war photographer research paper

Three images that show wartime photographs can have greater impact than the written word

Assistant Professor in Modern Languages (Spanish), University of Birmingham

Senior Lecturer in Photography, Teesside University

Disclosure statement

Pippa Oldfield's research has previously been supported by funding from AHRC; The British Academy; Paul Mellon Centre; and Peter Palmquist Memorial Fund, among others.

Lucy O'Sullivan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

University of Birmingham provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation UK.

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This article contains images that some may finding distressing, including of torture.

“Images are worth a thousand words. These images may be worth a million .” US secretary of state Antony Blinken’s response to being shown graphic images of the victims of Hamas’s recent massacre raises an important question about whether photographs are more powerful than words in conveying the brutality of war.

Since the announcement of its invention in 1839 , photography has been imagined as a form of “writing with light” (referring to the meanings of the Greek words phos and graphe from which it is derived).

Writing in the New York Times in 1862, Oliver Wendell Holmes reflected on photographs taken after the Battle of Antietam during the US civil war: “We see the list [of those killed in battle] in the morning paper at breakfast but dismiss its recollection with the coffee.” By contrast, it was as if the photographer had “brought bodies and laid them in our dooryards and along the streets”.

In a globalised and fast-moving media landscape, photographs are more efficient than words. They can be absorbed in an instant and apparently transcend barriers of language. The notion of photography as a universal language has been around since photography’s origins and, despite criticism, remains powerful .

As the documentary photographer Sebastião Salgado put it: “I can write in photography — and you can read it in China, in Canada, in Brazil, anywhere .”

Photographs have worked alongside words to substantiate written reports on war on the basis that the mechanically produced images provide an objective and neutral record of reality.

Numerous scholars, however, have debunked this and shown how the camera can indeed lie . Wartime photographs can be used for propaganda purposes . Yet, even in the era of digital and AI-enhanced imagery, the idea that photography reveals the truth persists.

Lucy’s research has explored how this perception of photography as evidence was harnessed for propaganda purposes during Mexico’s Cristero War (1926-29) , a struggle which saw Catholics rise up against a series of government policies curbing religious freedoms.

Catholic propagandists disseminated real photographs of slain priests and militants , both in Mexico and abroad, as proof of federal violence. This created narratives of martyrdom that would galvanise support for the rebellion.

The most enduring photograph of this kind is the striking image of the Jesuit priest Miguel Pro who was executed without trial in 1927 on suspicion of attempting to assassinate former president Álvaro Obregón, despite limited evidence.

In his final moments before the firing squad Pro assumed the pose of Christ on the cross, converting his body into a symbol of non-violent Catholic resistance. The publication of the photograph in the mainstream media sparked Catholic outrage around the world in 1927 and continues to circulate today.

Some of the most powerful photographs from wartime have catalysed fierce debate on the justification of conflict. Here are three examples.

1. Liberation of concentration camps (1945)

Journalists have turned to the camera when words seem incapable of describing the most extreme wartime atrocities. This was the experience of US and British reporters covering the Allied liberation of the concentration camps at the end of the second world war.

A New York Times journalist said at the time: “Writers have tried to describe these things, but words cannot describe them .” Photographs offered proof that was “ more difficult to deny than with words ”, according to professor of communication at the University of Pennsylvania Barbie Zelizer .

An Israeli government spokesperson said that photographs of the recent October 7 massacre had been released to combat a “ Holocaust denial-like phenomenon ” over the Hamas atrocities.

2. “Napalm Girl” (1972)

Nick Ut’s photograph of nine-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc fleeing after a napalm attack on the village of Trang Bang has been considered “a symbol of the horror of war in general, and of the war in Vietnam in particular” . The image created the myth that the US was responsible when in reality the napalm had been accidentally dropped by South Vietnamese forces.

Although Ut’s photograph did not radically transform US public opinion to the extent often assumed , it became an icon for anti-war sentiment and Ut claimed that it influenced soldiers’ decisions to abandon the war.

3. Abu Ghraib (2004)

Photographs have played a powerful role in exposing war crimes, as in the case of the now infamous images documenting torture against detainees at the US military prison in Abu Ghraib, Iraq .

Although written reports of abuses had been circulating for over a year, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claimed only the images provided a “vivid realisation” of what happened. “Words don’t do it,” , he added.

The most striking photograph, showing the hooded figure of Ali Shallal al-Qaysi with electrical cables attached to his outstretched arms, arguably became the defining image of the “war on terror” . The image significantly damaged public perception of US foreign policy and was appropriated as a symbol of protest around the world .

Read more: 50 years after ‘Napalm Girl,’ myths distort the reality behind a horrific photo of the Vietnam War and exaggerate its impact

These images demonstrate the power of photography not only to provide “evidence” of the realities of war, but also to elicit an emotional response from the viewer. Author Susan Sontag famously warned that over-exposure to images of suffering could cause apathy and “compassion fatigue” but, as the photography curator and academic David Campany has shown, it’s not that clear-cut .

Research from 2011 concluded that photographs published in European news publications relating to human experiences of the 2009 Gaza conflict provoked stronger emotional reactions than articles.

In her work on the ongoing Israel-Palestine crisis, Israeli author and art curator Ariella Azoulay argues that contemplating images of suffering binds us in a “civil contract” with those depicted: it is up to us to respond through meaningful action.

As we navigate the harrowing news coverage of the Middle East conflict , perhaps what is most important is photography’s potential to remind us of our shared humanity.

• Israel-Palestine conflict
• War photography
• Israel-Hamas conflict 2023

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From Frontlines to Magazine Covers: How Women War Photographers Shape History

“With great power comes great responsibility”. This motto may be fictional, but it applies really well to war photographers. War photography has greatly evolved since its first use in 1849 in Rome. It is now easier than ever to document a conflict: a phone camera is enough. However, war photographers play a peculiar role in conflicts. Armed with their Nikons, they are actors in wars. Not only do they play a role on the ground, but they also play one back in their countries, for which a phone camera is not enough. Taking pictures is one thing, covering conflicts is a completely different responsibility. On the frontline, being a war photographer requires not only courage and strength but also listening capacities and empathy, not to mention excellent analytical abilities. Back in his or her society, the photographer’s work means taking part in building a representation of wars. The power of pictures lies in the fact that they are proofs that events did happen, that people suffered. They are the recipient of how a war will be remembered in the future. Every choice made by a photographer, therefore, influences the narrative about a conflict. This is why, on the one hand, war photographers are so passionate about their work and, on the other, feel useful against their impotence.

In which way do photographers play an essential role in building the representation as well as the narrative of wars?

When one thinks of war photographers, great names come to one’s mind. Most often, they are male names. But it is wrong to think that women photographers are not abundant. Inspired by an exhibition at the Museum of the Liberation in Paris( 1 ), I decided to focus on women war photographers and analyze what they have to say, and if there are any differences between men and women photographers of wars.

A mission on the ground: how do photographers take the right picture?

The first aspect of a photojournalist’s work consists in preparing themselves to go to the frontline. From military equipment to training and first aid formation, photographers, who are particularly exposed, learn to protect themselves. Once they get to the zone of conflict, they still have to settle and find locals who are able to help them. Most of the time, photographers work with ‘fixers’, that is, local people, sometimes local photographers – in the case of Ukraine for instance –, who are willing to guide photojournalists. Being accompanied by someone who knows the area, has contact points, and speaks the local languages proves very helpful to foreign photographers. Moreover, photographers learn to be resourceful to get the pictures they want. It can be easier for women photographers to access certain places, especially in the Middle East. For instance, Christine Spengler( 2 ) explains that, because both her hair and eyes are dark, she wore a hijab, hid her Nikon beneath it, and went unnoticed. People would even call her the Sawda , which means “the woman in black”.

Nevertheless, going on the frontline often reveals itself both stressful and upsetting. Photographers must deal with their emotions, including fear, sadness and even horror – Véronique de Viguerie explains she sometimes cries while taking pictures. But as she puts it, “fear allows her to be much more focused, much more intense, much more careful”( 3 ).

Once photographers, equipped with their cameras in their hands, have found a subject of interest, another set of question appears before them. As Susan Sontag explains it in her collection of essays entitled On Photography , photography is closely related to ethics. She speaks of a “right to observe”, adding that photographers have a “predatory role”( 4 ). Indeed, photographers spring unannounced in people’s lives to take their pictures. For many photographers, it has become important to obtain an individual’s authorization before taking the picture. That way, what seemed like aggression at first becomes a short-term relationship between the subject and the photographer. For her part, Christine Spengler underlines the direct look that characterizes her portraits. As she emphasizes, the frontal gaze proves that she “never ever takes stolen pictures”( 5 ). In addition, she chose black and white colors for her war photos in order to respect the dignity and the modesty of the people she takes pictures of.

In war photography, on another note, it can be difficult to draw the line between interest and voyeurism. When confronted with horror, photographers do not always know when to stop taking or publishing pictures. Susan Sontag raised this issue in her essays, stressing that an enforced familiarity with pictures of horrors leads to a lack of reaction to it. Indeed, “ ce qu’il y a de plus scandaleux dans le scandale, c’est qu’on s’y habitue ” [what is scandalous with scandal is that one gets used to it] ( 6 ). Since the 2000s, many women photographers have decided to keep such pictures private, except when they wish to raise awareness about a cause, therefore solving this issue.

When thinking of war photography, people generally have in mind soldiers, weapons, and tanks. But, as it turns out, but there is much more to war photography than meets the eyes. As Christine Spengler puts it, “if you look at the TV for Ukraine, are there not even more women and children suffering than men?”( 7 ). Similarly, some women photographers explain that they tend to photograph victims and pain more than men do. Christine Spengler gave the example of Patrick Chauvel, a distinguished Grand Reporter who only takes pictures of “men and shooters”. She emphasizes, however, that such a statement is not always true. There are indeed men, like Robert Capa – or Émeric Lhuisset today – who also photograph suffering individuals and victims. On the contrary, women like Catherine Leroy sometimes follow soldiers and take pictures of frontlines, battles, and weapons. Each photographer is unique.

Nevertheless, this tendency still often proves right. Véronique de Viguerie also notices a particular angle chosen by women in their pictures and their stories. For her, this is related to the fact women have easier access to certain spaces. Christine Spengler even speaks of an “osmosis”( 8 ) she shares with some of her subjects, especially women because she herself is a woman.

Photographers are actors in the wars, not as combatants – although they are sometimes forced to get involved – but as witnesses. They take this role very seriously, prepare for it before going to the frontline, and make sure they take the right picture once on the ground. In the deep intricacies of wars, then, photographers take on a specific position.

Covering the warzone: the photographer’s responsibilities

One of war photographers’ roles is to inform. Émeric Lhuisset explains( 9 ) that he always studies the situation before going on a mission. By doing so, he gets to know how the situation has developed and what is at stake. When he arrives on the ground, he tries to understand it better by directly consulting the people involved. This understanding of conflicts goes along with a distance the photographer keeps from his subject.  For Émeric Lhuisset, such a distance is important because it enables photographers to be “more detached and, that way, offers another viewpoint”. It leads to more objectivity, which is essential to many photographers. Most of them try to follow both sides of the conflict they are covering when it is possible. Unfortunately, it is not always the case. In Ukraine, for instance, there are almost no photographers following the Russians. In Émeric Lhuisset’s opinion, this can be explained by the fact Russians have built the narrative of a “special operation” – which is not a war. It would therefore be uncomfortable for them to have war photographers with them. This an example of how photography and the narratives of war are interconnected.

Photographers have another peculiar role in wars. Nowadays, photos are always part of an informative warfare. This means both sides of a conflict often try to take control of the pictures which are taken. These pictures can represent sensitive military information but, most often, they are used for propaganda. Both these roles impose a great responsibility upon photographers.

On the one hand, they must be careful about what they photograph. Some people on the ground may be reluctant to trust photographers, fearing they might be spies. Nevertheless, this can be another advantage for women photographers. As Véronique de Viguerie describes, people are less wary of women on the frontline.

On the other hand, every image becomes a weapon in the war of propaganda. If photographers may accidentally reveal sensitive information, they might also turn out to be useful. Indeed, they participate in defending one side’s version, by advertising and relaying it. During Euromaidan, Émeric Lhuisset was in Ukraine( 10 ). He photographed people protesting and interviewed them. Later, he put the pictures up, along with what people said, in the streets of a town in the Donbass area. When people saw them, they were surprised they actually had a lot in common with the people protesting, contrary to what Russian propaganda was saying.

