Photography, Propaganda or Misinterpretation?

Photography is a combined word and is coming from the Greek “photo” that means light, and “graphy”, which means writing. So what we actually do when we do photography, we are writing with light. Photography is the most fascinating procedure of understanding our space and environment, since is a representation of real life Photography has been depicting the image of reality for a hundred and fifty years now, giving different meanings each time to how the world looks.

One of the most important uses of photography is in photojournalism. Photojournalism, closely related to documentary photography, emerged around 1850 when people were more interested in the current events. Therefore photographers started taking pictures of events, cities and landscapes. In that way they produced pictures no one have ever seen bringing reality in every household, on a piece of paper.

Photography belongs in the cultural and artistic activities of our days. Painting is considered to be the foundation of photography since they both act in the exact same way. Even though, photography, as painting, portrays reality objectively as it expresses personal emotions about the subject at the same time.

Photographic propaganda can exist in both photojournalism and art photography. Photographs show life in a frame. What is behind the camera is many times more important than the actual image. That’s where journalism comes into the “game”. Photographs, usually supported by some sort of text, lead the reader’s way of seeing. In such way they influence individual’s objectivity. I picture equals to a thousand words. It is very easy for a photograph to be misinterpreted by a text “of the wrong thousand words”.

A resent example is the war in Iraq. ‘THE PROPAGANDA WAR’ as The Economist had described it (October 6th-12th 2001). In this issue, The Economist had as a cover, a THE PROPAGANDA WAR. Inside the words you could see several images. In the top row where ‘THE’ aligned, was occupied by an aircraft carrier. Inside the ‘PROPAGANDA’ you could see images all people involved in this war, the American flag burning, other children lighting up a Molotov bomb, a Muslim church and a man with an “American scull like” mask. In the ‘WAR’ little children look desperate, smoke over Manhattan and the World Trade Centre entirely covered and in the middle Mr Bush. Gallery

Advertising, through photography, has found a prosperous ground to evolve. Therefore advertising couldn’t do without photography and photography wouldn’t be so overvalued unless advertising’s growth.

Capturing movement was a revolution in photography having as pioneer Eadward James Muybridge, born in 1830 in Kingston-Thames, England. Pioneers of the cinematic image found their inspiration in Muybrigdge’s work. That brings us to television where advertising has reached its peak.

Since advertising is based on corporate organisations, representation is biased from several interests promoting taboos and creating propagandas. The most common way of creating propaganda is, for example, the promotion of the male and female body, bringing in contradiction black and white. In such way it generates racial and sexual stereotypes.

Relevant examples are supported by images of the “Calvin Klein” advertisement campaign and United “Colors Of Benetton”. Both Companies, apart from the ‘seducing’ photographs, use text in order to lead consumers’ tastes, likes and dislikes.

Calvin Klein adverts, put representations of the male/female bodies in a ‘cinematic’ spotlight, which is quite difficult for ‘common’ people to reach. By creating this distance between people and the perfect body, therefore Calvin Klein Company aims to high profits.

In the following adverts you can see that the image subject is almost irrelevant with the product. First there is the ‘Body’ advert, which advertises underwear. This single photo is mostly occupied by the body of the model, implying that the underwear will not fit an ‘inappropriate’ body.Gallery

The ‘be not, be cool, just be’ advert contains images of three individuals, just being. This advert is for the ‘CK be’ perfume and suggests that every one should be themselves, implying that you will definitely be cooler by wearing this perfume.Gallery

‘Obsession for men’ perfume gets directly to the point. The obsession is obviously the naked woman rather the au de toilette that is been advertised. A prototype of woman for both men and women. The advert is the most common example for the stereotype of the perfect partner (men) and the perfect role model in order to obtain the perfect partner (women)Gallery

Benetton is a clothe Company and in this advert, it shows one man kissing a woman. There are no clothes involve within the photograph so how do they expect to sell their clothes? Similarly to the Calvin Klein adverts, when the product is not included, then the advert serves another interest.Gallery

Most of us are aware about the context of Benetton adverts. The company is trying to question important issues through provocative images. According to the adverts, Benetton is exploiting world issues to draw attention to its products by, many times, socking the public.

It is clear that photography serves several purposes such as to inform, record, and delight. Photography, sharing the static image with painting and the moving image with filming, is accepted as the most accurate and reliable form of nonverbal communication. Taking advantage of it, could be many times be used for the mislead of the audience for the benefit of corporate organisations.

Victor Burgin said “the intelligibility of the photograph is no simple thing; photographs are texts inscribed in terms of what we may call ‘photographic discourse’, but this discourse, like any other, engages discourses beyond itself, the ‘photographic text’, like any other, is the of a complex ‘intertextuality’, an overlapping series of previous texts ‘taken for granted’ at a particular cultural and historical conjuncture”. Each photograph is a book, which meaning varies from reader to reader.