Towards a Sociology of Photography'

Pierre Bourdieu

Is it possible and necessary for the practice of photographyand the meaning of the photographic image to provide materialfor sociology? Weberian thought has lent credence to the ideathat the value of an object of research is dependent on theinterests of the researcher. This disenchanting relativism atleast allows the illusion of an element of choice in the encounterbetween researchers and their objects. In fact, the most rudi-mentary techniques of the sociology of knowledge would showthat in every society, and throughout history, there exists ahierarchy of legitimate objects of study. Inheriting a traditionof political philosophy and social action, must sociology abandonthe anthropological project to other sciences and, taking as itsexclusive object the study of the most general and abstractconditions of experience and action, can it reject as meaninglesstypes of behavior whose historical importance is not immedi-ately apparent?

But it takes more than a sociology of sociology to show thatall too often, beneath grand ambitions, it conceals a massiverenunciation. The same fundamental intention is probablyexpressed by banishing from scientific study certain objectsheld to be meaningless, and excluding from it, under the guiseof objectivity, the experience of those who work in it and thosewho are its object.

Efforts to reintroduce the experience of agents into anobjective account are too easily discredited by identifying thismethodological requirement with the question-begging withwhich certain defenders of the sacred rights of subjectivityattack the social sciences, without recognizing that the mostsignificant advances in those sciences have been made thanksto the methodological decision to 'treat social facts as things'.

They are also too easily discredited because this regulatory ideais condemned to appear an inaccessible ideal: in fact, one cannever reach the infinitely receding point which might allowsociologists to encompass, within the unity of a total apprehen-sion, the objective relationships which they can only compre-hend at the cost of an abstract construction and the experiencein which these relationships are rooted and from which theydraw their meaning.

The subjectivist intuitionism that seeks a meaning in theimmediacy of lived experience would not be worth attending tofor a moment if it did not serve as an excuse for objectivism,which limits itself to establishing regular relationships andtesting their statistical significance without deciphering theirmeaning, and which remains an abstract and formal nominal-ism as far as it is not seen as a necessary but only a purelytemporary moment of the scientific process. If it is true that thisdetour via the establishment of statistical regularities and for-malization is the price which must be paid if one wishes to breakwith naive familiarity and the illusions of immediate under-standing, it is also the case that the properly anthropologicalproject of reappropriating reified meanings would be negatedby the reification of the reappropriated meanings in the opacityof abstraction.

By its very existence, sociology presupposes the overcom-ing of the false opposition arbitrarily erected by subjectivistsand objectivists. Sociology is possible as an objective sciencebecause of the existence of external relationships which arenecessary and independent of individual wills, and, perhaps,unconscious (in the sense that they are not revealed by simplereflection), and which can only be grasped by the indirect route

Visual Anthropology Review Volume 7 Number 1 Spring 1991 129

of observation and objective experimentation; in other words,because subjects are not in possession of the meaning of thewhole of their behavior as immediate conscious data, andbecause their actions always encompass more meanings thanthey know or wish, sociology cannot be a purely introspectivescience attaining absolute certainty simply by turning to sub-jective experience, and, by the same token, it can be an objectivescience of the objective (and the subjective), i.e. an experimentalscience, experimentation being, in the words of Claude Bernard,'the only mediator between the objective and the subjective',Claude Bernard continues:

The experimenter who is faced with natural phenom-ena is like a spectator watching silent scenes. In asense he is nature's examining judge; only, instead ofbeing up against those who seek to deceive him withlying testimonies or false witnesses, he is dealing withnatural phenomena which are, as far as he is concerned,characters whose language and customs are unknownto him, who live in circumstances which are unknownto him and yet whose intentions he wishes to know. Tothis end he employs all the means within his power.He observes their actions, their development, theirmanifestations, and he seeks to untangle their causesby using various tests, called experiments. He uses allimaginable artifices and, as is commonly said, oftentells lies to know the truth, and attributes his own ideasto nature. He makes certain presuppositions about thecauses of the actions that pass before him, and, in orderto know if the hypothesis at the basis of his interpre-tation is correct, he sets about bringing to light certainfacts which, in the logical order of things, may confirmor negate the idea that he has conceived. (1984:52)

This description of the procedures of experimenters facedwith the natural world as ethnologists are faced with societieswhose culture they do not know is also broadly true of socio-logical research. Whetherthey attempt to grasp their'intentions'(in the sense meant by Claude Bernard, i.e. their objectiveintentions) via objective indicators, or whether, telling lies toknow the truth, they attempt, using indirect questions, to attainthe answers to the questions they are asking themselves andwhich the subjects, having been led to err rather than to deceive,can only answer unawares (and then only indirectly); or even ifthey can decipher the meaning included within the regularitiesprovided by statistics in their raw state, sociologists work tograsp an objectified meaning, the product of the objectificationof subjectivity which is never directly given either to those who

are involved in the practice or to the outside observer.But, unlike natural science, a total anthropology cannot

keep to a construction of objective relationships, because theexperience of meaning is part of the total meaning of experi-ence: the sociology least suspected of subjectivism relies onintermediate concepts and concepts which mediate between thesubjective and the objective, such as alienation, attitude orethos. The task of this sociology is to construct the system ofrelationships which will encompass both the objective meaningof organized actions according to measurable regularities andthe particular relationships that subjects have to the objectiveconditions of their existence and to the objective meaning oftheir behavior, the meaning which possesses them because theyare dispossessed of it.