Another responsibility of war photographers regards the relationship they build with their subjects. Photographers show a deep interest in them, not only by taking their pictures but also by trying to form a connection with them. Susan Sontag writes the photographer gains “their confidence”( 11 ). And they must honor it. Inside communities that are stricken by war, photographers play an essential role in relaying stories to the world. Local people are often grateful because they feel photographers are voicing their concerns. As Émeric Lhuisset puts it about Ukraine, “by giving their voices back to these people, [he] allows them to be once again the actors of the writing of their own history”( 12 ) while Russians are slowly making it disappear.

Instead of sensationalism, which she avoids, Christine Spengler( 13 ) always looks for a relationship with her subject. That way, she has direct information about how the person lives and what he or she is going through. In her photo of a woman on the Polisario Front, this special connection she creates with her subject is the first step in making people more aware of what’s going on over there.

Once photographers have established contact with the people affected by the war, they take their pictures while paying attention to every single detail. This effort goes towards bringing the rightest representation possible back to their own countries.

Publishing their pictures: the photographers’ roles in building narratives

From the beginning of the twentieth century onward, photographs have taken an always more essential place in the news. With the Spanish War, for instance, the 1930s were a time of peculiar expansion for war photography. The image became a tool particularly sought-after because, contrary to drawings, it seemed like a perfect, unaltered, and trustworthy rendition of reality. This relation to truth is still crucial for war photographers. Both Émeric Lhuisset( 14 ) and Christine Spengler( 15 ) insist upon the fact they do not modify their pictures. Christine Spengler, comparing herself to Goya – who would draw sketches of executions to paint them exactly like they happened –, states she “do[es] not add anything”. Looking at her picture of the bombing of Phnom Penh, she asserts that “it’s the reality”, as strange as it may seem.

Of course, this idea has to be balanced. Images can be modified. Even if they are not, they are still always the result of subjective choices. Christine Spengler argues that if there are fifty photographers, “there will be fifty different angles”. War photographers choose their subjects, the place from which they take a picture, the distance, the framing, and so on.

Besides, Susan Sontag also criticizes the idea of pictures as the perfect representation of reality. She argues that “strictly speaking, one never understands anything from a photograph”( 16 ). To her mind, photos that show reality as it is do not help people understand what they represent.  It is the photographer’s point of view as well as the text accompanying it that inform people.

The choices photographers make are not random. They come from the way photojournalists define their own roles. While interviewing photographers, I have jotted down two roles they assign themselves.

The first one is to raise awareness about unknown or little-known conflicts. Christine Spengler expresses( 17 ) her will to “defend the oppressed” and “testify of rightful causes”, especially when they are either unknown or forgotten. For instance, she went to Eritrea and Chad to photograph what she calls “lost causes”. Once she has pictures, she can publish them in magazines, therefore making a wider audience aware of what is happening in these countries.

The second one is to change people’s views regarding well-known conflicts, or to improve them. That is how Émeric Lhuisset explains( 18 ) why he went to Syria or why he covered the Maidan uprising.

One way or the other, there is always the idea of creating a narrative and bringing it back home in order to help people better understand a situation that is going on far away from them. Another mission taken on by photographers is linked to the knowledge that their images may become evidence in trials for war crimes, or even genocide. For Laurence Geai( 19 ), this justifies her need to follow clues leading to war crimes.

Like Émeric Lhuisset, photographers “try to be in places where history is made”( 20 ) but their pictures do not create history by themselves. It is their publication that propels them forward onto the scene of the making of history. That is where photographers play an essential role. Beyond the choices they make when taking a picture, they also choose which pictures they are going to send to magazines. Newspapers and magazines such as Life or Vu in the past or The Los Angeles Times, Le Monde, Le Figaro play a great role by both sending photographers on missions and selecting the pictures they publish. This selection is greatly influenced by the society wherein it is published, its standards, and its vision of a given conflict. This explains why Caroline Brothers claims that an agency’s choice “produces a stereotypical or humdrum vision of reality” where “photography acts as a site for the construction of ‘a sort of abstract history’”( 21 ).

But images also sometimes participate in building a very concrete history, for instance when they reveal something dramatic or hidden, like a war crime. When such photographs are published, they become history themselves. Our knowledge of past conflicts is engraved with the pictures which shocked and reshaped public opinion. The first image that comes to mind when thinking of the Vietnam war, for instance, is the photography of Kim Phuc, taken by Nick Ut. These icons are parts of the narrative that societies build with conflicts and wars.

Photographers play an essential role in building the representation as well as the narrative of wars in three ways.

Firstly, by documenting what they see on the frontline. This requires training and a peculiar resistance to fear. When they take a picture, while also respecting their subject’s right to the image, war photographers attempt at representing what they feel to be the true experience of the people involved in the war. It is where most differences between men and women can be seen. Indeed, women photographers regularly have access to places where men cannot go. They also focus on victims more than men.

Secondly, by acknowledging their own responsibilities on the frontline. Beyond documenting, the knowledge that their pictures will then be part of a war’s history deeply concerns photographers. They want the information they relay to be the best possible. They inform themselves and build a relationship with their subjects to make sure they get it right. They, therefore, become an important intermediary between events and narratives.

Finally, by making their pictures accessible to the public back in their societies. Once they’ve taken pictures, they publish them. Their images then become the representation people have in mind when thinking of a war. The choices photographers make to publish a picture or not thus participate in the building of the narrative of wars.

Bibliography

1. About war photography

• Barnades, Florent. « La fin du photojournalisme de guerre ? ». Médium , vol. 34, no. 1. January-March 2013. pp. 155-170.
• Brandon, Laura, Payne, Carol. « Guest Editors’ Introduction: Photography at War / Introduction au dossier : la photographie à la guerre. ».  RACAR : Revue d’art canadienne / Canadian Art Review , vol. 39, no. 2. 2014. p. 1–13.
• Howard, Dick. « Quelle distance pour voir clair ? Chronique transatlantique (VI) ». Esprit , no. 372. 2011. pp. 191-195.
• Poivert, Michel. « Théâtre des dernières guerres ». Vacarme , vol. 37, no. 4. 2006. pp. 41-44.
• Amar, Pierre-Jean. Histoire de la photographie. Paris : Presses Universitaires de France, 2020.
• Brothers, Caroline. War and Photography: A Cultural History . London: Routledge, 1997
• Sontag, Susan. On photography . New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977.
• Sontag, Susan. Regarding the pain of others . New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003.
• Documentaries
• Bouvet, Éric. « Ukraine, des photographes dans la guerre ». 21st of June 2022. Paris : LCP-Assemblée nationale.
• Fricke, Nils, Fritz, Johanna-Maria, Teshaieva, Mila. « Montrer la guerre : 2 photographes en Ukraine ». 29th of April 2022. Paris : ARTE Regards.
• Coste, Christine (modératrice), Geai, Laurence, Sharrock, Chloé, « Photographier la guerre aujourd’hui », Le Parlement de la photographie, Ministère de la Culture, 8 juin 2022, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, Public Lecture.
• Barbaroux-Pagonis, Nina [for Les Déconnomistes]. « Véronique de Viguerie, photographe, témoin de guerre ». Aix en Provence : Cité du livre. 4th of December 2019.
• Chaverou, Éric, Vasak, Stanislas. « Images de la guerre en Ukraine : les regards du photographes William Keo et du chercheur André Gunthert ». Paris : France culture. 9th of April 2022.
• Gesbert, Olivia. « Quels rôles jouent les images dans la guerre ? », La Grande Table des Idées . Paris : Radio France. 14th of April 2022.

2. About photojournalists

• Amar, Marianne. « Les guerres intimes de Lee Miller ». Clio. Histoire, femmes et sociétés , vol. 20, no. 2. 2004. p. 11.
• Mayer, Marion. « Guerre en Ukraine : les photojournalistes, témoins du drame des civils ». La Croix , n°4229 3. 16th of April 2022.
• Sharrock, Chloe. « Ukraine : les portraits en guerre de Chloe Sharrock ». Libération , n°12719. 12th of May 2022.
• Spengler, Christine, Une femme dans la guerre, 1970 – 2005 : les rivages de la paix .
• Dupont, Louise. « Christine Spengler, une vie de femme photographe de guerre ». 1st of April 2022. Paris: France 24.
• Bécard, Catherine. « ‘Témoigner des causes justes’ : Christine Spengler raconte comment est née sa vocation », L’invité de 7h50 du weekend . Paris: France Inter. 24th of April 2022.
• Devillers, Sonia. « Christine Spengler, photographe de guerre », L’instant M . Paris: France Inter. 6th of June 2022.
• Leys, Claire, Michon, Esther. « Guerre en Ukraine : comment photographier l’horreur?, avec Chloé Sharrock et Nicolas Jimenez ». Paris: Le Monde. 12th of April 2022.
• Sorbier, Marie. « Les femmes, des photographes de guerre comme les autres. Avec Sylvie Zaidman », Affaire en cours . Paris : France culture. 8th of March 2022.
• Van Reeth, Adèle, « La photo de guerre, c’est risquer sa vie pour sauver celle des autres. Avec Laurence Geai, photojournaliste », Les chemins de la philosophie . Paris: France culture. 25th of March 2022.

3. Exhibitions

• Chépeau, Anne. « Montrer sa compassion de l’humanité : une exposition consacrée à des femmes photographes de guerre à Paris ». Paris : France Info. 8th of March 2022.
• Charrier, Liliane. « Femmes, reporters de guerre et photographe de l’humain ». Paris : TV5 Mondes. 28th of March 2022.
• Beckmann, Anne-Marie, Korn, Felicity. Women war photographers: from Lee Miller to Anja Niedringhaus , Munich: Prestel. 2019.
• Exhibitions
• Les femmes photographes de guerre . 8 Mar.-31 Dec. 2022, Museum of the Liberation of Paris – Museum of the general Leclerc – Museum Jean Moulin and Kunstpalast of Düsseldorf, Paris.
• Photographies en guerre . 6 Apr.-24 July 2022, Museum of the Army, Paris.

4. Interviews

• Lhuisset, Émeric. Interview. Conducted by Priscille de La Hougue. 10 th of June 2022.
• Spengler, Christine. Interview. Conducted by Priscille de La Hougue. 13 th of June 2022.

(1) Les femmes photographes de guerre . 8 Mar.-31 Dec. 2022, Museum of the Liberation of Paris – Museum of the general Leclerc – Museum Jean Moulin and Kunstpalast of Düsseldorf, Paris.

(2) Spengler, Christine. Interview. Conducted by Priscille de La Hougue. 13 th of June 2022.

(3) Barbaroux-Pagonis, Nina pour Les Déconnomistes, « Véronique de Viguerie, photographe, témoin de guerre », Aix en Provence : Cité du livre, 4 décembre 2019, [disponible en ligne], URL : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T31PvNfufGs

(4) Sontag, Susan. On photography . New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977.

(5) Interview with Christine Spengler, see supra

(6) Beauvoir (de), Simone, Djamila Boupacha , Paris : Gallimard, 1962. [what is the most scandalous about scandal is the fact we get used to it”

(7) Interview with Christine Spengler, see supra

(8) Interview with Christine Spengler, see supra

(9) Lhuisset, Émeric. Interview. Conducted by Priscille de La Hougue. 10 th of June 2022.

(10) Interview with Émeric Lhuisset, see supra

(11) Sontag, Susan. On photography . New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977.

(12) Interview with Émeric Lhuisset, see supra

(13) Interview with Christine Spengler, see supra

(14) Interview with Émeric Lhuisset, see supra

(15) Interview with Christine Spengler, see supra

(16) Sontag, Susan. On photography . New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977.

(17) Interview with Christine Spengler, see supra

(18) Interview with Émeric Lhuisset, see supra

(19) Coste, Christine (modératrice), Geai, Laurence, Sharrock, Chloé, « Photographier la guerre aujourd’hui », Le Parlement de la photographie, Ministère de la Culture, 8 juin 2022, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, Public Lecture.

(20) Interview with Émeric Lhuisset, see supra

(21) Brothers, Caroline. War and Photography: A Cultural History . London: Routledge, 1997.

