Why is photography a universal language?

Answer 1

"Photography is the only "language" understood in all parts of the world, and bridging all nations and cultures, it links the family of man." - Helmut Gernsheim

To that quote, I reply:

...like the rest of our globalising western culture. Other non-western cultures didn't have much of a choice. I love photography & I am a photographer myself, though if I refer to Marshall Mc Luhan, I understand that photography with its one-eyed & one-timed perspectivist view is the consequence of our alphabetised & eye-dominated culture with its ultra-specialised & fragmented perception of the world... whereas video & living images integrate a broader spectrum of our human senses with their simultaneous impulses resulting in a wider consciousness & different rendering of space & time, another dimension. Electricity as extension of our nervous system with its immediacy & ubiquity makes us tribal people again and video & computer technologies go this way, whereas photography as ultimate achievement of our mechanical times starting from the Renaissance and the Gutenberg printing machine, implies an alienation belonging to our previous industrial era. The white man, the global colonialist, invented the camera, and came up with this idea of an international brotherhood. "Family of Man" is the title of the famous post-WWII photo-exhibition currated by Edward Steichen at the NYC MoMA. In my opinion, saying that "photography is a universal language" is a very idealistic & humanistic view of the world.

Jean-Marie Babonneau, photographer,

Copenhagen, the 6th of february 2010.

LINKS:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_of_Man

http://www.family-of-man.public.lu/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan

My own photography website: http://www.betterworldinc.org