Between the Eyes: Essays on Photography and Politics

Afterimage, March-April, 2004 by James Johnson

Readers, of course, may contest any, maybe all, of these interpretations. To my mind though, Levi Strauss persuasively presents Cross, Hoagland, Witkin, Jaar and Salgado (and others) as intentionally adopting aesthetic strategies that will help them "find new ways to reinvest images with believability." As with any purposeful project, there is in all this a substantial, ongoing risk of failure.

Intentionality couples attempt and achievement. The former in no way insures the latter. Photography is especially susceptible to this risk insofar as it is "a complex act of communication," a negotiation that includes at least the photographers, their subjects, actual and potential viewers, and those who subsequently might use any given photograph. By adopting self-consciously aesthetic strategies the photographers Levi Strauss discusses are seeking less to actively compete on terms set by the forces of pandemonium than "to change the rules of engagement, to engage the audience differently." Their aims are political insofar as they resist the surfeit and speed of images to which we are subject by compelling us to slow down, to take time to see, to think, to imagine. By insisting that we approach photography as a means of communication, Levi Strauss also hopes to get us to appreciate that the uses to which different agents put it and conundrums that result from their projects afford an especially perspicuous vantage point from which to approach the intimate intersection of aesthetics and politics.