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The Afghan War: A Photographer’s Journal

The Times photographer Tyler Hicks, who chronicled the 20-year war, captured American troops in battle, the deaths of civilians, schoolgirls in class and the struggles of ordinary Afghans to survive.

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War Photographer

By carol ann duffy, war photographer study guide.

“ War Photographer ” initially appeared in Carol Ann Duffy ’s first published collection of poetry, Standing Female Nude (1985). The poem depicts a photographer developing pictures he has taken in different war zones and reflecting on the pain and trauma inflicted by war on both soldiers and society more broadly. It is situated towards the end of the collection (the fortieth poem out of fifty-one total poems) and builds on themes that are present throughout the book, such as religion, the role of art in society and history, and memory. The poem also fits into Duffy’s collection structurally and stylistically, as it mainly employs free verse paired with rhyming couplets at the end of each stanza. Throughout Standing Female Nude , and in later work, Duffy mixes poetic forms to create emphasis and nuance. Deryn Ree-Jones, in her book on Carol Ann Duffy, describes the collection as marking a shift in Duffy’s work from “the personal and Romantic lyric to a dramatic one.” “War Photographer” embodies this shift by training Duffy’s focus on a character other than herself and using literary techniques including symbolism and juxtaposition to dramatize the photographer’s work in the darkroom.

Scholars have speculated about the specific photograph or photographer referred to in “War Photographer.” Some believe that the poem is based on the experiences of Don McCullin, a photographer who was friends with Duffy. McCullin discusses his own experience grappling with trauma while working in a darkroom in his book, Shaped by War . Other scholars note that the photograph described in the poem—specifically the reference to “fields which…explode beneath the feet / of running children in a nightmare heat”—invokes Nick Ut’s famous photograph, “Napalm Girl.” This disturbing, Pulitzer Prize-winning image shows children running down a street after being struck by a napalm bomb during the Vietnam War.

War Photographer Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for War Photographer is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

what does the religious imagery in stanza 1 suggest about the photographer and his work

The priest imagery is a means of the photographer himself making sense of his work and using metaphor to shield himself from reality, which adds a further layer of meaning. Characteristic of those grappling with trauma, the photographer is unable...

why is the phrase "running children in a nightmare heat" effective

This seems like a powerful metaphor for the effect of war on children.

Study Guide for War Photographer

War Photographer study guide contains a biography of Carol Ann Duffy, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About War Photographer
• War Photographer Summary
• Character List

War Photographer: Form and Structure

Overview of “war photographer” form and structure.

• “War Photographer” is composed in four stanzas , each containing six lines . This consistent, rhythmic structure ties in with the meticulous nature of the war photographer’s work.
• The poem employs rhymed couplets , which brings a sense of order to the chaotic and brutal reality of war - reflecting the photographer’s attempt to provide structure and meaning through his photographs.
• The structure lets the poem progress from the darkroom, to the photographer’s memories, to the newspaper editor’s office, to the reader’s breakfast table, subtly revealing the journey these photographs take and the impact they have.

Analysis of Form in “War Photographer”

• The use of first person narration allows readers to closely associate with the photographer’s experiences, permitting a deeper understanding of his feelings.
• Free verse is employed, giving the poet freedom to bring forth the irregularities and harsh realities of the war.
• The poem follows a cyclical structure , starting and ending in the darkroom. This serves to highlight that despite the horrors captured and displayed, the cycle of war and suffering continues unabated.

Analysis of Structure in “War Photographer”

• The separation of the poem into four distinct sections could mirror the compartments in the photographer’s camera, each carrying a distinct, yet interconnected image and narrative.
• Each stanza transitions from the personal to the public domain , serving to illustrate the vast gap in understanding and empathising with the atrocities of war.
• The commas used provide a paused, reflective pace that mirrors the careful, deliberate process of developing photos, which also offers the speaker a chance to meditate on each scene he’s captured.

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War Photographer by Carol Ann Duffy – Analysis of Poem

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The poets of the first half of the 20th century (or Eliot's generation) gave an exuberant of literature imbued with vigorous and energetic response to the war besides philosophical questions and spiritual quests following the consequences of the First World War. In comparison to Eliot's generation, the poetry of the second generation (after WW-II) is dormant, inert, and the poets seemed to recoil from the destruction, horror and disorder of the war years. While some of the poets of the 1940s adopted a neo-romantic attitude, the poets of the 50s, reacting against such attitude, made a conscious effort to focus on the real person and event. By choosing the real person and event, the poets of the 50s endeavoured to make poetry less scholarly, sophisticated and show the poet as the man next door communicating with man in the street. Consequently, most of the poets, apparently, failed to explore beyond the surface reality. But delving deep in their poetry, it is found that undern...

Dilek BULUT SARIKAYA

The First World War marks an inevitable transformation in the traditional gender roles of women from being passive domestic sustainers of the family into active contributors in social life as voluntary nurses, ambulance drivers, and factory workers. Nevertheless, women's poetic contributions to literary representations of war continue to be precariously neglected till the publication of Catherine Reilly's Scars Upon my Heart in 1981, a war anthology of seventy-nine women poets. Margaret Postgate Cole (1893-1980) is among these women war poets who provide a distinguished feminine insight into the experience of war, different from the male perspective. Far from displaying an amateurishly sentimental and romanticized engagement with war, Margaret Postgate Cole shows a great artistic aptitude in unmasking the conniving ideological roots of war that are reinforced by the patriarchal authorities. Cole, in her poetry, concentrates on the unjustifiable ideology of war, preying on innocent young soldiers. The aim of this article, therefore, is to analyze Cole's poetry of the First World War to demonstrate her profound awareness of the meaninglessness of the war that is promulgated by the rulers and decision makers.

JOURNAL OF THE COLLEGE OF EDUCATION FOR WOMEN

Ian G Kennedy

Yale Review

Stephen Yenser

Jacques Coulardeau

There are two levels of denunciation of any war in this poem. First the plain level of capitalism, business in wartime, to make a profit from death. But also a denunciation of the brother, of all human beings, even if they are only thirteen (what a number!), who are so manipulated by the war itself and the survival instinct of theirs that they turn collectors of tokens of the repetitive death of human beings in the same uniforms. Marshall McLuhan said clothing was an extension of the skin. But in this case it is the skin and the body it contains that become the extensions of the uniform. This kind of irony is close to Daniel Defoe's black humour about the rearing, raising and fattening of Irish babies for the English meat market, except that here we are not dealing with procreating in order to make a profit, but with killing in order to make a profit, or to collect colours and medals and buttons. This is what the moral duty of all poets, and artists, and intellectuals, is in such circumstances: to use their art, their intellectual and artistic abilities to build an artistic voice for the voiceless crowds in order to rebuild their moral sense and ability to finally say no to what should not have been started in the first place. But three years later can we say the poets have been heard, the poets have been effective? I will not commit myself on this issue. But I would understand some people may doubt it.

Husain Necklace

This paper analyzes the poem 'The Map Woman' by Carol Ann Duffy.

Ed Larrissy

The Cambridge Companion to British Poetry, 1945–2010 brings together sixteen essays that explore the full diversity of British poetry since the Second World War, a period of signifi cant achievement in which varied styles and approaches have fl ourished. As a comprehensive critical, literary-historical and scholarly guide, this Companion offers not only new readings of a wide range of poets but a detailed account of the contexts in which their verse was written and received. Focusing on famous and neglected names alike, from Dylan Thomas to John Agard, leading scholars provide readers with insight into the ongoing importance and profundity of postwar poetry. In view of its influence on contemporary British Poetry, a chapter on Northern Irish Poetry is included.

International Journal for Research in Applied Science and Engineering Technology

Triasha Mondal

Remembering 1916, ed. Deirdre Mac Bride (Community Relations Council, Belfast)

Fran Brearton

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Hunters and Gatherers of Pictures: Why Photography Has Become a Human Universal

Leopold kislinger.

1 Independent Researcher, Leonding, Austria

Kurt Kotrschal

2 Department of Behavioral Biology and Konrad Lorenz Forschungsstelle, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

3 Domestication Lab at the Konrad-Lorenz Institute of Ethology, Wolf Science Center, University of Veterinary Medicine, Ernstbrunn, Austria

Associated Data

The original contributions presented in the analysis are included in the article, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.

Photography is ubiquitous worldwide. We analyzed why people take, share, and use personal photographs, independent of their specific cultural background. These behaviors are still poorly understood. Experimental research on them is scarce. Smartphone technology and social media have pushed the success of photography, but cannot explain it, as not all smartphone features are widely used just because they are available. We analyzed properties of human nature that have made taking and using photographs functional behaviors. We did this based on the four levels, which Nikolaas Tinbergen suggested for analyzing why animals behave in a particular way. Including findings from multiple disciplines, we developed a novel conceptual framework—the “Mental Utilization Hypothesis of Photography.” It suggests that people adopt photography because it matches with core human mental mechanisms mainly from the social domain, and people use photography as a cognitive, primarily social coping strategy. Our framework comprises a range of testable predictions, provides a new theoretical basis for future empirical investigations into photography, and has practical implications. We conclude that photography has become a human universal, which is based on context-sensitive mental predispositions and differentiates itself in the social and societal environment.

Introduction

Photography is ubiquitous around the world, with the number of people taking and using personal photographs steadily increasing (Lee and Stewart, 2016 ; Canon, 2018 ). More than 90 percent of all photographs (henceforth photos ) are taken with smartphones (Carrington, 2020 ), and more than half of the world's population uses smartphones or mobile phones to take, view, and share photos (Statista, 2019 ; Kemp, 2021 ). Smartphones integrate photography with many other functions, notably with access to the internet and social media (Smith, 2011 ; GSMA and NTT DOCOMO, 2014 ). This has rapidly shifted photography from an exclusive activity of socio-economically capable minorities toward engaging a majority of the world's 7.8 billion people.

We examined the question why people take, view, own, share, and use personal photos, and why photos are important to them. We consider the distribution of smartphone technology and social media a precondition for the sweeping success of photography, but insufficient to explain it, as not all smartphone features or technologies are widely used just because they are available. The technology to make audio-recordings, for example, has not been adopted by many people (Milgram, 1976 ). Although smartphones are capable of easily recording the voices of loved ones, conversations, the sounds of a birthday party, or of a strange city, people rarely use this function (GSMA and NTT DOCOMO, 2014 ; Lutter et al., 2017 ).

There is extensive research on the psychological bases of pictorial representation and art (e.g., Deacon, 2006 ; Donald, 2006 ; Dutton, 2009 ). No theory, however, has suggested an integrated psychological basis of the wide range of photography-related behaviors. Photography differs significantly from other visual representation techniques. The invention and further technical developments in photography have conveyed images with characteristics that drawings, paintings, maps, or plans do not have: (a) photos are realistic in a special way; (b) photos are produced by technical devices; (c) part of the information in photos is there by chance; (d) people tend to believe that what they see in photos really happened that way; and (e) photos can be created easily, quickly and effortlessly. We will describe these properties in more detail at the beginning of the following section.

Milgram ( 1976 ) assumed that taking and using photos conveys specific abilities, which can be best understood if cameras and photos are regarded as “evolutionary developments” (p. 7). We followed this approach and hypothesized that the urge to take, view, share, and use photos is based on human nature (Wilson, 2012 ; Kotrschal, 2019 ), i.e., on evolved context-sensitive predispositions and mechanisms, mainly rooted in the social domain. We examined this hypothesis on the basis of the four levels of Tinbergen ( 1963 ) to analyze and explain “natural” traits, i.e., those which evolved via the Darwinian processes. These levels relate to (1) the physiological mechanisms underlying a certain behavior, (2) it's ontogeny, (3) evolutionary history, and (4) adaptative value. This frame guided half a century of behavioral research and may be considered the research program of organismic biology in general (Bateson and Laland, 2013 ; Nesse, 2013 ).

