Photography as Children's Literature

For children, magical associations may easily attach themselves to the camera, to the process of freezing and preserving on film a moment in time. The camera mysteriously catches images inside it; by a leap of the imagination, it may also seize something of the essence of what is photographed. The primitive's fear that the camera will rob him of his spiritual being, that the act of photography is itself deviltry, is akin to the child's fascination with a dark box that in one click captures light and form. The camera inspires awe because it seems to imply the use of surreptitious power. It is the conceit that the people photographed, even while posing in conscious knowledge of the camera's presence, do not know that something is being taken from them.

Like all magic that enchants, photography is surrounded by ritual, adding to a child's unarticulated sense of the power of the camera. Focusing, testing for light exposure, and opening the shutter for an instant are all limited, rigidly defined actions which produce magical results seemingly out of proportion to the effort expended. The necessary element of taboo attending all ritual is present in the prohibition against exposing film to light. The liquid alchemy of the darkroom further deepens the mystery of the camera, and accords greater power to both photographer and photograph. The transubstantiation of film occurs at the moment of its immersion in a chemical bath; white development paper is miraculously consecrated to produce an image.

Photographs themselves play host to a child's curiosity, recording strange moments and new happenings. The visual presentation of a reality beyond the child's immediate experience, its transportation from there to the child through the medium of the photograph, must play upon his sense of wonder. Unlike most cartoons, which employ imaginary characters in a completely self-contained fantasy world, photographs invite the child to ask questions about the incomplete reality they present. Cartoons may induce excitement and exclamation but their narrative closure denies questions. The story a photograph tells, by contrast, is only implicit in its image; the story consists of the answers to the questions the child asks as his curiosity moves him to fill in the narrative gaps that a photograph suggests but does not reveal.

Such considerations are especially true of the documentary photograph. It places limitations on the extent to which the formal elements of composition can be emphasized. These elements—of line sharpness, focus, filtering, framing, mood, and the modulation of shadow—cannot be self-consciously displayed in photo documentation. They must be disciplined, limited, and given direction by the documentary intent, made to serve social and political ends. The statement of suffering or victimization must be direct, must be the controlling element in the photograph's composition. It is this directness, the photo's legibility as drama and history, that makes this kind of photography particularly attractive to children. For it focuses on people and hints at a larger story, encouraging questions that will complete the narrative suggested by the image.

The Eye of Conscience, a book of documentary photographs, is not written and edited expressly for children. But on the above grounds, and for other reasons as well, it may have an immense appeal for them. Many of the photographs in the book are of children. Among them are Dorothea Lange's Depression waifs and Jacob Riis' Lower East Side: its overcrowded, gaslit classrooms in condemned schools, its homeless boys sleeping on stoops, curled into one another like animals. And there are Lewis Hine's haunting child miners, illegally exploited for their labor, dressed like little men in jackets and gloves too big for them, their faces blank and stained with coal dust, their bodies and wills broken at age ten.

In these photos, children can see not reflections but refractions of themselves, for the photographed children are victims, orphans of social inequality. The photos may bring a child...