In other words, the description of objectified subjectivityrefers to the description of the internalization of objectivity.The three moments of the scientific process are thereforeinseparable: immediate lived experience, understood throughexpressions which mask objective meaning as much as theyreveal it, refers to the analysis of objective meanings and thesocial conditions which make those meanings possible, ananalysis which requires the construction of the relationshipbetween the agents and the objective meaning of their actions.

One example will suffice to show that this is not question-begging but rather a demand for a method with a theoreticalbasis. Statistics can objectively establish the system of life-chances objectively attached to particular social categories,whether these are the chances of attaining permanent employ-ment in the case of an unqualified and uneducated Algerian sub-proletarian, or the chances of entering a faculty of medicine orlaw in the case of a manual worker's daughter. A statistic suchas this remains abstract and almost unreal unless one knowshow this objective truth (never perceived directly as such) isactualized in the practice of the subjects: even when, at firstglance, action and discourse appear to refute the future objec-tively inscribed in the objective conditions, they only revealtheir entire significance if one observes that they imply apractical reference to this future. Thus, sub-proletarians mayhave magical and fantastic hopes which only apparently con-tradict the objective truth of their conditions, since they char-acterize the aims for the future appropriate to those without anobjective future; similarly, the manual worker's or peasant'sdaughter, of whom statistics reveal that she has had to pay forher attainment of higher education by being relegated to the artsfaculty, can carry out her studies as the fulfillment of a fullypositive 'vocation', although herpractices betray, especially bythe mode in which they are carried out, a practical reference tothe objective truth of her condition and her future.2 The class

Pierre Bourdieu is Professor of Sociology at the College de France and Director of the Center for European Sociology at the Ecoledes Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. His recent publications include Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste(1984 (1979) Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press) and The Political Ontology of Martin Heidegger (1991 (1988)Cambridge: Polity Press).

130 Spring 1991 Volume 7 Number 1 Visual Anthropology Review

habitus is nothing but this experience (in its most usual sense)which immediately reveals a hope or an ambition as reasonableor unreasonable, a particular commodity as accessible or inac-cessible, a particular action as suitable or unsuitable. In short,a total anthropology would have to culminate in an analysis ofthe process by which objectivity becomes rooted in subjectiveexperience: it must overcome it by encompassing the momentof objectivism and base it in a theory of the externalization ofinteriority and the internalization of exteriority.

Everything therefore takes place as if the shadow cast byobjective conditions always extended to consciousness: theinfraconscious reference to objective determinisms which in-fluence practice and always owe some of their effectiveness tothe complicity of a subjectivity that bears their stamp and isdetermined by the hold they exert. Thus the science of objectiveregularities remains abstract as long as it does not encompassthe science of the process of the internalization of objectivityleading to the constitution of those systems of unconscious anddurable dispositions that are the class habitus and the ethos: aslong as it does not endeavor to establish how the myriad 'smallperceptions' of everyday life and the convergent and repeatedsanctions of the economic and social universe imperceptiblyconstitute, from childhood and throughout one's life, by meansof constant reminders, this 'unconscious' which becomesparadoxically defined as a practical reference to objectiveconditions.

One might say of photography what Hegel said of phi-losophy: "No other art or science is subjected to this last degreeof scorn, to the supposition that we are masters of it withoutado" (Preface, Principles of the Philosophy of Right). Unlikemore demanding cultural activities such as drawing, painting orplaying a musical instrument, unlike even going to museums orconcerts, photography presupposes neither academicallycommunicated culture, nor the apprenticeships and the 'pro-fession' which confer their value on the cultural consumptionsand practices ordinarily held to be the most noble, by withholdingthem from the man in the street.3

Nothing is more directly opposed to the ordinary image ofartistic creation than the activity of the amateur photographer,who often demands that his camera should perform the greatestpossible number of operations for him, identifying the degree ofsophistication of the apparatus that he uses with its degree ofautomatism.4 However, even when the production of thepicture is entirely delivered over to the automatism of thecamera, the taking of the picture is still a choice involvingaesthetic and ethical values: if, in the abstract, the nature anddevelopment of photographic technology tend to make every-thing objectively 'photographable', it is still true that, fromamong the theoretically infinite number of photographs whichare technically possible, each group chooses a finite and welldefined range of subjects, genres and compositions. In

Nietzsche's words, "The artist chooses his subjects. It is hisway of praising"( 1974:245). Because it is a 'choice thatpraises', because it strives to capture, that is, to solemnize andto immortalize, photography can not be delivered over to therandomness of the individual imagination and, via the media-tion of the ethos, the internalization of objective and commonregularities, the group places this practice under its collectiverule, so that the most trivial photograph expresses, apart fromthe explicit intentions of the photographer, the system ofschemes of perception, thought and appreciation common to awhole group.