We place photography in the context of the coherent theory of the evolution of life (Darwin, 1859 , 1879/2004 ; Jablonka and Lamb, 2014 ) and human nature as an outcome of this evolution. The four levels proposed by Tinbergen are the theoretical and practical formulation of this context. Since there is only a single Darwinian theory of evolution, and culture is part of human nature (Jablonka and Lamb, 2014 ), the biological context should allow us to develop a unified explanation, coherent with contemporary knowledge particularly on the proximate mechanisms (i.e., current physiological mechanisms and their ontogeny). According to the four levels of Tinbergen, our central research questions are: What are the cognitive and physiological mechanisms underlying taking and using photos? How does taking and using photos develop ontogenetically?—which is important for understanding the development of inter-individual variation. What is the phylogenetic basis for photographic behavior? What may the functions and adaptative value of taking and using photos be? In this respect, a contribution of taking or using photos for survival and individual reproductive success may not be obvious in modern humans, but to qualify as an evolutionary function, the proof of a direct effect would not be needed. Rather, it would be sufficient to find a plausible positive effect on a person's social and mental well-being, which, in turn, on a population level, would entail a positive, supportive effect on societal and biological fitness.

Our aim was to create a theoretical framework, which describes why and in what way taking, viewing, sharing, and using personal photos are functional behaviors in terms of what is presently known about human nature. The development of this framework was based on the integration of available empirical findings on photography from multiple research areas with findings from biology, psychology, and neuroscience. We consider cultural and biological traits as closely interconnected and interacting in driving evolution and individual behavior (e.g., Jablonka and Lamb, 2014 ; Kotrschal, 2019 ). To the best of our knowledge, a similarly comprehensive integration of findings into a coherent theoretical framework has not been attempted before. Our framework generates a number of predictions about the specific characteristics of personal photos and photography-related behaviors, which can be tested through empirical investigations.

Based on our framework and data on the global availability of smartphones and social media, we intended to show that photography qualifies as a human universal (Murdock, 1945 ; Brown, 1991 ; Antweiler, 2016 ; Christakis, 2019 ; Kotrschal, 2019 ). The concept human universal is traditionally associated with traits, activities, characteristics, or institutions, which are observed in all cultures and societies worldwide, like social organization, cooking, language, music, or weapons (Brown, 1991 ). According to this view, photography would not be a human universal. Historically, photography is a new development and did not exist in the traditional societies described by ethnology. For traits or behaviors, which have only recently become universal, Brown ( 1991 ) introduced the term “‘new’ universals” (p. 50). He cited dogs, tobacco, metal tools, and plastic containers as likely examples. Hence, according to Brown's classification, photography is a “new universal.” We describe photography as a human universal, which is based on context-sensitive predispositions, which differentiates itself over ontogeny in the societal environment. Our evolutionary approach does not suggest categorizing photography as a stereotypic behavior based on “innate” dispositions. In line with the present concepts of human social behavior and human universals, we emphasize context-sensitivity, inter-individual variability and individual uniqueness of photography-related behaviors within the frame of the human reaction norm (Woltereck, 1909 ), as comparable, for example, with language or music.

Materials and Methods

Specific characteristics of photographs and photography.

Our focus is on personal photography , that is, on photography-related behaviors, including taking, viewing, sharing, and using photos, which are performed for personal reasons and without commercial intent (Chalfen, 1987 ; Kindberg et al., 2005 ). In particular, we refer to photography-related behaviors, which people perform immediately and voluntarily (spontaneously), without intentional preparation or planning beforehand. We specifically referred to characteristics of photos and behaviors related to photos, which other representational pictures and behaviors associated with them do not have:

Photos Are Realistic Images

An object depicted in a photo can share a large number of visual features with the object that was seen in the environment at a specific point in time from a specific location (Bradley and Lang, 2007 ). Because of this characteristic, photos are called realistic images (DeLoache et al., 1998 ). When individuals see a photo, a retinal image can be formed, which is similar to the image that would be formed if they saw the represented event or object in the environment in real life (Perrett et al., 1991 ). When investigating the neural bases of recognizing or categorizing objects (e.g., faces, bodies, sites, or objects), neuroscientists and cognition researchers often assumed that there is an equivalence between the photographic representation and the perceptible object in the environment and presented photos of objects as stimuli instead of the real objects in question. Important psychophysiological mechanisms underlying photography-related behaviors are related to the fact that photos of objects elicit reactions in certain areas of the brain similar to events, which are effectively seen in the environmeint.

Photos Are Produced by Technical Devices

Drawings and paintings can also be realistic images. In contrast to photos, the creation of drawings and paintings involves the hands of the artists who created them, and important visual characteristics resulted from the dispositions, ideas and decisions of these artists. Photos are created by technical devices, and viewers know this fact.

Part of the Information Came Into the Photo by Chance

The people who use cameras choose a certain perspective, a certain frame and a certain moment when they press the shutter button. Photographers use this selection to control the characteristics and meanings of photos. In complex natural scenes, photographers cannot control all of the information that gets into the photos. Some information comes into the pictures by chance (Talbot, 1844/2011 ). This is hardly the case with representative drawings or paintings.

People Assume They See Reality in Photos

People tend to believe that what they see in photos really happened that way—even if photos are posed, manipulated or forged (Wade et al., 2002 ; Nightingale et al., 2017 ). This phenomenon is still poorly understood. It is possibly related to the knowledge of the viewers that they see a picture that was produced by a technical apparatus. This knowledge could be linked to the assumption that the picture is little affected by the personal attitudes and intentions of the person who made it (Miller, 1973 ; Gu and Han, 2007 ).

Photos Can Be Created and Understood Easily, Quickly, and Effortlessly

Unlike drawings, paintings, maps, or plans, photos can be created easily, quickly and effortlessly. Three-year-old children can take informative and expressive photos (Magnusson, 2018 ). Without complex knowledge or skills, people can take photos that they and other people find excellent (De Looper, 2016 ). Complex events represented by photos are quickly and easily understood. A single quick glance is enough for viewers to understand, for example, an interaction between two individuals (Hafri et al., 2013 ).

Taking, sharing, and using photos are not behaviors, which have all of a sudden appeared as something completely new and an emergent property of culture. We hypothesized that they are deeply rooted in organismic and cultural evolution. The basic cognitive and physiological factors underlying photography-related behaviors are common to all people. Some of these factors may vary relatively little between individuals, but others, for example, related to individual personality structure may show great inter-individual variability. But even such a pronounced inter-individual variability is far from random, as much of ontogeny seems to depend on context-sensitive human dispositions (e.g., Jablonka and Lamb, 2014 ; Kotrschal, 2019 ). Such dispositions are the result of non-random interactions between genes, epigenetics, and the social and societal environments during ontogeny. They frame the way people tend to take, view, share, and use photos.

Empirical Data and Findings on Photography-Related Behaviors

Empirical data and findings on taking, viewing, recognizing, sharing, and using photos come from a variety of disciplines, such as psychology, neuroscience, human-computer interaction, and anthropology. In analyzing the questions on the level of the cognitive and physiological mechanisms underlying photography-related behaviors, we referred to studies that examined the following questions: Which cognitive processes in the brain play a special role in photographing (Barasch et al., 2017 ; Blitch, 2017 )? How do people's brain responses to photos they have taken themselves differ from their responses to photos taken by others (Sellen et al., 2007 ; St. Jacques et al., 2011 ; Diefenbach and Christoforakos, 2017 )? Which brain responses do photos elicit in which viewers see a person with whom they are connected through a close emotional relationship (Bartels and Zeki, 2004 ; Gobbini et al., 2004 ; Leibenluft et al., 2004 ; Master et al., 2009 ; Eisenberger et al., 2011 )? Which brain responses do photos evoke in which viewers see themselves (Devue et al., 2007 ; Butler et al., 2012 )? Which neural processes form the basis for viewers to find a picture beautiful or ugly (Kawabata and Zeki, 2004 ; Jacobs et al., 2012 )?

To describe the ontogenesis of photography-related behaviors, we refer to studies that examined the development of the ability to recognize the representational properties of photos (DeLoache et al., 1998 ; for review, see Bovet and Vauclair, 2000 ), as well as to studies, which examined the age at which children start taking photos and for what purposes they use cameras (Mäkelä et al., 2000 ; Sharples et al., 2003 ; GSMA and NTT DOCOMO, 2014 ).

In analyzing the evolutionary roots of photography-related behaviors, we refer to studies of the ability of non-human primates and other animals to recognize objects depicted in photos (Bovet and Vauclair, 2000 ; Kano and Tomonaga, 2009 ; Aust and Huber, 2010 ). Information was also provided by investigations into the question how people develop the ability to recognize objects pictured in photographs (Deregowski et al., 1972 ; Miller, 1973 ; Bovet and Vauclair, 2000 ).

Table 1 briefly summarizes some of the research that will be used to analyze the level related to the adaptative value of photography-related behaviors. Every single referenced study provides a number of answers that are not always consistent with the answers from the other studies. The answers given are therefore rather examples of content to which we refer in the article than representative information.

Questions and studies used to analyze the adaptative value of photography-related behaviors.

Results: the Four Levels of Tinbergen ( 1963 ) As a Theory Frame

Psychophysiological mechanisms underlying photography-related behaviors.

Researchers have used photos as stimuli. Thus, quite some knowledge on the psychophysiological mechanisms involved in recognizing and viewing photos has accumulated, but experimental research on the mechanisms involved in taking photos is essentially lacking (except for Blitch, 2017 ). The success of photography, however, is primarily related to features of taking photos (Krämer and Winter, 2008 ; Hu et al., 2014 ; Lee et al., 2015 ; De Looper, 2016 ; Malik et al., 2016 ; Carrington, 2020 ). These include various activities and outcomes. These activities are, for example, associated with relating to individuals or objects as well as creating and appropriating images of them and their desirable properties. Outcomes may be associated with a sense of control and efficacy. The rapid global spread of photography was not driven by new opportunities to get, acquire, or exchange photos taken by other people, but mainly by the increased availability of inexpensive cameras, particularly smartphones, and opportunities to share one's own photos electronically. For this reason, we address in this section the specific mechanisms that form the neural basis of taking personal photos. The following description of the processing steps in taking pictures corresponds to hypothetical predictions. We mainly employ findings on processes in primates including humans from various contexts, which can be related to the psychophysiological mechanisms involved in taking photos. Figure 1 shows a hypothetical model including the major steps of taking a photo.

Hypothetical process model including the major processes and activities that occur in an individual who engages in taking a personal photo. The place within the sequence where the processes and activities are located indicates either when they occur or when they first occur. In order to keep the presentation clear, possible feedback effects of activities on the antecedent steps are not shown. Downward arrows mean “then occurs”; a horizontal arrow means “interacts with”.

Initial Steps in Taking Photos

The first steps in taking a photo do not involve conscious awareness (Custers and Aarts, 2010 ). A mother, for example, responds spontaneously to the happy expression on the face of her 6-year-old son at his birthday party, or a hiker responds to the overwhelming panorama at a mountain top. In these examples, the perceptual input activates a fast, low-level system of subcortical structures related to affective processing (Baxter and Murray, 2002 ; Pourtois et al., 2013 ), including neurons responding to the visual information and others responding to relevance and information related to primary (evolutionarily developed) or individually acquired reward value. Some of these structures project to the midbrain dopaminergic system (Dommett et al., 2005 ; Schultz, 2006 ). In turn, dopaminergic projections from the ventral tegmental area (VTA) in the midbrain reach the ventral striatum, including the nucleus accumbens (NAcc), amygdala, hippocampus and other areas of the mesolimbic system (Berridge and Robinson, 1998 ; Alcaro et al., 2007 ), which functions as the central neural basis for approach and motivation. This mesolimbic system overlaps with the social behavior network in the brain, responsible for the control of social behavior (Goodson, 2005 ; O'Connell and Hofmann, 2011 ).

The activity of the dopaminergic neurons in the brain of the mother who sees her happy son corresponds to a “wanting” reaction (Berridge and Robinson, 1998 ). It makes her son's excited face salient and attractive. The fact that the mother likes what she perceives may be related to the release and processing of endogenous opioids (Panksepp, 1998 ; Kringelbach and Berridge, 2009 ; Hsu et al., 2013 ). Whereas dopamine conveys motivational incentives, endogenous opioids convey “liking,” but also have a calming effect and reduce neural responses to pain, stress and anxiety (Carter, 1998 ; De Kloet et al., 2005 ).

