Photography as Historical Documentation

    Robin Kelsey’s article “Of Fish, Birds, Cats, Mice, Spiders, Flies, Pigs, and
Chimpanzees: How Chance Casts the Historic Action Photograph into Doubt,” seeks to address why some photographs are acclaimed as pieces of history while others or not.  She suggests that chance discredits some photographs as historical events.  Kelsey centers his study on Joe Rosenthal’s popular image of the soldiers planting the flag on top of Iowa Jima.  The arguments that he uses to suggest that pictures may not be a relevant piece of historical information include several zoological analogies designed to cast doubt upon the accuracy of the portrayal of various acts of history by popular photographs.
    Robin Kelsey first analogy is of a fisherman.  On a fishing expedition, two fisherman hooked two fish at the same time.  They were fishing in Alaska for lingcod and halibut.  One fisherman caught a 82.6 pound lingcod that broke records. The other fisherman caught a 210 pound halicut.  When both men hooked the fish, the other men on the ship focused on the fisherman who had hooked the 210 pound halicut.  This is a large fish but less than half the record size for this particular fish.  It was only after the two fish were brought on deck that the men on the ship recognized the significance of the lingcod’s mass.  Robin Kelsey finds this analogy revelent to Joe Rosenthal’s picture because Rosenthal did not know the significance of the photograph of the flag raising at Iowa Jima.  In fact Rosenthal took several pictures of the flag after it was placed.  These pictures included the soldiers in a celabratory pose underneath the flag with rifles raised triumphantly.  Rosenthal delivered the photographs for development and the developer sent the famous picture of the flag raising to Guam.  By the next morning the photograph had been placed in many major newspapers accross the United States.  When Rosenthal learned of this, he expected that the photograph of the soldiers posing had recieved special attention, not the photograph of the flag raising.  In fact, the photograph of the flag raising was not posed, and Rosenthal hastily took the picture, almost missing the oppurtunity.  Thus, chance has placed the significance on Rosenthal’s ‘lucky catch.’ Rosenthal argues that this act of chance marginalizes the historical importance of many historical action photographs.  He explains that many of the people that have viewed the photograph feel betrayed when they learn that this was the second flag raised at this famous battleground.  One of the general’s suggested that the flag that was placed after the battle was to small.  This larger flag was then placed into the soil, giving Rosenthal his oppurtunity to capture his pullitzer winning photograph.  

The second way that Kelsey uses the fisherman analogy is to determine the significance of a photograph.  She suggests that, unlike a fish, a photograph cannot be quantitately measured for significance.  A fish may be weighed to determine whether it is a record breaking fish.  Each photograph has unique qualities and no set rule for determination of quality.  Kelsey proceeds to analyze the stature and position of the flag, flagpole and the men.  The men are spanned from left to right in the photograph and the flag pole crosses the picture diagonally.  The repetitive body positions of the man and there close proximity to one another suggests unity and teamwork.  The man at the far right is at a larger distance from the men and is standing in a muscular position deliberately placing the end of the flag pole.  Kelsey suggests that this man represents leadership emerging from unity. Kelsey suggests that because of qualitative information that is broadcast through photographs, photographs may not be considered for there historical accuracy.  Kelsey provides a famous picture of Vietnamese children running from a Napalm Strike.  She then reveals a second photograph where the viewpoint has changed to include another still image photographer in the image.  The first image was successful while the second was not.  Kelsey writes that the presence of the photographer in photograph is what ruined the appeal of the photograph to the general public.  While the inclusion of the photographer is historically accurate, it changes the visual appeal.  Kelsey uses this as further proof that chance and success of photographs lower the historical attributes of popular action history photographs.

The second analogy chosen to support Robin Kelsey’s article relates Joe Rosenthal’s photograph to a cuckoo.  A mother cuckoo will lay an egg in the nest of another bird.  When that egg hatches, the baby bird will proceed to roll the other eggs out of the nest.  The mother bird will continue to watch the cuckoo until the cuckoo leaves the nest.  The mother cuckoo arbitrairily picks a nest.  Just as fame for a photograph may arbitrarily pick a photographer.  Kelsey argues that Rosenthal did not intend to capture the much repeated photograph of the flag raising when he opened the shutter.  He merely saw an oppurtunity for a photograph and took it.  The other way that this analogy works is to suggest that the photograph feeds off the information that the viewer infers from the photograph.  Whether accurate or inaccurate, such as the case when viewers of Joe Rosenthal’s picture feel they are examining the first flag raising after the major battle of Iowa Jima.  As a mother bird thinks she is feeding her own child.

Robin Kelsey explains the opposing view point that the significance of a photograph is captured instantly by the eye of an experienced photographer.  The analogy he uses to describe this is a spider tracking a fly or a cat tracking a mouse.  When the predator sees his opportunity he takes it.  Similarly a photographer would see the oppurtunity for an important photograph and capture it.  However, Robin Kelsey discredits this belief because there are no criteria to distinguish a photograph taken at the right moment by a master photographer from a photograph stumbled upon by chance.  He argues that because Rosenthal himself was not aware of the significance of his photograph of the second flag raising, it must be considered blind luck.

Robin Kelsey’s last analogy is to a group of chimps striking keys at random.  He suggests that if a chimp sat at a keyboard long enough he would reproduce a completed work.  He suggests that if someone takes enough pictures they will chance upon a photograph of some significance.  He suggests that this analogy is valid because Rosenthal himself commented on his blind luck in the capture of the famous moment in Iowa Jima.

The most convincing argument in the piece that would discredit historical validity of action historical images is the comparison of the two images in Iowa Jima and the two images of the children fleeing the napalm in Vietnam.  The reasoning behind which photograph made it big and which did not was the staple point of the article.