Since the dawn of photography as an art form, photographers have been chasing the almost-holy candidness of life. Of course, this makes perfect sense: A work of candidness is not only beautiful to look at, but it symbolizes humanity in its rawest form. A truly candid photo, such as the work of Alice Chapman, evokes powerful emotion due to its nature of realness. It allows the viewer to truly enter the world the photographer inhabits, and the photographer to open the seemingly real world to the viewer.
This candid nature, however, is not easy to achieve. In fact, it is constrained by the field in which the photographer works. Street photographers and journalists root their work in the capture of reality, and wildlife photographers are linked to the intrinsically raw nature of the wild, but for those outside the aforementioned spheres, such as fashion photographers, portrait photographers, and others, candidness is a task to achieve. Thus, we enter the realm of staged candid photography, a classic of contemporary photography. Yet staged candidness raises a new issue—that of simulation and the hyperreal.
In “Simulacra and Simulation,” Jean Baudrillard discusses the issue of a simulated reality. A simulacrum, according to Baudrillard, is that which exists as a copy of an object with no original position in the world. He gives the example of the cowboy in Westerns, which is meant to be a copy of Western ranchers. Of course, in the “Wild West,” as it is known, the lawlessness and untamed nature of life depicted in Westerns never existed, nor did the cowboys of interest. In the chapter “The Precession of Simulacra,” he defines hyperreality as the state of life in which simulacra have overtaken the real in the question of meaningfulness. In essence, the world and culture are defined by images rooted in an unreal nature, and culture loses its grounding in actuality. The boundaries between real and simulation are blurred to the point of hardly existing at all. One can simply look at the images in the news for contemporary evidence of this. The mass discussion of immigrant crime has led to it becoming a reality, not in lived experience but in the minds of the people. Millions of Americans have convinced themselves that immigration is bound to bring lawlessness and violence to our cities, when the reality is the opposite. In essence, images of the unreal have taken precedence in our minds and taken on a form of reality.
But how does this relate to photography and staged candidness? Staged candidness is hardly any more real than the Western; it is meant to replicate a state that does not exist. One may be inclined to respond, “Staged candidness is meant to represent real candidness,” but this is a critical error. The candidness that staged candid photography seeks to replicate never existed. Take, for example, classic candid social media posing, which encourages you to pose in such a way to mimic a real-world interaction, but, of course, no interaction or moment can be so perfect. The staged nature of these images inherently takes away any true candid nature within them. They are simulacra. Yet, this type of staged candidness has become omnipresent in our post-modern world. The aforementioned social media candidness runs wild through our phones. Scrolling through your Instagram will bring up dozens of posts from people posing in a way to simulate real interactions or the real world. It is a classic facet of online existence. In our post-modern world, dominated by ubiquitous instant internet access, the unreal has become intensely culturally dominant.
This new world we exist in is one where photography has superseded painting as the dominant form of art. Susan Sontag discusses this issue in her seminal text, “On Photography.” Sontag posits that photography lives within a different sphere than painting, with the latter rooted in the unreal. Photography holds itself to a fictitious standard of reality, with a presumption of realness founded in its disposition as a raw capture; painting, in contrast, exists in the opposite world. Painting is an innately unreal form, with it being a wholly created art. It holds no basis in reality, neither assumed nor intended. Thus, the new world wherein we reside, one in which photography takes the central role in cultural production, has shifted the dynamic of reality in culture. With photography superseding painting as the primary art form, the position of simulation has changed. Simulation has become the defining element of art and culture, and this is only encouraged by the rising trend of staged candidness.
But if staged candidness exists, there obviously must be some real candidness. Real candidness has an undeniable beauty in it, whether in street photography, as I mentioned previously, or, more notably, in nature. For example, Warner Herzog’s 2005 documentary “Grizzly Man” is partially a collection of footage taken by animal activist Timothy Treadwell. Treadwell’s career consisted of going deep into bear country in Northern Alaska, the last sizable remaining truly wild portion of America. This area is, by nature of it being untamed, entirely candid. Treadwell’s footage has an element of beauty within it that is near impossible to describe. A shot featured in the documentary shows a family of foxes running in front of the camera while a bear lounges in the background. The shot is plainly unstaged. The bear is, in fact, just sitting, and the foxes are, in fact, just running. There is a real sense of beauty within it—one that simply cannot be captured on a traditional film set. While this is videography, the concept remains true. Wildlife photography is naturally candid, and thus has a beauty to it that sets it apart from staged candid photography.
The question then arises, why does this matter? Why should anyone care about the propensity for modern photography to be dominated by staged candidness? The answer lies in its aforementioned nature as an element of the omnipresent unreal in our culture. This tendency towards staged candidness only pushes our culture deeper into a spiral of unreality. The consequences of this become evident when one consults social media. A defining trait of contemporary social media is the feeling of being left out of some core life experiences when one sees these staged candid photographs. When we assign socio-cultural and internal value to photographs—which we undoubtedly do—and these photographs become dominated by the unreal, the value becomes inherently negative. While the impact of social media is hardly comparable to that of Trump’s unreal rhetoric, the concept of the decay of reality remains true. Where social media’s candid photography creates an essence of simulation, Treadwell and other nature documentarians, along with street photographers and journalists, build the real. This is not to say it is evil to stage candid photos; rather, we must understand the position they hold within wider society, art and culture.