In other words, the range of that which suggests itself asreally photographable for a given social class (that is, the rangeof 'takeable' photographs or photographs 'to be taken', asopposed to the universe of realities which are objectivelyphotographable given the technical possibilities of the camera)is defined by implicit models which may be understood viaphotographic practice and its product, because they objectivelydetermine the meaning which a group confers upon the pho-tographic act as the ontological choice of an object which isperceived as worthy of being photographed, which is captured,stored, communicated, shown and admired. The norms whichorganize the photographic valuation of the world in terms of theopposition between that which is photographable and thatwhich is not are indissociable from the implicit system of valuesmaintained by a class, profession or artistic coterie, of which thephotographic aesthetic must always be one aspect even if itdesperately claims autonomy. Adequately understanding aphotograph, whether it is taken by a Corsican peasant,a petit-bourgeois from Bologna or a Parisian professional, means notonly recovering the meanings which it proclaims, that is, to acertain extent, the explicit intentions of the photographer, it alsomeans deciphering the surplus of meaning which it betrays bybeing a part of the symbolism of an age, a class or an artisticgroup.

Unlike fully consecrated artistic activities, such as paintingor music, photographic practice is considered accessible toeveryone, from both the technical and the economic viewpoints,and those involved in it do not feel they are being measuredagainst an explicit and codified system defining legitimatepractice in terms of its objects, its occasions and its modalities;hence the analysis of the subjective or objective meaning thatsubjects confer on photography as a practice or as a culturalwork appears as a privileged means of apprehending, in theirmost authentic expression, the aesthetics (and ethics) of differentgroups or classes and particularly the popular 'aesthetic' whichcan, exceptionally, be manifested in it.

In fact, while everything would lead one to expect that thisactivity, which has no traditions and makes no demands, wouldbe delivered over to the anarchy of individual improvisation, itappears that there is nothing more regulated and conventional

Visual Anthropology Review Volume 7 Number 1 Spring 1991 131

than photographic practice and amateur photographs: in theoccasions which give rise to photography, such as the objects,places and people photographed or the very composition of thepictures, everything seems to obey implicit canons which arevery generally imposed and which informed amateurs or aes-thetes notice as such, but only to denounce them as examples ofpoor taste or technical clumsiness. If, in these stilted, posed,rigid, contrived photographs, taken in accordance with the rulesof a social etiquette which produces photographs of familycelebrations and holiday 'souvenirs', we have been unable torecognize the body of implicit or explicit rules which definethese aesthetics, it is probably because we have not suspendedan overly limited (and socially conditioned) definition of cul-tural legitimacy. The most banal tasks always include actionswhich owe nothing to the pure and simple quest for efficiency,and the actions most directly geared towards practical ends mayelicit aesthetic judgements, inasmuch as the means of attainingthe desired ends can always be the objectof a specific valuation:there are beautiful ways of ploughing or trimming a hedge, justas there are beautiful mathematical solutions or beautiful rugbymanoeuvres. Thus, most of society can be excluded from theuniverse of legitimate culture without being excluded from theuniverse of aesthetics.

Even when they do not obey the specific logic of anautonomous aesthetic, aesthetic judgements and behavior areorganized in a way that is no less systematic but which starts outfrom a completely different principle, since the aesthetic is onlyone aspect of the system of implicit values, the ethos, associatedwith membership of a class. The feature common to all thepopular arts is their subordination of artistic activity to sociallyregulated functions while the elaboration of 'pure' forms,generally considered the most noble, presupposes the disap-pearance of all functional characteristics and all reference topractical or ethical goals. Aesthetes who attempt to liberatephotographic practice from the social functions to which thegreat majority subordinates them, namely and principally therecording and compilation of the 'souvenirs' of objects, peopleor events socially designated as important, are seeking to makephotography undergo a transformation analogous to that whichaffected popular dances, the bourree, sarabande, allemande orcourante, when they were integrated into the scholarly form ofthe suite.5

