Translations of visual reality: Image, language, and ethics in the photographic essay

This dissertation traces the history of the photographic essay through an examination of its classic texts---How the Other Half Lives, You Have Seen Their Faces, American Exodus, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, and the collaborative works of John Berger and Jean Mohr---with particular attention to the interaction between word and image, and the ethical relationships between creators, subjects, and readers. I show that from its earliest stages the genre reveals tension between word and image but a longstanding faith in that supplemental relationship to effect political change. And while it is not always articulated, nor exactly equal, collaboration is a necessary component of the photographic essay process. The genre reveals, however, a growing concern over the ethics of representation and the formal means by which to represent others. After the pivotal text, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, a self-reflective examination of its own modes of production and construction has become a proper---even necessary---subject of the photographic essay. In spite of the dangers of representation, contemporary writers and photographers understand the photographic essay project as a necessary one. The dissertation ends with a survey of recent photographic essays, showing that themes that have run through the genre since its earliest examples are increasingly and more explicitly articulated.