In everyday life, people usually take photos of pleasant events (Chalfen, 1987 ; Sharples et al., 2003 ; Hu et al., 2014 ). We assume, however, that the motivation to take a picture is often also related to the activation of a mental representation of a negative context, which is processed non-consciously. In our example, this negative context would be that the mother knows that her son celebrates his last birthday party before entering school. As her own mental representations of school are ambivalent, she develops an anticipatory concern regarding the situation of her son, which is threatening and creates mental stress (Ulrich-Lai and Herman, 2009 ). Representations of such threats correlate particularly with activities in the amygdala (Baxter and Murray, 2002 ; Pourtois et al., 2013 ), triggering a cascade of adaptive neural and neuroendocrine reactions (De Kloet et al., 2005 ; Schiller et al., 2008 ; Ulrich-Lai and Herman, 2009 ; Hostinar et al., 2014 ). They include the activation of the stress systems leading to an increase in excitement and alertness.

Hence, we suggest that two conflicting representations are activated in the mother's brain, each associated with a different behavioral response than the other. The mother needs to mobilize cognitive and behavioral resources to be able to balance the two possible meanings and reactions, which in essence employ different parts of her brain. The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) plays an important role in this. The ACC lies inside the frontal cortex, where it extends around the dorsal side of the corpus callosum, the nerve tract that connects the two cerebral hemispheres. It integrates and organizes emotional and cognitive information related to coping with pain, fear, anxiety, and stress, and potential motor responses, and is a major neural basis of cognitive control (Bush et al., 2000 ; Shenhav et al., 2013 ). Cognitive control is defined as regulating reactions to pieces of information that are in conflict with one another and in which automated processing may lead to errors (Miller and Cohen, 2001 ). The goal of cognitive control is to integrate conflicting information into representations that support appropriate behavioral decisions.

The mother's medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) signals that there is something out there that offers the opportunity to collect or appropriate something valuable—mPFC is a central part of the neural basis of appropriating or collecting something (Anderson et al., 2005 ; Turk et al., 2011 ). Based on the dopaminergic processes involved, the motivation for appropriating something can be very strong: mPF and ACC have the greatest densities of dopaminergic projections from the midbrain of all areas in the cortex (Williams and Goldman-Rakic, 1993 ; Cohen et al., 2002 ).

Based on her photography-related knowledge, the mother categorizes what she perceives as “something that is photographed.” What is going on out there, could enable her to create a valuable picture. According to the assumptions of Event Cognition (Newtson, 1973 ; Zacks et al., 2001 ), “a children's birthday party” is not represented in the mother as a continuous, uniform event, but in the form of a few interconnected discrete units or steps, such as welcoming the guests, eating the birthday cake, blowing out the candles, and so on. The mother has detected that such a discrete step of the party has occurred. A photo of it could represent much of her son's birthday party. Activation patterns in prefrontal and hippocampal areas switch on photography-related memory contents that are connected to one another and retained in various locations widely spread over the cerebral cortex (Tonegawa et al., 2015 ). Context and scene are associated with possible outcomes of taking a photo with a smartphone camera, including a coarse anticipatory representation of the possible photo and its use.

Still without the involvement of conscious processes, the representation of the goal to take a photo is activated in structures of the mother's anterior prefrontal Cortex (PFC) (Soon et al., 2008 ; Custers and Aarts, 2010 ). Processes in OFC, mPFC, ACC, and ventral striatum analyze whether the goal to take a photo can be achieved in the given situation, and whether it is worth the effort. The result is the decision that the photo is worth the effort.

Steps Accompanied by Conscious Awareness

For taking the photo, representations from different explicit and implicit memory and processing systems must be integrated. Our mother is now consciously recognizing (Dehaene and Naccache, 2001 ; Damasio, 2010 ) that she is perceiving something that might be worth photographing. She takes her smartphone and points the camera at her son, who is surrounded by friends. She controls what will be seen in the picture. OFC, ACC, amygdala, and the anterior insula build the neural bases of various valuation, filtering, ordering and decision processes (Hsu et al., 2005 ). The mother's working memory (Baddeley and Hitch, 1974 ; Miller and Cohen, 2001 ) processes, maintains and integrates different pieces of information of internal and external origin.

The mother takes a photo of her son, a person with whom she is connected through a close positive emotional relationship. Seeing him activates areas in the mother's brain that have a high density of the peptide hormones oxytocin and vasopressin (Bartels and Zeki, 2004 ). Oxytocin and vasopressin are produced in the hypothalamic Nucleus preopticus (NPO), stored in pituitary, and are involved in the development and maintenance of close selective social relationships (Carter, 1998 ; Panksepp, 1998 ; Scheele et al., 2013 ; Hostinar et al., 2014 ). They also support the control and suppression of threat-related information (Nelson and Panksepp, 1998 ; Donaldson and Young, 2008 ; Scheele et al., 2013 ). Particularly oxytocin is involved in the development and maintenance of close selective social relationships or attachment and conveys the feeling of social connectedness (Carter, 1998 ; Panksepp, 1998 ; Scheele et al., 2013 ; Hostinar et al., 2014 ). Both hormones are associated with activating the mesolimbic reward system (Donaldson and Young, 2008 ). Oxytocin release correlates with opioid activities, reduces stress and thereby causes a calming effect (Nelson and Panksepp, 1998 ). In fact, there is a strong antagonism between oxytocin release and glucocorticoids synthesis, i.e., metabolic hormones that are produced and released in response to stressors (Carter, 1998 ; Hostinar et al., 2014 ; Preckel et al., 2015 ).

The mother's vmPFC assigns a positive value to the neural representations of the situation, photographing in general, and the intended photo in particular. On a non-conscious processing level, however, the anticipatory representation of the threat of her son's potentially negative experiences at school is still effective. This threat is primarily processed in the amygdala, but the mother's vmPFC projects into the amygdala and, thereby, inhibits its activity, which reduces fear and anxiety (Andolina et al., 2013 ; Hostinar et al., 2014 ). In addition, vmPFC, OFC and ACC project to the hypothalamus and reduce the activity of the mother's stress systems (Ulrich-Lai and Herman, 2009 ; Hostinar et al., 2014 ). Her implicit processing mechanisms suggest that she can now safely ignore the threat (Schiller et al., 2008 ).

When she recognizes a sufficient correspondence between the characteristics of the picture on the smartphone display and the mental representation of the desired photo, she presses the shutter button. She creates a permanent external picture of her son in a particular context, a representational digital object, which she possesses and can share with others. An important part of the value the picture has for her is related to the fact that she has created it herself. Actually, people can reliably distinguish between photos that they have taken themselves and photos taken by others (Sellen et al., 2007 ; St. Jacques et al., 2011 ).

A mountain hiker who discovers something she wants to photograph may have a different experience than a mother at her son's birthday party. She likes to hike alone and enjoys nature and silence. When looking at the mountain landscape, the anticipation of a longer period of non-self-chosen solitude has been activated. The hiker can take a picture, which will allow her to share her experience with her friends. Unlike our example mother, the hiker has more time for taking the picture, because the landscape does not change as quickly as social situations at a party. The hiker can use this time for creatively composing a photo, which will be different from ordinary photos depicting similar landscapes and which the viewers will find beautiful, useful, or important (Thagard and Stewart, 2011 ; Ellamil et al., 2012 ). She associates and integrates the incoming visual information with certain conceptual and emotional categories as well as with internal representations of existing extraordinary landscape pictures. The neural bases of these operations include structures of two cortical networks that are usually not active at the same time. One of these networks is activated when people focus their attention on external stimuli, the other network when attention is focused on thoughts, memories or imagery (De Pisapia et al., 2016 ).

Ontogeny of Recognizing, Taking, and Using Photos

Human babies recognize certain photos at an age of 3 months or even earlier (for review, see Bovet and Vauclair, 2000 ). In a cross-cultural study, DeLoache et al. ( 1998 ) showed that 9 months old babies treated pictured objects as if they were real objects, explored them with their hands, tried to touch them, or to take them out of the picture. At the age of 19 months, human children understood that pictures are both concrete real objects, but also representations of other objects. From about 1-year of age, children begin to create traces on two-dimensional surfaces with suitable materials (Thomas and Silk, 1990 ; Wright, 2010 ). At the age of two, children begin to name the meanings of their drawings or paintings. They also know that pictures are made with specific intentions to represent objects or events (Preissler and Bloom, 2008 ). Children aged 3- to 4-years know what properties of pictures are helpful if they are used to convey ideas of objects to other people, and that there are better and worse pictures for this purpose (Allen et al., 2010 ). They know that pictures containing a lot of visual details are best used to tell others what objects look like.

Many children like to draw. As much as they develop joy and zeal in drawing, they usually have little interest in owning the pictures as soon as they are done (Thomas and Silk, 1990 ; Cox, 2005 ; Cherney et al., 2006 ; Wright, 2010 ). If they have mastered a special pictorial challenge, they proudly show their picture and look at it together with others, but they do not go for drawings they made the week or the month before to look at them again. The fascination lies in the activity of drawing itself, in experiencing the ability to create a picture with a certain meaning—and to use this to relate to others (Cox, 2005 ; Wright, 2010 ). The early ontogenetic development of competences related to producing and using representational pictures happens in the social environment, usually the family. The family is also one of the most productive places of personal photography (Chalfen, 1987 ; Petrelli and Whittaker, 2010 ). The most successful photography exhibition of all time even had “family” in its title: The Family of Man ( 1955 ).

Children see the photos their parents keep in photo albums, photo books, boxes or computer folders. The photos of the ancestors—and their actions, experiences, relationships, occupations, and possessions—that a family owns can give children a sense of social belonging, societal significance, and security (Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton, 1981 ; Chalfen, 1987 ; Petrelli and Whittaker, 2010 ). These photos are heritable assets of knowledge. They are usually linked to oral or written information, which shows and tells to whom the children belong and whom they can trust. Through mechanisms of social learning, family traditions of photography emerge (Mäkelä et al., 2000 ; Sharples et al., 2003 ; Petrelli and Whittaker, 2010 ). Children get to know certain ways of using cameras and photos early on (Mäkelä et al., 2000 ; Sharples et al., 2003 ). They experience how their mother or father reacts to certain events by taking photos—usually positive, which supports this behavior via positive reinforcement learning. Children also realize that taking, viewing, and sharing photos is repeatedly done in certain social contexts, for example at a birthday party, graduation, or wedding. They learn that photographers keep some pictures and discard others and may shape their own taste along this.

Many children start taking photos themselves at preschool age (Sharples et al., 2003 ; Magnusson, 2018 ). Seven- to 15-year-olds take and use photos in connection with the playful and explorative use of electronic devices (Mäkelä et al., 2000 ; Sharples et al., 2003 ). They use cameras and photos for joking, like making faces or adopting funny poses, for expressing feelings, or telling stories. According to an international survey, 81% of the 8- to 18-year-olds in Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia used a mobile phone in 2013 (GSMA and NTT DOCOMO, 2014 ). Most of the children got their own mobile phone between 10- and 12-years of age and 55% had access to the internet. The features most used by children and adolescents were cameras (91%), followed by music players and video players. Many young people in their teens and early twenties take and use photos to create a sense of self and an identity (Schiano et al., 2002 ; RSPH and YHM, 2017 ). Social media provides them with a platform where they can use photos to express different characteristics of themselves and to experience other people's reactions (Krämer and Winter, 2008 ; Hu et al., 2014 ; Lee et al., 2015 ). Photos of family members and pals are especially important for people (Mäkelä et al., 2000 ; Sharples et al., 2003 ), and the value of these photos increases with the age of their owners (Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton, 1981 ).

Evolutionary Roots of Taking and Using Photos

Why do photos have the characteristics they have? Why are they important for people all over the world? Which meanings can almost only be represented and communicated through photos Kislinger, 2021 ), and which cannot? In this section, we will refer to cognitive and social building blocks, which are part of the evolved nature of modern humans and suggest answers to these questions. Figure 2 presents an overview of the evolutionary building blocks that underlie the success of photography to which we refer.

Schematic illustration of the building blocks that are part of the evolved nature of modern humans and form the basis of the importance of photos for people. The arrows show the order in which we describe the building blocks in our model.

Vision as a Central Element of Human Cognition

People take and use photos to represent important events in the environment. Representing features of the environment with survival value is one of the core functions of central nervous systems (CNSs) since they exist. Organisms developed sensory organs, which react to relevant physical and chemical events in the environment, as well as neurons, that is, cells capable of receiving, generating, and transducing signals for internal communication and for relating to the environment (Butler and Hodos, 2005 ; Gregory, 2008 ). By means of neural activation patterns, organisms have used “images” for hundreds of millions of years (Damasio, 2010 )—as representations of the environment enhancing predictability in interaction with this environment and, thus, survival. Although it is hard to imagine how a jellyfish with its dispersed nervous system should be able to form an image-like mental representation, the fact that its body responds to stimuli in a coordinated and adaptive way at least hints at such a possibility.

