Photographic Power: Scenes from the United States and the Philippines

• Main Author: Rafael, Vicente L.
• Format: text
• Published: Archīum Ateneo 2024
• Subjects: civil rights; civil wrongs; lynching; photography; portraiture; Philippines; United States; war
• Online Access: https://archium.ateneo.edu/kk/vol1/iss44/5; https://archium.ateneo.edu/context/kk/article/1004/viewcontent/3_20KK44_20Rafael.pdf
• Institution: Ateneo De Manila University

This essay takes its inspiration from a series of addresses given by the former slave and radical abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Douglass hailed the promise of photography to bring forth democratic modes of representation. He saw in photography the power to bring distances up close and level social hierarchies by revealing the common humanity of those below with those above. Douglass, however, hedged his optimistic view. He saw that the “vast power” of photography also came with great danger. It can reveal truth but it can also foster error depending on “the master we obey.” It is this double-edged power of photography that I explore, looking at the dialectical workings of photographic images along the following axis: portraiture, war, and civil rights and civil wrongs. And I do so comparatively, toggling between examples from the United States and its former colony, the Philippines. Finally, I ask how photography’s social power linked to the notion of photography as a civil contract can at times produce surprising transformations, while at other moments stifle such changes.