16 July 2023
Take a time to look at the following images. What do you notice? To what extent do these photographs reflect reality?
I should mention here that these photographs are all taken on film, which, unlike cameras with digital sensors, does not automatically white-balance the pictures. Film emulsions are commonly created for either daylight (blueish light) or tungsten (reddish light) light. The lighting in all these pictures however shares a similarity: the presence of fluorescent (greenish) lighting. Under fluorescent lightning, tungsten-balanced films gets a green cast.
While following the Visual Ethnography summer school, I started to wonder about colors and representations of reality. Instead of asking the question of what filters or white-balance settings should be used to make images as least distorted from reality as possible, what if we intend to do exactly the opposite? Can we use certain filters and white-balance settings in photography and film to create an alternative reflection of reality? This question is part of the broader question: ‘to what extent can visual ethnographic work manipulate reality to present a certain representation of reality?’ I am glad that I am not the first researcher who has thought of this.
Filters are disliked by most visual ethnographers, as they can distort images in ways that can overemphasize cultural differences (Fewkes, 2008). The author gives an example of such criticism, with an ad for a Gold Diffusion Filter advertisement (see Figure 6), explaining how ‘the seductive gaze, the use of cloth to invoke veiling, and the bright colors combine multiple elements of visual culture that most anthropologists would label “exoticizing”’ (p.1).
Gold Diffusion Filter advertisement; Fewkes (2008)
Fewkes (2008) however disagrees with the idea of ruling color filters out completely, as they are merely another equipment choice. The author argues that cultural representation already begins before image production, as the choice of equipment already by large degree determines how images are produced. For instance, using consumer video cameras ‘may invoke the home video look to create a sense of “being there” in relation to the field site’ (p.2), inducing the anthropologist as a source of authority, whereas using professional higher definition cameras may induce that image detail is seen as the source of authority. Both can be biased and present a particular view of culture and anthropological research. What is important is to be aware of this, and to be aware that technology decisions impact how reality is framed.
To come back to my photographs, the very idea that images should be white-balanced (rather than having a green-cast), can also be seen as an equipment choice and even a cultural choice on the part of the researcher. Digital cameras default to automatic white-balance settings, which is often overlooked as a representation issue (Fewkes, 2008). While most visual representations benefit from a white-balanced image (our brains also make such adjustments without us noticing), I argue in some cases it can be good to deviate from this, as it can help transfer the narratives and experiences of research participants more effectively.
I argue that the use of filters or white-balance settings in visual ethnographic work can serve a symbolic and even methodological purpose. Namely, it can induce the same emotions and feelings experienced by subjects under study, in those watching the ethnographic imagery. To give an example, here is a quote from someone suffering from depersonalization and sensitivity to fluorescent light: ‘It’s all just there and it’s all strange somehow. I see everything through a fog. Fluorescent lights intensify the horrible sensation and cast a deep veil over everything. I’m sealed in plastic wrap, closed off, almost deaf in the muted silence. It is as if the world were made of cellophane or glass’ (Simeon et al., 2023, p.51).
Now compare a photograph that I took, and edited with two different types of white balance, bellow. Which one more accurately depicts not reality (can we even know what reality looked like?), but an experience of reality that emphasizes the green cast of fluorescent light and a feeling of disconnection from reality? It is important to note that both these images are merely representations of reality, as even the more ‘white-balanced’ top image was white-balanced by taking the floor as reference point (I would argue it has a slightly too warm tone, which does not capture how the station looked like).
It is no wonder that green was chosen as a color filter Wachowski and Wachowski (1999) for the scenes ‘inside of the matrix’ in their movie The Matrix, as the movie also symbolizes this feeling of unreality. Although the movie is a fictional work rather than an ethnographic work, the use of filters in it can still inspire visual ethnographic work.
During the summer school Visual Ethnography at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, which I attended in the summer of 2023, one of the main things I learned was that visual research can create empathy and show emotions better than some numbers or a few long papers. I learned that visual ethnography is not only video, but also art, sounds, and photography (Henley, 2007; Pink, 2001). We saw during one of the screenings how sounds could be manipulated and even studio-recorded to immerse the viewer in a video. We experienced ourselves how artistic representations of Covid-19 related trauma in Dutch nursing homes touched us, creating more empathy for the workers affected. The goal of both of these was not to most accurately depict reality. Underwater, you would not hear someone swim, and the artistic representations of trauma did not look ‘photorealistic’, but those are exactly not the goals we should strive for. I argue the same to be true in ethnographic photography. The visual can truly speak to people’s emotions. Rather than seeing photography as merely a tool to ‘depict reality’, we should open our minds and also start to see photography for what it can be: a tool to artistically represent narratives in order to create empathy and understanding. The use of filters or white-balance settings as tools to achieve these goals should then not be ruled out.
Roan Buma, 16 July 2023.
References
- Fewkes, J. H. (2008). The seductive gaze through the gold filter: representation, color manipulation and technology choices in visual ethnography. Visual Anthropology Review 24(1). 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-7458.2008.00001.x
- Henley, P. (2007). Seeing, hearing, feeling: Sound and the despotism of the eye in “visual” anthropology. Visual anthropology review, 23(1), 54-63.
- Pink, S. (2020). Doing visual ethnography. Doing Visual Ethnography, 1-304.
- Simeon, D., Simeon, D., & Abugel, J. (2023). Feeling unreal: Depersonalization and the loss of the self. Oxford University Press.
- Wachowski L., & Wachowski, L. (1999). The matrix [Film]. Warner Bros.