Mammals evolved out of mainly visually oriented reptiles (Northcutt, 2011 ; Striedter, 2020 ). During their first 100 million years of evolution, however, the reign of dinosaurs forced them underground or into a nocturnal lifestyle. This led to a reduction in visual orientation, while olfaction and hearing were optimized. Within the modern mammals we see a full reinstatement of trichromatic vision only in the primates, while most other mammals remain bi-chromatic as an adaptation to being active at dusk and dawn and at night. Due to specific properties of their central nervous systems, including retinae, primates can extract a broad range of information from the properties of light and its reflections in the physical world (Felleman and Van Essen, 1991 ; Gollisch and Meister, 2010 ). Vision is a central component of human cognition. Visual content dominates, for example, perception, memory, imagining, and dreaming (Posner et al., 1976 ; Zimmermann, 1989 ).

Living Together in Groups and Social Attachment

People primarily take photos of other people, especially people to whom they are emotionally connected (Chalfen, 1987 ; Hu et al., 2014 ; Lee et al., 2015 ). Processing stimuli with social significance has a long evolutionary history (Wilson, 1984 , 2012 ). The tegmental and diencephalic parts of the brains of birds, bony fish, and mammals feature an evolutionary extremely conservative—hence homologous—social behavior network (Goodson, 2005 ). This regulates social recognizing, mating, parental behavior, persistent bonding, expressive behavior, aggression, and responses to social stressors. Primates inherited this network virtually unchanged in structure and function from their ancestors. The primate ancestors of humans established close relationships with other individuals in their groups who were not reproductive partners or relatives (De Waal and Brosnan, 2006 ; Wilson, 2012 ). Social cohesion improved the ability of individuals and groups to adapt to variable environments, to survive and to reproduce. Living together in groups affected both behavior and cognition. In primates, the social domain hosts a substantial part of the motivation to orient to and perceive stimuli, and to carry out certain behaviors and actions. Important and mutually linked social behavior systems are attachment and care , that is, a close selective emotional connection with another individual—the caregiving attachment figure, or the other way round, the attached dependent (Bowlby, 1974 ; Carter, 1998 ; Panksepp, 1998 ). There is a strong antagonistic interaction between the feelings of safe attachment and distress (Panksepp, 1998 ). Threatening or stressful situations elicit the desire for social closeness, and societal cohesion increases in times of crisis. Support by an attachment figure provides a sense of security and calmness. Conversely, being isolated from attachment figures or other socially supportive individuals is perceived as a potential threat. This antagonistic interaction is relevant in terms of photography-related behaviors. Photos of attachment figures or of the attached dependents convey important potentials. In experiments, for example, merely seeing the photo of an attachment figure reduced physical pain as effectively as the actual closeness to that person (Master et al., 2009 ; Eisenberger et al., 2011 ).

Social Learning, Cultural Evolution, and Symbol Systems

An important ability of animals living in groups is profiting from experiences or interactions with other individuals, called social learning (Richerson et al., 2010 ; Jablonka and Lamb, 2014 ). A system of characteristic behavior patterns and preferences, which are socially passed on through generations, is referred to as culture and its gradual change as cultural evolution (Jablonka and Lamb, 2014 ). Cultural phenomena have probably played a greater role in human evolution than in any of the other animals showing cultural diversification (for example wolves or orcas) ever since the common ancestors of humans and chimpanzees (Richerson et al., 2010 ; Whiten, 2011 ).

Social learning is the base for tradition forming and transferring information via culture. The ancestors of humans used gestures, vocalizations, and found objects as signs for something that was not currently present in the environment to communicate with others (Seyfarth et al., 2005 ; Deacon, 2006 ; Arbib et al., 2008 ). Over many generations, groups gradually developed a complex system of gestural and vocal signs, as well as rules specifying how these signs were to be combined into larger units of meaning (Seyfarth et al., 2005 ; Arbib et al., 2008 ). As a crucial step in human evolution, humans began to use symbols , this is, signs that represent meanings based on rules and conventions. Symbols are part of an evolved cultural system, which regulates the relationships between individual signs and indicates how they are combined to represent units of meaning (Jablonka and Lamb, 2014 ). The use of symbols for organizing and conveying information was a crucial step in human evolution. Human symbols are considered as discrete dimensions of inheritance and evolution which interact with genetic evolution. People developed systems of symbols to represent and communicate knowledge, rules and ideas (Jablonka and Lamb, 2014 ; Tomasello, 2014 ). Language became the most important symbol system, likely also pushing brain development. Cultural evolution and genetic evolution interacted and led to a positive feedback selection between cognitive mechanisms, language, and social skills (Deacon, 1997 ; Jablonka and Lamb, 2014 ).

Cooperation, Property, Status, Reputation, Courtship, and Mating

Among the evolutionary mechanisms, which favored cooperation in groups, direct and indirect reciprocity appear to be particularly relevant (Nowak, 2006 ). These mechanisms are also relevant in terms of taking and using photos. Direct reciprocity is effective when two individuals encounter each other repeatedly: one cooperates assuming that the other one will reciprocate later. Cooperation, hence, benefits both. The mechanism of indirect reciprocity explains cooperation in situations where one individual helps another individual whom the individual may not meet again or from whom no help is expected. This can still pay off, if the helpful behavior is observed by other group members. Indirect reciprocity describes the benefit of an altruistic act for the helping individual, which spreads via gossip or other information. In this detour, the helping individual acquires the reputation of being “generous,” i.e., able and willing to cooperate. This reputation supports access to resources and reproductive success (Nowak and Sigmund, 2005 ; Nowak, 2006 ). With the evolution of complex language—and later with the distribution of photos—the subset of a population that could receive information about the cooperative potential of an individual tremendously increases as compared to the number of people able to directly observe an individual's behavior. Photography and social networking services on the internet have increased the potential audience enormously.

In human societies, it is generally advantageous to regulate resource use and ownership through rules or conventions in order to avoid costly redundant conflicts (Stake, 2004 ). Depending on socio-economic background, people have developed specific rules about the appropriation of things as well as about the retention and distribution of property (Stake, 2004 ). Many animals appropriate things and retain them (Stake, 2004 ). Property-related experiences and behaviors are based on specific neural substrates, especially in the frontal cortex (Anderson et al., 2005 ; Turk et al., 2011 ). The brain structures involved are particularly rich in dopamine receptors. The acquisition of property is accordingly associated with strong motivation. When individuals acquire and possess valuable resources, it may also be beneficial to their status within their groups, or may even be to the benefit and status of these groups (Brown, 1991 ; Van Vugt and Tybur, 2016 ). Much of human social complexity is about status and prestige. This modulates, in turn, individual access to resources in a social dynamic between cooperation and competition (Nowak and Sigmund, 2005 ; Van Vugt and Tybur, 2016 ). Individuals can display their property and signal that they have a certain status within the social and cultural hierarchies of their group or society. To communicate this status, individuals may use symbols of their possessions. Individuals can also share their resources with others, be generous or even wasteful with their possessions to increase their prestige and, ultimately, their reproductive success (Buss and Schmitt, 1993 ). In women and men, the acquisition, retention, and use of resources or possession have specific characteristics (Brown, 1991 ; Buss and Schmitt, 1993 ).

Photography has provided people with effective means to signal their social status to a large audience (Krämer and Winter, 2008 ; Piazza and Bering, 2009 ). Distributing selfies with famous people or in front of famous sights, for example, is motivated by telling others about one's own potential to meet these famous people or to travel, and to communicate one's own interests and attitudes (Krämer and Winter, 2008 ; Diefenbach and Christoforakos, 2017 ). Many people also take and share status-relevant photos of themselves with their “belongings,” such as house, car, boat, their beautiful partner, or children (De Looper, 2016 ; Jain and Mavani, 2017 ). Empirical data suggest that people also use photos for enhancing their mate value in the minds of potential romantic or sexual partners (Piazza and Bering, 2009 ; Smith, 2016 ; Hobbs et al., 2017 ; Sedgewick et al., 2017 ; Gale and Lewis, 2020 ; Kemp, 2021 ; Morris, 2021 ). We will discuss this in more detail in the section on the functions of photography.

Memory and the Urge to Create Coherent Explanations for Events and Conditions

Humans improved their ability to use language to categorize behaviors, events, objects and states. They developed a special system of comprehensive memory for experiences, including social, called episodic memory (Tulving, 2005 ). Thereby, experiences of “what,” “with whom,” “when,” and “how it felt” are integrated in a way that individuals can consciously access their stored representations and have a comprehensive awareness of their own life as related to others. With the ability to represent, process, and communicate past and future, as well as possible or imagined events through language, came the urge to explain what happens in the world, to interpret the past and to predict the future (Pettitt, 2011 ). Humans developed an awareness of mortality, thinking about death, and the desire to overcome mortality. The earliest burial sites found with material traces of ritual practices are around 100,000-years old (Pettitt, 2011 ; Wilson, 2012 ). The desire for extending one's effectiveness beyond lifespan could also play a role in taking pictures (Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton, 1981 ; Chalfen, 1987 ). Many people retain photos of ancestors in a respectful way, in the implicit understanding that their descendants will do the same. This is reminiscent of animistic cultures, where identity and existence of people are deeply rooted in cults around ancestors (Frazer, 1911 ; Bird-David, 1999 ).

When taking a photo of another person, the photographer not just appropriates a picture of the light reflections from this person, but also of the visual, behaviorally relevant signals that this person emits at that particular moment. This may be part of the reason why many people consider appropriating a picture of a person to have “magical” (Frazer, 1911 ; Kittredge, 1929 ) or “animistic” (Bird-David, 1999 ; Harvey, 2005 ) properties. The term “animistic” refers to the belief that not only humans, but also animals, plants, lakes, mountains, etc. have souls and are animated (Harvey, 2005 ). With taking a picture of a certain person her or his personality and even “soul” may be captured, and the owner of this picture can change the condition of the pictured person—with potentially negative consequences (Hetherwick, 1902 ; Frazer, 1911 ; Hocart, 1922 ). Image magic has a long tradition going back far into human prehistory (Kittredge, 1929 ). Today, there is an ongoing struggle for legal regulation of the protection of one's image as part of personal rights and property rights, indicating that personal images still retain their special private status. Even on a rational base, the power that is conveyed by taking, owning, and using photos [e.g., Regulation (EU), 2016 ], is still a delicate topic in modern Western societies.

Language enables humans to integrate a huge amount of information into meaningful contexts and to create explanations of events in which these events appear ordered and understandable toward a goal, rather than meaningless, accidental and pointless (Kahneman, 2011 ). In addition to language, an evolutionarily older cognitive system remained (Evans, 2008 ; Kahneman, 2011 ), providing quick reactions to relevant events in the environment on the basis of minimal sensory information, for example, via faces with emotional expressions or expressive body poses (Kislinger, 2021 ). Certain events depicted in photos cause activations of evolutionarily old brain structures, like superior colliculus, pulvinar, and amygdala (Morris et al., 1999 ; Van Le et al., 2013 ; Almeida et al., 2015 ). Objects and events pictured in photos are not only recognized by humans, but by many other species (Bovet and Vauclair, 2000 ; Kano and Tomonaga, 2009 ). In some cases, the last common ancestor of humans and a species in question lived long ago, e.g., 220 million years in the case of pigeons (Aust and Huber, 2010 ). This either hints at an ancient ability shared via phylogenetic inheritance (homology) or at parallel evolution (analogy).

Functions and Adaptative Value of Photography

A “function” of a behavior describes a specific contribution of the individual expression of this behavior to survival and reproductive success (Jablonka and Lamb, 2014 ). Photography-related behaviors touch the evolutionary functional domains of well-being and social connectedness, which are at the core of human nature. These behaviors will therefore, directly or indirectly, relate to potential individual societal and—ultimately—reproductive success. We suggest that taking, owning, viewing, sharing, and using photos provide a specific and effective strategy for coping with complex environments fraught with uncertainty. Photography as a coping-strategy comprises four core domains: (1) making sense, (2) appropriating an image, (3) establishing and supporting social connectedness, and (4) courtship and mating. These four domains can be involved in different photography-related behaviors to different degrees.

