Photography is an important tool used to shape public policy and perception and to effect social change. Photography became an important emerging medium, in the mid 19th century, stretching back as far as before the American Civil War. It is difficult to speculate how much the evocative photography of that era influenced public opinion on the war. However, the war is significant in being one of the first major events where documentary photography showed its potential as a mass medium for the dissemination of visual information. Previously prints and lithographs were the primary method by which images were shared and spread. Alternatively, photography offered a reality and truth that could not be matched by the earlier technology.
It would not be long before documentary photography was adopted by governmental institutions to carry out their work and showcase their findings/achievements. The United States Geological Survey, or USGS, was one such government agency which used documentary photography in their work. In the late 19th century they surveyed the western
Cause and reform advocacy are quintessential, if not defining aspects of documentary photography, thus inextricably linking the practice with the political domain and the policy-making process. Themes of injustice and immorality are overarching in the medium and scholars continue to study the effect of documentary photography on the policy process. In the Journal of Women’s Health Caroline Wang discusses a photographic therapy strategy. [2] While informing and educating the collective conscious of broad society of the health struggles of women is listed as one of its three primary goals, it is telling that the programme classifies its third primary goals as the specific targeting of public policy makers. Thus public policy outcomes are not relied upon as side-effects of the documentary process, but rather as specific aims.
However, caution is a strategy that should be employed by policy makers when confronted with documentary photography. It is noted that the photographer may manipulate the image by documenting certain scenes, or developing relationships with subjects and “runs the risk of producing a result socially opprobrious and pornographic”.[3] Objectivity is a trait that the creator must bring to the practice and which must be recognised by the audience before any lessons for public policy can be extracted.
