructions
Read and listen to the assigned materials from the lecture and this assignment.
Start your post with a topic sentence, in bold, that identifies one thing about this discussion of art and truth that you feel strongly about.
Compose a substantial post that explains why you think or feel that way, using concrete examples from the artworks covered (O’Sullivan’s Harvest of Death, Ut’s Vietnamese Girl, and Fenton’s Valley of the Shadow of Death) and their relationship to truth and fiction.
Respond to at least one post of a classmate, engaging with their ideas. Do their views modify or reinforce your opinion?
I think we look at war photographs to get a perception of unaltered reality. Paintings are made according to the way how the artist perceives and later expresses what he experiences, but photos, on the other hand, show us how life and events really are. I think the fascination with war photographs comes from the natural human pursuit of truth. In war, we are stripped down of our egos and we see the horror of it in the spotlight. When we see war photographs like those listed above and in the readings we see the raw material of what is really happening, forever captured by the flash of a camera.
There is no fiction in war and we get a disturbed feeling that is way less strong than the subjects of the photos experience it. It humbles us, shocks us, and also helps put things into perspective of the comfortable lives we are living in America. I know Ukrainians displaced by the war and the photos and videos they show me from the front lines help give me insight into my life and help me understand what really matters.
What matters is compassion and loving-kindness. Everything else is relative. If we have more compassion we would never have to see any war again. Unfortunately, that is not the case and these photos stand as a testament that as humans we are not yet as developed as we would like to think.