Making Sense

“Making sense” plays a role in many photography-related behaviors (Harrison, 2002 ; Frohlich et al., 2013 ); it is particularly evident in the taking of photos (Chalfen, 1987 ; Gillet et al., 2016 ). Thereby, people assign a certain cause to an event—that is, they create an explanation for why this event occurs—or a certain meaningful order, which is consistent with a goal. The 6-year-old birthday boy from our example above laughs because he gets along well with other children, and other people want him to be happy. The photo of the hiker shows that being alone on a mountain top is great, because it gives one a deep personal feeling for nature, which still can be shared with friends via a picture. According to our framework, people build mental representations, which make an event understandable. As a consequence, the future course of the event appears predictable and controllable. Taking photos allows making sense immediately and intuitively, without the involvement of complex reasoning.

Sharing and viewing photos can also be used for making sense of events. The photo of a family reunion can show a group of laughing people who relate to each other in a friendly and nice way, even if a heated argument broke out at this meeting, which may have led to long-term insults and resentments. Particularly, people who were at this meeting can look at this photo to reassure themselves that, despite certain controversy, things are fine and people like each other. This is supported by the propensity of viewers to assume that what they see in photos reflects reality. Understanding photos does not require the mastery of a particular language, complex cultural knowledge, or elaborate thinking. A single photo can give a fairly comprehensive idea of an event—possibly better than any verbal description: “a picture is worth a thousand words” (The Post-Standard, 1911 ).

Appropriating an Image

The domain “appropriating an image” is related to the fact that people gain permanent access to valuable information by taking, sharing, or getting a photo—most frequently related to social relationships. Photographers relate to an event or object through the camera, select certain properties of this object and the scene in which it is contained, and create a focus. From the flow of the object's appearances, which they perceive over a certain period of time, they extract a single picture and fix it. It represents only a small fraction of the sensory information that is available in that situation. By selecting and organizing the information, which they include in the picture, they interpret the object or event. If they have managed to create the picture with the intended meaning, this success conveys the experience of effectiveness and competence (Krämer and Winter, 2008 ). This experience reduces emotional arousal and physiological stress responses to potential threats and supports coping with them (Bandura, 1997 ). A man looking out the window of the plane that is taking off, for example, may take a number of photos, thereby potentially also coping with his fear of flying. Taking photos may help to maintain control in a potentially stressful situation.

Establishing and Supporting Social Connectedness

Seeing an important person in a photo allows the viewer to relate emotionally to this person, although she or he is absent or may have passed away. Photos of their own children, parents, or romantic partners are particularly important to people (Bartels and Zeki, 2004 ; Gobbini et al., 2004 ; Leibenluft et al., 2004 ; Petrelli and Whittaker, 2010 ; Hu et al., 2014 ). Photos of loved ones enable people to feel close to them, provide a sense of security and calmness and reduce the sensation of pain (Master et al., 2009 ; Eisenberger et al., 2011 ). Photos, to some extent, can substitute for physical closeness. Viewing, owning, or sharing photos of family members or ancestors support developing cultural and genealogical roots (Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton, 1981 ; Petrelli and Whittaker, 2010 ). Hence, taking and using photos relates to establishing, maintaining and strengthening social connections (Kindberg et al., 2005 ; Barasch et al., 2014 ; Lee et al., 2015 ; Pittman and Reich, 2016 ).

Many people share their photos, and if a photo is liked and appreciated by others, the photographer experiences self-efficacy (Krämer and Winter, 2008 ) and self-esteem (Burrow and Rainone, 2017 ). This is exploited by the “like buttons,” an enormously popular feature of social media platforms (Kemp, 2021 ). Sharing photos contributes to a common understanding of the world. Sharing photos also enables people to convey others views that they enjoy, e.g., photos of hilarious events or natural sceneries. Photos of natural scenes (as opposed to human artifacts or urban environments) have a positive influence on the well-being of viewers (Berto, 2005 ; Valtchanov and Ellard, 2015 ) as “Biophilia” is a human universal (Appleton, 1975 ; Ulrich, 1983 ; Wilson, 1984 ; Kaplan and Kaplan, 1989 ). Viewing such photos relaxes, reduces emotional stress, and thereby regenerates depleted cognitive resources.

People often use photos to show others who they are and what role they play in society. Issues of identity, reputation, prestige, or status often play a role in personal photography (Chalfen, 1987 ; Barasch et al., 2014 ; RSPH and YHM, 2017 ). If one person photographs another person, this can be of value only for the photographer, or for both (Milgram, 1976 ). People can use photos to influence how other people perceive the pictured individuals, objects, or events and thus exert social control (Sharples et al., 2003 ; Diefenbach and Christoforakos, 2017 ). People being photographed, however, may also use this circumstance for their own goals, like for influencing how others perceive them (Harrison, 2002 ; Krämer and Winter, 2008 ; Jain and Mavani, 2017 ). Being photographed can immensely increase the size of the “audience.”

As humans are radically social in their nature, observing or monitoring the behavior of other people plays a central role in the motivation to use social media on the internet and to post photos (Joinson, 2008 ; Lee et al., 2015 ; Malik et al., 2016 ). People are usually aware of the presence of cameras. This may produce “audience effects,” i.e., the feeling of being watched influences behavior and makes people behave in a socially agreeable way (Bateson et al., 2006 ; Oda et al., 2015 ), by showing, for example, “photo faces.” Through this tendency, photography supports cooperative coexistence in complex societies and has an adaptative value both, on the individual and on the societal level.

We are well aware that people also distribute photos of atrocities. The impact of such photos can be used to boost the importance of the photographer or distributor, or even to hurt other people, to violate the rights of others, or to deceive (Smith et al., 2008 ; Kowalski et al., 2014 ). Manipulative to harmful photo use is facilitated by the fact that photographic forgeries are becoming increasingly difficult to detect, both in social and in journalistic media (Campbell, 2014 ; Nightingale et al., 2017 ). Various detrimental outcomes of taking and using photos have required legal regulation of photography-related behaviors [e.g., Regulation (EU), 2016 ]. The ubiquity of taking photos has massively reduced possibilities of intimacy and privacy. A vast dark side of photography exists outside of personal experience. The large social media providers use the shared personal photos as a data source. The acquisition of these data, their possession, the algorithms of their management and the extraction of information from them give the companies enormous power, which has not been put under democratic control until now (Zuboff, 2015 ).

Courtship and Mating

Courtship and mating are certainly part of the domain of establishing and strengthening social connections and attachment (Hazan and Shaver, 1987 ; Fisher et al., 2002 ). But they are directly relevant in terms of evolutionary function and as such encompass a range of distinct strategies and conflicts (Fisher et al., 2002 ; Buss and Duntley, 2011 ). The global prevalence of intimate partner homicide reflects the high value of the activities and resources that are at stake, as well as the severity of the conflicts in question (Stöckl et al., 2013 ). Sexual or reproductive behaviors shaped all living beings and played a central role in the evolution of human cognition (Miller, 2001 ; Nowak, 2006 ). Sexual themes and symbols are featured in some of the oldest preserved artifacts (Conard, 2009 ). With photos, a new type of visual cueing was developed that fulfills special functions in attracting potential partners, mate selection, and sexual behavior. The potentials of photography range from tender romantics to hardcore pornography.

“Beauty” plays a special role in this context. Many people want to take and use beautiful photos (Bakhshi et al., 2015 ; De Looper, 2016 ). Darwin ( 1879/2004 ) associated the “sense of beauty” (p. 114) with the context of sexual selection: the function of beauty is that the choosing female or male individuals are “excited” by it. Individuals considered to be beautiful manage to “excite attention” (p. 467). In this sense, beauty is a sensory signal that it could be advantageous to pay attention to, and approach, the sender of this signal. Among the hashtags (terms assigned to posted photos) that were most frequently used on Instagram in 2020, “Love” came first, “Art” fifth, and “Beautiful” sixth (Kemp, 2021 ). Instagram is the most photography-related social platform and was the fifth most visited website worldwide in 2020 (Kemp, 2021 ).

The invention of photography and its further technological developments, including digital communication, allowed people to create a new type of sensory cues relevant to courtship activities, mate selection, sexual intercourse, and (ultimately) reproduction. Photography has been used almost from the start to satisfy cravings for pictures of naked people and for erotic images. Retinal images of naked potential partners expressing interest in sexual activity has meant observers had access to reproduction for hundreds of thousands of years. Photos of sexual acts are among those images that are most emotionally arousing (Bradley and Lang, 2007 ; Wehrum et al., 2013 ) and pornography is one of the most prominent domains of internet use.

People also use photos to influence choices of potential romantic or sexual partners. The success of dating applications on the Internet has greatly increased the importance of photos in connection with courtship and mating (Piazza and Bering, 2009 ; Smith, 2016 ; Hobbs et al., 2017 ). Social media platforms and dating apps enable users to form relationships with people they have never seen before. Mobile dating applications are used by more and more people (Smith, 2016 ; Morris, 2021 ). People looking for partners create profiles on these apps that they use to present themselves. Photos of oneself play a central role in this. People show photos of themselves—often also taken by themselves—in which they are represented as they would like to be seen by potential romantic partners (Sedgewick et al., 2017 ; Gale and Lewis, 2020 ). The use of such photos enables people to reveal actual traits of themselves, but also to make themselves appear more attractive than they potentially are (Sedgewick et al., 2017 ; Gale and Lewis, 2020 ). People can also use symbolic self-made photos to create a desirable impression of themselves in potential romantic partners, for example photos of groups of nice, laughing people, pets, flowers, a beautiful garden, an elegant apartment, tourist attractions, dangerous environments, sporting events, or full bookshelves (Krämer and Winter, 2008 ; Piazza and Bering, 2009 ). Online dating is not only increasing rapidly among young adults, but also among the older population (Smith, 2016 ; Morris, 2021 ). Through dating apps, photos play an increasingly important role in mate selection, which played a central role in the evolution of human cognition (Miller, 2001 ). When photos are used in dating and courtship, there is also the characteristic connection between emotionally positive information and the processing of uncertainty (Berger and Calabrese, 1975 ; Knobloch and Solomon, 1999 ), addressed above. In this context, the positive information concerns one's own attractive properties. Uncertainty is associated with one's search, and potential negative outcomes of establishing relationships with people one does not know from face-to-face encounters.

The Mental Utilization Hypothesis of Photography

We propose that the success of smartphones as well as photography is based on core human mental mechanisms which are primarily related to the social domain. Photography exploits evolved cognitive and social predispositions. In this sense, our framework is a mental exploitation hypothesis, analogous to the Sensory Exploitation Hypothesis in evolutionary biology (e.g., Ryan, 1990 ). This hypothesis states that new preferences evolve along established pre-existing sensory biases and response tendencies, such as primates owing their social and/or sexual preference for red to their old predilection for this color, which usually indicates ripe fruits (Ghazanfar and Santos, 2004 ).

Sensory biases and preferences also play an important role in photography-related behaviors. The visual channel provides information, which is converted into, or affects, mental representations. In our framework, however, the focus is on a higher, more integrated level of processing, on which those mechanisms and functions are organized that control the mental representation of the world and flexibly adapt social behavior. In connection with photography, the term exploitation may have a negative connotation, such as photographers exploiting the people in front of the camera (e.g., Sontag, 1978 ). For this reason, we refer to our framework as the mental utilization hypothesis of photography. It suggests that photography fits the nature of human perception and mental processing like a key fits its lock.

Photography as a Coping Strategy

Along to the four levels of Tinbergen, our analysis of photography-related behaviors suggests that people take and use photos to cope with certain stressful and threatening events in specific ways. The conceptualization of photography as a coping strategy is counterintuitive against the background that people usually like to take photos and generally take, share and own photos of events associated with happiness, pleasure, love, or success (Chalfen, 1987 ; Sharples et al., 2003 ; Hu et al., 2014 ). Individuals who take or use such photos, we propose, experience a pleasant situation, but are also—non-consciously—exposed to threatening information or uncertainty. As examples, we mentioned the mother who photographs her 6-year-old son, the lonely hiker, and the man who is afraid of flying. Taking and using photos allows people to search for, and engage, in emotionally positive information. Successful coping through photography-related behaviors reduces complexity, uncertainty, and anxiety. Coping, or the exercise of cognitive control, does not have to be exclusively reactive, but can also be carried out proactively (Bandura, 1997 ). Coping through taking and using photos has features that can be described on a continuous scale, with reactive coping at one end and proactive coping at the other.

