In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

132 Photography and Social Reproduction An earlier version of this essay was first published in NuNaHeDuo (Dislocation), a Hong Kong avant-garde photo magazine. The original stimulus for the piece was the widely reported rumour that a photograph by Osbert Lam had in some way contained a portent of the deaths by crushing which occurred in Lan Kwai Fong on New Year's Eve 1992. Photography, like a virus, has invaded all areas of our visual world in a way unparalleled by any other medium of image. Not only does it pervade our public spaces, it finds its way into the most private parts of our life as well. Advertising images consciously attempt to frame our desires and future action, while our own old photos function as replacements for, rather than aids to, our memories of the past. The mass-reproducibility of the photo helps it in the first case, while the ease with which it can be taken is the crucial factor in the second. Now, for the first time in history, we are all capable of producing images of great representational richness: the camera has vastly increased the extent to which we are both consumers and producers of images. The camera is there at all rites of passage: marriage, for instance, or graduation. And while the professional photographer has a role here, the photos taken by the participants and their friends are equally important. Ostensibly functioning to neutrally record a reality independent of themselves, photos actually intervene in the ritual structure of the event, helping to produce that reality. People gather together for the wedding photo, and the graduation photo may be produced at a date entirely different from the graduation ceremony itself. The act of looking together at the family photo Photography and Social Reproduction album creates the togetherness which family photos supposedly record. I The smiles in those photos are smiles for the camera, and of course while smiling is required of the subjects of domestic photography, only 'spontaneous' smiles will do. We are usually willing to play the part scripted for us, producing such 'informal' facial expressions even as we pose rather formally, accommodating ourselves to the preference we know cameras have that their subjects be static. The dissemination of the power to make images that the camera has enabled has hardly led to an anarchic diversity: we consent to use photographic images largely as part of a narrowly repetitive dance concerned with the reinforcement and reproduction of social bonds and roles. Of course, since societies differ, photography is utilized in different (albeit largely socially conservative) ways in different places. Pierre Bordieu has been responsible for the most extensive investigation into the sociology of the photo, showing for instance the difference between the way that French peasants and French city dwellers use photography.2 What remains largely still to be written, however, is the anthropology of the photograph, the story of the different, culturally specific ways in which the camera is used.3 Although it may be a Western invention, embodying Western conceptions about representation (basically it can be described as a tool for mechanically producing Renaissance-style perspectival images), the camera has been employed in distinctive ways far from its place of origin. One could illustrate this point by going back to the consideration of photography's role in rites of passage, specifically the rituals surrounding death. In Hong Kong, unlike in England, photos playa significant ritual role in funeral ceremonies and in mourning. No photos of the deceased are carried at English funerals, nor have I ever heard of someone in England having a photo taken of themselves in the specific knowledge that this would be the image by which they would be remembered after death. The placing of photos of the deceased in family altars, or the burning of incense to them, is clearly meaningful only within the context of Chinese concerns about lineage and beliefs about forebears. A piece of modern technology helps such traditional beliefs survive, and since presumably at one time only the rich would have been able to afford ancestral portraits, it even enables them to extend their domain, at the same time as it transforms them from within.4 Even an art photograph can become inserted into patterns of belief concerning the supernatural, as is demonstrated by the view (reported in the press at the time of the Lan Kwai Fong New Year tragedy) that Osbert Lam's photo Stun (1992; fig. 19.1), hanging in the...

Share