Having constituted photography as an object of sociologi-cal study, we first had to establish how each group or classregulates and organizes the individual practice by conferringupon it functions attuned to its own interests; but we could nottake as our direct object particular individuals and their rela-tionship to photography as a practice or an object for con-sumption, without risking falling into abstraction. Only themethodological decision to make a study based primarily on'real' groups6 was to allow us to perceive (or prevent us fromforgetting) that the meaning and function conferred upon

photography are directly related to the structure of the group, tothe extent of its differentiation and particularly to its positionwithin the social structure. Thus the relationship of the peasantto photography is, in the final analysis, only one aspect of hisrelationship to urban life, identified with modern life, a rela-tionship which is made apparent in the directly experiencedrelationship between the villager and the holiday-maker: if, indefining his attitude to photography, he calls upon all the valueswhich define the peasant as such, it is because this urbanactivity, the prerogative of the bourgeois and the city-dweller,is associated with a way of life that questions the peasant wayof life, forcing him into an explicit self-definition.7

Apart from the interests of each class, it is the objectiverelationships, obscurely felt, between the class as such andother classes that are indirectly expressed through the attitudesof individuals towards photography. Just as the peasant isexpressing his relationship with urban life when he rejects thepractice of photography, a relationship in and through which hesenses the particularity of his condition, the meaning whichpetits bourgeois confer on photographic practice conveys orbetrays the relationship of the petite bourgeoisie to culture, thatis, to the upper classes (bourgeoisie) who retain the privilege ofcultural practices which are held to be superior, and to theworking classes from whom they wish to distinguish themselvesat all costs by manifesting, through the practices which areaccessible to them, their cultural goodwill. It is in this way thatmembers of photographic clubs seek to ennoble themselvesculturally by attempting to ennoble photography, a substitutewithin their range and grasp for the higher arts, and to findwithin the disciplines of the sect that body of technical andaesthetic rules of which they deprived themselves when theyrejected as vulgar the rules that govern popular practice. Therelationship between individuals and photographic practice isessentially a mediate relationship, because it always includesthe reference to the relationship that the members of other socialclasses have to photography and hence to the whole structure ofrelationships between the classes.

Attempting to overcome a falsely rigorous objectivism bytrying to grasp the systems of relationships concealed behindpreconstructed totalities is quite the opposite of succumbing tothe seductions of intuitionism, which, conjuring up the blindingevidence of false familiarity, in the individual case merelytransfigure everyday banalities about temporality, eroticismand death into false essentialist analyses. Because photography,apparently at least, lends itself very badly to properly sociologi-cal study, it provides the desired opportunity to prove that thesociologist, concerned with deciphering that which is only evercommon sense, can deal with images without becoming vi-sionary. And to those who expect sociology to provide themwith 'visions' what can one say, except, along with Max Weber,'that they should go to the cinema'? (Introduction, The Prot-estant Ethic).

132 Spring 1991 Volume 7 Number 1 Visual Anthropology Review

Notes.

1. This essay originally appeared as the Introduction to myUn art moyen: essai sur les usages sociaux de la photographie(Les Editions de Minuit: 1965). English translation © PolityPress, Cambridge; 1990. It appears here with the permission ofthe U.S. publishers, Stanford University Press.2. The same methodological demands are imposed on theethnologist who, at the risk of abstraction, must only see thereconstruction of the system of models as a moment of thesurvey, designed to describe the relationship which unites thesystem of models and the system of dispositions. This is not theplace to demonstrate how the logical oppositions which orga-nize a mythic-ritual system are rooted in dispositions (particu-larly in attitudes regarding time) that extend to the body hexis.3. 8,135,000 cameras in working order, at least one camera inhalf of all households, 845,000 cameras sold each year; thesefigures adequately reveal the enormously wide diffusion thatphotographic practice owes to its accessibility.4. Judgments about photography include, on the one hand,the whole popular philosophy with regard to the technicalobject, and, more precisely, the apparatus and, on the otherhand, real spontaneous aesthetic 'theories'; for example, thefrequent refusal to consider photography as an art is inspired bya summary definition of the camera as an apparatus, as well asby a highly ethically colored image of artistic activity.5. But efforts to constitute a 'pure' photography with anautonomous aesthetic often lapse into contradiction because therefusal to admit and subsume that which creates both thespecificity of the photographic act and its accessibility leads tothe borrowing of aesthetic norms from consecrated arts such aspainting.6. Three monographs were written in 1960, one on a villagein the Be'arn, the second on Renault factory workers, and thethird on two photographic clubs in the region of Lille. In allcases the studies relied particularly on prolonged observationand free discussion.7. The proportion of practitioners ranges from 39 percent intowns of less than 2,000 inhabitants to 61 percent in towns of2,000 to 5,000 inhabitants.

References.

Bernard, Claude1984 Introduction a la midecine experimental.

Flammarion, Paris.Hegel, G.W.F.

1942 Principles of the Philosophy ofRight,transTM. KnoxOxford.

Nietzsche, F.W.1974 The Gay Science. Kaufmann Walter.

Visual Anthropology Review Volume 7 Number 1 Spring 1991 133