People use photography not only to cope with events with generally positive emotional value, but also in coping with negative events. For example, traffic accidents, high-rise fires or other disasters tend to lure in bystanders and onlookers taking smartphone photos of the scene or of the victims (Vollmuth, 2017 ; Newton, 2019 ). There is no research on the motives which drive such photography-related behaviors. They may be similar to the motives which make people watch horror or crime films (Bartsch and Mares, 2014 ). What people see confronts them with something extremely meaningful—threats that exist in the world, their own mortality and vulnerability (Arndt et al., 1997 ). Most of these bystanding photographers immediately share their products. Taking and sharing the photos, we suggest, enable people to make sense of threatening events to get along with them, but also use them to push their own importance and prestige within their networks.

Has Photography Become a Human Universal?

Several researchers discussed the creation and use of representational pictures as human universal (Deacon, 2006 ; Donald, 2006 ; Dutton, 2009 ). The creation of realistic visual pictures appeared more than 30,000-years ago and some of them have been preserved on cave walls (Guthrie, 2005 ; White et al., 2018 ). Photography, in connection with digital technology and smartphones, has made it possible for everyone to create, own, and share realistic pictures easily and effortlessly and to integrate such pictures in everyday life. Based on our analysis and statistical data (Statista, 2019 ; Carrington, 2020 ; Kemp, 2021 ), we conclude that taking, viewing, and sharing photos through the use of smartphones has become a human universal—a “new” universal, according to Brown's ( 1991 ) classification—that is based on context-sensitive predispositions, particularly connected with the radically social human nature, and differentiates itself in the societal domain (Kotrschal, 2019 ). Photography not only classifies as a human universal, but also as a unique human feature not shared with any other animal species—not only because other species lack the technical means of photography, but before all, they seem to lack the motivation and mental mechanisms behind the typical human urge to capture the world in images. We conclude that photography is closely matching the unique construction of the human mind and qualifies as a feature of human nature, i.e., the Conditio humana (Arendt, 1958 ; Kotrschal, 2019 ).

Figure 3 summarizes the conditions, components, and abilities that have made photography a human universal as proposed by the mental utilization hypothesis of photography. One element of Figure 3 relates to the specific social contexts and environmental features that generate photography-related behaviors, as suggested by the evolutionary building blocks of photography. They are (1) coexistence in large, complexly structured societies; (2) frequent encounters with strangers, the outcome of which is often difficult to predict; (3) strong mutual observation of behavior; (4) individuals' well-being and prosperity depend on judgments by strangers; (5) requirement to display one's own status symbolically in public; (6) continuous confrontation with the news of success or profit, as well as disaster, illness, or death; (7) large number of potential sexual or reproductive partners among strangers; (8) individuals have to make far-reaching decisions about their future lives; (9) requirement of communication with absent or distant people; and (10) requirement of quick communication with strangers across cultural or linguistic boundaries.

The Mental Utilization Hypothesis of Photography. The schematic illustration shows the proposed conditions, components, and abilities that made photography a human universal. An arrow means “provides the basis for” or “leads to”.

Limitations

The analysis of a particular behavior on the basis of the four levels of Tinbergen requires the integration of findings from a range of disciplines. Despite the referenced mechanisms and functions of taking photos, which represent the present state of knowledge, our conclusions remain necessarily speculative—because of the preliminary nature of all scientific results, because of the inherent pitfalls of attempting to integrate such diverse results into a comprehensive synthesis, and due to the space constraints of a journal article. In addition, there are very few empirical findings on taking photos, and they come only from the Western world. Thus, we may underestimate the cultural diversity in photography, although we are quite confident that the behavioral core is based on human nature, and therefore, should in principle, apply to all people. Within our conceptual frame we describe taking and using photos as functional outcomes of cognitive and social adaptations. It could certainly be argued that the success of photography is ultimately a byproduct of the accessibility, affordability and success of smartphones and social media, which results from marketing activities of powerful companies. But this is a different level argument not contradicting our utilization hypothesis. Our analysis of photography-related behaviors as coping strategies creates a picture of photography in which the benefits are generally greater than the cognitive and social costs, which also explains why photography became such a sweeping worldwide success once the smartphone technology became available.

The goal of producing an image that supports memory only plays a subordinate role in our description of photography-related behaviors. In this respect, our framework differs from explanations that describe the production of memory pictures as a central function of photography (Milgram, 1976 ; Kahneman, 2011 ; Frohlich et al., 2013 ; Henkel, 2014 ). These explanations are consistent with the fact that many people stated the retention of memories, when asked about the purpose of photographing (Chalfen, 1987 ; Kindberg et al., 2005 ; Broekhuijsen et al., 2017 ; Lee, 2018 ). Empirical findings, however, show that people lose many photos they have taken or never look at them again (Kirk et al., 2006 ; Whittaker et al., 2010 ). Furthermore, the experimental studies on the question of whether taking or seeing photos improves people's ability to remember past events produced a multitude of different and sometimes contradicting results (for review, see Foley, 2020 ). This was one of the incentives for us to attempt a new synthesis within an evolutionary theory frame.

Testable Predictions for Future Research

As shown in Table 2 , the mental utilization theory of photography allows generating a number of testable predictions. Ideally, these would be tackled by experimental and behavioral field studies in natural environments, in both everyday and lab situations. Rapidly developing mobile techniques (such as EEG headsets, eye-tracking devices, etc.) open up new possibilities for the investigation of the attention structures and specific cognitive mechanisms involved in taking and using photos.

A sample of testable predictions along the 4 levels of Tinbergen based on the mental utilization hypothesis of photography.

We position viewing, sharing, and using personal photos within the coherent theory of the evolution of life and human nature. On the basis of the four levels of Tinbergen ( 1963 ), we developed a theoretical framework that describes the characteristics of photos and photography-related behaviors, including potential adaptative values related to the evolutionary functional domains of coping, well-being, social connectedness, courtship, and mating. We hypothesized that people take or use photos in contexts in which a pleasant event is coupled with uncertainty or with the processing of threatening information, and that people generally use photography as a coping strategy. Based on our analysis, we propose the Mental Utilization Hypothesis that explains the success of photography by its match with core human mental mechanisms, which characterize human nature.

The proposed hypothesis provides a novel conceptual framework, potentially useful in devising future experimental studies of photography. Despite the global ubiquity of photos, there is still almost no research into the cognitive mechanisms underlying photo taking. Investigations into the courtship or mating functions of photography are still limited to the explicit use of photos in online dating, but these functions are more fundamental and embracing. Studies regarding evolutionary functions of photography are particularly desirable. Important findings could be gained through comparisons between cultures, subcultures and sociological strata, gender and age classes. Important questions in such comparisons could be whether social prestige and social, occupational, or reproductive success can be linked with photography. Is photography an addition to existing social and sexual behavior or is it part of a socio-sexual change which compensates for or replaces previous behaviors or customs? Does it have “emergent properties” not found in its constituent elements? Last but not least, our description of taking and using photos as a coping strategy provides a comprehensive theoretical basis for new experimental research into the application of photography in psychotherapeutic contexts. With photography, people developed a new means of representing experiences and ideas through pictures with special characteristics, the understanding of which requires a minimum of effort and cultural knowledge. We are creatures in an increasingly complex social world for whom and in which these pictures open up powerful possibilities for action, but also for feeling at home and safe.

Data Availability Statement

Author contributions.

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct and intellectual contribution to the work, and approved it for publication.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions. They also thank Jenna Hicken for personal assistance in translating the manuscript.

Funding. This project was supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF): W1262-B29.

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English major elected to National Humanities Center Leadership Council

• Leslie King

11 Apr 2024

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Adventuresome notions of zookeeping, law enforcing, firefighting, doctoring humans or pets, driving a bus, or owning a shop tantalize many 5-year-olds’ minds. Then adulthood sets in, and people often find themselves pursuing passions different from what they imagined during childhood.

But this is not the case with Julie Deacon.

Why it matters

Since her early childhood, the Virginia Tech junior who is majoring in creative writing and minoring in international studies hoped her path would involve writing. That lifelong dream is finding new validation. The National Humanities Center Leadership Council in November accepted Deacon into its membership.

“Julie is a great example of a dedicated student who knows where she wants to go,” said Laura Belmonte, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, “and with her love of writing and journalism, she is the perfect ambassador for the humanities when it comes to representing Virginia Tech in this highly competitive role on the leadership council.”

The leadership council, housed in the nonprofit National Humanities Center at Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, helps prepare select students with humanities-based leadership skills. These young scholars are from institutions that are center sponsors. Universities nominate them to the council ranks.

Elected students participate in round tables and discussion sessions about the importance of humanistic perspectives in addressing the concerns of contemporary society. They then embark on a semester-long research project, which they will present at a symposium later in the year. After this, they work on other initiatives and career development.

War zone research

Deacon’s focus with her research project involves the extent to which journalism is justifiable in war zones, examining different perspectives on peace coverage and its benefits and detriments.

She will interview journalists and spend time in historical collections.

“In terms of the main focus for the research project, I’ll be able to utilize a lot of past information in archives for firsthand accounts. The American Red Cross archive database has a lot of information on war journalists and peace coverage, as does the National Archives,” she said. “I can use these archives to help build my research project with information from United States wars and worldwide conflicts that involved journalists living on assignment in war zones, and hopefully I’ll be able to get first-hand references from different established journalists. There are so many more resources than I ever thought there would be about such a focused topic.”

Although she is not sure she will pursue this avenue of journalism, she became intrigued with the idea after talking to editor Michael Marshall at the Crozet Gazette, a community newspaper in Virginia where Deacon works as a freelance writer. When she first met him, he mentioned wanting to be a foreign correspondent at the start of his career. Deacon thought that sounded fascinating.

“It’s such an interesting perspective,” she said. “When we think about war, of course our minds naturally go to those directly involved in the fighting, but there are also those who report news and development to the general public. Media and communication are so influenced by how events are reported, where they’re reported, and who’s reporting them. I thought that’d be an interesting topic to dive into, and everything came together to make the role of journalism in war zones the focus of this research project. I’m thankful and excited that the National Humanities Center is giving me the resources to pursue it.”

Early career writing

The realities of a war zone are different from the types of journalism prevalent in Deacon’s writing experience. Currently, she is a digital media intern for the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech. Prior to this, when she first started at Virginia Tech, she wrote for the Collegiate Times and then segued to the newspaper in Crozet, Virginia.

Deacon also completed a bridge experience internship with the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Virginia Tech. A bridge experience offers students an experiential learning opportunity, such as an internship, in exchange for credit toward graduation. For this, Deacon revised and edited content for student access and career development.

After deciding to pursue journalism, she began working for the Crozet Gazette in the summer of 2023 and continues to freelance for the publication.

The latter experience is one she finds fulfilling, delighting in opportunities to interact with a wide variety of people. These include  athletes who overcome personal challenges,  business owners, and an 85-year-old who was once a member of the Hollywood Foreign Press who reported on the American entertainment industry for predominantly foreign media markets. With the paper’s small team of seven employees, Deacon considers herself fortunate to be able to write alongside these more seasoned writers and that she can continue working for what started as a summer dream job.

“It’s been such a great experience working for a local paper,” she said. “You find out there’s always something to write and talk about, and interesting people to talk to everywhere you go.”

Humanities forward

Deacon finds her peers on the leadership council just as interesting. From Vanderbilt to Yale, there is a vast, diverse group of majors. These include neuroscience, engineering, the arts, and liberal arts, all engaged in propelling the humanities forward. In an age when STEM fields can dominate discussions of education and career prospects, Deacon’s experience at Virginia Tech and her work with the leadership council have made her optimistic about the enduring value of the humanities.

“I completely understand the desire to major in a discipline with guaranteed high pay and job security, but I don’t think those should be the sole reasons to earn your degree in something,” she said. “In my eyes, I think having the opportunity to come to college and choose how you might want to spend your future is an incredibly fortunate thing that we get to do, and it’s important that you focus on what you enjoy and what truly interests you.”

For Deacon, that career is writing. Her journey is one that bridges the divide between STEM and the humanities and speaks to the role of young leaders shaping a more empathetic and understanding world. 

Jenny Kincaid Boone

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