Watching a documentary on the Ovation channel about photographers, including Susan Meisalas I was struck by her reflecting upon what it is that viewers of her images take away. She concludes that it's just not possible to know.
As the cameras panned around the exhibit at the ICP and she commented on the cinematic quality of her work, esp. in Nicaragua, and I couldn't help but feel that by presenting the work in large, beautiful, colorful prints the majority of the audience, rather than being moved to action or touched by the people they see portrayed, felt an otherness from the subjects – almost as if the images they were viewing were part of what might as well have been a fictional narrative, rather than a documentary one.
I experienced similar thoughts when attending a presentation by Art Wolfe where he presented pristine landscape photographs of a hitherto unexplored area of the Himalayas. Rather than cultivate or inspire in the viewer a sense of stewardship for the natural resources of our planet, the images were so otherwordly that, despite their beauty, they were off-putting in their distance from what is real to most of the residents of the planet.
So, the question is: Can photography still reveal truths and inspire action and change, or has the medium evolved in the minds of most of us into simply entertainment?