Recently I read a chapter of Photography by Stephen Bull about Photography and Celebrity. As I’ve come to expect from Bull, the chapter was very well written and just seemed to flow from one aspect to another, it was very well organized with making various points relevant and insightful.

It was also written in a very linear fashion, where he started at the beginning of celebrity and photography, of where people were first able to put faces and identities together. From there he moved into claiming that the period between the 1920s to the 1970s was the golden era of celebrity and when they appeared larger than life characters and images of perfection. This was then moved into being a contemporary interpretation of where a celebrity is seen as being human with certain imperfections that everyone has.

I found that the chapter stuck very closely to the format of art history, hence the linear feel to his writing. Even though I found this chapter good to read and very constructive, I don’t want to write a thesis in the same way, as if I am writing an article on art history. This is not because of a lack of inspiration from what was written but I feel that the actual style of writing itself would not suit the subjects that I want to write about.

The way that I would like to write my thesis is more from a philosophical perspective rather than a historical perspective. I tend to write in this style and I find that is is more comfortable and suited to my way of thinking. I like the idea of being able to construct an argument and discuss the issues raised, challenging the initial ideas and using premises to test how strong the initial conclusions are. By working this way, I can follow threads and add depth and strength, or challenge and disregard, those avenues of investigations.

So, with this in mind, will influence what I write about, what subject I will choose to use. I recently realised that I would be discussing how image and identity relate to each other in the celebrity photograph and this returns me, yet again, to the notion of photographic truth. I say “yet again” because my dissertation as an undergraduate discussed the notion of photographic truth and it looks like I will be continuing this discussion. This is not a complete surprise as the dissertation was an analysis of a photograph of Marilyn Monroe and served as tool to explore the notion of photographic truth.

When I was writing that dissertation, something that amazed, and puzzled me, was the fact that some people like to be looked at. Personally this is something that I have trouble understanding because I am the exact opposite and really dislike being the centre of attention. So, to discover that some people enjoy and thrive at being looked at, seems so alien a concept that I found it fascinating.

This in itself led to considering image and personality, that what people project when they are being photographed is what people want to be seen and not what is real. To prove this point all anyone needs to do is to look at the photographs on Facebook, where life is just one big party and everyone is happy and smiling and taking “selfies” every 2 minutes. Even taking this one step further, before the days of the internet, the family photo album was always filled with people smiling and if there was a grumpy photo inserted it was because it was humorous on some level.

So, it looks like photographic truth is back on the agenda. I can still explore image and identity and this can be used as an initial area of research and still split into the three areas of photographer, image and viewer. However, I am now beginning to think that I need to find a working definition of Truth (and as soon as I wrote this, I realised the enormity of the task!) as this will provide an initial direction and focus, which could influence the rest of the research.