John Tagg on Photography, Evidence, and Surveillance

Introduction to Tagg's Argument

John Tagg's essay "Evidence, Truth, and Order: A Means of Surveillance" is drawn from his collection The Burden of Representation and was later republished in Visual Culture: The Reader, edited by Jessica Evans and Stuart Hall (Sage, 1999). When first confronted with a title like "Evidence, Truth, and Order: A Means of Surveillance," a reader unfamiliar with Tagg's broader body of work might assume the essay centers purely on the criminal justice system — on evidence, the establishment of truth, and the mechanical eye of electronic surveillance. However, Tagg, a photographer and critic, is primarily concerned with photographic art in the context of the studio and the museum, not the justice system alone, even though his theories engage with issues of incarceration and judicial process as well as with art. In his essay, Tagg is not only concerned with photographic evidence as deployed in law courts and the ability of photographs to make truth claims before juries and judges, but also with the broader implications of photographic representation in law for artists and for photography as a medium.

The Subjectivity of the Photographic Eye

Throughout his writings, John Tagg is preoccupied with photography's capacity to open a pictorial eye upon the world. Does the photographic eye, he asks, see the "real" world in an unvarnished way — in the language of objective legal evidence or truth? Rather than affirming this assumption, Tagg argues that photography, supposedly the most objective of the pictorial arts, merely transmits the vision and the limited perspective of the photographer. What a photographer chooses to include within a frame — and what is left out — establishes only a subjective truth claim and imposes an artificial order upon the formless, limitless quality of lived experience.

The surveillance of photography may indeed resemble the watching of a voyeur. But even a voyeur chooses what he or she wishes to spy upon. The selection of an intimate or criminal subject says as much about the observer's preoccupations as it does about the person being observed. Likewise, a photographer's selection of a subject reveals as much about the photographer as it does about the one being photographed. This voyeuristic metaphor underscores Tagg's central claim: that the act of photography is never neutral, and that surveillance — whether artistic or forensic — is always shaped by the subjectivity of the one who looks.

Photography, Evidence, and Legal Truth Claims

The particular danger of photography, Tagg argues, is that the medium creates the impression of offering a "real" and unvarnished glimpse of life in an objective manner. This is especially dangerous when a photograph is taken as evidence that a crime was committed, regardless of the inherently subjective nature of even forensic photography. Even when a photographer does not intend to make a truth claim, cultural perceptions of the medium lead viewers — including juries — to accept photographic evidence in a courtroom as real and authoritative.

The additional weight of authority carried by state representatives such as prosecutors, combined with the forensic credibility routinely assigned to forensic photography, can make it extremely difficult for a defendant to contest such a powerful visual claim. The photograph appears to speak for itself, yet Tagg insists it is always speaking for someone — the photographer, the institution, or the state.

Works Cited

Tagg, John. The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988.

Tagg, John. "Evidence, Truth and Order: A Means of Surveillance." In Visual Culture: The Reader, edited by Jessica Evans and Stuart Hall. New York: Sage, 1999, pp. 244–273.